The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity

"The Lies that Bind is a most timely book. Anthony Appiah wrote the book on the back of his Reith Lectures, which were informed and stimulated by the vexed politics of our times. It tackles deeply-etched senses of identity and belonging, based on presumptions of class, race and nation. In the book, Appiah—with his characteristic wisdom, good humour, and liberal good sense and so many rich historical tales from around the world and from the past—asks us to interpret identities not as pre-given, or monolithic or unchanging, but instead as shaped by our own rich and often contradictory experiences as human beings. He’s getting us to think about identity and belonging through the multiplicities that we inhabit and that we have to engage with, and as a kind of challenge, as opposed to a pre-given. The book for us is really quite compelling because of its erudition. The writing style is magical. It’s very clear. And the argument, in its own right, is vital for what I would call our identitarian times. Yes, and one might be tempted to think that, coming from a privileged background, he can afford to be cosmopolitan, and that such cosmopolitanism runs in his blood. But I think the beauty of the book is that he says, ‘Well, in actual fact, we’re all like this. We are all the product of multiple affiliations and attachments and moorings.’ That’s what makes it really compelling. Quite apart from the revelations of his own biography in the book, there are so many other rich examples from around the world. His awareness of the detail of what goes on in the past and elsewhere in the contemporary world is really quite extraordinary. He’s saying that the way in which we’ve come to think of identity—along the lines of divisions of class, race and nation—are based on a whole series of fictions and myths that don’t actually map onto reality, in terms of how lives are led. But they are passionately held, which is why unmasking the lies and their affective grip is so important."