I have readHanan al-Shaykh, The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (2009)
Elias Khoury, يالو | Yalo (2002) Amin Maalouf, Léon l'Africain (1986), Samarcande (1988), Les Jardins de Lumière (1991), Le Rocher de Tanios (1993), Le Premier siècle après Béatrice (1992), Les Échelles du Levant (1996), Le Périple de Baldassare (2000), Les Croisades vues par les Arabes (1983), Les Identités meurtrières (1998), Le Dérèglement du monde (2009) |
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I have writtenRestytucja Śródziemnomorza. Poszukiwanie transkulturowej ciągłości w pisarstwie Amina Maaloufa
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the ugly word that starts with an "i"
When I was a professor at the University of Warsaw, some time around 2010, I used to make my students read Maalouf's Identités meurtrières. Usually to no avail. Most of them preferred to believe older, male professors, chanting their siren song of simple and strong, national identity, that contributed, in 2015, to the victory of the ultra-conservative, Catholic-nationalistic party "Law and Justice". And that was when the time of Maalouf definitely ended (just as my professorship at the University of Warsaw).
Nonetheless, the anecdote proves how much Maalouf was right, and important. His essays - as well as some of his novels, such as Le Périple de Baldassare, a cross-cultural search for a lost manuscript -, give the impression of simplicity, as if they were destined for young adults. Or just less sophisticated readers. They were written as popular literature, probably deliberately, to make a real impact. At other times, Maalouf was popular even in Poland; many of his novels were translated, and I supervised various graduate dissertations concerning them; it seemed an ideal material for my students of "Cultural Studies - Mediterranean Civilisation". Maalouf was making a politically correct, easy reading for years. Till the times changed.
Les Identités meurtrières speak of the danger of identity taken as something clear, unique, uncompromising, requiring unconditional fidelity. And looking suspiciously to all those who do not share the same clarity. How important this book might be in Poland, today, if anyone read it! But no one does. The book was translated into Polish, because some one took it for a publication concerning terrorism, the danger of those fanatical Arabs. Just the same way as La Maladie de l'islam, de Abdelwahab Meddeb, that was also translated later on. Just because the title seemed to go straight to the core of Polish anxieties, at the time the country refused to participate in the European policy in response to Syrian refugee crisis.
What I tried to explain to my Varsovian students, the only identity we possess is strictly individual, and performative; it is something actualised in a context, in an encounter, facing another human being. My anti-essentialism was paddling laboriously against the current. Maalouf says that identity is a drawing on a living skin, something warm and elastic, not an artificial structure. Something personal, made out of unrepeatable biography, like a fingerprint that distinguishes each of us, instead of connecting us into a tribe. He speaks of double, triple, multiple identities, of the importance of those bridge-building individuals that the tribes take for traitors.
Amin Maalouf, Les Identités meurtrières, Paris, Grasset, 1998.
My Polish edition: Zabójcze tożsamości, trans. Halina Lisowska-Chehab, Warszawa, PIW, 2002.
Kraków, 4.08.2021.
Nonetheless, the anecdote proves how much Maalouf was right, and important. His essays - as well as some of his novels, such as Le Périple de Baldassare, a cross-cultural search for a lost manuscript -, give the impression of simplicity, as if they were destined for young adults. Or just less sophisticated readers. They were written as popular literature, probably deliberately, to make a real impact. At other times, Maalouf was popular even in Poland; many of his novels were translated, and I supervised various graduate dissertations concerning them; it seemed an ideal material for my students of "Cultural Studies - Mediterranean Civilisation". Maalouf was making a politically correct, easy reading for years. Till the times changed.
Les Identités meurtrières speak of the danger of identity taken as something clear, unique, uncompromising, requiring unconditional fidelity. And looking suspiciously to all those who do not share the same clarity. How important this book might be in Poland, today, if anyone read it! But no one does. The book was translated into Polish, because some one took it for a publication concerning terrorism, the danger of those fanatical Arabs. Just the same way as La Maladie de l'islam, de Abdelwahab Meddeb, that was also translated later on. Just because the title seemed to go straight to the core of Polish anxieties, at the time the country refused to participate in the European policy in response to Syrian refugee crisis.
What I tried to explain to my Varsovian students, the only identity we possess is strictly individual, and performative; it is something actualised in a context, in an encounter, facing another human being. My anti-essentialism was paddling laboriously against the current. Maalouf says that identity is a drawing on a living skin, something warm and elastic, not an artificial structure. Something personal, made out of unrepeatable biography, like a fingerprint that distinguishes each of us, instead of connecting us into a tribe. He speaks of double, triple, multiple identities, of the importance of those bridge-building individuals that the tribes take for traitors.
Amin Maalouf, Les Identités meurtrières, Paris, Grasset, 1998.
My Polish edition: Zabójcze tożsamości, trans. Halina Lisowska-Chehab, Warszawa, PIW, 2002.
Kraków, 4.08.2021.
