French academic Bertran Badi revealed his exceptional experience in living between two different cultures, stressing that the dual affiliation of the French and Persian identity formed a source of tremendous power after a long suffering from exclusion and marginalization.
This early suffering was embodied in Badi’s experience, born in 1954 of an Iranian father and a French mother, who faced great difficulties during his early stages of growth due to the community’s lack of acceptance of its double identity.
The researcher expressed his feeling of fundamental difference from his peers who belong to one clear identity, while he was experiencing a 100% French and Persian experience at the same time.
In this context, an episode of the “interview” program dealt with the suffering of the father of Badi, who immigrated from Iran in 1928 to study medicine, then participated in the French resistance against the Nazis and obtained the Order of Honor.
Despite his grave sacrifices, the father faced a severe shock when he was asked to return to his country on the day of liberation despite obtaining the medal, which left a deep wound in himself reflected on the subsequent son’s experience.
However, this harsh experience constituted a starting point towards the positive transformation, where Badi explained how his perception of things changed by two articulated events in his life, where the events of May 1968 in France formed a basic turning point through which he realized his affiliation with the world before belonging to a specific country.
Understanding Persian culture
In parallel, his enrollment in higher education contributed to his understanding that the personality is built day by day, not with inheritance or the pre -determined affiliation.
Badi was able to take advantage of his father’s experience in understanding the depth of Persian culture, as the father was throwing him every evening of Persian poetry and showing him what he calls oriental wisdom.
This dual cultural experience enabled him to develop a new scientific approach in studying international relations based on understanding the cultural subjectivity of peoples rather than imposing one vision on it.
Based on this basis, the researcher developed the theory that understanding international relations does not pass through the traditional major theories, but rather through the subjective approach that takes into account the difference in the historical paths of the peoples.
He stressed that the Russian -Ukrainian conflict carries a different meaning in France from the meaning it carries in Chad, and that the inhabitants of the Middle East do not receive conflicts in the same way that Europeans or Americans receive.
Based on this deep understanding, Badi criticized the Western mind, convinced of its superiority to the extent that the Western narrative of events is suitable for the rest of the world.
How does the other think?
He called for the necessity of asking 3 basic questions that represent the humility of science: how the other thinks, how he sees me, and how he thinks I see him, and pointed out that the Europeans do not ask these questions, but they have only one question: how should the other be similar to us.
Within the framework of his analysis of the dynamics of contemporary identity, the discussion touched on the concept of identity and its classification to 3 stages: the natural identity necessary for the human being in the world, the liberation identity that allows the resistance of the forms of dominance imposed, and the deadly closed identity that drives the belief in the superiority of the other and that must be fought.
In implementation of this classification on contemporary reality, Badi warned against using religious and ethnic identity as tools for hegemony, stressing the necessity of real freedom to choose.
He called for the right of Iranian women who want to take off the veil to this, and the right of the French woman who wants to wear it as well, considering this the essence of real freedom.
In terms of contemporary political developments, the academic link between the rise of the extreme right with fear of globalization and the other, indicating that populism is based on imposing identity and closing society in the face of the world.
The fear of difference, globalization and resort to the closure of identities as a basic structure for the extreme right that must be faced and move against it.
Badi concluded his pivotal theory that humiliation is an essential factor in international relations, considering it the highest levels of domination and its absolute form.
He pointed out that all the wars of the resistance and liberation movements throughout history constitute a victorious response to humiliation, stressing that the social power in the end is stronger than political power and that man remains the supreme value in the face of all forms of repression and domination.
7/27/2025–|Last update: 22:24 (Mecca time)