A r t i c l e S y m p o s i u m

.13A Garden of Identities:Multiple Selves and Other Futures

Ziauddin Sardar City University, LondonUK

Journal of Futures Studies, November 2005, 10(2): 13 - 20

I close my eyes and think of a future world. Avisionary world, thirty, forty years from today. A worldnot of new humanity but a plethora of old and newhumanities. A world where more than one of way ofbeing human is not only the norm but is consideredessential for the very survival of our species. This is theworld as a garden.

Gardens, by the very fact that they are gardens,consist of a myriad of different plants. There are all vari-ety of hurdy perennials that flower year after year. Thereare the annuals and the biennials that have to be plant-ed in season. There are plants that provide variouscolours of foliage, or hedges and borders, or climb upfences, or play architectural roles. There are fruit trees,trees that provide fragrant and colourful flowers andtrees that fix the soil and provide shade. There are thegrasses so essential for the lawns. And what would agarden be without the proverbial birds and the bees?And those warms and insects that both enrich the soiland require some form of pest control. The thing abouta garden is that all this truly monumental variety of lifeexists in symbiosis: nourishing each other and ensuringthe overall survival of the garden. Of course, the gardenhas to be tended: the weeds have to be cleared, plantshave to be pruned, we have to make sure that nothinggrows so much that it ends up suffocating and endan-gering other plants.

So, I desire a future where all the vast and variedways of being human, all the plethora of different cul-tures, past, present and the future, exists in symbiosis asthough the globe was a well-tended garden. In essence,

it is a vision of a globe of pluralistic identities. But thekind of identities I seek, or rather envision, has little todo with identity as we have conventionally understoodthe term.

Philosophically, the concept of identity, as AmartyaSen has pointed out, is based on two basic assump-tions. First, the presumption that we must have a single– or at least principal and dominant – identity. Second,the supposition that we discover our identity. The firstassumption is plainly wrong: not only do we exist withmultiple identities but often invoke different identitiesin different contexts. So: "the same person can be ofIndian origin, a Muslim, a French citizen, a US resident,a woman, a poet, a vegetarian, an anthropologist, a uni-versity professor, a Christian, an angler, and an avidbeliever in extra-terrestrial life and of the propensity ofalien creatures to ride around the universe in smartlydesigned UFOs. Each of these collectives, to all of whichthis person belongs, gives him or her a particular identi-ty, which are variously important in different contexts"(Sen 2001). The second assumption is just as erroneous.We discover our identity, the argument goes, from thecommunity we belong to: it is through the relationshipswithin a community that we discover our identity. Thisargument suggests that we have no role in choosingour identities. But even though the constraints of com-munity and traditions are always there, reason andchoice too have a role to play. The point is not that wecan chose any identity at random; but "whether we dohave choices over alternative identities or combinationof identities, and perhaps more importantly, substantial

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freedom on what priority to give to the variousidentities that we may simultaneously have"(Sen 2001).

It is because we have a problem with plu-ralistic identities that we are in the midst of aglobal epidemic of identity crisis. Most of us donot know who or what we really are. Some ofus have impossibly romanticised notions ofwhat we should be. We desperately cling on toan imagined "heritage", subscribe to the preser-vation of an unchanging "tradition", and areready to kill and be killed to save some"essence" of our idealised identity. Many of ushave altogether abandoned the very idea of ahaving a fixed identity: we change our identitieswith as much ease as we change our jackets. Allof us are suffering from a disease that is slowlybut surely eating us from the inside.

The symptoms are everywhere. InNorthern Ireland, men in balaclavas are not just"scum", they think of themselves as eitherIreland's or Ulster's "finest" and will unite in vio-lence for the sake of the difference. Britainseems perpetually in limbo not knowingwhether to become more American or moreEuropean. For much of the 20th century,American identity, and its foreign policy, wasshaped in opposition to a "communist bloc". Ina post-Cold war world, America has to createimaginary villains ("Muslim terrorists", rougestates such as bankrupt and starving "NorthKorea", "the Chinese menace") in an inaneattempt to resolve its predicament of self-identi-ty. The collapse of the Soviet Union has pro-duced a plethora of new artificial, national feud-ing identities, pitting Azerbaijanis againstArmenians, Chechnyans against Russians,Kazakhstanis of one kind against Kazakhstanisof another. The Balkans has just gone throughone of the most brutal balkanisation of identi-ties in all its history. In the Muslim world, tradi-tionalists and modernists have been engaged inbattles over what constitutes true Islamic identi-ty for decades(Moussalli 1999). The very idea ofbeing "White" has now become so problematicthat "Whiteness" is studied as an academic disci-pline in its own right.

In short, identity is being contested every-where. That is why the politics of identity has

become one of the dominant themes of post-modern time.

To "know thyself", as Socrates put it, isboth a fundamental human urge and a basicquestion in philosophy. Having some idea ofwho or what we are helps us to determine howwe ought to live and conduct our daily affairs. Alittle self-knowledge also provides us with a lit-tle coherence in our metaphysical and moraloutlooks. But in a rapidly globalising world, it isalmost impossible to have even a modicum ofself- knowledge. All those things that providedus with a sense of confidence in ourselves - suchas nation states with homogenous populations,well-established local communities, unques-tioned allegiance to history and unchanging tra-dition - have evaporated. The sources of ouridentity have been rendered meaningless.

Consider, for example, the territory called"England". It is not the sole preserve of "theEnglish" anymore: the population now is muchmore heterogeneous, with "Englishness" (how-ever, it is defined) as only one segment in amulti-ethnic society. Moreover, the history andtradition that are associated with this"Englishness" - the Empire, House of Lords, foxhunting, the national anthem - are either ques-tionable or meaningless to the vast majority ofnew-English who now live in England. Worse:this Englishness becomes quite insignificantwhen it is seen in relation to a new Europeanidentity which itself is an amalgam of countlessother cultural identities. Not surprisingly, "theEnglish" feel threatened.

While the concrete foundations of identityare cracking away everywhere, the shifting con-text adds another layer of perplexity. Identity isa label, a toolkit, a compass bearing. It permitsus to find not only ourselves but discern similar-ity and/or difference in everyone else. When thefoundations of our identity crack we lose notonly the sense of who we are but essential ele-ments of how we connect to all other identities.All labels become confusing, multiple and prob-lematic.

Think of the rather common label: "black".It has no global connotation; there is no univer-sal black identity. Being black has differentmeaning and significance in different places. In

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New York, being black is a mark of difference incontrast to the whites, the Italian, the Irish, theHispanics and a symbol of being cool. InNigeria, it is not important whether you areblack or white but whether you are Yorubarather than Hausa; and the only way you can becool is to be totally westernised. In Jeddah,nothing is cool, and what really matters is notwhether you are black or brown but whetheryou are a member of the royal family. In CapeTown, to be black is, almost by definition, to beconfused: once excluded, now technicallyempowered, a dominant group in the rainbow,but still practically marginalised by the historythat created and continues to operate practicalexclusion. So, from the perspective of identity,context redefines meaning and we end up nottalking about the same colour at all.

In addition, the very notions and ideas weuse to describe our identities are changing radi-cally. What does it mean, for example, to be a"mother" in a world where in vitro fertilisationand surrogate motherhood is rapidly becomingcommon? What happens to conventional ideasof parenthood in the case of the French baby"constructed" from the egg of a 62-year-oldwoman, sperm from her brother, and "incubat-ed" in a surrogate mother? What does it meanto be a "wife" in a homosexual marriage? Or"old" when you have rebuilt a 65-year-old bodythrough plastic surgery and look like a youngstarlet?

Thus, identity has become a perilousnotion. It is not, if it ever was, monolithic andstatic; but multiple and ever changing. And themost fundamental change is this: all those othercategories through which we in the Westdefined and measured ourselves - the "evilOrientals", the "fanatic Muslims", the "inferiorraces of the colonies", the immigrants, therefugees, the gypsies - are now an integral partof ourselves. It is not just that they are "here"but their ideas, concepts, lifestyles, food,clothes now play a central part in shaping "us"and "our society". We thus have no yardstick tomeasure our difference and define ourselves.

Descartes could say with some confidence,"I think, therefore I am" because his thought hadalready defined the Other, the darker side of

himself, through which he could confirm hisown civilised and thoughtful existence. Today,our thought has to be directed toward a morefrightening question: how much of the Other isactually located within me? The quest for identi-ty is essentially an attempt to answer this ques-tion. And it is the fear of the answer that trans-forms, in the words of Amin Maalouf, theLebanese-French novelist, "a perfectly permissi-ble aspiration" into "an instrument of war"(Maalouf 2000). This transformation occursthrough some basic associations.

The first of these is the conventional asso-ciation of identity with power and territory.Identity always conferred power, defined theessential character distinctive to its own territo-ry, and familiarised people with the propermeans of domesticity, living comfortably withinthe homeland. But an all powerful identity islike an all-powerful tree in the garden: it sucksthe life out of all other plants. When power isskewed in this manner, it is not possible to existin symbiosis. Take the case of America, whichbegan as a declaration of identity: a new worldemptied of meaningful past and ready formigrants who would build an identity based onthe power of a new territory. But the very defi-nition of American identity provided power andprivilege for those who were conceived as theinsiders. The term 'ethnicity' has its roots in theAmerican provenance where, apart from theEuropean immigrants, all other immigrants aredefined as ethnics. As Dipankar Gupta notes,ethnicity "connotes, above all else, the significa-tion of the primordially constituted 'Other' as an'outsider' " (Gupta 1996). The distinction isbetween hyphenated Americans – Italian,German, Polish, Irish, Russian – and ethnicity.American identity offers the hyphenatedAmericans the ideal American Dream of inclu-sion and opportunity. Thus, only hyphenatedAmericans have ever made it to the WhiteHouse.

But ethnicity is very different: blacks,Hispanics, Native Americans are ethnics, prob-lematic and different kinds of Americans.Ethnics make excellent domestic servants, a sig-nificantly different thing from domesticity.Ethnicity is the politically correct term for race,

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for a hierarchy within American identity and forthe power of definition that is exclusive towhite America. Asian too are ethnics. ChineseAmericans had their identity neatly stereotypedin the works of Mark Twain and Bret Harte.Japanese Americans were the only peopleinterned as real "enemies within" during theSecond World War, an unthinkable reaction toGerman, Italian or any other quisling stateAmericans.

In British identity, power and territory areexpressed in hierarchies of race and class. It is alittle too glib to argue that British identity hadthe luxury of seeing race as external, the defini-tion of difference beyond it shores. But theexercise of power that created an Empire onwhich the sun never set, a notion of class thatdefined and shaped modernity and was not astranger anywhere in the world, are essentialattributes of what it is to be British (Colls 2002).Without it the British could not be simultane-ously xenophobic, internationalist andparochial: the sort of people who go on Spanishholidays to eat fish and chips and drink warmbitter ale. British identity is based on anassumption of authority that makes the world afamiliar place, a proper theatre in which to con-tinue being British. It also produced its owninternationalist perspective: Britain has had itsshare of "old India hands", "Africa men andwomen" – urbane, cosmopolitans who knowJohnny Foreigners better than they know them-selves.

The problem with identity as power andcontrol over territory is what happens whenpower wanes. Johnny Foreigner is now within,ethnics are demanding the American Dream.Power has been debunked, denounced and vili-fied. Does all that that identifies the Self godown the plughole with it? How can we becomfortable with accepting the identity of vil-lains? Which leads us to the second association:to exclude the unsavoury foreigners from ouridentity we have to anchor it in romanticisedhistory and frozen tradition.

Collective identity is based on the selectiveprocesses of memory. Let me illustrate how thisprocess work, and how the creation of identity

can lead to conflict, by dwelling on the notionof British identity. British identity was (is?) theacknowledgement of a common past. Sharingand having been shaped by this common past iswhat makes the British different from all otheridentities. The trouble is history as a deliberatehuman creation, itself another wilful act ofpower, artificially constructed to support anartificial identity. Europe engineered a culturalidentity based on a common descent from thesupposed traditions of ancient Greece andRome and two thousand years of Christianity.British history books always began with thearrival of the Romans. So British history beginsby submerging, barbarising and differentiatingitself from Celtic history. Celt and Welsh arewords whose linguistic roots, one Greek theother Saxon, mean stranger. The history ofBritain, as written in the age of devolution,records not a common shared past but continu-ous contest and conflict within British isles.Whatever Britain is, it is the creation of domi-nance by kings and barons and upwardlymobile yeoman who practiced colonialism athome, and after perfecting the technique,moved abroad.

It was Oliver Cromwell who noted thatBritain had its "Indians" at home in what hecalled the "dark corners of Britain." He referred,of course, to the residual Celtic corners. Itmakes perfect sense that Margaret Thatcher,whom I always regarded as Oliver Cromwell indrag, should propose the solution to the Ulsterproblem as relocating Catholics to Ireland. Itwas Cromwell's policy: if they will not reform,be educated and submit, then they have noplace within the identity, history and societythat is Britain. That no one seriously proposessending the Union Jack waving Ulstermen backto where they came from, or removing theUnion from them, itself suggests a strong alle-giance to a constructed history, the history ofirreconcilable difference. As Orangemen sooften say, marching with fife and drum to intim-idate and demonstrate their dominance is theirculture. In an age of the politics of identity, cul-ture has its rights. But how far can you defendthe rights of a culture whose only reason for

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being is to retain dominance? It really is quite dumbfounding how much

of Britishness, and by association Englishness, isbased on fabricated history. Consider the wholenotion of Anglo-Saxon Britain. WinstonChurchill and Rudyard Kipling were devotees ofAnglo Saxon history for a reason. It enabledthem to avoid how genuinely European Britishhistory has always been. Norman kings hardlyever spent time in Britain, spoke French ratherthan English, and were most concerned withdominating Europe from their French posses-sions. Of course, the Saxon bit of the AngloSaxon has its own problems. After the WelshTudors, and Scots Stuarts, a brief quasi nativeinterlude, German monarchs were bussed in toreign over Britishness that was to be marked byEnglishness alone, and that wanted nothing todo with Europe.

The selectivity of historic memory is partof its inventiveness. History always seeksancient roots, the better to justify its innova-tions. Ancient Anglo Saxon liberties were pur-posefully invented on a number of occasions tofashion the Mother of Parliaments. This founda-tional institution was not a true popular demo-cratic institution until 1929, the first electionbased on universal adult suffrage. The statue ofOliver Cromwell quite properly stands outsideParliament. His insistence that ancient AngloSaxon liberties rested on property owning wasthe novel twist that secured class hierarchy,made the Restoration of monarchy easy, andenabled manufactured history to continue itswork. The pomp and ceremony of the Britishmonarchy was a late Victorian invention. TheRoyal Family as the model for the normativefamily, an ideal for a nation, is a post Edwardianinvention, Victoria's son Edward hardly being asuitable candidate for model husband andfather. And so it goes on.

Thus, the notions of race and class areintrinsic to the self-definition of the English.Without the idea of race there is little left forEnglish identity to hold on to: only being a dis-advantaged minority within Britain, the com-plete inversion of received history. What workswell for youthful addicts of street culture doesnot suit the aspirations of new English identity,

and that's why the appeal to the barricades,sending them back, locking them up has to bemade.

As recently as 1940, George Orwell couldstate that "when you come back to Englandfrom any foreign country, you have immediatelythe sensation of breathing different air". Identityas difference is less easy to define in a worldalready awash with globalisation whose mostnotable feature is rampant Americanisation.Where is the British sandwich? Surely thatdefined the difference of being here. ButMcDonalds, Starbucks, pizza parlours, donerkebab, chicken tikka marsala, the rise of ciabat-ta and the pret a manger syndrome have trans-muted the familiar air of England in wafts ofeveryone else's fragrant confections.

These culinary metaphors have becomebasic to redefining British identity. The new culi-nary repertoire are not so much a smorgasbordas alternative choices. Does Britain embrace theglobal Americanisation of the high street, themerchandised model of individualism, the freemarket identity of buying into who you want tobe in terms of dress, sex and politics? Or isBritain as European as ciabatta and its passionfor fine wine? Are the British the kind of peoplewho opt for a common European history ofstruggle for public ownership and secure, quali-ty public services? In facing that choice, Britainhas to discover how and in what way the spiceddiversity of real curry, as opposed to an invent-ed dish to suit only white tastes, fits into thefeast of identities. And, these questions are notjust rhetorical: they have a real import in termsof policy. Should Britain align itself with Americaor look more towards Europe is a question thatdominates British politics – some would evenargue that it is tearing the nation apart.

Much the same can be said about otherproblematic identities. Like Britain, Islam toohas used selective memory in shaping an identi-ty for itself that is posed against a demonisedWest. And, just like the Muslims, fundamental-ist Hindus too have constructed a romanticisedpast to shape a Nationalist Hindu identity(Bhatt2002). In both cases, the fabrication of mono-lithic identities has led to conflict and death.The desire to be pure, unpolluted and authentic

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often leads to construction of identities that aretotalitarian in the content and destructive intheir nature.

So we arrive at the third association: thenegotiation of identity between the alternatepoles of desire and death. As American scholarCornel West has suggested, we construct ouridentities from the building blocks of our basicdesires: desire for recognition, quest for visibili-ty, the sense of being acknowledged, a deepdesire for association (West 1994). It is longingto belong. All these desires are expressed bysymbols – pomp and ceremony, marches, festi-vals, national monuments and anthems, cricketand football teams, etc. But in a world wheresymbols are all we are, all we have, holding onto these symbols becomes a matter of life anddeath. It is for the glorification of these symbolsthat the bloody tale of national history is writ-ten and enacted in nationalists' campaignseverywhere around the world.

Identity not only invokes the desire to bedifferent, it also summons the desire to expresssimilarity. Indeed, there can be no differencewithout similarity. But similarity is always seenas the opposite pole of difference, as appeals tomaking everyone the same. It is often posed as"our" similarity against "their" difference. Oncethe doctrine of similarity was the underlyingprinciple of the communist ethos, now it hasbecome essential to the internationalist-libertar-ian-individualist doctrine that underpins globali-sation. "Workers of the World Unite" has beenreplaced by "Liberal Capitalism is the Only Way".Such championing of similarity can become waron those who fight to maintain their difference.Similarity in such contests becomes an ethos todie for.

In coming to terms with the contemporarycrisis of identity, we need to transcend certainapparent contradictions. To reject the demoni-sation of difference does not require the aban-donment of difference. The desire for similarityis not the same thing as the aspiration forhomogeneity. Traditions and customs that donot change cease to be traditions and customsand are transformed into instruments ofoppression. Identity has historic anchors but isnot fixed to a limited, unchanging set of tradi-

tional signs and historic symbols. Identity is notwhat we buy, or what we choose, or what weimpose on others; rather, it is something fromwhich we learn how to live, discover what isworth buying, and appreciate what it is to bedifferent. Just as the flora and fauna in a gardenlearns to live with each other.

What we need is to recover our confi-dence in identity as the product of various anddiverse traditions. We need to recognise thatany identity is the means to synthesise similaritythrough difference and to see difference as dis-crete means of expressing basic similarity. Weneed to move away from the politics of contest-ed identities that heighten artificial differencestowards acceptance of the plasticity and possi-bilities of identities that focus on our commonhumanity. Living identity, as opposed to the fos-silised to die for variety, is always in a constantflux. It is an ever changing balance, the balanceof similarities and differences as a way of locat-ing what it is that makes life worth living andwhat connects us with the rest of the changingworld. The challenge of shaping Other futures isto transcend difference and thereby enable it tofulfil its real purpose – to provide variety anddiversity in a world that cannot exist with it.

This then is my vision of the future. Aworld of variety and diversity where we are atease with our identity, know our Selves, andthrough knowing ourselves come to see beautyand goodness in Others who are not like us. Afragrant world with all the colour and multiplici-ty of a garden.

But, of course, it is more than possible thatinstead of moving towards my garden of identi-ties, we could go forward to a totally differentfuture. An alternative scenario is reflected inthe title of Francis Fukuyama's book: OurPosthuman Future (Fukuyama 2001). Here,human identity per se evaporates and geneticengineering, cloning and neuropharmacologylead us to a future of identities manufactured inthe laboratory. Eugenics will ensure that we areall much stronger, smarter and resistant to dis-ease and death. Xeno-transplants will guaranteereplacement parts for our failing bits of biology.Scientists would isolate biochemicals in an eggand transfer them directly to the skin cell –

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doing away with the idea and need of thehuman embryo altogether. So, our sense of our-selves, and how we interact as social and cultur-al beings, will be fundamentally altered. Identitywill acquire a new meaning – or rather mean-inglessness as we will all be fashioned in ahomogeneous way by standardized technology.There are obvious problems with this scenario.As soon as biotechnology solves one problems,it creates a myriad of others. As Fukuyamaacknowledges, it could at best lead to a newclass of people – those who could afford thetechnology – and create a whole new under-class of ordinary mortals; at worse it could leadto a Brave New World that Aldous Huxleywarned us about. My point is that a posthuman, bio-technology based future is simply acontinuation of the Enlightenment project ofprogress through instrumental science. Onesource of Truth, and one Civilisation, continuesin its trajectory – the human garden becomesan embodiment of a single, all-powerful identi-ty.

There is another scenario that is worthconsidering. Globalisation may continue on itspresent course unimpeded for the next two orthree decades (Sardar 2002). That would notonly mean that the world is dominated andcontrolled by a single nation - for globalisationis only another name for Americanisation - butalso the cultural space for difference would betotally eroded. In other worlds, the world willbe awash with a single culture and its products,and difference as such would cease to exist.Diversity as we know it would disappear andcultures trying to retain some semblance ofidentity and originality would be in perpetualconflict with America. Puritanism and funda-mentalism would stalk the earth on one hand,and America's arrogance will take cosmologicalproportion on the other. This scenario too leadsus to a desolate panorama with a single identi-ty.

To undermine these two undesirable sce-narios, we need to abandon the idea that a sin-gle truth can be imposed on a plural globe. Justas a garden does not function on the basis of asingle species, so the single Truth of westerncivilisation as well as creeds and ideologies that

are based on exclusivist notions of truth andseek redemption by imposing this truth on allothers, cannot lead us to viable, sustainablefuture. Both America and the great monotheis-tic religions of the world must transcend theirhistoric goal of claiming exclusivist notions ofTruth just as science must learn to see itself asonly one – and not the – manifestation of reali-ty. The Platonic idea that truth is same foreveryone has no place in my future garden ofhumanities. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues inThe Dignity of Difference (Sacks 2002) thisnotion of truth sets up false oppositions. If alltruth is the same for everyone at all times, thenif I am right, you must be wrong. And, if I reallycare for truth, I must convert you to my view.We must move forward from the old recipethat "truth is supremely important, and there-fore all persons must live by a single truth" tothe new formula that "truth is supremely impor-tant, and therefore every man and women mustbe allowed to live according to how they seethe truth." Ultimately, my notion of pluralisticidentities comes down to how we all see thetruth differently, according to our historic expe-riences and perspectives, and how we all livethe truth in our lives, as individuals and commu-nities, in our uniquely different and culturalways of being human.

So, I open my eyes and go out to trans-form the world as I find it into the future worldthat I desire. A world where more than one ofway of being human is not only the norm but isconsidered essential for the very survival of ourspecies. This is the world as a garden. And youand I, and all of us, urgently need to cultivateour future garden of humanities.

CorrespondenceOne Orchard Gate, London, NW9 6HU, UKEmail: zsardar@compuserve.com

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