Part 5

Identity

5.1 Debating Identity• Identities: “They define who somebody is in terms of a trait, such as a physical

feature of the body, a belief, a genealogy or a cultural preference.”

• “They identify by placing individuals into groups who share that trait.”

• “This has a consequence: it means that identity is won at the price of reducing individuality.”

• “Identities are not given in terms of what individuals are as a whole, but in terms of more or less arbitrarily selected features that they possess.”

• “Individuals have little power to choose what features will be used to identify them-these are determined socially, from the outside.”

• “They anchor who you are to only part of yourself.”

• “Individuals exist socially in and through their identities, without and identity there is no such thing as a socially situated individual. Societies, identities and individuals do not exist independently of one another.”

• “Individuals don’t have a single identity, they have identities, and they do so just because identities are based on partial traits (skin color, socio-economic status, gender, nationality, region, profession, generation and so on).”

• “Not all identities carry equal weight in particular circumstances or have the same social consequences. Gender, race or ethnicity, and class are the identities, most of all, by which we are placed socially.”

• “Quite often, words used by others to define a group insultingly or prejudicially are appropriated by the group themselves and turned into a term marking self-identity, usually after passing through a brief phase where they are used ironically: hippie, punk, nigger.”

• “Significant numbers of people struggle to ‘dis-identify’ from-detach themselves from-given identities (we can have an identity based on dis-identification).”

• “It is important to distinguish between given or inherited identities (a mown) and chosen identities, many of which are based on cultural, material or ideological choices or preferences (a waiter, an opera fan).”

• Identity politics: “A politics engaged on behalf of those with particular identities (usually historically disempowered ones) rather than a politics organized on the basis of particular social policies or philosophies.”

• The origins of identity politics: “They begin with the civil rights movement in the USA during the early sixties, after which groups with specific cultural and social identities increasingly made political claims on the basis of those identities-in particular, African Americans on behalf of their racially defined community and feminists on behalf of women.”

• “Identity politics are fuelled by the desire for ‘recognition’ (the street word for which is ‘respect’), but in most cases they have also been motivated by more than that- by the desire for access, liberty and fair, unprejudiced treatment.”

• “Two kinds of explanations for the emergence of political formations: One stresses the agency of the community and individuals involved; the other analyses the larger social conditions that made the new politics and its forms of association possible.”

• Occidental Identity Politics: Emerged in the seventies and “can be regarded as a moment in a long history during which the authority of various national and colonial ‘ruling blocs’ was gradually diminished.

• “The women’s movement was enabled by a series of economic and technological developments: relative affluence, new devices for washing, cleaning, cooking and so non, all of which gradually shifted the balance of power between genders in everyday life.”

• “And as we have seen, the culture and media industries themselves accelerate segmentation and identity formation by quickly targeting particular identities as specific, de-limited consumer markets.”

• Difficulties with Identity politics:1- “Tends to erase internal differences.” ex. Feminism has an effect on women of

different classes and ethnicities.2- “Assumes that an identity is an essence- that there exists and essential (or

authentic) way of being for example a woman or an Asian.”3- “Tends to work by the principle of exclusion. Identities tend to be structured by

reducing or demonizing others (the concept of the White was largely based on vilifying groups with other skin colors).”

4- “Tends to overlook identities around which lives are actually lived. One of the more important identities that individuals have is determined by the paid work they do.”

5- “The ‘identity’ tends to be emphasized and the importance of organization and process in achieving political ends is neglected.”

6- “Tends to invest legitimating histories or traditions which can be politically (then commercially) exploited. National identities are the most obvious instance of this. Ex. The Scottish ‘tartan’ and ‘kilt’ as an important signifier of national identity.”

• “The meaning and force of all identities are in constant mutation. Identities are not just given or chosen, they have to be enacted, but this means that they have to enter into negotiations with the situation in which they are performed or otherwise acted upon.”

• Subaltern: “Refers to those social groups with the least power of all, especially colonized peoples. Under colonialism, the identity of subaltern groups is articulated in signifying practices that imitate and displace concepts that have been articulated by the colonizer.”

• “Groups and individuals do not have a single identity but several.”

• “It is impossible to exist in society without a proper name, without being located within the set of identity-granting institutions into which one is born: family or kin-group, nation, ethnic community, gender.”

• “There is no getting away from identities-even being a cultural studies student or teacher forms one.”

5.2 Multiculturalism• The idea “that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can

coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country.”

• “ Multiculturalism in the US tends to mean something rather different than it does in Europe or Australia: it is somewhat less connected to issues of immigration and more focused on accepting blacks and Hispanics.”

• Multiculturalism threatens:

1- “A return to cultural barbarism through a lowering of standards or a debasement of values”

2- “Illiberal coercion, since under particular policies designed to enable the survival of minority cultures, limits to individual freedom may be imposed.” ex. “The law in Quebec, Canada, requiring all firms of over fifty employees to conduct business in French.”

3- “Multiculturalism will lead to a fragmentation of languages, religions and cultures within the nation so as to unravel the binding threads required for national unity.”

• “The idea that multiculturalism equals barbarism is odd. Multiculturalist policies are features precisely of the most developed states.”

• “Multiculturalism is much weaker in the peripheries of the developed world.” Ex. an advanced industrial state such as Japan barely accommodates it, retaining an official monotheism which downgrades the lives of migrants.”

• “Similarly, ethnic cleansing, to take the most extreme form of anti-multiculturalism, is today more common in states where modernization is lagging than it is in hyper-modern nations.”

• “Almost all nations are, and always have been, multicultural in the sense that they contain a multitude of cultures and usually of languages and dialects.”

• “The modern state was brought into being in order that individuals of different religious creeds could live peaceably together as citizens.”

• “All modern societies do not just tolerate, but are built around, meanings and values that are not shared by all members.”

• “A commitment to a nation can encompass differences and indeed may be strengthened by them.” Ex. “American culture stands for a relatively restricted set of attachments that can co-exist with a number of very different religious, taste, moral, etc. preferences.”

• “The primary point of multiculturalism is to grant full citizenship to those of different cultures.”

• “And culture becomes important in this context because citizenship is not just a matter of holding a passport. It also consists of the capacity to contribute one’s heritage, looks and beliefs to the national identity.”

• Official multiculturalism emerged out of:- “Difficulties faced by European politicians when they divided central Europe

into new states after WW1.”- “Many nations-from Germany to the USA- denaturalized ethnic groups or

migrants, often condemning them to statelessness.” This paved the way for events such as the Holocaust.

- “After WW2, policies of denaturalization were illuminate.”- “Official multiculturalism was spurred on by large-scale immigration in and

after the fifties when improved and cheaper global communications allowed migrant communities to stay in touch with their home states and maintain their old cultural interests and dispositions.” “So to some degree multiculturalism is a consequence of globalization.”

• “On one level multiculturalism is a governmental tool for managing difference.”

• “ It can be a means of managing not just mono-culturalism but also racism:”

- “Multiculturalism closes down on differences within particular cultural groups. That is, it does not provide sufficient room for identity-in-difference.”

- “Multiculturalism tends to propose cultural solutions for political problems, by emphasizing recognition and freedom of expression rather than power and economic equality.” “States promote multiculturalism to exhibit their tolerance rather than to promote differences.” Ex. Ethnic restaurants and festivals.

- “In aiming to market to different communities, corporations will incorporate personal and values connected to those communities. Urban governments have promoted cultural diversity in order to make their cities attractive to globally mobile companies and highly skilled labor.”

- “Multiculturalism encourages essentialism: it freezes different cultural communities into their differences, and conceives of cultures not as dynamic, ceaselessly transforming themselves, but as fixed traditions.” This can encourage ethnic and racial prejudice.

• “Each multiculture contains a variety of perspectives and values, some in conflict with others, and some mappable onto other multicultures.” Ex. A conservative Muslim father and a conservative Christian father who share the same concerns for their daughters.

• “Individuals can belong simultaneously to different multicultures and engage in activities which are not covered by any ‘culture’ at all.”

• Cultural Diversity: is a more appropriate term than multiculturalism and can mean the same thing. “ Multiculturalism implies a bounded border within which different cultures co-exist, and increasingly nation-state borders do not provide the framework within which cultural relations have to be considered.”

• “Multiculturalism may require different groups of citizens to be treated differently.” Ex. Muslim women be allowed to wear the Hijab in schools. “These issues become more difficult when customs come into question.”

• “When cultural traditions don’t respect human rights as these have come to be understood in the West and by the major international organizations, should universal rights override cultural rights?”

- Nations do not require common cultures and common religions anymore.

- They do not require common laws. In some countries the laws of the native peoples are applied and are upheld for different circumstances.

- Nations do not require a common language. “Very few states have ever been monolingual, and bilingualism or multilingualism” go together.

• “Nation-states are best regarded as political and economic units rather than as cultural ones.”

• “Colonized people have a different relation to the settler-state and to the land than do post-settlement migrant communities.”

5.3 Race• “Race differs from concepts such as gender, class and even ethnicity in that there

is a question as to whether it is real at all.”

• “Race, it seems, is nothing but a dangerous product of prejudice or, at least, of false thinking.”

• “Racism is, at its heart, the belief that the human species is constituted by a number of separate and distinct biological discrete sub-species: i.e. races.” It is “difficult to decide how many races actually existed.

• “yet race as a category refuses to disappear. There are several main reasons for this:”

1- “It can return to its pre-scientific roots.”“Races consist less of people joined by deep-seated biological traits than by the sharing of

particular kinds of personalities, values and dispositions, bound to particular body types, often marked by skin color. That kind of racism can create hierarchies and build apparatuses of oppression and discrimination.”

2- “It is often difficult to disjoin culturalism (that idea that different peoples have different inherited cultures) from a racist node, since different cultures so often implies different kind of people with different kind of bodies.”

3- “Racism is difficult to uproot since it is based on look-the visual differences between different groups of people.”

4- “Race is experienced as such by many on a daily basis, although not by the same-race majorities in most communities.”

“For example, travelling to china can be such a powerful experience for Europeans: there they can understand what it is like to be a member of a group with a different body type.”

• “At one level the only way to avoid racism is simply to stop using racist concepts. This would require removing the markers of race, and in particular that of skin color, from discourses about social groups and individuals so that these markers become as meaningless a criterion for distinguishing between people as, say, shoe size.”

• This is highly unlikely though. “Just because culture and society are still too organized around them; experience too is filtered through them.”

• The history of Western racism:

• The concept of the volk community: a theory by J. G. Herder during the late 18th century. “A community distinguished by its authenticity and bound together by a cultural tradition-by values, myths, languages and a spectrum of character types and capabilities unique to it.”

• Theory of Evolution or Darwinism: A theory by Charles Darwin published in 1859. “Darwinism allowed society and politics to be understood not as the outcome of human choices (under the sway of particular interests) but as subject to invariable, determining biological laws, and, in particular, the laws that ordered the transmission of inherited traits across populations.”

• “This was the basis of what has come to be known as ‘scientific racism’.”

• Scientific racism “became such a powerful idea because it fulfilled particular ideological needs in the age of imperialism, and most all because it helped legitimate the domination of the globe by white.”

• “It is as if once all human beings were deemed equal, systemic inequality could only be maintained by declaring some kind of people less than fully human-and racism could do that.”

• “Today, as we know, racism works purely ideologically. Inside a shared culture, in most cases it works by distinguishing other people by virtue of their race.”

• “Racism organizes certain stereotypes: races are regarded as groups of similar individuals who possess a narrow set of traits, usually, but not necessarily, negative traits. Notions such as ‘Asians are brainy’ or ‘Indians are lazy’.”

• “Racist imagery of this kind regards individuals not so much as individuals as such or even as belonging to other collectivities (to localities or classes say) but primarily as members and representatives of a race imagined as a bundle of stereotypes and dispositions.”

• “Groups or individuals within racialised communities whom these stereotypes cannot cover become more or less invisible.”

• “The primary difficulty with the concept of race today is that it is so tightly connected to that of ethnicity.”

• Ethnicity: “Relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background Ethnicity is what ties you to your race or culture. It is your background and has a strong influence in the things you do.”

• “Race is a biological notion while ethnicity is a cultural one. Yet ethnicity is very connected to filiation and blood: people of the same ethnicity share not just cultures but a network of family relations, roots, and a connection to a particular home territory.”

• “If race mediates between society and nature, ethnicity mediates between race and culture.”

• “They key distinction between race and ethnicity is that ethnicity seems to be tarnished by the history of racism, so that while today race is almost never a source of individual or group pride. Ethnicity can be just such a source of pride.”

• “Multiculturalism is the state’s recognition of the power of ethnicity to establish identity. Yet ethnicities are not simply positively affirmed; they are also often responses to the past discriminations that defined them.”

• “Many ethnic identities are not strong simply because they are self-generated, and because historically they have been used by dominant groups to pick out and subject particular groups of people.”

• “Racism and ethnicism are both, then, forms of identity politics, and like identity politics they neglect the history of interaction with others out of which particular ethnicities and cultures emerge and within which they are maintained.”

• “Globalised societies and cultures are finding more and more ways to use race: as a niche for marketing; as a source of commodifiable, imaginary representations which can energize popular cultures; and as a source of identity pride especially for the marginalized and unprivileged.”