Let’s move now to the political nature of identities, that’s to say now politics is back. When we talk about identities, we feel that we are in a new world which is less political and more let’s say <i>identitory</i>. That’s an illusion. “Politics is back” means that politics is still shaping, structuring identities and especially on the international arena. I mentioned in my previous lecture that identity was constructed, and was particularly constructed by political and identity entrepreneurs. That means that identities play an important, a major role on the international arena because identities have not only a political substratum, but are permanently manipulated by political strategists, that’s to say by political actors. That’s to say also that identities must be considered as a part of a political expression, as a part also of a political mobilization, as a part of a strategy of a political legitimization. Expression, mobilization, legitimization, those three famous level of the political action must be considered at the different level in which identity issues are really involved. The role of a political substratum for interpreting identities and competition among identities is a permanent factor of shaping and reshaping of the international system. Let’s consider for instance the partition of India. Partition of India was achieved, as you know, in 1947 at the moment of the independence of the former British empire of India, the famous Raj India. In a first look, we can consider that this is an <i>identitory</i> partition, that Identity played as such a role in shaping, structuring these two states India and Pakistan. But this is an illusion. It would be a grave illusion to consider the Indian partition as a result of two antagonist identities. If we consider for instance the father, the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a Muslim but he was not a radical Muslim, he was not a fundamentalist. He had a very liberal and even secular, secular vision of Islam. The man was eating eggs and bacon as breakfast and was also drinking whiskey and was emancipated from a vision, a religious vision of Islam. The problem of Jinnah was not to consider that Muslims and Hindus were not able to coexist. His problem was to consider Muslims as a minority, as a minority inside the Indian Empire, and as such, Muslims had no chance for him to reach the level of power of domination inside the new state. And the only chance for Muslim people to rule the state would be to share India between Pakistan and India, that’s to say to construct the famous two nations. It was not for a religious reason, it was not for an identity reason, but the real motivation has to be found in the minority status of Muslims that’s to say in a political condition. This political condition is probably one of the main factors which has to be considered when we try to understand these situations made of apparently conflicting identities. And we have also of course to take into account the strategies of the identity entrepreneurs when manipulating, when instrumentalizing identities, the political identity entrepreneur has a political strategy, that’s to say he is reaching a political goal which is generally conquering the power inside the political system. So the two questions we have now to set up would be first what are the factors of these identitary dynamics in the world order? Why is it more active in some countries than in others? And the second question: what are the political reasons? First, what are the factors of this political manipulation of identities? Why this political manipulation is so high in some countries? I think that we have to distinguish four factors. The first one would be the ideological collapse, that’s to say what we commonly call “the end of ideologies”. I’m not sure that ideologies are ending, but my point is to say that there are some situations in which ideologies play a major role, and it was the case during the Cold War for instance, bipolarity and there are some other situations in which ideologies are declining. When ideologies are declining, and it was the case just after the bipolarity collapsed, the identity plays a role of substitute. When ideologies are no more mobilizing, for instance in Algeria after independence, identity is much more able, prompt to mobilize people than in a situation in which competition is structured by the duality or plurality of competing ideologies. The second point, the second factor will be the institutional collapse. When the state is no more working, when the political institutions are no more working, that’s to say are less and less legitimate, of course people are prompt to go to a cultural ideology for finding a substitute to this absence of political institutions and political organization. That’s why when state is collapsing; we can observe this increasing influence of identities. The third one will be empire collapse. Our world is made of several empires, which are generally coming from very far, that’s to say are very old, are very strongly rooted in the history of the world, I mean the Chinese empire, Russian empire, Ottoman Empire and so on. When an empire is declining, or even more, when it is collapsing, this is liberating, emancipating identities which are not able to fix themselves through new nations, and that is creating a very strong, very harmful competition of identities. As it was the case in the former Yugoslavia for instance, the case now in Caucasia, or it’s the case also in Ukraine, and so many other countries, because we know that the collapse of the Russian empire is a very strong event, which is really redefining the international and especially the regional context. The fourth factor is to be found in the integration collapse. Integration that’s to say when international social integration is low, when individuals, when peoples are determined by a high level of poverty, a low levels of human development, the reaction is commonly to go back to its own identity and use it as an emblem for protesting against this situation of low integration. So ideological factors, institutional factors, Empire collapse, integration collapse, all these factors are very important in our present world, are playing a major role for giving, for providing to identity a very structuring role in the present international system. What are now the results? The results now are considered as something, which would be very close to anarchy. We had with the nation order a kind or harmonious coexistence among people; of course sometimes this coexistence was moving to war, but however the national order was ordering, was structuring the international arena. Identities and identity competition is not really resulting in a new order and this is the crucial point of the present international instability. For many reasons; because identity is made of communautarism and not made as nation was, not made of a political program, of a political vision of the city, of the order, of the political order, of the political institutions and of the political structures. Identity is a kind of strategy of expressing themselves against the others, but which is not looking for defining a new political order. The second point is that identity doesn’t consider alterity. Identity as I mention is a vision of oneself but is not a vision of the others and is not setting the question of how coexisting with the others. The third one is of course the risk of transformation of identity to radical identity and to radical vision of identity and to radicalism and fundamentalism. But the main dangerous result is that identities are not territorialized; it’s impossible to imagine a harmonious, a homogenous city made of one identity. This incompatibility between territory and identity is the major difference between identity and nation. Nation is made of a territory, of a territorial support and especially as we mentioned in its political vision. But identity is made only of ethnicity, that’s to say of cultural properties. These cultural properties cannot be transferred to a territorial order. That’s why this ethnicization of the world is a kind of aporie.
