Integration (…and identities)

I remember the profound impression that Ravenna’s cosmatesque mosaics left on me. In these mosaics the different pieces contribute to creating a harmonious whole, which defines its unity. Their reality is to be themselves for themselves, but their reason and their fate is to be together at the heart of a whole which completes them.

Today, we see the emergence of a globalised culture, a market culture which, according to Paul Ricoeur, by imposing its goal for a unique culture on all is attacking national and local cultures. Faced with such a hegemonical conception warning bells go off and the defences of collective identities are shown, which thus prove their vitality. For us, Ibero-Americans , the process of identification resides in ‘the continuity of a profound conscience’ which informs us that we are the same despite changes.

We, Ibero-Americans , like to say that we belong to the West, and how could it be denied when our language, beliefs and values continually remind us of this ? But, it is also important to add that this is not enough to define us. Certainly, we have a particularly American way of being Western. And many try to develop a process of civilization from a single identity, an endogenous, democratic and pluralist process.

Faced with a world lacking certainties, we, the people of South America have chosen to live by referring to ancestral culture. Let’s examine two central issues that characterise this culture: recurrent themes of identity (which links back to the reality of being) and of the utopia of integration (which denotes the should be). Each of these terms relates back to the other. The link between culture and identitarian conscience is essential for the formation and consolidation of the processes of regional integration. In our America, the collective identity of the present finds itself changing vis-à-vis ghosts of the past and projects itself through the reexamination of the post-modern crossing of doubt and the indefinable. We think that integration in the Ibero-American space will only be possible through the articulation of (distinct and complementary) national identities. And we also believe that the cultural identity of each of our plural (fragments not forming a whole) countries attends the fate of regional integration (in a utopical unity).

Post-modernism is arbitrarily presented without allowing the South American people to grope their own way on the obstructed paths of modernity. We live in a post-modern era that incites us to set aside existing identities (be what we were) and to promote the construction of new identities (be what we would like to be). However, for South American societies and communities, their cultural identities (be what we are) constitute the ultimate existential refuge faced with globalisatory assaults, their reasons to be in the world and the defence of a particular way of life. For them, culture is a territory where the collective ethos is incarnated as well as the refuge of a heritage the defence of which allows neither impediments nor compromises.

Is this movement irreversible? When everything seems to deny us, the movement of our speech, our faces and our gestures remind us, despite post-modernism, uniformisation and all that goes with it, of the memory of a conscience that tells us that we are ourselves. This is what we call identity! We who express it thus, reject fundamentalist rhetoric and defend the existence of a culture of cultures (Ibero-American), ready to defend our different forms of being and ways of life which together democratically open out to multiculturalism and universality.

In the name of shared cultural identity, we could for example refute globalisatory concepts of a fragmentary post-modernism which tries to make us believe that it is possible to promote progress whilst denying absolute truths. This, I state, is not fundamentalism, but critical conscience and democratic dignity.

The collapse of identities is the revenge of collective memory and the conscience crisis of a resistant present. Let us not forget: a critical culture always presumes resistance. Post-modernism discovered that diversity is wealth. This is one of its greatest merits. However, it reduces the question of identity to those of diverse ‘crossings’ that take place in time and relativise its importance.

We are the fist to recognise and revel in the differences which reinforce our collective identity. It is clear that this must be a starting point, but that it is not enough. It is equally necessary to add that this discourse on differences is formulated from the heights of asymetrical power relationships since cultural diversity, besides difference, also engenders inequality.

The cultural survivances of our America allowed it to be established that similarities mean more than differences. So, in virtue of the fact that we have so many things in common, our peoples have the right to come together in order to obtain comparative (and competitive?) advantages and to aspire to build an Ibero-American community of nations. From unity comes strength.



(On the same problem or on connected issues we recommend the following article in Spanish by the same author : Diversidad, Identidad Cultural e Integración en América Latina)