Well just look at all the other Musas in this dive, one by one, and imagine—as I do—how they could have survived a shot fired in bright sunlight or how they managed never to cross paths with that writer of yours or, in a word, how they’ve managed to not be dead yet.
—Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation
The question is not whether Lincoln [in the Gettysburg Address] truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term “people” to actually mean. … Thus America’s problem is not its betrayal of “government of the people,” but the means by which “the people” acquired their names.
—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
What identity can exist without a name? In his 2013 novella Meursault, contra-enquête (The Meursault Investigation), Algerian writer and journalist Kamel Daoud raises this question through a confrontation with Albert Camus’ novel L’Etranger(The Stranger). Harun, the brother of the Arab killed by Meursault in Camus’ work and the narrator of Daoud’s story, laments not merely the actions of Meursault that led to his brother’s death but also the failure of Camus to name his brother, thus condemning the murdered man to perpetual anonymity and dis-identity. Within the context of Harun’s account, the failure to name his brother (Harun eventually reveals his name to be Musa) robbed Harun and his mother of the proper recognition in Algiers as the surviving kin of a murdered man. In some sense, their own particular identities were forced to remain incomplete, as this monumental loss stood unrecognized by those around them and thus could not properly constitute a portion of their identity. Of more immediate import, however, is the effect of namelessness on the dead man; as Harun contends, by failing to name Musa, the author has intimated that, whereas the philosophical questions of murder and the Absurd are of paramount importance, the man himself, the Arab whom Meursault murdered, is of no consequence. The name, if not an essential component of one’s identity, is at least an essential signifier of the existence of that identity and thus is a crucial element of personhood, both in life and in death; or, as Harun concludes, “It is as important to give a dead man a name as it is to name a newborn infant.” Ultimately, by failing to name him, the man is not a man at all; he is an object without an identity.[1]
From this perspective, it is only a small step to conclude that, as an object without an identity, Meursault’s “Arab” can be subjected to a myriad of attitudes and behaviors that could not rightfully be leveled at Harun’s brother “Musa.” The recognition of the identity of the other necessitates the attendant realization that the other is not merely an object but is instead a person; further, by virtue of having personhood, the other is fundamentally like me, at least in some respects. This trajectory should be understood as a constitutive process of empathy and thus a founding principle of human society; without the necessary recognition of the identity of the other, there can be no grounds for relation, understanding, or compassion between individuals. This is not to say that, had Musa been given a name, Meursault would not have shot him once then four times more; yet had Musa’s name been given, it would be far more difficult for Meursault, as well as Camus’ readers, to view the victim as a philosophical concept rather than as a man, a brother, and a son, and to avoid realizing the pain and injustice of that loss. As a person, with an individual identity, Musa compels a reflection on what it means to be human and what it means when a fellow human suffers.
* * *
In stark contrast to the recognition and respect involved in using another’s preferred name lies the action of assigning a name or label of our own choosing to another person. We are asserting power over that person (or thing) that we are naming. We are categorizing, limiting, or removing the authority of the individual to self-identify, to self-define. What’s more, this effect is not always implicit; at times, the act of naming is an explicit declaration of power, deciding who or what holds value and worth. In his book-length essay Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates proposes that misuse of the authority to name is an attempt to legitimize the differences that those in power wish to establish as meaningful. As Coates writes, “The process of naming ‘the people’ has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy.” To assign a name, particularly when that name emphasizes difference, is to highlight that difference as something that matters in the determination of “good” and “bad.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Zur Geneologie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals), made the same point in his analysis of the origins of contemporary conceptions of morality. Nietzsche points out that the notions of “good” and “bad” arose from a specific dynamic of power, as those in power ultimately created the distinctions between good (equated with what those in power value) and bad (all that fails to meet the standard of that which those who are “good” value). According to this conception, those who hold power look inside of themselves to determine the good (according to their own values), then characterize that which is outside of and unlike themselves as bad. The “good” do this to emphasize the distinction between themselves and the those who are “bad,” but also as a means to direct the behavior of those who are “bad” and thus maintain their own power. To name is thus to become an arbiter of value, to exercise undeserved power with devastating effects on those named, those whose power to define themselves has been taken away.
Lamenting his place in the centuries-long tale of black subjugation to unjust power, Coates concludes: “I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us [blacks] but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” The power to name thus not only represents the imposition of an identity; it is also an imposition of the conditions within which that unchosen identity is to be lived.
In his immensely important work Les damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth), Frantz Fanon describes the conditions and consequences of colonialism, noting that “for a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” Written more than fifty years ago, these words have added relevance now as the guiding ideologies of colonialism still damage cities and neighborhoods where differenceis held to be a normative determinant of value.[2] Although there are few assets which merit the place of fundamental importance occupied by “land” in Fanon’s account, in cities like Baltimore one such possibility is the name.
The colonized in Fanon’s account had a great deal to lose to the colonizers—their independence and their livelihood, both of which were inexorably tied to their autonomous possession of the land. In contrast, the “colonized” in a city like Baltimore often have little, by way of property, that so defines and legitimizes their position as autonomous and independent—except for the ways in which they have defined and identified themselves for themselves and for others. Their names—or the possibility of their names—is sometimes all they have to call their own. Kamel Daoud similarly alludes to the importance of the autonomy to name and the consequences when it is taken away:
Strange, isn’t it? For centuries, the settler increases his fortune, giving names to whatever he appropriates and taking [names] away from whatever makes him uncomfortable. If he calls my brother “the Arab,” it’s so he can kill him the way one kills time, by strolling around aimlessly.
The power to name, when exercised by the individual for oneself, is the power to create and define oneself freely and with intentionality. When misappropriated and misused, the power to name exercised over others condemns them to identities they have not chosen and that may not therefore appropriately represent who they have been, are, or will be. And yet this power can define the conditions under which those who are named live and die.
What’s more, the misappropriate and misuse of the power to name has profound implications that reach far beyond the individual(s) so named. When individuals are misnamed, they are misunderstood. Yet the individual is still just one part of a greater whole—a family, a community, a nation. The individual does not exist in a void; the part cannot exist without the whole, and each gains some measure of meaning, of definition, from its manner of relation to the other. But if one side of that relation is misunderstood, is an accurate and meaningful definition of the other side possible? If we don’t fully understand the individuals constituting a community, can we truly understand the community itself? What about the nation that comprises those communities and those individuals? Perhaps this is why, after nearly 250 years as a recognizable independent country, there is still so much confusion over what “America” actually means.
* * *
We don’t know what America actually means—that may sound absurd, but it’s the truth. Perhaps sometimes we think that we do, or maybe we just trick ourselves into believing that we do. When we say things like “make America great” or “take back America,” or when we talk about the “American dream” or an “American ethos,” the presumption is that this thing, this America, is an identifiable, agreed-upon notion that, once stated, means precisely the same thing for all people. But it doesn’t. It never has.
This is certainly not a new, nor even a terribly profound, realization. Marginalized groups have been making this contention for centuries here. Langston Hughes beautifully and heart-breakingly captures the tension, between competing conceptions of what an inclusive nation is or ought to be, in his 1936 poem “Let America Be America Again.” In the poem, the narrator enumerates the often-cited qualities that define America—freedom, self-rule, hopes and dreams realized—only to be challenged by an interlocutor who questions the reality of these notions. Upon hearing the narrator’s appeal to “let my land be a land where Liberty / Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, / But opportunity is real, and life is free, / Equality is in the air we breathe,” this interlocutor must object: “There’s never been equality for me, / Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’” Here the narrator is caught off guard, shaken, forced to ask: Who do you think you are to disagree with what I’m saying here? “Who are you that draws your veil across the stars?” The answer, of course, is obvious:
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
The interlocutor is in fact everyone who has been marginalized or excluded, who has been used or displaced to achieve an end, who has been vilified to preserve a false notion of what this “America” is. Baltimore writer and educator D. Watkins, in his powerful 2015 essay “Fuck the National Anthem,” succinctly sums up Hughes’ point: “Even though I was born in America, and my ancestors built its infrastructure for free, I’m not a part of the ‘Our’ when they sing, ‘Our flag was still there!’ … [T]he ‘Our’ doesn’t include blacks, most women, gays, trans, and poor people of all colors.”
Far too often, it’s easy to offer a definition of America without being forced to reckon with the implications of that definition. Any such definition necessarily decides what is included and identifies those to whom the definer relates. But what is excluded in the definition, accidentally or intentionally? Who is thereby alienated in that definition? And although these questions are not asked nearly often enough, perhaps they cannot be asked or answered meaningfully until all of the parts of the whole that we seek to define—every individual present, whether by birth, by immigration, by abduction and forced labor, or by any other means or happenstance—are permitted the basic human right of self-definition and self-determination.
To refuse to allow an individual, any individual, to fully, autonomously, and intentionally determine one’s own identity will have dire consequences for the individual; there can be no mistaking that fact. Likewise, it must be recognized that those consequences are not limited to the scale of the individual; they will in fact reach to the highest levels of any system of relations of which the individual is a part. James Baldwin, in his famous discussion of the true cost of The American Dream, noted that “if the people are denied participation in it, by their very presence they will wreck it.” When the individual cannot determine for oneself who s/he is, is not free, everything else upon which the individual is founded—the family, the community, the nation, even the world—is likewise doomed to a future of disillusionment, marginalization, tyranny, and violence.
Notes
[1] This is not to suggest that Camus’ failure to name the Arab in L’Etranger was an accident or somehow should be taken as an indication of his personal conviction that the Arab should have been placed in a position of subjugation. Rather, Camus’ unnaming of the Arab was likely no accident. Perhaps the fact that no name is given for the Arab should be taken as an indirect effect of the ‘Absurdist’ position as Meursault lives it. Ultimately, Meursault’s shooting of the Arab and his ignorance of the man’s name are both a symptom and consequence of the Absurdist position. If there is no meaningful difference in the death of one’s mother versus the death of one’s neighbor’s dog, then what meaning could possibly be gained or lost by noting the name of one who has died?
[2] When viewed from outside of the place and the perspective of any community, it can be easy to judge, to evaluate, and to adjudicate based solely on the perspective or values held by those outside; consequentially, it can be equally easy to assume power to determine what is wrong, what needs to change, how the problems of the community can be fixed. Though not as explicitly destructive as the aspects of colonialism which Fanon described, this may rightfully stand as an example of a contemporary “colonialism of values.”