shared history, and shared lifestyle. Further, because of the individualism that is
part of modernization, the said attachments are no longer automatically and thus
largely unconsciously acquired, but have become emotionally charged. The
highlighted and sentimental character attributed to identity has increased its
conflict potential. Without one you are nothing, while any particular feature of
the multifaceted structure that is your identity both allows you to associate with
others and exposes you to the dangers of exclusion and discrimination.
Individual identities are complex structures combining inherited features with
various group memberships, loyalties, values, belief systems, and fashions.
These structures adjust to changing circumstances and so does the concept of
identity itself. Elements may be discarded or remixed, new ones added on
occasion. Hence a definitive definition is not available. Instead, as an antidote to
too much rigidity, we can refer to how the Samo of Burkina Faso understand
identity, as cited by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It comprises nine elements:
(1) the body, which one receives from one’s mother, (2) the blood, which one receives from one’s
father, (3) the shadow the body projects, (4) warmth and sweat, (5) breath, (6) life, or rather a
particle of life, which is an entity in which all living beings are immersed, (7) thought, subdivided in
understanding and consciousness, (8) the double, which is the immortal part that can perform and
suffer witchcraft (it detaches from the body every night to wander in dreams, and then definitively
some years before death to go on the journey of the dead where it will have two more lives and two
more deaths of death, and finally it will incarnate a tree), (9) individual destiny.