01 Identity and Difference

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IDENTITY

AND

DIFFERENCE


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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 inwhich we live


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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)


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Circuit of culture


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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...)


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essentialism identity is rooted in kinship and

the truth of a shared history

history is constructed or represented as anunchanging truth

non-essentialism understanding of identity

which includes notions of fluidity andcontingency

identity is formed in particular historical

circumstances

Essentialism vs. non-essentialism


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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


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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)?


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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

Conceptualization of identity


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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

Representation


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identification - actualization of unconscious

wishes in relation to images; seeing ourselves

in the image presented

relations of power

Identification


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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 backsimply to one source

political upheavals - earlier forms replace

communism as a point of reference

A crisis of identity


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multiculturalism

renewed search for ethnic certainties

search for old ethnic certainties

new 'European identity'

imagined community (Benedict Anderson,

1983)

our understanding of national identity mustinclude the idea we have of it


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the OtherEuropean fear of Islamic fundamentalism

Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978) - western

culture constructs East as a source offascination and danger

post-colonial world - break-up of old

certainties and the production of newpositionalities


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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 ethnicgroups and plurality of cultures

celebration of difference can ignore the

structural nature of oppression

Histories


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English author born in Jamaica

Afro-Caribbean 'blacks' of the diasporas of the

west

identity as a production

cultural identity in terms ofone, shared

culture

Fanon - colonisation destroys the past of the

oppressed people

oneness imposes an imaginary coherence on

the ex erience of dis ersal and fra mentation

Stuart Hall - Cultural identity and diaspora


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a second view of cultural identity stresses

differencescultural identities undergo constant

transformation

this position reveals the traumatic character ofthe colonial experience

cultural identity is not a fixed essence, but

a positioning


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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


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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

Repositioning Caribbean identities


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European Presence

introduces the question ofpower

dominant European regimes of representation:

adventure and exploration, exoticism, tourism

imperialising eye


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the juncture point where strangers from everypart 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

New World Presence


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constantly producing and reproducing

themselves anew, through transformation and

difference

Diaspora identities


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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'sdifferance

meaning is always deferred, never fixed or

complete


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shifts in social class positioning

Ernesto Laclau - dislocation

instead of fixed identities, there is a plurality ofcentres where new identites can emerge and

where new subjects can be articulated

move away from class-based positions tothose based on gender, race, ethnicity or

sexuality

Social changes


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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)


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emerged in the West in the 1960s

anti-establishment

move from class allegiances to particularidentities (feminism, black civil rights, sexual

politics)

identity politics - claiming one's identity as amember of an oppressed or marginalized

group

celebration of the group's uniqueness

New social movements


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Non-essentialist definition of identity -

identities are fluid and can bereconstructed in new cultural conditions

overthrowing Marxist class positionings

identities based on race, gender or sexualitycut across class affiliations

essentialism is rooted in biology and gives

a unified notion of identity


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marking of difference is crucial for

constructing identity positions

difference is reproduced through symbolicsystems

symbolic systems of representation and social

difference are established through

classificatory systems (division into

opposing groups)

Difference and identity


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Durkheim - meaning is produced through

classificatory systems

social relations are produced through ritualand symbol which classify things as sacred

and profane

difference is the mark of identitycultural consensus enables classifying things

and maintaining social order

Mary Douglas, the British anthropologist, alsostates that ritual, symbol and classification are

central to the production of meaning


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social and symbolic systems produce

classificatory structures which impose

meaning and order on social life

fundamental distinctions - us-them,

inside-outside, sacred-profane, male-

female


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Claude Lvy-Strauss - the food which we

consume establishes our identity

political dimensionmaterial 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


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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?

Difference


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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

Henrietta Moore: 'Divided we stand'


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Derrida - meaning is produced through a

process of deferralwhat appears determinate is fluid and unsure

there is contingency rather than fixity

division between sex and gendergender is socially constructed

both biology and culture are historically and

culturally variable concepts


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subjectivity includes our sense of self

involves both conscious and unconscious

thoughts and emotionspositions we take up and identify with

constitute our identities

interpellation - Louis Althusser - the way inwhich subjects are recruited into subject-

positions through recognizing themselves

Why do we invest in identities?


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combined psychoanalysis and structurallinguistics with Marxism

ideologies reproduce social relations

the subject is not the same as the human personbut is a symbolically constructed category

symbolic proceses and practices designate

our identitysubjects are recruited and created at the level of

the unconcsious as well as the conscious mind

Althusser


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made up of the powerful desires which arisefrom the intrusion of the father into the

relationship between the child and the mother

the unconscious is the repository ofrepressed desires opposed to the laws of the

conscious rational mind

irrational behaviour- conflict of theunconscious mind and the demand of social

forces (super-ego)

The unconscious


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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

Freudian psychoanalysis


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unified human subject is a myth

the child has no awareness of being separatefrom the mother

mixture of fantasies of love and hate, focusing

on the mother's bodythe beginning of identity formation is when

the child realizes it is separate from the mother

entry into language results in the splittingwithin the subject

the mirror stage - the child constructs a selfbased on its reflection either in an actual mirror

or in the mirror of the eyes of others

Jacques Lacan


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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


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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


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subversion of the unified self

emphasis on the construction of the gendered

self through cultural and representationalsystems

possibility ofexploring unconscious as well

as conscious desires in explaining processes

of identification

Lacan's and Freud's contribution

01 Identity and Difference

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