Theories of Identity
Essentialism
- Physiognomy
Drawn inbred characters - can tell by how they look if unbalanced
Characteristics of the face can tell how intelligence you are - eg. racial features
English/german are intelligent decreasing down with ethnicity's
- Phrenology
Theres an ideal make up for your brain
Areas of the brain - theres perfect ratio to each other - well balanced character and identity
Say if you animal is more than moral than you might be more likely to be criminal
Drawn inbred characters - can tell by how they look if unbalanced
Physiognomy
- Legitimising racism
In art
- Belgium painter
- Everyones face looks odd except Christ carrying the cross and the lady
- Son of God - the people who put him to death are bad - drawn attention through there ugly face
- Holy Virgin Mary - largely accepted
- Black Artist - makes Mary black - shown in exhibition - Met in New York - people were outraged
- Got withdrawn from exhibition - even if we don't believe in the theory its still subconsciously there
- Media Culture - identify three stages
Pre Modern Identity
Modern Identity
Post- Modern Identity
- Pre Modern
Identified through marriage - who you marry
Institutions determine identity - state, church etc.
- Modern Identity
19th/20th Century
People started moving to cities for factory work - new class emerge
Middle class
3 writers of theories appear:
- Charles Baudelaire
- Thorstein Veblen
- Georg Simmel
French - male and female words
- Baudelaire - concept of 'flaneur' - gentlemen stroller - observes society - walks the street
- Veblen - gentleman of leisure - leisure of class - don't have to go to work - if you got the means to show off what you got to wear
- Simmel - trickle down theory - fashion system of today - emulation and distinction - the 'mask' of fashion - hide behind what you wear - try and dress as the upper class but cheaper material - the upper class try to look for something new to distinct the classes again
Simmel
Speed and mutability of modernity individuals withdraw into themselves to find peace
- Post-Modern Identity
Discourse analysis eg. age/gender/nationality/ethnicity
Identity is constructed out of the
discourses culturally available to us.
Class
- Need awareness of your own in order to judge someone else's identity
- Humphrey Spender/Mass Observation - Worktown Project 1937
- How much has this changed?
- Martin Parr, New Brighton - Merseyside - The Last Resort 1983-86
- Is it a statement of the 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 (2004), Identity, page 52
- Social comment about class
Nationality identity
- Alexander McQueen - Highland Rape collection -1995-6
- Talking about rape of Scotland
- Vivienne Westwood - Anglomania collection -1993-4
The architecture - Las Vegas - has all the sites in one why would you need to go elsewhere
Race/Ethnicity
- People assume artists are white European
- Black artists try apply there race within the work
- Chris Ofili - Reference to Bob Marley and raster colours
- No black superheros - what would they look like - creates Captain Shit
- Entertaining comments - is she commenting on social stereotypes
- Alexander McQueen - black models - used in a particular way - animalistic outfit - drawing attention to society ideals
- Emily Bates - ginger scottish textile designer/artist - Titian (1532) - mary magdalene is a red head and was claimed to be a prostitute
Gender and Sexuality
- Said that all male fashion designers are homosexuals
- Designed clothes to make women look bad
- Androgyny 1920s style
- Gender stereotypes of what genders should look like
- Masquerade and the mask of femininity - Cindy Sherman -1997-80 - fictionalises film stills to show how women are shown in films
- Woman artist - Sarah Lucas - Au naturel 1994
- Felt the need to deal with there sexuality
- Tracey Emin - not everyone she had slept with but been in a bed with - instantly thought of as a slag
- Picasso often had affairs with models - not seen badly for it
- The gaze - Gillian Wearing, Lynne - 1993-6 - ' I may not be brilliant but I have great breasts' - she was a man going through surgery - all is not what you see
- Postmodernity Condition
- Identity is constructed through your social experience
- Zygmunt Bauman - Leeds University - Identity (2004) Liquid Modernity (2000) Liquid Love |(2003)
- Identity is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered
- Introspection is a disappearing act - where there are lots of people you start to check your mobile phone to not feel alone
- This things become a crush to imideate the situation
Post - modern life is bleak
- Take consolation that peoples life's are worse than yours
- I think therefore I am
- I shop there I am - Barabara Kruger
- Gets taken over by Selfridges
- Family trip shopping is the new church
- Tragic - spend the night connecting with friends online instead of in person- to get sex or approval
- Second life - invent character of yourself in virtual world and life out your life online
- BBC three documentary - online adultery and online love
All create an identity to belong - in order to conform to society
Identity
Overview
The lecture will aim to introduce historical and contemporary conceptions of
identity, to introduce Foucault‟s „discourse‟ methodology, and to place and
critique contemporary practice within these frameworks, and to consider their
validity. It will consider „postmodern‟ theories of identity as „fluid‟ and
„constructed‟ (in particular based on the theories of Zygmunt Bauman), and
consider identity today, especially in the digital domain.
Traditional approaches to identity
The concept of ESSENTIALISM (traditional approach) suggests that our
biological make up makes us who we are, and that we all have an inner
essence out of which our identities form. Post-Modern theorists are ANTI-
ESSENTIALIST and disagree.
Phases of identities
According to Douglas Kellner in Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and
Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (1992), there are three
phases of identity:
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, with the 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
Accepted institutions within society determined „secure‟ identities, from which
it was difficult to break free, for example Marriage, The Church, monarchy,
Government, the State, Work.
Role
Farm-worker ..........
The Soldier .......
The Factory Worker...
The Housewife......
The Gentleman....
Husband-Wife (family).....
Related institutional agency with vested
interest
landed gentry
The state
Industrial capitalism
patriarchy
patriarchy
Marriage/church
Foucault – Discourse Analysis
Foucault suggests that 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)
Postmodern Identity
Postmodern theorists suggest that Identity is constructed through our social
experience.
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) Erving Goffman suggests
that life is „theatre‟, made up of „encounters‟ and „performances‟. For Goffman
the self is a series of facades
Zygmunt Bauman proposes that Postmodern Identity is „liquid‟, that is
something that we can change and affect deliberately and at will.
„Yes, indeed, “identity” is revealed to us only as something to be invented
rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, “an objective”‟
„“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 decry as prejudices) and 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
„“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 (2004), Identity, page 52
Further Reading
Bauman, Z. 2004) Identity, Cambridge, Polity Press
Benwell, B. and Stokoe, E. (2006) Discourse and Identity, Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press
Gauntlett, D. (2008), Media, Gender and Identity: an introduction, London and
New York, Routledge
Kidd, W. (2001), Culture and Identity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan
Woodward, K. (ed.) (1999), Identity and Difference, Milton Keynes, Open
University Press
James Beighton, December 2012.
james.beighton@leeds-art.ac.uk
