Upcoming Events
Who Are We — and Should It Matter in the 21st Century?
Dialogue Berlin presents a discussion with Gary Younge
‘We are more alike than we are unalike. But the way we are unalike matters. To be male in Saudi Arabia, Jewish in Israel or white in Europe confers certain powers and privileges that those with other identities do not have. In other words identity can represent a material fact in itself’. British-born, New York-based journalist Gary Younge joins Sharmaine Reid, the founder of Dialogue Berlin, to present his latest book, Who Are We — and Should It Matter in the 21st Century, and to discuss the meaning of identity in today’s world.
The way we define ourselves is critical, wherever we are, and whatever our origins. Our concepts of identity are mutable, but they are also fast changing. For the British, however, the issue of identity is particularly troublesome: to what degree does an English person, for example, identify with ideas of Britain or Europe? And how does identity change when they live abroad? Younge himself has negotiated this minefield from his childhood in England as the working-class son of a single mother from Barbados, to his current life as a newspaper correspondent in Brooklyn.
Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, Gary Younge’s book addresses the relationship of identity to issues ranging from domestic politics to international terrorism. In so doing, his wide-ranging study takes in subjects as diverse as Tiger Woods, the ‘blackness’ of Barack Obama, the rise of European Islamism, and the Danish cartoons controversy.
For Guardian correspondent Younge, the effects of globalisation have included a polarisation of identity, something that could be described as a post-9/11 tribalism. But identities also relate to power and, as Younge observes, ‘the more power an identity carries, the less likely its carrier is to be aware of it as an identity at all’. These themes and more will be discussed in Dialogue Berlin’s latest discussion at the Direktorenhaus, the city’s new multidisciplinary art space.
Wednesday 14 July
19:30 – 21.30
Direktorenhaus
Am Krögel 2
10197 Berlin
€3,00
RSVP to events@dialogueberlin.com
