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In the book under review Alemseged Abbay, a native of Tigray, combines theory on ethnic and national identity formation with redundant Ethiopian nationalist discourse to examine how both the Tigrayan and Eritrean nationalist movements ended up the way they did, despite their recent history of alignment against a common enemy and despite what he considers linguistic and cultural links, or the primordial ties they shared. The primordialist perspective on identity formation is invoked as a perfect guide for understanding the Tigrayan nationalist movement which he thinks the Eritreans lacked, and still chose to be politically independent. He legitimizes the Tigrayan rise to ethno-national self-assertion by drawing on myths, invoking real /imagined symbols and icons and key incidents invented into narrative forms to suit his interpretation of history. In contrast to Tigrayan nationalist discourse, which emphasizes ancient history, the Eritrean national identity is regarded a product of the shared experiences of colonial occupation and the armed struggle that brought together people of different ethnic groups and religions to forge a sense of national community and national consciousness. Eritrean nationalist discourse has emphasized the creation of an independent state in future rather than concentrating on the glory of its distant past, yet not totally oblivious of its past. While these discourses shaped both nationalist movements, Abbay believes that he needs to account for the ‘historical error’ that produced a separate Eritrean national identity, which he considers an aberration. This, according to him, was mainly due to the manipulation of the political élites, particularly of the EPLF, in the 1990s. His perspective on ethnic national identity formation has provided him a basis for observations on the historical dynamic of the region but has not helped him to properly explain the socio-political reality and its outcomes.
Discourse and the Other
Abbay has tried to prove that Eritrea has no distinct identity to claim as its own because the people
of the highlands, which he prefers to call Kebessa, possess no identity other than the “trans-Mereb
identity.” But he finds the reality on the ground opposite to what the politics of ethnicity and
ethnic mobilization would presuppose; so he tells us that Eritrean case presents an anomaly. Unable
to come up with rational and critical thought to squarely face the challenges of Tigrian ethnic
identity, he laments the events that he finds difficult to come to terms with and says:
The puzzle here is that in this part of the world the ethno-regional nationalism, currently in vogue, betrayed the conventional wisdom and expected logic of establishing an ethno-regional state. The structural factors that tie the trans-Mereb region have failed to glue the common political identity (1).This is a provocative argument, especially for the Eritreans. Does trans-Mereb have any justification to be a political reality? Why should the peoples of this region want a state? Where is this done? And in whose conventional wisdom? Answering these questions is necessary for evaluating the validity of what is put forth in the book.
Rhetoric on Ethiopian history and national identity has been constructed around the legend of Queen of Sheba and the continuity of the three thousand years of history that has always claimed the Ethiopianness of Eritrea. This discourse allowed the Amhara ruling elite to maintain their power over other peoples in the region. In a similar vein the writer of this book comes up with the idea of “Tigray-Tigregn” state, which he claims was imagined at one point in history by peoples on “ both sides of the Mereb River.” The basis of this version of the history of Eritrea are the turbulent years of the 1940s which Eritrean scholars have yet to record and draw on. The purpose of this review is not to show how such non-Eritrean historians have recorded events and what role their interpretation has played in creating the image of Eritrean society and the metamorphosis of the Eritrean national identity, but to focus on the analysis of the writer’s discourse, the methods he has used to develop his theme, and the framework within which he describes his concept of identity to establish that Eritrea has no separate identity other than the “trans-Mereb” identity.
One aspect of a writer’s discourse is his style. Pomposity, incautious use of quotations and oversimplification characterize the style of Abbay. Recurrent use of “primordialism,” “primordial tie,” and “primordiality” are his sole instruments to explain social dynamics, rational actions, and identity formation. This deliberate overuse is his strategy for persuasion, as can be seen in following statement:
Until the 1960’s the Kebesa entertained no sense of identity other than the primordially-based trans-Mereb identity…. The armed struggle was weakened by the absence of a distinct primordial identity. The ELF and the EPLF assault on the primordial trans-Mereb identity and the launching of a process of inventing a brand new identity deprived them of a crucial anchor in the past. Consequently the revolution kept lurking until the ethnonationalist war in Tigray…(222-223).Abbay’s primordialist theory is extended further to explain how people would behave in a football field. “To test the strength of the primordial ties that bind the TPLF and the EPLF, a soccer match between Eritrean and Shoan teams was imagined…”(167). A hypothetical question he posed to his informants (both Tigrians and Eritreans) provided him with data that pointed to “the strengths of primordial ties.”
Abbay’s tone is presumptuous and patronizing. The following assertion reveals his extraordinary intervention in a subject he seems not qualified to deal with. “By sidestepping the creation of ‘Greater Tigray’ state after the military victory, the current trans-Mereb rational actors abandoned the common sense of identity that had been entertained by the 1940’s political elite’s a sense of identity that is still cherished by the trans-Mereb civilians” (7). The very use of concepts of his own creation, such as “Greater Tigray,” “trans-Mereb,” “shared memories,” “shared heroes,” etc which have hardly any appeal to an Eritrean, not only expose his naïve understanding of Eritrean mind but also show his lack of respect for his readers. It is an ironic situation of a non-Eritrean telling the Eritreans who they are.
His exposition of the Eritrean “psyche” and the language used for this clearly show his bias against Eritreans in general: “It was what the Italians left that made them [the Eriteans] feel they were more ‘modernized’ than their incoming rulers, the Amhara” (88). While he makes no mention of the role of the EPLF in bringing the TPLF to power, he gives undue credit to TPLF and belittles EPLF’s military victories: “the promordiallly-dictated Tigrian insurgency, thus, emerged as were prodigious movement that enabled Eritreans to realize their otherwise impossible aspirations. Without the Tigrian insurgency, the hurdles faced by the Eriteran nationalism were too formidable”(223). This is consistent with his bias of assigning heroic quality and status only to the historical figures of the 19th century Tigray, and ridiculing some Eritrean officials, because they failed to “pass his quiz” relating to the glory of Yohannes and Alula.
Theory and Facts
Much of what is considered theory in social sciences consists of conceptual frameworks that direct inquiry. This makes conceptual refinement crucial for the usefulness of future research and the advancement of theory. Without this, empirical research can prove misleading. Abbay makes no effort to provide a basis for understanding the intricate relationships between identity, ethnicity, ethnic politics and the mobilization of ethnic identity. He neither defines nor describes these concepts adequately. Excluding an important and most recent perspective, the constructionist perspective, in the understanding of identity formation, he sticks to the one that suits his pre-determined conclusion. Amazingly, the very first word in the title of his book “Identity” is never defined and is always confused with ethnic identity. He sees a one-to-one relationship between language, identity and ethnicity, and makes much of the static view of identity: that it is related to a person’s birth and ‘blood’ and that language is one of its primary markers. This has limited relevance to Eritrea. It is even dangerous in that it provides intellectual justification for ethnic cleansing. That no judicious treatment is provided for discussing concepts and alternative perspectives on ethnic and national identity formation is a deliberate omission on the part of the writer.
It is important to mention here that the notion that identity is dependent on a people’s past, their background, or blood, or ‘roots’ has serious flaws. ‘Primordially-based’ ethnic identity is conservative and, therefore, seriously criticized by those who consider identity to be dynamic rather than static. Primordial attachments, says Peter McGrath (1993:15), “allow one group or tribe to distinguish itself from other nearby group. Typically, they imply conflict: one group against the other.” According to Young,“ In its extreme form, ‘primordialism’ wanders into the zoological gardens of sociology” (1993:23). Advocates of linguistic rights distance themselves from this extreme view on language identity creation because “a crude form of primordialism would also conceptualise language in an anthropomorphic, ‘biologized’ way, as an organism with life of its own, more or less despite the speakers” (Phillipson et al. 1995:9).
As regards the dynamics of identity formation, Abbay fails to provide a theoretical basis for understanding the complex relationship between language, identity, and ethnicity or ethnic identity. It needs to be stressed that ethnicity is only one form of collective identity, and the mobilization of ethnic consciousness is one out of the several options that are available to the members of various collectivities. In each different form of collective identity, language assumes a different role. In the African multilingual context language is not important for nationalistic sentiment because national identity is rarely associated with language as such. A basic distinction could be made here between language in its primary function as a tool of communication and language as a symbol, a rallying-point for both élites and counter-élites. “But ethnicity is frequently related more to the symbolism of separate language than to its actual use by all members of a group” (De Vos 1995:23). We can again check the record by asking who has respect for the Tigrigna language? How strong was the linguistic nationalism and how developed were the print capitalism and the literary tradition when Amharic was superimposed over Tigrigna in the regions Abbay wants to compare. Drawing a gross and crude comparison of the nationalist movements with different strategic goals and political programs (even after TPLF adopted a “pan-Ethiopian goal” according to the author) to imply that language was associated with the nationalist movements in a similar fashion of linguistic nationalism is misleading. With regard to this misconception, Patemen has to say this in a nutshell: “Even in those distant times (at the times of the ‘glorious victories of Amhatsion’ 1314-44,) however, it is clear that the land and the people of highland Eritrea were distinct from the people of Tigray even though they spoke the same language, just as the Austrians, Swiss Germans, and the Germans of today are very different people” (1990: 330). Thus, if there is no justification for the German speakers in three states to form an ‘ethno-regional’ state in central Europe, there can’t be any political rationale for the peoples on both sides of the Mereb to form a state only because they speak dialects of the same language.
One thing that Abbay has completely ignored is the fact that like many colonially constructed countries south of the Sahara, Eritrea is a multilingual and multicultural country and has thus no reason to re-think or re-imagine its identity which has been forged by over one hundred years of history of resistance of all the ethnic groups that make up the state. Another necessary element that may have helped the validity of his claims, yet conspicuously lacking in his discourse, is his failure to show that identity is co-constructed or mutually constructed, as Sorenson and Matsuoka argue: “Identity is socially constructed and produced through complex interaction in which each actor must understand not only her or his own personal, collective or social identity but also the social identity of the other actors involved” (Mutsuoka and Sorenson 2001:17).
Finally, the sincerity of Abbay’s claims is suspect because we are not sure of the veracity of the sources of his information. His assertion that the civilian and the elite perceptions of identity among Eritreans are different is also untrue. Who in the post-independent Eritrea, soon after the historic referendum, could really show any longing for trans-Mereb collective memory? All these flaws in Abbay’s conceptualization and methodology point to the only possible conclusion: that it is no more than a clearly crafted work of propaganda, which suits the ideology of the ruling clique of the present day Ethiopia. I think it is preposterous to sell such an ideology of ethnicity to the people of Eritrea for neither politicized ethnicity nor an irredentism movement exists in the country. This subversive tilt in Abbay’s work considerably diminishes its value as a work that seeks to promote the understanding of African ethnic, national or regional problems. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it provides an insidious intellectual justification for a political agenda that raises horrific visions of African balkanization.
Chefena Hailemariam
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