Lecture 7 - Identity

Here are my notes from the seventh lecture Identity on 19/01/2012.

Historical conceptions on Identity
Discourse methodology
Critique contemporary practice within these frameworks
Idea of liquid identity

Theories of Identity
Modernity - industrial revolution
Facial characteristics

Postmodern theorists disagree with it

Phrenology - splits the mind into sections

image of head


Notion that different parts of the brain formulated the person that you are
If one part is large then it will mean another side is lacking

Cesare Lombroso - says that it's genetically inherited - suggests if someone looks a certain way is more likely to commit crime than others

You can study and measure someones facial characteristics to see how intelligent you are.

Blonde haired blue eyed beast

Physiognomy legitimising racism
Harper's Weekly

image of lots of people
Hieronymous Bosch - Christ carrying the Cross

painting of black person
Chris Ofili - Holy Virgin Mary
Part of sensation exhibition in 1997.

Historical hases 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'.

Pre-Modern Identity
Institutions determined identity - marriage - mans owning of the wife, church, monarchy, government, the state, work

Secure identities
Farm worker - report to rich people
Soldies - reports to the state
Factory worker - related to industrial
Housewife
Gentlemen
Husband-Wife

Modern Identity
Charles Baudelaire - The painter of modern life 1863
Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the leisure class 1899 - theory of the leisure class that doesn't have to go to work. Conspicuous consumption - relates to fashion. If you wear a certain type of dress it shows that you don't have to go to work, shows have money. To see and be seen.
Georg Simmel - The metropolis and mental life 1903 - Establishment of modern city and relates a note of social anxiety, concern of who you are and how you fit into society.

Modern Identity 19th & 20th Centuries
Baudlelaire - introduces concept of the 'flaneur' (gentleman stroller). People going about their leisure, being out and about and showing they don't need to go to work.
Veblen - conspicuous consumprion

Simmel introduces trickle down theory - upperclass seen wearing newest fashion and gear and then the lower class aspires to be like them and emulate what they are wearing. Upperclass want to distinguish themselves from the lower class, don't want to be linked. Emulaton, distinction, the 'mask' of fashion - people hide behind what they're wearing.

Georg Simmel
quote from slide titled his name


He suggests that with the speed and mutability, individuals start to draw into themselves to find peace. Become less concerned what is going on around them and more of what is going on inside.

Foucault
Identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us.
What is discourse?
quote on this page


Possible discourses
Age, class, gender, etc...

Discourses to be considered
Class, nationality, race/ethnicity/gender and sexuality - 'otherness'

Class
Being with the industrial revolution, people moving to cities and working in factories became the working class. To recognise your own class you must acknowledge other classes.
If you are upperclass you want to maintain this distinction.

Mass observation - observing people, upper class people observing lower classes

bauman quote


Las Vagas
Sums up the fluid identity of the world. Different identities all pushed into one place.

quote about disney world


Sums up the notion of why go anywhere around you.

Race/ethnicity
Chris Ofili
images
No woman no cry - comes from the Bob Marley song - obviously.

Captain Shit - how he believes a black superhero would be perceived by a white audience. Is it a statement he is making on his race and identity with these?

Gender & Sexuality
Masquerade and the mask of the femininity

Postmodern condition
Identoty is constructed through our socialPo experience
Ervin Goffman The Presentation of self in every day life

Zygmunt Bauman
Identity 2004
Liquid Modernity
Liquid Love

quote & image


The Morality of Advertising - Theodore Levitt 1970
quote


Portmodern Identity
I shop therefore I am

Darley (2000), Visual Digital Culture, p.187
quote