IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE

identity often addressed as problematic national, familial, sexual identities crisis of identity breakdown of previously stable group membership multiplicity of identities nationality, ethnicity, social class, community, gender, sexuality identity is a link between us and the society in which we live

 identity mediates between subjective positions and social and cultural situations marks of identity:
difference polarization (ethnic conflict) inclusion or exclusion (us and them) oppositions (man woman)

Circuit of culture

 identities are produced, consumed and regulated within culture creating meanings through symbolic systems of representation about the identity positions which we might adopt different types of identity can be associated with this circuit (national, sexual, maternal...)

Essentialism vs. non-essentialism

essentialism identity is rooted in kinship and the truth of a shared history history is constructed or represented as an unchanging truth non-essentialism understanding of identity which includes notions of fluidity and contingency identity is formed in particular historical circumstances

 a story from war-torn former Yugoslavia identities are given meaning through the language and symbolic systems through which they are represented identity marked out by difference, exclusion, symbols identity shaped by reasserting lost identities from the past identity characterized by conflict, contestation and possible crisis

 Is there a crisis of identity? How are differences manifested and represented? Why do people invest in identity positions? Is identity fixed (essentialism) or changes over time (non-essentialism)?

Conceptualization of identity
both social and symbolic (how we make sense of social relations) processes mark identities importance of classificatory systems (how social relations are organized) identities are not unified (collective vs. individual level) psychic level explains why people take up positions and identify with them

Representation
includes signifying practices and symbolic systems through which meanings are produced representations produce meanings through which we can make sense of our experience establishes individual and collective identities marketing

Identification
identification - actualization of unconscious wishes in relation to images; seeing ourselves in the image presented relations of power

A crisis of identity
globalization - increasing transnationalization of economic and cultural life new shared identities (Macdonald) migration of labour - plural, but also contested identities diaspora identities - cannot be traced back simply to one source political upheavals - earlier forms replace communism as a point of reference

 multiculturalism renewed search for ethnic certainties search for old ethnic certainties new 'European identity' imagined community (Benedict Anderson, 1983) our understanding of national identity must include the idea we have of it

 the Other European fear of Islamic fundamentalism Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978) - western culture constructs East as a source of fascination and danger post-colonial world - break-up of old certainties and the production of new positionalities

Histories
authentification through reclaiming one's history Jane Austen's novels - authentic English past? one version of the past is of Britain as an imperial power the other expresses the diversity of ethnic groups and plurality of cultures celebration of difference can ignore the structural nature of oppression

Stuart Hall - Cultural identity and diaspora

English author born in Jamaica Afro-Caribbean 'blacks' of the diasporas of the west identity as a production cultural identity in terms of one, shared culture Fanon - colonisation destroys the past of the oppressed people oneness imposes an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation

 a second view of cultural identity stresses differences cultural identities undergo constant transformation this position reveals the traumatic character of the colonial experience cultural identity is not a fixed essence, but a positioning

 stressing differences explains the experience of a profound discontinuity the common history - transportation, slavery, colonisation - has been profoundly formative 'doubleness' is most powerfully to be heard within the varieties of Caribbean musics Derrida - meaning is never finished or completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other meanings without relations of difference, no representation could occur

Repositioning Caribbean identities

African Presence the site of the repressed the unspoken, unspeakable 'presence' post-colonial revolution, the culture of Rastafarianism, the music of reggae legacy of Marcus Garvey the music of Burning Spear & Bob Marley

 European Presence introduces the question of power dominant European regimes of representation: adventure and exploration, exoticism, tourism imperialising eye

New World Presence

the juncture point where strangers from every part of the globe collided the scene of fatal encounter between Africa and the West the place of many, continuous displacements experience of slavery, colonisation and conquest the beginning of diaspora, diversity, hybridity and difference

Diaspora identities
constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference

 the identity we now claim can be legitimized by reference to an authentic past uncovering the 'truth' about the past in the 'oneness' of a shared culture fluidity of identity - identity is a matter of 'becoming' as well as of 'being' the past undergoes constant transformation difference explained through Derrida's differance meaning is always deferred, never fixed or complete

Social changes
shifts in social class positioning Ernesto Laclau - dislocation instead of fixed identities, there is a plurality of centres where new identites can emerge and where new subjects can be articulated move away from class-based positions to those based on gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality

 Pierre Bourdieu - fields - we represent ourselves to others differently in each context from class-based loyalties towards 'lifestyle' choices and 'identity politics' shifting sexual identities sexual identities are mediated by the cultural meanings produced through dominant systems of representation (heterosexuality)

New social movements

emerged in the West in the 1960s anti-establishment move from class allegiances to particular identities (feminism, black civil rights, sexual politics) identity politics - claiming one's identity as a member of an oppressed or marginalized group celebration of the group's uniqueness

 Non-essentialist definition of identity identities are fluid and can be reconstructed in new cultural conditions overthrowing Marxist class positionings identities based on race, gender or sexuality cut across class affiliations essentialism is rooted in biology and gives a unified notion of identity

Difference and identity

marking of difference is crucial for constructing identity positions difference is reproduced through symbolic systems symbolic systems of representation and social difference are established through classificatory systems (division into opposing groups)

 Durkheim - meaning is produced through classificatory systems social relations are produced through ritual and symbol which classify things as sacred and profane difference is the mark of identity cultural consensus enables classifying things and maintaining social order Mary Douglas, the British anthropologist, also states that ritual, symbol and classification are central to the production of meaning

 social and symbolic systems produce classificatory structures which impose meaning and order on social life fundamental distinctions - us-them, inside-outside, sacred-profane, malefemale

 Claude Lvy-Strauss - the food which we consume establishes our identity political dimension material connection cultural proscriptions (alcohol and pork) identities are constructed through oppositions (vegetarians - carnivores) social order is maintained through binary oppositions in the creation of insiders and outsiders one identity is created in relation to another

Difference
binary oppositions are essential to the production of meaning difference can be construed negatively ('other' or outsiders) or can be celebrated as a source of enriching diversity ('Glad to be gay') criticism of dualisms - one element in the dichotomy is more valued than the other opposition between nature and culture is thus seen as gendered Luce Irigaray - Can women be different from men without being opposite to them?

Henrietta Moore: 'Divided we stand'

anthropology destabilized unitary categories such as 'woman' two standpoints gender inequality - women are equated with nature and men with culture (Lvi-Strauss) social structures - women are equated with the private, men with the public arena division between nature and culture is not universal

 Derrida - meaning is produced through a process of deferral what appears determinate is fluid and unsure there is contingency rather than fixity division between sex and gender gender is socially constructed both biology and culture are historically and culturally variable concepts

Why do we invest in identities?

subjectivity includes our sense of self involves both conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions positions we take up and identify with constitute our identities interpellation - Louis Althusser - the way in which subjects are recruited into subjectpositions through recognizing themselves

Althusser

combined psychoanalysis and structural linguistics with Marxism ideologies reproduce social relations the subject is not the same as the human person but is a symbolically constructed category symbolic proceses and practices designate our identity subjects are recruited and created at the level of the unconcsious as well as the conscious mind

The unconscious
made up of the powerful desires which arise from the intrusion of the father into the relationship between the child and the mother the unconscious is the repository of repressed desires opposed to the laws of the conscious rational mind irrational behaviour - conflict of the unconscious mind and the demand of social forces (super-ego)

Freudian psychoanalysis
traces apparently irrational behaviour to the repression of unconscious needs psyche is comprised of: the unconscious (the id) the super-ego (acts like a conscience representing social constraints) the ego - attempts resolution; constantly in a state of flux and conflict

Jacques Lacan
unified human subject is a myth the child has no awareness of being separate from the mother mixture of fantasies of love and hate, focusing on the mother's body the beginning of identity formation is when the child realizes it is separate from the mother entry into language results in the splitting within the subject the mirror stage - the child constructs a self based on its reflection either in an actual mirror or in the mirror of the eyes of others

 the first encounter with the process of constructing a 'self' sets the scene for all future identifications because identity depends for its unity on something outside itself, it arises from a lack; a desire for a return to the unity tendency to identify with powerful figures outside itself symbolic systems enable us to identify with the ways in which we are seen by others

 Oedipal stage - the father divides the child from its fantasies and the desire for the mother is repressed into the unconscious the father, symbolized by the phallus, represents sexual difference the phallus introduces difference the masculine is privileged over the feminine girls are positioned negatively and as 'lacking' feminist criticism has contested Lacan's theory of the phallus

Lacan's and Freud's contribution

subversion of the unified self emphasis on the construction of the gendered self through cultural and representational systems possibility of exploring unconscious as well as conscious desires in explaining processes of identification