There’s this short book, like under 80 pages written by French philosopher François Jullien. It carries a provocative title, ‘There is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity’, but it is arguably more timely than it is provocative.
It is such a short book that it makes little sense to go through it. You can read it fair quickly, in a number of hours, and be done with it. You don’t have to reserve weeks to go through it. It’s certainly possible to read it in one sitting.
The gist of the book is that people not only take identities and differences for granted, but also that they also take the very notion of identity and difference for granted, which leads a lot of the issues that people face in their everyday life.
Jullien deals with these concepts similar to Gilles Deleuze. He does, however, go his own way with them. They agree on that identity is the issue here. Deleuze’s vehemently opposes representational thinking and advocates for non-representational thinking. The point he wants to make is that things do not represent anything, nor can they be judged accordingly, like how well or badly they represent something else. It’s Plato’s thing and those who build on his thinking, wittingly or unwittingly, doesn’t matter, to think of things as representing something else, like some form or idea. So, Deleuze thing is to flip that. Those forms or ideas remain abstract, but they are not given. They are abstractions that have been abstracted from the concrete circumstances that we find ourselves in. The key for him is that difference should not be thought of as something secondary that merely appears in between the identities, as discussed by him in ‘Difference and Repetition’. Instead, it is primary and gives rise to identity, which is therefore secondary.
For Jullien, the thing is to use different terms to achieve much of the same. Identity and difference are replaced by fecundity and divide. I am not sure this is absolutely necessary, but he has his reasons. The great difficulty is, of course, to get others to agree that certain terms are not useful and, in fact, problematic to the point that it makes more sense to abandon them and use other terms instead. This way people won’t get confused when someone else uses the same terms very differently, basically in an inverted form, like Deleuze. That said, this may not necessarily work, because setting up terms like this may also confuse people and, more problematically, they may cling to the other terms, because they appear to them as simply given.
Jullien (1-6) also opposes other terms, namely universality, uniformity and commonality. They appear to be the same thing, but they are not as he (1) points out. Firstly, universality has to do with this sense that things are the way they are because they just are, because they have to be. This is not really about generality, but rather about necessity. Secondly, uniformity is this sense that things are the same, but not because they have to be, but rather because it is convenient for us to think this way. This is what a standard means. It’s not a given, even if it is thought of as such. Instead, it’s something that’s convenient for us to be this or that way. Thirdly, commonality has to do not with what is shared, but with what is similar.
To be clear, this is not to say that one cannot define universality, uniformity and commonality another way. In fact, Jullien (1-6) advocates for this. Firstly, that this and/or that appears universal is not really a problem. It is rather that people have been taught not to stop for a moment, to think whether something really is the case, universally. Secondly, the problem with uniformity is not that something standardized and mass produced is bad in itself. It is rather that people have ended up failing to realize that they are indeed a matter of convenience and utility, not of necessity. If you ask me, adhering to standards does keep things uniform, but that comes at a cost. If everything must be done in a certain way, coming up with new ways of doing something becomes difficult. Thirdly, commonality can be good thing, like in sense that it is what connects people, to this or that extent, in this and/or that way. It’s a bad thing when it’s reduced to assessing likeness. For example, people can have a lot in common with one another, but be unlike one another.
The opposition of universality, uniformity and commonality, of a certain kind, may give his reader the impression that he is simply against standardization and homogenization. He does object to such, yes, but it has more to do with cultural imperialism, by which I mean exporting western thought all over the world, in connection to colonization, imperialism and globalization. There’s this idea that what’s universal is all that comes from the western world. Everyone and everything should be uniform. Therefore, everyone and everything should be assessed and judged accordingly as either conforming with the western standards or deviating from them. There’s basically no room for heterogeneity. It should all be homogeneous.
In other words, he (16) opposes the taken for granted idea that civilization simply means western civilization. This opposition does not, however, amount to heralding diversity and inclusivity, because, in his (7, 19) view, this results in exclusive and self-segregative practices.
Think of the current situation in the United States. The conservatives long for some lost or almost lost civilization that’s privileges “conceptual abstraction”, namely in the form of natural sciences, “citizenship and salvation”, namely in the form of what’s American and Christian, to summarize the situation using the three levels mentioned by Jullien (16). There’s this obsession over what’s considered truly American and fear that it’s being lost, because there are all these people who do not appear to be truly American, but happen live in the United States. However, this longing is for something that never even existed.
The longing for something that never even existed and the associated obsession with something that no one has even been, nor will be, manifests itself in the opposition of diversity and inclusivity. This opposition is, however, not to be confused with why Jullien (7, 19) opposes them. The conservatives think that the liberals are responsible for the disarray and dissolution of that imaginary civilization. There’s this, supposedly ideal American. Therefore you are not truly an American if you are not a wealthy, white, heterosexual man who speak English. All these poor people, all these colored people, all these sexual deviants and all these speakers of foreign languages, they are not really American.
The problem with that is that, well, no one really can live up to that standard. Who is wealthy enough? Who is white enough? Who is heterosexual enough? People like to think that they are rich, that they are ethnically or racially pure, that they have healthy sexual habits and that they speak perfect English, but it often turns out to be that their money is not really their money, that their lineage is far from pure, that engage in all kinds of sexual activities that they would never admit publicly and that the way they speak is far from what’s considered standard.
A mere cursory glance at the map should tell you that the country is far from homogeneous and that the idea that it ever was is laughable. Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco are all cities in California. It was once part of Mexico, which, in turn, was once part of the Spanish Empire. Tallahassee in Florida and Tuscaloosa in Alabama are both from Muskogean names, while the state names are Spanish and Muskogean. Then there are French influences, like Baton Rouge in Louisiana and St. Louis in Missouri.
The reason why Jullien (7, 19) opposes diversity and inclusivity was already briefly mentioned, but it warrants a bit more attention. The problem has to do with the logic itself: you are either … or … and then you are judged accordingly. Okay, so, let’s say that you’re not American. You’re then something else, let’s say Mexican. The problem is that we must define not only what counts as American, but also what counts as Mexican. Who gets to be American? Who gets to be Mexican? We have to do this with everything. Who gets to be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual? Who really speaks English?
This is why Jullien seeks to do away with identities and replace them with fecundities or resources, as he (vii, 24) also calls them. In his (vii) view, cultures consist of these resources that do not belong to anyone. Instead, they appear and therefore become available to anyone to exploit, as he points out (vii).
He (24) also seeks to replace differences with divides. This has to do with how, in his (24-25) view, divide involves this distance between people that they must overcome by coming together, instead of recognizing distinction, how this is distinct from that, etc.
When you combine the two, fecundity and divide, you get a sense of what he wants to achieve by using these terms instead of identity and difference. Much like Deleuze, he wants to avoid starting from identities and then relegating difference as this …. empty …. whatever … it is that is in between them. Cultures cannot be defined as this or that or, okay, you can try to summarize them, like what resources they consist of. Anyway, the point he wants to make with fecundity is that they are static, while divide explains how to have anything one, like whatever it may be, like this or that culture, it’s always coming together of more than one.
In my view, this is a productive way of thinking about culture, because it’s dynamic. It erases not only this or that problematic identity and the differences between them, but all identities. Oh, and this is a good thing, a very good thing. It’s a very productive or, should I say, fecund way of looking at reality. You come together to make something new by using whatever resources you have at your disposal, instead of adhering to what having this and/or that identity is supposed to entail.
References
- Deleuze, G. ([1968] 1994). Difference and Repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
- Jullien, F. ([2016] 2021). There is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity (P. Rodriguez, Trans.). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press.