On Name and Identity

/, Literature, Blesok no. 75/On Name and Identity

On Name and Identity

(2) In this lecture I have not separately elaborated the problem of the political/ethical responsibility of naming, so I failed to answer several important questions:

а) Does the constitution of the subject precede naming or does naming additionally create what it refers to as a final act, that is, is the nameless subject in fact a subject?
b) Which is the social role of a nickname or a pseudonym?
c) Could the accent of a name lead to a change of its meaning?
d) Does the name die with its carrier?
e) What is the relation between one’s proper name and the national identity?
f) How does the name create social engagement and ethical responsibility?

(3) In the book Identitet, Tekst, Nacija – Interpretacija crnila makedonske povijesti (Zagreb, 2009) I have demonstrated how the Others/Bulgarians/Serbs/Greeks have always wanted to colonize/occupy the place from which Macedonians have answered throughout history. I would say that the history of the Macedonian nation is nothing but a struggle to defend that place of answering; that is, it is a place that mostly and primarily belongs to Macedonians! They, in fact, realize that whoever manages to colonize this holy place, excludes, forever, all other potential answerers: the right to answer is resolved with the act of naming itself! And it is here, in my opinion, that one should find the native soil of any, even Macedonian, nationalism, which is nothing else but that sort of political sentiment:

[S]eeking to establish self-determined nation-states as
social mobilizations in order to realize or defend nations, and as passionate loyalty and devotion to one’s nation, as n identity granting cultural community, may have been the most important determinant of social and political life in recent history (Langman, 2006: 66).

But all these activities are doomed to fail if we do not manage to evidence the name in the community itself. We must also be aware that the times of nationalism have not passed and that we are just now entering the stage of neonationalism (Liah Greenfield) since, not only is nationalism omnipresent, but nation as a global phenomenon penetrates all spheres of human activity and provides generally accepted joints of establishing mutual relationships.

(4) In Romeo and Juliet love blossoms despite their names; they die because of their names, but through their names they also survive. What separates them in their love are their families – or, in our case, the countries – that are opposed to the names. That is why their names separate them, they would like to emancipate themselves from their names:

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Then comes her crucial argumentation:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou are thyself, though, not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man.?! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Perhaps in Juliet’s projection the name Romeo really is not part of her beloved’s identity; it is merely an obstacle since any substitution/empty name could satisfy her desires for it would be mature to grant the beloved a new identity, which would be no burden for the future of their relationship; but in the case of Macedoania, even the greatest efforts do not offer this surrogate/empty name that could beget such an identity as not to irritate the Others/neighbours.

(5) Gesine Schwan defines the civic/democratic political identity as a complex of civic ethos with particular psychological dispositions and identification of citizens with a fundamental normative consensus. Romeo is not a citizen since he is not at all free in his actions. It is interesting to nota that Juliet is much freer in her actions that he is; her individuality is considerably more expressed and we recognize in her a strong will to be autonomous, to obtain the right to make crucial decisions. All these elements are the necessary prerequisites for creating a sense of freedom, of personal dignity and the right to self-determination.

(6) After their burning, ashes remain, and ashes, according to Jacques Derrida’s philosophy, is complete un-remembering, destruction of memory itself; but there is something left in the ashes – even though illegible – the name of the person who perished in the fire. Any systematic erasure of the name leads to the destruction of the archive, which is nothing but an organized memory of the name (Yad Vashem, for instance).
The play Romeo and Juliet suggests that the loss of one’s name equals loss of life. If by some coincidence we renounce our name, then we cannot annihilate anything but ourselves. And in this context one should be more understanding of cases when the nation becomes a traumatic object, which does not merely organize enjoyment of the national community in (and enjoyment after) it, but also represents a fear of potential danger for the nation on the part of others. I am therefore not prone to apply the same criteria on the changes of Balkans into Southeast Europe, or on the potential change of the name Macedonia into X, since no reliance on Foucault’s theoretical tradition or on Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, as Kolozova does, cannot convince me that the change of the name of Balkans into Southeast Europe, as part of a large geopolitical project – (re)construction of a new geopolitical and cultural identity – could be compared to the violence resulting from the demand that a country renounces its name, tradition or identity. And if in the change of the name/(re)construction of the identity Balkan into Southeast Europe one may see the reflection of a quite concrete, material or real phenomenon, in the case of Macedonia that simply does not hold water. In the latter case it really is a matter of ‘just a name’ EXISTING together with its historical baggage! We must therefore not allow certain realities to disappear with the disappearance of a dying name.

Bibliography:
Derrida, J (1992), Acts of Literature, New York./ London.
Kolozova, K (2003), ‘Identitet (jedinstva) u izgradnji: O smrti “Balkana” i rođenju „Jugoistočne Europe“’, in Dušan I, Bjelić&Obrad Savić, ed. Balkan kao metafora, Između globalizacije i fragmentacije, Beogradski krug: Beograd. pp. 295-307.
Langman, L (2006), ‘The Social Psychology of Nationalism: To Die for Sake of Strangers’, in Gerard Delanty, Krishan Kumar, ed. The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, London/ Thousand Oaks/ New Delhy, pp. 66-83.
Staten, H (1984), Wittgenstein and Derrida, Lincoln: London.
Taylor, Ch (1991), The Malaise of Modernity, Anasi: Toronto.
Wittgenstein, L 1998), Filozofska istraživanja, Zagreb.
Wodak, R. (2006), ‘Discourse-analytic and Socio-linguistic Approaches to Study of Natiob(alism)’, in Gerard Delanty, Krishan Kumar, ed. The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, London/ Thousand Oaks/ New Delhy, pp. 104-117.

(The lecture was delivered on 26th May 2009 at the Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology in Skopje)

Author: Zlatko Kramarić
Translated by Kalina Janeva

2023-06-07T22:08:32+00:00 December 21st, 2010|Categories: Essays, Literature, Blesok no. 75|0 Comments