Against Labels

Don't Label Me by Irshad Manji is not an academic book in the very strict, elitist sense of the world. Rather a collection of thoughts and ideas about diversity, race, gender and their enemies, told as a dialogue between the author and her dog - a choice that it doesn't necessarily resonate with my academic/writing style - it analyses through examples and personal experiences the impact of stereotypes and ready-made ideas. 

Based on cultural, gender and personal history experiences, we are rather tempted to operate with labels than with open identifications. We don't have time, we don't trust our judgement and the challenges of new situations. Therefore, it is much better to apply the label used for a community to the entire sum of the individuals it is made of. It is also safe, as human nature is rather tempted towards the familiar than to the unusual and original - be it in ideas, feelings or personalities.

Irshad Manji is not stranger to controversy. Pledging for a reform of Islam, without placing herself on an atheist position, she is a person of faith that rejects dogmatism. In an approach that involves knowledge and empathy, the author demonstrates that labels - that are 'never innocent' - can be avoided following a careful deconstruction. A life where the use of labels is minimal is a life where individuals are free to be read and express themselves because once someone is instantly assigned a specific box of features, they 'involuntarily' turn into an 'avatar of other people's projections'. 'When one let labels stand in for people, we end up manipulating people. Our shared humanity, along with our distinctive individuality loses out'. 

When it comes to multiculturalism, the risk is to prefer to use the label(s) in order to designate the diversity, labels that, in fact, ignore the specificities and individual character threats. Therefore, the terms turns to be just another label which operates against the supposed openness it is aimed to represent. 'A society that revels in multiculturalism resembles a room full of folks buzzinh around with identity cards stuck to their foreheads. The first thing you see is their labels'. 

Thus, if one wants to really start a social change in terms of identity and openness towards the other, one should start with difficult dialogues about the concepts easily used without a proper critical feedback. Listening shall be a faculty used in order to understand and analyse not to win over arguments. At the end of the process, changing the mind is a state of mind and it cannot be done without a proper openness about it. 

Although the book is not stuffed with theories and critical approaches, it is guided by critical thinking, a character feature that is unfortunatelly absent sometimes from the academic discussions, as often limited to pledging pro or against a theory, based on dogmatic perspectives. 

Rating: 3.5 

The Need for Localisation

One of the most challenging part of writing and researching diversity - especially national and ethnic - is the need to be specific. The more vague, general and, theoretically, inclusive you are, the biggest the danger to be accused of misunderstanding and misleading the adequate definition of the topic you approach. 

My thoughts were pushed by a recent - with some academic notes - discussion I had on food. There could be specific criteria to declare a food tasty - education and cultural background being one of them - but when it comes to placing a food geographically, you can easily start a war. I am slowly slowly gathering more and more such testimonies - hopefully part of a book I hope to finish one day - one of the most famous - also because it has to do with an area which always burns - is the hummus war between Lebanon and Israel. As a final user, I might say that I love the hummus made by both Lebanese and Israeli cooks - although personally not a hummus lover because the food I grew up with was slightly different in taste and ingredients (call it bland, sometimes), but what exactly made a hummus to be made in Lebanon, respectively made in Israel is a matter of political choice, sometimes. 

Closer to home, the famous food appropriations of foods among the Balkan countries are less burning - right now - but in a small Serbian village might bring a lot of tensions if you label a food wrongly, as Croatian or Turkish. 

What you can really do in order to avoid such unpleasant political background to your plate - food to be enjoyed in a special ambiance and this is hopefully no big dispute about it - is to get into as many details as possible when describing a food. The details have to do with the special place where the meal was eaten and the very special details of the recipe. Some ingredients and ways to prepare might differ from a village to another and could be slightly altered from a family to another. Offering as many personal and individual details add a lot of zest to the recipe and the food story in general, as it opens up the ways to tell individual, subjective stories. 

The food love might lead to anthropological memories and could help recreate a world where table manners and customes as well as menus are part of individual narratives and histories. On the long term it can also create more enjoyable discussion about food besides setting up the world of fire for...a tasty bowl of hummus.