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When we meet someone we haven't met before, one of the first
things that we wonder about is "who is he?". This is no real surprise
- as human beings, we instinctively try to introduce patterns and
make sense of our apparently disordered world. One of the way we do this is to
attempt to categorise people so that based on our past experience, we know how
to deal with them. And this is why the issue of fixing identity is so
crucial in our relationships with others.
The problem is that fixing identity is a lot harder than it
sounds. For one thing, the notion of identity is very fluid and not as
immutable as we would like to think. Take the case of personal identity. You
might probably think that this is fairly easy to establish - after all, if
Nkala's friends and family cannot distinguish him from someone else, then it
becomes impossible for them to have a relationship with Nkala.
However, if you really think about it, there are just two
things that are unique to Nkala that identifies him from everyone else: his physical
attributes, and (more importantly) his memory of his life experiences.
If Nkala is involved in a car crash that not only disfigures him but wipes out
his all memory, it will be very hard to prove to his friends and family that he
is the person they used to know. In fact, even if medical and law enforcement
authorities confirm that this is the case, the friends and the family of the
person would still feel as if Nkala no longer exists. This is because all the shared
experiences that previously gave meaning to their relationship and
communication now no longer exist. But I will not go on at length about
personal identity - I have already explored this more informally in another
article.
I'm more interested in exploring how we construct a person's
identity by virtue of which group that he belongs to. As I said previously,
this categorisation is useful, because it helps to determine how we should interact
with that person. For example, perhaps Nkala's past experience has taught him
(rightly or wrongly) that Igala people are not trustworthy. So when he has to
deal with Atuluku, he tries to identify which ethnic group he belongs to, and
when he finds out that he is a Igala,
he can either choose not to deal with him or deal with him carefully. The
converse is also true - it is possible that Nkala's past experience has taught
him (again, rightly or wrongly) that people who practice Buddhism are people of
integrity. So when he has to deal with Nkulu who he has identified as a
Buddhist, he feels that he can afford to trust him.
The problem is that identities constructed this way are
complex and multi-layered, consisting of various roles which assume
varying degrees of importance depending on the context. For example, consider
the following narrative in the life of Joe Okojie:
"Joe wakes up
as a husband next to his wife. Then he leads his family in prayer as a Christian
and a family head. He gets ready for work, admonishes his children to be
good as a parent and leaves for work. He walks to the bus stop as a pedestrian,
and while waiting for the bus, he buys a newspaper as a customer. He
then boards the bus as a commuter, and he reads the sports section of the
paper as a football enthusiast. He then disembarks from the bus and
enters his company's building as an employee. From there, he proceeds to
his office as a manager, where he conducts the day's business with his
subordinates. Later on in the day, he reports to his manager as a subordinate
to deliver some reports. In the evening, he ends the day's work and leaves for
his church, where he meets the rest of his family and takes part in the
fellowship as a deacon. When this is finished, they all head for home.
On the way, he receives a phone call from his hometown's social club president, which he
deals with as a community member and an Esan man. Finally, he
gets home, has the meal his wife has prepared for him and retires for the
night."
From this narrative, it's obvious that Joe's identity is
made of all these different roles. Each of these roles are of varying
importance to him, depending on how long he assumes the role, how rich the
experience is of assuming the role is, how emotionally involving the role is
and how many other people participate in his experience of assuming the role.
This means that roles like 'commuter' and 'pedestrian' are of much less
importance to him than 'manager' and 'parent'.
The existence of multiple roles in Joe's identity makes it
difficult to put him in a single box in an attempt to categorise him, as there
are multiple ways of classifying him. What most people do is to determine the
classification system that is most appropriate for the circumstance, and
use that. So for example, when the newspaper vendor interacts with Joe, it
isn't the fact that he is a Christian or a manager that the vendor is
interested in - what matters most to him is his ability to dip his hand in his
pocket, bring out some naira and exchange these for a newspaper as a customer.
However, this raises another question - what classification
system is appropriate for what situation? Referring to our earlier example,
let's say that Nkala now needs to deal with Opaluwa who happens to a Igala
Buddhist. Should he distrust him, because he is Igala? Or should he trust him,
because he is Buddhist? Usually in these kinds of situations, Nkala will
usually have to decide whether a person's religion or ethnicity is more
important in determining their trustworthiness. But what if Opaluwa belongs to other groups that also affect whether Nkala sees him as
trustworthy or not? It is at this point that the usefulness of identity as a
basis for human interaction comes into question, and at which Nkala must use
more empirical evidence in deciding whether to do business with Opaluwa or not.
Let's return to the original scenario where Nkala is trying
to decide whether he should do business with Atuluku, the Igala man. It would
appear that since Nkala has decided that he is Igala, it should be
straightforward enough for him to decide not to deal with him. But just how
does Nkala know that Atuluku is Igala? What exactly makes a person a Igala?
This is another common issue to deal with when identifying someone.
Sometimes, establishing that someone belongs to a particular group is a trivial exercise. For example, referring
to the earlier narrative, there is no question that when Joe boards the bus to
work, he is a commuter. It is easy to decide in this case, because the
requirements for being a commuter are few and easily determined - all you do is
to board a public transport vehicle when going to work.
But at other times, it is a much more complicated task.
Nkala may decide that because 'Atuluku' is a Igala name, then he must be Igala.
But what if he has only recently changed his name from a non-Igala name to
'Atuluku'? Nkala may decide that because he speaks Igala, then he is Igala -
but what if he learned the language while growing up in Lokoja as a child of
non-Igala parents? As a last resort, Nkala may choose to use the parentage of
Atuluku to determine definitively whether or not he is Igala. But what does
that mean for Joseph, a Igala man who was adopted by British foster parents when
he was a baby and taken to the UK? Both his parents were Igala, but he has
neither a Igala name nor can he speak or understand Igala. Does this make him
Igala? Does this make him any more Igala than Atuluku who can understand and
speak Igala, even though neither of his parents are Igala?
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Even if Nkala
decides that he wants to use a definitive method of ascertaining the
'Igala-ness' of a person (e.g. by deciding that everyone who is the child of an
Igala man is Igala irrespective of what they might look like or how little they
know about Igala culture), does this mean that what he says can be
accepted as the final word on the matter? What if all the people he speaks to -
including Igala people themselves who have both Igala parents and were born and
bred in Lokoja - tell him that Atuluku is definitely an Igala man? He will look
foolish continuing to assert otherwise.
So it is with most people - they usually form an opinion
as to a person's identity based on what
everyone else says. But is this fair? Shouldn't an individual be the
primary arbiter of his identity? Perhaps not. The identity may be his, but in
so far as it is used by other people, they have an interest in deciding how it
should be created.
Having said this, it is one thing to talk about other people
defining an individual's identity, but it is a completely different thing to
talk about outsiders defining a group's identity. Usually, there is
common consensus on the status of a group in relation to a larger group. For
example, Ekiti or Ijesa people may claim a distinct history and culture of
their own, but they would still acknowledge that they are part of the larger
Yoruba nation. However, sometimes there may not be universal agreement on this
- there is still some controversy over whether ethnic groups like the Ukwuani
are a part of the larger Igbo nation.
Ultimately, I believe that each group should have the right
to determine the nature of its identity; having said that, I wonder what a
group can do if everyone else believes that it is something other than what it
claims to be. For example, in the Horn of Africa, there is a de-facto
autonomous state called Somaliland which has been functioning independently of
Somalia since that country descended into anarchy. However, it is yet to be
granted recognition from other nations. This points to larger geopolitical
considerations at work in deciding whether to recognise a group's claim to a
particular identity.
So I close off my exploration about identity by speculating
about how our views of identity will change in the future, especially in
Nigeria. One interesting development is the growth of mixed marriages,
especially abroad and in urban areas. What is also interesting is to note how
much more migration there has been within Nigeria since independence. So it
will be interesting to see how a person born in Kano (in Hausaland) of a Yoruba
father and and Igbo mother will eventually define and have defined his
identity.
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Posted by Robot| 30.09.2007 22:29