Identity Lecture

 IDENTITY LECTURE

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 (more of this later …)

Physiognomy - 

• a person's facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin

• "friends began to notice a change in his physiognomy

• the supposed art of judging character from facial characteristics.

Phrenology - 

• the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.

•  Physiognomy legitimising racism - irish iberian , anglo - teutonic , negro

Fine art 

• Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516) Christ carrying the cross , oil on panel c. 1515
• Chris Ofili , Holy Virgin Mary , 1996 - caused sensation 

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

• Marriage, The Church, monarchy,

• Government, the State, Work

Secure identities 

Modern identity
19th and early 20th centuries

• Charles Baudelaire – The Painter of Modern Life (1863)

• Thorstein Veblen – Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

• Georg Simmel – The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)

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

Veblen – ‘Conspicuous , consumption of valuable

goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure’

- Different words in french and things are feminime and masuclin .

- Conspictues consumptopm - showing off wealth

Simmel 

• Trickle down theory

• Emulation 

• Distinction

• The mask of fashion

Georg Simmel also rights .. ‘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’ 

• alienation in society 
• more alone 

Simmel suggests - 

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’.

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)

Discourses to be considered - Class , Nationality , Race/ethnicity , Gender and sexuality - Otherness.

CLASS

Humphrey Spender/Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937

- Summer nights dream.

NATIONALITY 

‘Much of the press coverage centred around accusations of misogyny because of the imagery of semi-naked,
staggering and brutalised 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’.


RACE & ETHNICITY
Visual culture 

• Chris Ofili No women , No cry 1998
• Chris Ofili , Captain Shit and the legend of the black stars 1994. - perceptions of black people , fine art.

- Gillian Wearing - turner prize. ' Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say 1992-3 - Stereotypes ?

- Emily bates , Dress Created using her own hair . (Textile Designer / Artist)

'Hair has been a big issue throughout my life .. it often felt that i was nothing more than my hair in others peoples eyes.'

GENDER & SEXUALITY 

• Gillian Wearing, from Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, 1992 - 3

• Androgyny 1920s style, from Punch magazine

• Sam Taylor-Wood, Portrait (Fuck, Suck, Spank, Wank), 1993. 

• Tracey Emin, Everyone I have ever slept with 1963 - 95, 1995

• Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel, 1994

The Postmodern condition:Liquid Modernity and Liquid Love

• Post monderist theory

• Identity is constructed through our 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”’

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), Enlightenment Philosopher: ‘I think therefore I am’ (Discourse on Method, 1637)

Barbara Kruger, I shop therefore I am, 1987, 

She gets criticised , has she been sold out , theres also a notion she has been a sponsored artist ,  her work is in Selfridges and it goes against everything she is saying as the signs are hanging above people buying things ' to change there lives'

“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), Visual Digital Culture, p.187.