Book Review - The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
Kwame
Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy and law, has the perfect credentials
to challenge our assumptions about identity. His father was Ghanaian, his
mother English; He was born in Wiltshire, but grew up in Ghana; his mother’s
religion was Anglican, while his father was a Methodist; Appiah now lives in
New York and is married to another man.
In
his latest book, inspired by his 2016 Reith Lectures ‘Mistaken identities’,
Appiah covers creed, country, colour, class and culture, devoting a chapter to
each theme. Identities are important, he asserts, because they “can give you a
sense of how you fit into the social world…they give you reasons for doing
things.” Essentialism, in particular, is problematic as a means of
classification because there isn’t an “inner essence” that determines the
makeup of different social identities.
According
to Appiah, the fluidity and flexibility of identity is crucial. Religious
traditions, change over time, so “we need to think of creedal identities in
terms of mutable practices and communities rather than sets of immutable
beliefs.” Cultural practices are also “mobile” and benefit from crossover.
What’s important about values, he suggests, is that “you need to keep caring
about them.”
In
his chapter on Country, Appiah uses the example of Aron Ettore Schmitz to
illustrate the limitations of defining nationality too narrowly. Schmitz, whose
pen name was Italo Svevo, was born in Trieste in 1861, at a time when
nation-states were not yet considered the dominant form of global political
organisation. His parents were Jews of both Italian and German origin. He was
born in the Austrian Empire but at the time of his death, Trieste was an
Italian city: “he was a citizen of one country who became a citizen of another
without leaving home.”
Tracking back and forth between continents
and prejudices, Appiah includes extracts from classic texts and builds on and
develops the scientific research of others. He sometimes states the obvious.
For instance, many historians believe that the rise of racism in the latter
part of the eighteenth century was a direct consequence of “the need to salve
the consciences of those who trafficked in and exploited enslaved men and
woman.” Writing about class, Appiah declares that meritocracy, advocated by Americans
as a means of bypassing the old British class order, is also unreliable,
because of the desire to hand down our hard won success to our children. The
baton of privilege continues to pass between generations.
In
this methodical interrogation of the “lies that bind”, Appiah warns against using
outdated (mainly 19th century) modes of thought because much of it
is “unhelpful or just plain wrong.” His main premise is that people can misuse identity
to support negative “hierarchies of status and respect and… structures of
power.” It’s a topical study, particularly given today’s societal divisions in
the US and UK. Appiah’s conclusion - that our social identities should “expand our
horizons”, not confine them - is also timely.
Originally published in The Tablet