OUGD501 Lecture Notes: Identity

OUGD501
LECTURE NOTES
IDENTITY

LECTURE SUMMARY

• To introduce historical conceptions of identity
• To introduce Foucault’s ‘discourse’ methodology
• To place and critique contemporary practice within these frameworks, and to consider their validity
• To consider ‘postmodern’ theories of identity as ‘fluid’ and ‘constructed’ (in particular Zygmunt Bauman)
• 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 

The more vertical the line the more intelligent you are. Shows racial discrimination and the idea of Nazi perfect race.

PHYSIOGNOMY LEGITIMISING RACISM

Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1516)

Christ carrying the Cross, Oil on panel, c. 1515

Hieronymous bosch paintings of religion shows Jesus and Mary as blonde hair blue eyed beautiful people, which we know is not true.

Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996

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

 

 

Modern identity 19th and early 20th centuries

  Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 94),

Le Pont de l’Europe, 1876

Baudelaire – introduces concept of the ‘flaneur’ (gentleman-stroller)

Veblen – ‘Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure’

MODERNE IDENTITY 19th AND EARLY 20th CENTURIES

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 a 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 Etc

DISCOURSE TO BE CONSIDERED:

•  Class
• Nationality
• Race/ethnicity
• Gender and sexuality