Lecture Summary//
- To introduce the conceptions of identity
- To introduce Foucaults 'discourse' methodology
- To place and critique contemporary practice within these frameworks, and to consider their validity
- To consider 'postmodern' theories of identity
- To consider identity today, especially in the digital domain
Theories of Identity//
- Essentialism (traditional approach)
- Our biological make up makes us who we are
- We all have an inner essence that makes us who we are
- Post Modern theorists disagree
- Post Modern theorists are anti-essentialist
Historical phases of identity//
Douglas Kellner- Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern, 1992
- Pre modern identity- personal identity is stable- defined by long standing roles
- Modern identity- modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility to start 'choosing' your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to 'worry' about who they are
- Post modern identity- accepts a 'fragmented self'. Identity is constructed
Pre- Modern Identity// Institutions determined identity
'Secure' identities
- farmworker: landed gentry
- the soldier: the state
- the factory worker: industrial capitalism
- the housewife: patriarchy
- the gentleman: patriarchy
- husband wife: marriage/ church
Modern Identity// 19th and early 20th centuries
- Charles Baudelaire- The painter of Modern Life (1863)
- Thorstein Veblin- Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
- Georg Simmel- The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)
Baudelaire- introduces concept if the 'flanuer' (gentleman stroller0
Veblin- 'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure'
Simmel- Trickle down theory/ emulation/ distinction/ the mask of fashion
Georg Simmel:
'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or in the traffic of a large city'
- Simmel suggests that: because of the speed and mutability of modernity, individuals withdraw into themselves to find peace.
He describes this as 'the separation of the subjective from the objective life'
Post-Modern identity//
'Discourse Analysis'
- Identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us.
What is discourse?
- '..a set of recurring statements that define a particular cultural 'object' (e.g.. madness, criminality, sexuality) and provide concepts and terms through which such an object can be studied and discussed'
Cavallaro, (2001)
Possible discourse//
- Age
- Class
- Gender
- Nationality
- Race/ ethnicity
- Sexual orientation
- Education
- Income
Discourses to be considered//
- Class
- Nationality
- Race/ ethnicity
- Gender/ sexuality
Class//
'society..reminds one of a particularly shrewd, cunning and pokerfaced player in the game of life, cheating if given a chance, flouting rules whenever possible' Bauman (2204)
Nationality//
'Much of the press coverage around accusations of misogyny because of the imagery of semi-naked, staggering and brutalized women, in conjunction with the word 'rape' in the title. But McQueen claimed that the rape was of Scotland, not the individual models, as the theme of the show was the Jacobite rebellion' Alexander McQueen, Highland Rape collection, Autumn/ Winter (1995-6)
Race and ethnicity//
'Hair has been a big issue throughout my life.. it often felt I was nothing more than my hair in other peoples' eyes' Emily Bates, Textile Designer/ Artist
Gender and sexuality//
'Edmund Berger, an American psychoanalyst writing in the 1950s, went much further, both in condemning the ugliness of fashion and in relating it to sex. He recognised that the fashion industry is the work not of women, but of men. Its monstrosities, he argued, were a 'gigantic unconscious hoax' perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War- male homosexuals (for he made the vulgar assumption that all dress designers are 'queers'). Having first, in the 1920s, tried to turn women into boys, they had latterly expressed their secret hatred of women by forcing them into exaggerated, ridiculous, hideous clothes' Wilson, E. (1985), Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London
The Postmodern condition:
Liquid Modernity and Liquid Love
Post modern theory:
- Identity is constructed through the social experience
- Erving Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
- Goffman saw life as 'theatre', made up of 'encounters' and 'performances'
- For Goffman the self is a series of facades
Zygmunt Bauman//
'Yes, indeed, 'identity' is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, 'an objective''
'In airports and other public spaces, people with mobile-phone headset attachments walk around, talking aloud and alone, like paranoid schizophrenics, oblivious to their immediate surroundings.
Introspection is a disappearing act. Faced with moments alone in their cars, on the streets or at supermarket checkouts, more and more people do not collect their thoughts, but scan their mobile phone messages for shreds of evidence that someone, somewhere may need or want them' Andy Hargreaves (2003)
'The typical cultural spectator of postmodernity is viewed as a largely home centred and increasingly solitary player who, via various forms of 'telemediation' (stereos, game consoles, videos and televisions), revels in a domesticated (i.e private and tamed) 'world at a distance'' Darley (2000)
'If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in order to get sex or approval. ('I like Facebook', said another friend. 'I got a shag out of it')' Tom Hodgkinson (2008), 'With friends like these..' Guardian, 14/01/08
'Fun they may be, these virtual communities, but they create only an illusion of intimacy and a pretence of community' Charles Handy (2001), The Elephant and the Flea, Hutchinson, page 204
'Identity is a hopelessly ambiguous idea and a double-edged sword. It may be a war cry of individuals, or of the communities that wish to be imagined by them. At one time the edge of identity is turned against 'collective pressures' by individuals who resent conformity and hold dear their own ways of living (which 'the group' would condemn as cases of 'deviation' or 'silliness', but at any rate of abnormality, needing to be cured or punished' Bauman (2004), Identity, page 76
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