Narrative Identity: Transnational Practices of Pashtun Immigrants in the United States of America

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Shifting Identity

The term identity is frequently used but rarely defined in public discourse; and, in some cases, the same could be said for academic writing as well. There seems to be considerable confusion regarding the meaning of identity yet there is hardly a more popular word. Phillip Gleason highlighted this phenomenon in his 1983 essay on the semantic history of identity. He suggested that though the word was being used constantly in discussions and in writing, most people, if pressed would have a difficult time defining what exactly they meant. The lack of precision and consistency coupled with the popular and clichéd usage of the term extinguished any analytical value for Gleason. He concluded his study by suggesting that a good deal of what passes for discussion of identity is little more than portentous incoherence.¹

Despite the lack of clarity and questionable analytical value of the term identity, interest both on the academic and popular level continued throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. In 1999, James Fearon conducted a similar study as Gleason’s and observed that in the fifteen years not much had changed:

Overwhelmingly, academic users of the word ‘identity’ feel no need to explain its meaning to readers. The readers’ understanding is simply taken for granted, even when ‘identity’ is the author’s primary dependent or independent variable.²

Fearon’s observation is particularly troubling considering the rapid expansion of publications containing the term identity since the mid-twentieth century. The following Google Ngram chart shows the dramatic increase in book publications containing the word identity leading into the twenty-first century.

Note the dramatic increase following the end of WWII.

The number of academic dissertations on identity has dramatically increased as well. A brief survey of the ProQuest dissertation database shows that in 1983, the year Gleason wrote his essay on identity, there were 181 dissertations published with the term identity in the abstract.³ The same search in 2013 reveals 3,325 dissertations, an increase of 1,737 percent in thirty years. Granted, these numbers must be considered alongside the overall growth of dissertations in social science in order to see whether there is any correlation. In comparison, in 1983 there were 9,599 dissertations published on social science. In 2013, the same search reveals 34,382 published dissertations. That is a 258 percent increase in published dissertations in social science in thirty years. This is a significant increase; however, it does not account for the 1,737 percent increase in dissertations with the term identity mentioned in the abstract.

The increase in academic publications is by no means a suggestion that the term identity is more understood. It is indeed possible, as some researchers have suggested, that the rapid semantic expansion only further contributes to the ambiguity.⁴ If identity is everywhere it is nowhere.⁵ In other words, if identity has come to mean so many different things to so many different people, is there any analytical value to the term? This is a genuine concern considering the sheer volume of identity studies in social science as well as the recent upsurge in popular discourse.

In addition to publications, there is a significant increase in media discourse concerning identity. It is fair to say that the popular meaning of the term is no less elusive than the academic usage. In 2015, Dictionary.com awarded the term identity the Word of the Year prize. The rationale for the award was attributed to the ongoing expansion and fluidity of the term, particularly in the areas of usage surrounding issues of gender, sexuality, and race. This makes sense considering that 2015 could be described as a watershed year for these topics in American popular media. A few clear examples that year include the public transgender transition of Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all fifty of the United States, and the racially motivated slaying of nine black church members by a self-proclaimed white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina. Needless to say, 2015 sparked much debate concerning the topic of identity.

However, it should not come as a surprise that the recent increased interest in identity surrounds controversy. This phenomenon was observed by Erik Erikson nearly seventy years ago when the topic of identity was first popularized in social science: We begin to conceptualize matters of identity at the very time in history when they become a problem.⁶ Erikson’s observation comes from the mid-twentieth century during the initial surge in identity discourse. The problem of identity at this point in history is primarily related to the post-WWII increase in immigration. Many of these immigrants, having left their homelands and families, found themselves in the midst of what Erikson called an identity crisis. He argued that the rise of national identity provided a new foundation for those who had lost their heritage. The conceptualization of a national identity, in the words of Erikson, was an attempt to make a super-identity out of all the identities imported by its constituent immigrants.⁷ Erickson’s words concerning the issues related to immigrant identity continue to be relevant today and are potentially even more debated as identity politics. Immigrant and national identity discussions are at least partially responsible for the recent revival of the term in addition to the aforementioned topics of gender, sexuality, and race.

Regardless of which problem initially spurred the recent movement to reconceptualize identity, there is a common underlying debate regarding whether or not identity is fixed or fluid and housed individually or collectively. In order to address these issues, the chapter will briefly discuss how the term identity has shifted since the sixteenth century to current usages in social science. Early uses of the term and the relationship among the disciplines of Theology and Philosophy provides a helpful framework to comprehend the ongoing debate. Understanding the underlying presuppositions of these positions and exploring the origin of the term identity will clarify the discussion regardless of what prefix is added to the term (i.e., ethnic, national, gender, racial, sexual, religious, etc.).

Identity According to the OED

According to the 2017 Oxford English Dictionary, the English word identity appears in the sixteenth century. Of the four references listed, three of the works are theological and the fourth is Henry Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (300 BCE). These works include an obsolete spelling of the word idemptitie which comes from the Latin idem (same) + the suffix tās (meaning quality or condition). This meaning is confirmed in the theological texts which are primarily concerned with the doctrine of transubstantiation or sameness of substance concerning Christ’s body and the eucharist. Both Catholics and Protestants employ the term differently in order to condemn or defend the doctrine.

One Catholic author, Nicholas Saunders, accuses Protestant reformer Alexander Nowell of twisting the scripture in order to make the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation unintelligible by conceptualizing the identity of the eucharist as a similitude or metaphor meaning likeness of Christ’s body rather than sameness:

How long will you continue in falsifying the holy Scriptures, M. Nowell? When shall a man find you to deal uprightly? Where is it written, I am bread? Where sayeth Christ those words? Verily if he had said them, yet you may know, he meant himself to be bread only by a similitude or Metaphor: as it was expounded before in the words, I am the true vine . . . The verb sum, I am, being joined with two natures clean distant doth always signify a like condition or property, and no identity of substance.⁸

According to Saunders, Nowell intentionally conflated the metaphorical I am statements in John’s Gospel with Christ’s words in Luke’s Gospel this is my body in order to show the impossibility of transubstantiation since it would require a change in Christ’s substance rather than a change in the substance of bread (Luke 22:19). This is not to suggest that Saunders rightly understood Nowell or vice versa. Rather, it is simply to demonstrate the debate as to whether or not the English word identity means sameness or likeness can be traced back to the sixteenth century.

Queer literary theorists have recently suggested that Billingsley’s translation of Euclid did not have the meaning of sameness but rather likeness or similarity:

Rather than think of identity in the sense of identity politics, however, we invoke the earliest use of idemptitie recorded in the OED: and Henry Billingsley’s Euclid translation of

1570

, idemptitie refers to a proportionality, likeness, or similarity that is more of an approximation than a substantialization (identity).⁹

In order to address this claim, it is necessary to consider the entire reference from Billingsley’s English translation Euclid:

As in proportion are compared together two quantities, and proportion is nothing else but the respect and comparison of the one to the other, and these quantities are the terms of the proportion: so in proportionality are compared together two proportions. And proportionality is nothing else, but the respect and comparison of the one of them to the other. And these two proportions are the terms of this proportionality. He calleth it the similitude, that is, the likeness or idemptitie of proportions: As if ye will compare the proportion of the line A containing

2

, to the line B containing

1

, to the proportion of the line C containing

6

, to the line D containing

3

, either proportion is dupla. This likeness, idemptitie, or equality of proportion is called proportionality.¹⁰

Billingsley is commenting on Euclid’s definition of proportionality. Considering ancient Greek mathematics were not interested in measurements but rather comparisons, one can see how Goldberg and Menon came to define identity as likeness rather than sameness.¹¹ However, suggesting Billingsley’s use of the term idemptitie meant likeness may not be so clear when taking into consideration that algebraic operations had a significant influence in Billingsley’s translation of Euclid. According to Antonio Malet, a purely numerical understanding of the terms compared in ratios was achieved by the end of the 16th century.¹² Therefore, Billingsley’s use of the term identity should not be read through the lens of an ancient Greek geometrical framework of comparison but rather a sixteenth-century framework of arithmetic where identity would have had a meaning of numerical sameness. This debate over whether or not the term identity should be used in Euclid’s theory of proportionality is explained by eighteenth-century Mathematician Isaac Barrow: The word similitude is too loose and ambiguous, and identity does not so well agree with things actually different compared immediately.¹³ Barrow clearly sees the term identity as sameness whereas proportionality for Euclid was likeness, hence the discrepancy.

The final work listed in the OED is by Thomas Morton who uses the term more philosophically in comparing the mutability of man and immutability of God which he calls identite or sameness of God.¹⁴ In discussing regeneration of those who are in Christ, Morton argues that there is no change in substance of the soul, body, or mind but rather a change in the quality and condition. Conceptualizing identity as personal sameness or personal identity is of great interest to the enlightenment philosopher John Locke. However, before discussing Locke, it is important to briefly explore early Greek philosophers’ interest in identity to see how the conceptualization of personal identity shifted from the immaterial soul to the rational self.

Shifting Identity from the Soul to Rational Self

The philosophical interest in the concept of personal identity or sameness of a person across time and space can be traced back as early as the fifth century BCE:

One of the earliest indications of interest in the problem of personal identity occurs in a scene from a play written in the fifth century BCE by the comic playwright Epicharmus. In this scene, a lender asks a debtor to pay up. The debtor replies by asking the lender whether he agrees that anything that undergoes change, such as a pile of pebbles to which one pebble has been added or removed, thereby becomes a different thing. The lender says that he agrees with that. Well, then, says the debtor, aren’t people constantly undergoing changes? Yes, replies the lender. So, says the debtor, it follows that I’m not the same person as the one who was indebted to you and, so, I owe you nothing. The lender then hits the debtor, who protests loudly at being abused. The lender replies that the debtor’s complaint is misdirected since he—the lender—is not the same person as the one who hit him a moment before.¹⁵

This is an early example of a public narrative expressing an appropriate sociocultural view of identity. The scene demonstrates both the historical debate concerning whether or not identity is fixed, fluid, or somewhere in between. In addition, this account brilliantly shows the ancient relationship between individuality and collectivity regarding the constitution of identity. While the debtor’s sameness or consistency of self is existentially drawn into question, he is physically reminded by another, specifically the lender, that he is in fact the same person. There seems to be a recognition of the overlap between personal and relational constitution of identity early on in identity discourse. At the very least, there is a recognition of the problem concerning the historical continuity of identity.

One way of reconciling the problem of a consistent identity amidst a lifetime of change is linking personal identity to the soul. The soul was initially introduced and popularized through the narrative works of Homer, though he does not associate the soul with identity. It would be hundreds of years later before philosophers such as Pythagoras (530 BCE) and Empedocles (450 BCE) would begin exploring the relationship between identity and the soul as a means to reconcile the problem of identity. Some have suggested these philosophers may have developed their ideas from a mystical religious movement known as Orphism, which taught that the soul persisted into eternity after death.¹⁶ While this is certainly a possibility, the evidence regarding the relationship between the mystical cult and these early philosophers is unclear. What is certain is their interest in the soul as the solution to the problem of identity, an opinion that is widely accepted in ancient Greece.

The rise of interest and the semantic expansion of the soul during the fifth and sixth century BCE is described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as remarkable; and that by the time of Socrates’s death the role of the soul is a common topic for philosophical discourse:

[The] soul is standardly thought and spoken of, for instance, as the distinguishing mark of living things, as something that is the subject of emotional states and that is responsible for planning and practical thinking, and also as the bearer of such virtues as courage and justice.¹⁷

These early Greek philosophical theories of conceptualizing identity through the soul significantly impacted the church fathers and thus set the framework for much of Western Civilization’s identity discourse.¹⁸ While there is certainly diversity among Western philosophers regarding the soul as well as the relationship between identity and the soul, by and large, the soul served as the solution to a person’s sameness or identity across changing time and space until the enlightenment.

Those who conceptualize identity as a self-sameness centered within individual cognition are influenced by Locke’s theory of personal identity which he articulates An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II: Ideas. In this seminal work, Locke defines personal identity as follows:

This being premised to find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing at different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: It being impossible for anyone to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present Sensations and Perceptions: And by this every one is to himself, that which he calls self: it not being considered in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same, or diverse Substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person; it is the same self now it was then; and ’tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.¹⁹ [sic]

Locke’s definition moves identity away from the substantialist views of his predecessors who focused on the immutable and immaterial soul towards an interior relational view of memory and consciousness of a rational self over time. While there is no shortage of interpretations of Locke’s theory of personal identity, there is a significant consensus that his views set the groundwork for modern empirical identity theories that are largely dependent on the relationship between consciousness and memory in order to individually constitute the self.²⁰

It is debatable whether or not the inward tradition and emphasis on continuity of consciousness and memory as the solution to the problem of sameness across changing time and space should be attributed to Locke. For example, Augustine’s fourth century work Confessions discusses, quite profoundly, the relationship between narration and memory in the discovery of self. In Book X, Augustine describes his memory as a great field, or a spacious palace, a storehouse for countless images. It is through these images that he meets himself through the recollection of past events. A process he describes as an inward journey:

When I use my memory, I ask it to produce whatever it is that I wish to remember. Some things it produces immediately; some are forthcoming only after a delay, as though they were being brought out from some inner hiding place; others come spilling from the memory, thrusting themselves upon us when what we want is something quite different, as much as to say ‘Perhaps we are what you want to remember?’ These I brush aside from the picture which memory presents to me, allowing my mind to pick what he chooses, until finally that which I wish to see stands out clearly and emerges into site from its hiding place. . . . All this goes on inside me, in the vast cloisters of my memory. In it are the sky, the earth, and the sea, ready at my summons, together with everything that I have ever perceived in then by my senses, except the things which I have forgotten. In it I meet myself as well. I remember myself and what I have done, when and where I did it, and the state of my mind at the time. In my memory, too, are all the events that I remember, whether they are things that have happened to me or things that I have heard from others. From the same source I can picture to myself all kinds of different images based on either my own experience or upon what I can find credible because it tallies with my own experience. I can fit them into the general picture of the past; from them I can make a surmise of actions and events and hopes for the future; and I can contemplate them all over again as if they were actually present.²¹

In this autobiographical account, Augustine recognizes the mediating role of an individual’s memory as well as the role of social memory in the recognition that he does not experience life alone. In fact, his memories are greatly tied to his friendships as oppose to Locke’s account which Paul Ricoeur describes as utterly singular.²² It may be more appropriate to credit Locke with removing the social component of the inward tradition rather than the inward tradition itself.

The inward tradition, following Locke, places a heavy emphasis on the individual experience and memory. However, there is an insufficient recognition concerning the influence of the sociocultural context in which our perceptions are situated. Thus, the individual and the collective are often juxtaposed rather than interconnected. Ricoeur suggests there is an intersection between the individual and the collective:

Does there not exist an intermediate level of reference between the poles of individual memory and collective memory, where concrete exchanges operate between the living memory of individual persons and public memory of the communities to which we belong? This is the level of our close relations, to whom we have a right to attribute the memory of a distinct kind. These close relations, these people who count for us and for whom we count, are situated along a range of varying distances in the relation between self and others.²³

According to Ricoeur, these close relations intersect multiple boundaries of individual belonging (2004). This relational approach brings the fields of sociology and phenomenology into the same sphere allowing for a reciprocal ascription of both individual being and collective belonging through shared memories. Ricoeur’s understanding of the mediatory role of close relations comes from Augustine’s original emphasis on the role of true brothers.

They are my true brothers, because whether they see good in me or evil, they love me still. To such as these I shall reveal what I am. Let them breathe a sigh of joy for what is good in me and a sigh of grief for what is bad.²⁴

Ricoeur re-defines Augustine’s true brothers as close relationships:

My close relations are those who approve of my existence and whose existence I approve of in the reciprocity and equality of esteem. . . .What I expect of my close relations is that they approve of what I attest: that I am able to speak, act, recount, impute to myself the responsibility of my actions. . . . I include in my close relations those who disapprove of my actions, but not my existence.²⁵

In other words, for both Augustine and Ricoeur, identity has both an inner and outer component that intersects in the relationships that are ontologically significant.

From Rational to Intuitive

Augustine may have conceptualized identity as both an inner and outer process, but, it is not until the mid–twentieth century that the notion is popularized by social scientists, particularly Erik Erikson. His use of the term continues to reflect an idea of self-sameness in the tradition of Locke; however, framework becomes less rational and more intuitive.

In addition to introducing identity as an emotional process, the sociocultural context takes on significant meaning in Erikson’s research. He never clearly defines the term identity though he describes it as "a subjective sense of an invigorating sameness and continuity."²⁶ Erickson’s theory of identity developed from his work with WWII veterans who had returned from the war without a sense of being the same person that they were before leaving:

Most of our patients, so we concluded at the time, had neither been shellshocked nor become malingerers, but had through the exigencies of war lost a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity. They were impaired in that central control over themselves for which, in the psychoanalytic scheme, only the inner agency of the ego could be held responsible. Therefore, I spoke of a loss of ego identity. Since then, we have recognized the same central disturbance in severely conflicted young people whose sense of confusion is due, rather, to a war within themselves, and in confused rebels and destructive delinquents who war on their society.²⁷

Erickson’s reference to historical continuity or personal sameness is drawn into question because some of the returning soldiers were unable to reconcile their experiences with their pre-war hopes and sense of belonging. Their involvement in war left a gap or discontinuity between their pre-war and post-war conceptualization of self that was not easily reconcilable. Erikson’s work with these veterans eventually develops into the theory of an identity crisis.

For Erickson, identity is more of a feeling or awareness than a cognitive ascent. In order to explain this feeling of identity, he references the personal experiences of William James and Sigmund Freud, two men he describes as bearded and patriarchal founding fathers of the psychologies on which our thinking on identity is based.²⁸ According to Erikson, the following excerpt from the personal correspondence of James to his wife, best described what is meant by a sense of identity:

A man’s character is discernible in the mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me! . . . although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretical determination which I possess."²⁹

Erikson continues with an excerpt from Freud’s 1926 address to the Society of B’nai B’rith in Vienna to broaden identity beyond individual interiority and towards a model that incorporates socio-cultural and historical processes as well as human development:

What bound me to Jewry was (I am ashamed to admit) neither faith nor national pride, for I have always been an unbeliever and was brought up without any religion though not without respect for what are called the ethical standards of human civilization. Whenever I felt an inclination to national enthusiasm I strove to suppress it as being harmful and wrong, alarmed by the warning examples of the peoples among whom we Jews live. But plenty of other things remained over to make the attraction of Jewry and Jews irresistible—many obscure emotional forces, which were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as a clear consciousness of inner identity, the safe privacy of a common mental construction.³⁰

These examples, according to Erikson, demonstrate that identity is something that reveals itself to the person rather than something to be pursued. Once identity it is revealed, you know you have it though it is somewhat indescribable. In addition, you recognize there are others who also received a similar revelation. This is not to suggest that only a select few have an identity but rather that not everyone is aware of their identity. He argues for a shared sense of identity revelation or illumination.

Concerning those who are aware, Erikson suggests a deep communality known only to those who share in it and expressible in words more mythical than conceptual.³¹ For example, while James and Freud are keenly aware of their identity as an inner process of emotions, neither seems able to find words that can sufficiently explain or conceptualize the process. Yet both James and Freud attempt to share this inner sense of awareness with those whom they share a sense of intimacy. The personal nature of James’s correspondence to his wife is apparent. However, Freud’s lecture is less obvious without Erikson’s commentary. He describes the context of the conference as an address to his brothers by an original observer long isolated in his profession.³² What might appear as a public lecture to the outsider, for Erikson, represented a deep communality for Freud. It is in these relationships that both James and Freud attempt to transcend their inwardly revealed identities which words cannot properly express, and move towards a communion with others who were also aware of their identity. Similar to Augustine, Erikson argues that while internally revealed, identity has an external or social component that further constitutes one’s sense of identity through close relationships. Erikson describes those who have a healthy sense of identity as "feeling at