Drifts identity, fundamentalism, pluralism and living together in 2012 (By Bahjat Rizk)
By Bahjat Rizk
The world report on culture published by UNESCO in 2000 under the title “Cultural Diversity, Conflict and Pluralism” revealed that “most conflicts that arise today in nation-states have a cultural component “and that” all these conflicts erupted in a short time since the publication in 1998 of the first World Report on the Culture of UNESCO. ” The cultural phenomenon became so with globalization a political fact and more, and he outstrips even established, as demonstrated in November 2011, the admission of Palestine as a member state at UNESCO, before admission to the United Nations. This ambivalence of cultural policy and led quickly to the cultural idealization and its manipulation by the political, but failed so far, àconceptualiser the issue of cultural diversity, lack of a reference framework, rational. So we have to face is a hard denial of cultural differences in the name of a generous utopian and somewhat helpless and smug humanism, or even a frantic frantic assertion of cultural differences that condemn us to enter into a logical continuous, endless conflicts, futile and hopeless. How to manage migration flows, the free flow of information and goods exceeding the borders? Especially that the same political phenomenon that solicits our identification, ie challenges our subjectivity can overnight buy another interpretation, by tilting our way of understanding, from one extreme to another. The year 2012 has clearly shown us that individual rights were sacred Drifts identity, fundamentalism, pluralism and living together in 2012 in the West as collective rights, prevailed in the East, this is due to the historical and sociological journey of two parts of world. Thus, depending on the angle of approach and reading conditioner that did, the same process could be seen as a democratic progress and modernity claim, or a collective regression and reactionary decline. How to retrieve identity abuses, fundamentalism to triumph pluralism and live together? How to define a constant anthropological framework, seemingly essentialist structure and identify not discriminate, recognize to be able to sustainably manage? While we did not found any solution to this recent and impromptu question, which can neither be treated purely idealistic level of philosophical ethics, nor solve the materialist political pragmatism. Continuing past ten years research on this issue, it seemed important to me to not remain at the level of observation, ask a fair and adequate problems and escape the inherently passionate debate. I therefore suggested a methodological approach that does not purport to be immediate answers, but establishes, as far as possible, a neutral framework for negotiations. For a charter of rights for minorities Indeed, returning to Herodotus, the father of history, which saw the first clash of civilizations between the Greeks and the Persians there twenty-five centuries, we identify the parameters that continue to structure our collective identities, namely “the folder / December 2012 / No. 427 45 language, race, religion and morals.” These parameters appear in 1945, the Charter of Unesco, which refers to “human rights without distinction of race, sex, language and religion.” Thus we are faced with the same parameters, subject to the requirements diametrically opposés.Ces parameters are essential for establishing a binding collective belonging, even discriminatory, to achieve human identity based on the universality of the individual.
Any identity conflict will necessarily borrow, one or the other of these parameters and even convert or switch from one setting to another within the same company, successively or simultaneously (communicating vessels). This dynamic structuring of identity should consider these constant elements, negotiate at the community level and transcend, in the quest for a universal individual human identity. Collective identity is simplistic and concrete, individual identity is emancipatory and abstract. To overcome the cultural and political difference, whether linguistic, racial, religious or sexual, we must develop a charter of rights for minorities, quivient complement that of human rights, recognizing their rights culturelset policies and placing them in a positive and non-continuity in a snap, with the majority who perceive their cultural contribution as an added value, advancing society and preventing stagnation, to close and to fall back on itself. In “absolutizing” cultural differences, we enter into a logical paranoid and suicidal archaic mutual elimination, by relativizing after having recognized and identified, we look through the trading and clearing, as an evolutionary complementarity beneficial, shared and beneficial. By multiplying the identity conflicts, both in the West (rise of the extreme right in Europe, killings in Norway, anti-Semitic attacks, racism of all kinds in both camps, frustration and insecurity) in the East (Spring Winter or Arab, racial and religious attacks in Africa and Asia) 2012 pushes us to think about the existential and vital question, without falling into the politically correct or promote communitarian and segregationist ideologies irreversible. Streamlining the debate can not be done only through proven and sound sources, taking into account both the rights of the individual as of minorities. ■ Bahjat Rizk
Cultural Attaché
Delegation of Lebanon to UNESCO