The Dialectic of Culture and Identity According to Ahmed Matar

Abstract

There is a dialectical relationship between culture and identity. Since Arab culture today is weakening in the face of the dominance of the Western or global other in the fields of thought and material production; Arab identity is affected by this reality. The weakness of identity inevitably leads to the weakening of culture more and more, as its people distance themselves from it. Perhaps the most dangerous thing that is happening today is that Arab thought sometimes moves away from the starting points and mechanisms of the intellectual process that this thought itself produces. As for identity, it consists of two pillars: the shared culture among the members of society, and the common interests between the groups of this society, whether psychological or material. Ahmed Matar's poetry exudes these ideas expressed in his poems. He believes that the Arab is the product of an ancient culture, but the intelligence systems exclude this culture and replace it with another hybrid culture, in which the person plays no role other than receiving silently without participating in the action, and without objection. The more culture is distanced from its meanings and starting points, the more it negatively affects the construction of the Arab-Islamic identity, which has become very distorted.