Universalism confronted with multiple identifications:
Lessons from the FDA experience

The issue of identities as well as their mode of expression and coexistence within societies arise certainly in very different ways according to the spaces under investigation. The logics that are at work are not so easy to grasp within the framework of a common approach; their unmistakable variety permanently challenges any comparative pretension. Undoubtedly, the identity affirmations that we observe in the World feed, at least in certain cases, on the dynamics of an individualizing modernization of the contemporary societies; dynamics the most perceptible consequence of which is then the reaffirmation of belongings, around a shared identity, which try to unify the social actor with the others or to integrate him with them within communities defined by a common legacy (Sylvie Mesure). Additionally, this individualizing dynamics is frequently associated to another one which includes or transcends it. The generic term of globalization, the extensive use of which reduces, to tell the truth, significantly the scope, refers to this second sort of dynamics.

Moreover, a first difficulty appears there, which forbids to generalize such an observation: it is indeed hazardous to reduce identity affirmations to the latest manifestation of the dynamics from the outside, at the risk of neglecting the role played by social actors and the influence of the internal factors in the emergence of identity claims (Otayek 2000: 111). Indeed it is also sound to consider a reactivation of the identity demands, often through heightened forms, within societies where individualism fails (or begins hardly) to get into the social relationships.

There is thus a great differentiation among the contexts where identity claims, which tend to question the universalist discourse, are voiced. That differentiation imposes a specific approach to analyze the modalities of coexistence of unique identities within the societies as well as the configuration of multiple belongings, sometimes perceived as irreducible. An approach which has to respect a double necessity: on the one hand, it should avoid any uniform treatment of identity affirmations, which are necessarily different, tending to homogenize them and to broach them in the double form of universality and eternity; on the other hand, it should open up to a common and transversal problematics allowing to go beyond the peculiarities of the various situations under consideration.

So the purpose of this paper is to find a tentative answer to the question no. 2 submitted to the members of the team. Having reminded the problematical character of the classical distinction between homogenous societies and plural societies, I will endeavor to bring out some avenues of research. These avenues result from the close examination of the French Antilles and French Guiana experience and are likely to foster the analysis conducted in the other geographic regions concerned by the program.


Prolegomena: homogeneous vs. plural

Any society is characterized, to a certain degree, by a tension between the identity quest and the construction of the polity. While the aim of the latter seems to be the coexistence among its constituents, the former seems to favor opposition and differentiation. The national community such as it is "imagined" and thought can be, then, analyzed as a mode of stabilization of uncertain and profuse identity productions (Badie, 2002). Hence a classic opposition between two conceptions of national construction: the first one proposes a narrow and simplified identity definition of the nation, which denies the principle of coexistence within the polity ; the other one questions the legitimacy of the national community by challenging, for example, its dimension and its borders. For all that, the just as well classic opposition between homogeneous societies and plural societies, often considered as granted, does not resist to a close examination. It is not a question, certainly, of denying the social and cultural peculiarities or of assimilating them to simple political manipulations, nor even of denying that cultural pluralism can be durably in keeping with the political trajectory of certain societies; or ignoring that community identifications can be reactivated by a pluralist memory kept alive by preserved senses of identity. But, we have to admit that it is risky to determine the threshold effects separating clearly situations of pluralism. Indeed, that situations are characterized by an extraordinary fluidity of the identification processes and by their frequent political instrumentalization. Additionally, the opposition homogenous societies / plural societies tends to underestimate one of the established conclusions of anthropology which emphasized for a long time the fragmentation of identities, the process of permanent recomposition which determine them as well as the problematic nature of the synthesis which ensues (Lévi-Strauss,1977).

The "revised constructivism" which inspires these reflections leads to opt for a definition of identity, at distance of any conception of a "natural identity", "as the various modes of definition towards the Other that any individual tends to elaborate according to his expectations, interests, socialization and the multiple interactions in which he is actively involved" (Badie, 2002: 60). Such a definition has the virtue of reminding that identity is by definition a contingent and evolutionary construction, strongly dependent on strategies of actors inserted into a plurality of social and cultural spaces, on the national and international context, on the institutional capacities of the State and those of the identity entrepreneurs. From this point of view, that definition also leads to relativize the distinction homogenous societies / plural societies: any society is a priori potentially plural and pluralist situations cannot be considered as irreversibly perennial as far as they are, on the contrary, inevitably unstable and changeable. Consequently, the true question that must be considered is : by what mechanisms and according to what modalities the tension between the affirmation of identities, so unstable and unique they are, and the construction of the polity is regulated?


The experience of the French départements in America (FDA)

The examination of the experience of the French Antilles and French Guiana includes, from this point of view, useful lessons which exceed their specific scope. Potentially fraught with conflicts of allegiance because of the colonial past, this experience reveals a rich and subtle reality. The claim of the State to eradicate any form of collective resistance, of cultural and political autonomy through the repeated attempts of assigning an identity from above prevented by no means the forming and the perpetuation of social behaviors, but also cultural spheres of activities escaping, to a large extent, the imposed norms. Better: the attempts of identity assignment gave rise—and still give rise—to strategies of adaptation and accommodation likely to relativize substantially the discourse which presents assimilation as an unambiguous process, a sort of machine capable of crushing the differences and of creating a unique allegiance.

For the attempts of nationalization of the local culture in the three cases, the final condemnation of one of the structuring vectors, the Creole language, and the relegation of this culture in the line of folklore practices in the name of the republican ideal of emancipation were not simply imposed by the colonial center; they benefited from the support of certain social and local categories, and sometimes corresponded to some dynamics and demands emanating from the Antillean and Guianian societies themselves. However, it would be absurd to claim that the national French culture entirely substituted the "peripheral" culture. The reality seems more complex for at least two reasons : for one, the phenomenon of contact, including in the oppressive and unequal situations have effects more delicate to analyze than a simple imitation or assimilation of the traits of one group by another group inasmuch that they provoke mutual exchanges susceptible to modifying the behaviors of one another; on the other hand, it seems that the experience of identity in the FDA is characterized by a reorganization founded upon a superposition of subjective belongings. Without a doubt, the assimilationist force of the French State had very widely lied in its undeniable ability to tolerate a confined space mediatizing the belonging to a broadened community by a local belonging, despite everything, constantly reactivated.

How to explain this configuration of subjective belongings within the Antillean and Guianan framework as well as the allegiance to a double system of universalist and singular norms? We can put forward the following hypothesis: they were made possible thanks to the capacity of the intermediaries, whom are notably the political elected members, to access State-controlled resources in a frantic quest for equality going back at least the abolition of slavery; their capacity also to state, most often in a minor form, the idiosyncrasies which are compatible with the upholding in the French national orbit and with the access to the aforementioned resources; and to reconcile the commitment to a universalist conception of citizenship that regards general principles as sacred while preserving, at a minimal level, actual differences.

We assess here the importance of the State role and its side-effects in the identity construction in the FDA. On the basis of a universalist project, the French State unmistakably succeeded in attracting the support of the sectors of the societies maintained away from the economic power by leaning widely on the republican egalitarian myth. Such is the true meaning of the départementalisation process that took place in 1946: the latter resulted, in Guadeloupe and Martinique as well as in Guiana, in the fact that those sectors of society without economic capital very early invested the public administration as well as the local political space and, subsequently, the cultural sphere. In the case of French Guiana, the cultural distribution of economic activities confirms our hypothesis: the Creoles—the main community for a long time—tend to give priority to the public service sector which depends directly on the State to the detriment of the production of goods and services left to the other communities. It goes without saying that the nature of the relationship with the State and the capacity of the latter to create a citizen allegiance and to structure the social organization is a crucial factor explaining, to a large extent, the process of identification creation.

This precarious balance remained, more or less, before being questioned because of the disenchantment created by the départementalisation process and strengthened by a crisis of political integration, and the emergence of a new supranational actor, the European Community. This new actor contributes to alter, in a way, the traditional points of reference and borders by multiplying the levels of identification. This evolution opened several faults into which rushed the elites bearing identity affirmations and thus favors a proliferation of combined and mixed references according to the economic, social, political and cultural stakes of the moment.

Contrary thus to an often widespread idea, the transition of the identity claims to politics, notably under the various forms taken during the last years, is not the blind and exclusive consequence of the State attempts at imposing a mono-identification. This is also the result of a work of construction carried out locally by elites capable of mastering the narratives of identity, of formalizing it and of using it. Both processes are linked and feed mutually. One thing is nevertheless unquestionable: the politicization of the identities, as we can observe it in the FDA, is symptomatic of a crisis that affects the relationship with the State. So the questioning of the traditional model of political integration which underlies the départementalisation system freed a strong potential of contestation and favored the proliferation of the identity claims throughout the 70s. The answers brought about by the State in the 80s, notably under the shape of a greater decentralization and its relative withdrawal from the cultural arena having abdicated partly its ambition in this domain, amplify the movement. They loosen a space of identity expressions and affirmations of uniqueness widely compatible with the double belonging, unanimously claimed, to the French and European orbit.

For—and it is a point that must be strongly underlined—these identity affirmations, which flirt with the demand of independence, combine with the will expressed, at least with the same strength, to continue to benefit from all the advantages inherent to the French and European citizenship. Significant is, in this respect, the debate which now takes place on the institutional future, within the French framework, of the FDA. One of the objectives of this debate is the elaboration of a political status allowing to reconcile, in an original juridico-institutional framework, the universalist aspiration (the republican egalitarian principle), the consideration of uniqueness (cultural identity) and the preservation of social benefits. Some of those social advantages correspond to a purely instrumental logic that mobilizes alternately or simultaneously the register of the republican egalitarianism and that of the local specificities, so maintaining the dependence nevertheless unanimously denounced. In other words, the promotion of of local issues with strong identity connotations turns out completely well-suited with the mobilization of resources—essentially material—at the national-French and European levels and the affirmation, in the cultural field, of irreducible specificities partly linked to the belonging to the Caribbean area.


Tentative conclusions and future avenues for investigation

Three series of conclusions and observations, exceeding strictly the cases under consideration, stand out after this brief look at of the FDA experience.

First of all, it is necessary to consider the fluidity of allegiances as well as the strong porosity of identify enclosures. Simultaneously inserted into a plurality of economic, social and cultural spaces, guided by various levels and principles of identifications, the actors and the individuals bearer mobile and changeable identities that they "tinker" according to the salient stakes at a given moment. This permanent "improvisation" results in a construction, on the basis of their multiple belongings, of an unstable balance. This is the reason why it is so important to analyze the phenomena of identification in a dynamic and strategic perspective.

Second series of observations: this unstable balance can evolve towards a situation of relative pluralism in the case of a weakening of the citizen allegiance. Such a weakening can favor, indeed, the mobilization of political entrepreneurs for whom the direct conquest of the state power is no longer the main target. The capacity to catch and to twist allegiances in order to reinforce their own authority so feeds a strategy of accumulation of political resources which tends to be self-sufficient, at least for a determined while. Such is the meaning, to a large extent, of the temporary renunciation of the independentist movements in the FDA : they give up the claim of an immediate independence since they control symbolically a cultural space where the differences to which they are attached are permanently expressed.

Finally, the institutional answers to the proliferation of identity references competing with the citizen allegiance go through, either a reactivation of different forms of local community-based democracy, integrating the different communities into citizen mobilizations, a method the efficiency of which is far from being proven; either by a reassessment of the hierarchical structure of the allegiances so that the citizen relationship is no longer in a zero-sum game with the other forms of identification (Badie, 2002 : 70). This last solution supposes the complementarity of the identifications and excludes any form of motionless and closed identities.


References

Badie, Bertrand. "La société plurielle entre mythe et réalités : un essai d'identification politique de situations pluralistes." In Javier Santiso (ed.), A la recherche de la démocratie. Mélanges offerts à Guy Hermet, Paris: Karthala, 2002, pp. 59-70

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. L'identité, Paris: PUF, 1977.

Martin, Denis-Constant and Bennetta Jules-Rosette. "Cultures populaires, identités et politique", Cahiers du CERI, no. 17, 1997.

Mesure, Sylvie. "Avant-Propos." In Revue de philosophie et de sciences sociales, 7-13. Paris, 2000.