European Minorities Torn Between Worlds
I post the story above in case you sometimes wonder if the discussion in the previous posts about the “Constitutive ‘Other'” in postmodern thinking is just a head game or if the idea of a Gryffindor/Slytherin Hermaphrodite who can bridge the chasm created by cultural metanarratives is silly beyond words. The agony of “home grown” Muslims in Europe unable to assimilate because of their beliefs and the beliefs of their host countries puts a “real life” face on this discussion and highlights both the relevance and the urgency of a “metanarrative of love.”
I would say, too, that this theme of painful duality needing resolution strikes home in our hearts both because we are all the victims of faction or “misfit toys” to some degree and because, as psychosomatic life, just by being human, we are a joining of contrary physical and spiritual tendencies. Our outsides and our insides, the external social environment and our interior life, then, resonate with the alchemical action of this story.
This isn’t kid stuff, however edifying the experience of this story is for the open-hearted, young or old
Excellent parallel. Of course, there are so many parallels between wizarding world political/social unrest and reality; it can become rather depressing if we don’t adopt Dumbledore’s optimism.