Worlds, real & imagined

Orpheus went to hell and back, and lost what he went there for anyway.

We strive to fill the gaps of antiquity, scan palimpsests from rubbish-tips, train every fragment of the spectrum upon them. The lacunae, though, are part of the story.

What we have is what we have; what we’re given, we should be grateful for.

If you have the same history as me when it comes to this digital whatever (i.e. a Mosaic floor, in best Time Team fashion) and have the same personal investment in it, you’ll have been through your share of ‘online life crises’, manifested in discomfort, misplaced nostalgia and the desire to get off the TCP/IP grid, or at least find a remote space within it. It’s part of the territory.

The only way to cope in those moments, for me at least, is to take a mantra: this is all so very broken and it needs fixing. So: to push past King Ludd, without despairing.

As a kind of prelude to what I’m going to discuss in terms of identity and the stuff of identity, I’ll point to this fine New York Times Magazine piece by Gershom Gorenberg on proving one’s Jewishness in order to marry in Israel. The pivoting grafs:

Trust — or lack of it — is the crux. Zvi Zohar of Bar-Ilan University explained to me that historically, if someone said he was a Jew, “if he lived among us, was a partner in our society and said he was one of us, we assumed he was right.” Trust was the default position. One reason was that Jews were a persecuted people; no one would claim to belong unless she really did. The leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Israel in the years before and after the state was established, Avraham Yeshayahu Karlitz (known as the Hazon Ish, the name of his magnum opus on religious law), held the classical position. If someone arrived from another country claiming to be Jewish, he should be allowed to marry another Jew, “even if nothing is known of his family,” Karlitz wrote.

Several trends have combined to change that. In an era of intermarriage, denominational disputes and secularization, Jews have ceased agreeing on who belongs to the family, or on what the word “Jew” means.

Among close communities, and especially among those with long histories of discrimination and persecution, trust is the engine of belonging. Trust is bestowed first by the say-so of trusted others, and when that’s unavailable, the fall-back is to documentation of heritage, lineage, an extrinsic point of connection. To marry in Israel, it’s not enough to be a Jew: someone with authority has to declare you Jewish.

That be itself seems problematic: being oscillates, depending upon the point from which identity is constituted. It works the other way, too, with those who apply for a visa to the land of their ancestors to be told by the consulate that they have always been citizens. (At college, I had a friend who was born and raised in Britain, but held an American passport through a parent: when visiting the US, it amused him that regardless of his accent and birthplace, the border agents would always say ‘welcome home’.)

On one level, it’s situational, a matter of utility. Not being able to prove one’s Jewishness to the satisfaction of Israel’s rabbinical judges is only an impediment to those who wish to marry or take advantage of the Law of Return; it won’t prevent you from holding a Passover seder. (Though having your identity questioned in such circumstances might have its own consequences.) Similarly, that grandfathered claim to a passport or to sporting eligibility only becomes part of who you are should the need or opportunity arise.

For the most part, we still function on trust and tokens, but the changing character of our interactions outpaces both the formal and informal structures in which they are used.

Etsy dataset. (two more: via kottke.)

The curious case of the canoeist from (Seaton) Carew reminded me of the stern notice that greeted me [mumble] years ago: ‘This passport remains the property of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and may be withdrawn at any time’. My passport is still a fascination: the complexity of its printing, the attempts to divine national characteristics from the stamps and visas they leave in its pages, the multilingual rubric that embraces ever more of Europe, and ever more pages, renewal upon renewal; but most of all, the way in which it pivots identity between self and state.

It’s not just the passport that’s government property, but the particular form of identity it instantiates. John Darwin isn’t charged with faking his death, but with making a false statement to obtain a passport. Put another way, he tried to give up something that wasn’t his, and that something was himself.

To those exposed to complicated books written by French sorts, the idea that identity is imposed in facets from without is hardly novel. But in this context, ‘identity theft’ seems a strange term. The elements that make it possible, tangible or intangible, may be in your possession, but they’re rarely your property in the Lockean sense, to be used and disposed of at will. Instead, they carry all the anxieties of items on extended loan: which is, in essence, what they are.

And as Ben Goldacre notes, the creep of biometrics subjects bits of your own body to this transformation. It’s a different kind of identity theft: one that takes your property and returns it on loan, reconstituted as identity data.

Here lies the paradox: the repeated instructions (and helpfully-offered subscription services) to protect your identity carry the implication that it’s yours to protect. Except that it isn’t. It might be argued that you have a duty of care, the same that would stop you from leaving your mate’s car unlocked with the keys in the ignition when you borrow it for a late-night beer run. Except that it’s not. Instead, we’re asked to protect something that’s not our own, warned not to give away something that has already been taken.