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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters The kindness of strangers
By Abdelwahab Elmessiri *Last week, I outlined two of the characteristics of functional groups, defined as a group of people, usually a numerical minority, either imported from outside the society or recruited from within its ranks, and generally defined in terms of a definite, limited, abstract function (profession, etc.), rather than their complex, concrete, and full humanity. They are entrusted with certain jobs or functions which members of the host society (the majority) either cannot or will not perform for a variety of reasons. Among the characteristics of these groups, besides those mentioned in the first part of this series, are: Separateness from time (history) and place (homeland) and the illusory feeling of a separate identity.
Members of the functional group develop a myth of a hypothetical sacred origin, and attach themselves to an original sacred homeland, either real or fictive (China/Zion) from which they have come, and to which they will eventually return one day, either in history or at the end of time. This attitude loosens their ties to their immediate place and time and undermines their loyalty to the country they reside in and to its history. It also makes life bearable for them, for it turns their immediate oppressive temporal and spatial surroundings into something temporary.
A proviso here is very much in order. Despite their structural isolation from society at large and their subjective sense of separateness from "the other", and despite the illusion they harbour that they have a separate identity independent of the society, the concrete identity of the functional group's members is nevertheless derived from the society they actually live in, and not from their religion or any hypothetical land of origin they believe themselves to belong to. This double identity (one abstract and hypothetical, the other concrete and real) is essential for the members of the functional group, for it enables them to move efficiently in the societies they live in, sustaining their living, yet remaining perpetually outside.
Double standards: Members of the functional group do not subscribe to one moral code that applies to all human beings. They espouse two codes: one for the functional group, the other for the host society. These double standards correspond to the functional group's dualistic view of the sacred, human, and concrete "me", as opposed to the profane "other". The other is not fully human; actually he is nothing but "useful matter" and therefore can be utilised and instrumentalised without any moral compunctions. On the other hand, members of the functional group are deemed sacred and fully human, and therefore moral criteria apply to them. They even sometimes think of themselves as a "chosen people", and therefore the common run of humanity does not count much; the moral standards that apply to the chosen people do not apply to others, who are mere "gentiles".
Members of the host society, it should be remembered, assume a similar dualistic attitude in their dealings with members of the functional group, who are, for them, nothing but "useful matter" that can be utilised and instrumentalised. Moral criteria that apply to members of the society do not, therefore, apply to them.
Mobility: Members of the functional group are the first modern men, and the first carriers of modernity and agents of secularisation. Isolation from society, their loose ties to time and place and their total instrumentalisation make them quite mobile, for, being outside the pale of normal humanity and normal mortality, they are not restrained or shackled by the moral values or absolutes of the society or by its historical traditions or conventions; nor do they have any sense of its sanctity or full humanity. Nothing for them is taboo.
This mobility makes it possible for them to take risks, penetrating all strata of society, moving into new fields, creating new ones, filling all possible crevices. The fact that the ruling class does not fear them increases their mobility and opens up to them possibilities closed to members of the society.
The paradoxical combination of centricity around the self (subject/limitless freedom) and around the non-Me (object/ruthless determinism -- pantheism/immanence)
It is unbearable, of course, for a human being to be turned into a mere tool to be used rationally and kept in isolation to guarantee both his survival and the efficiency of his performance. To overcome their alienation, members of the functional group usually develop a pantheistic view of the world, and a chosen people complex, seeing themselves as suffused with a divine substance and even at one with God.
One manifestation of this pantheism is the paradoxical combination of self-centredness and extreme objectivity, of limitless freedom and ruthless determinism, and an endless shuttling between the one and the other. Members of the functional group are usually centred around themselves and around their group to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Their motivation and conduct are almost exclusively dictated by their self-interest and pleasure and the interest of the functional group they belong to. This implies limitless freedom and a denial of boundaries.
But members of the functional group are at the same time centred around their abstract objective function (which they have to perform in the service of society). All this means a denial of their subjectivity and a surrender to ruthless determinism, for everything in their life is dictated by their function. They are not free agents, since they are mere tools of society, instrumentalised in its service. They belong to a chosen people, but their chosenness is tied up with the function they perform, and is totally derived from it.
This is the synchronic ideal type, which can also be historically operationalised. The decisive point in the history of the functional group is the rise of the central nation-state with all its modern institutions, which take over many of the functions of functional groups, making them useless and therefore disposable. Members of the group are done away with, most often through complete assimilation, but at times through genocide or deportation.
Sometimes the functional group, or at least some if its traits, is reproduced in modern form: emigrants from poor countries into advanced countries who perform black labour; personnel in the pleasure sector in modern societies (movies and escort services) and pleasure-related services (restaurants, tourism). Actually, one can argue that some of the smaller states that have strategic value and are incapable of defending themselves are turned into functional states, whose very raison d'ètre is a function they discharge in the service of a super-power.
One could also argue that, with the increased rationalisation of human relationships and the dominance of contractual relationships in lieu of traditional and moral loyalties, human individuals are instrumentalised and functionalised. We all become modern men, we all become disenchanted rational calculators of pleasure and utility, seeing mother nature and fellow man as useful matter and nothing more. This is the total elimination of the sacred, and the real death of God (is it also the death of man? Is this his final deconstruction?). Marx, in his own flamboyant way, called this "the Judaisation of society".
The functional group theory has structural and historical explanatory power. It integrates several elements (class, status, worldview, concepts of human nature, ethnicity, theories of rationalisation, symbols, etc.) and tries to operate on a level of analysis both very general and very specific.
The following are examples of functional groups:
1. Hebrew and Macedonian mercenaries in the Hellenic states.
2. Armenian merchants in the Ottoman empire.
3. Gypsies in Europe.
4. Eunuchs in the Chinese and Ottoman courts.
5. Chinese in Southeast Asia.
6. Arab traders (especially Lebanese) in Africa.
7. Huguenots in England and Canada.
8. Mamelukes in the Islamic Middle East (especially Egypt).
9. Cossacks in Tsarist Russia.
10. Janissaries in the Ottoman empire.
11. Ethiopian prostitutes in Africa.
12. Jews in Europe, especially Eastern Europe.
* The writer is professor emeritus of philosophy at Ain Shams University.
Part one: The function of outsiders
