Historical conceptions of Identity
Michel Foucaults ‘discourse’ methodology
Critique of contemporary practice
Consider ‘postmodern’ theories of identity as ‘fluid’ - ‘Constructed’
Theories of Identity
Essentialism - Tradiional approach
Biological make up makes us who we are
We all have inner essence
Physiognomy
Phrenology
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)
Notion that criminal ten dies are inherited
Phrenology is like a fact science, Animal, Moral and Reflective are parts of the Brain, if one bit that is larger, then the rest of your brains functions are small. Eg. More animal, less moral.
Physiognomy - Racism, A western european suggestion, Racial perfect, straight faced, blonde hair, blue eyed. The more vertical your face the more intelligent you are. A Racial reading of Identity.
Ubermench - ‘Superman - Superhuman’ Mentions the blue eyed, blonde hair.
Physiognomy, legitimising Racism
Irish Iberian - Anglo Teutonic - Negro.
Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516)
Christ carrying cross.
1515.c
Jesus carrying a cross, all the jews are exaggerated, animalistic mentality.
Chris Ofili, Holy virgin Mary, 1996. Racist painting of Virgin Mary.
On show at Sensationalism, everyone is offended that mary isn’t the White girl they all throughout she is, outcry.
Douglas Kellner - Media Culture: 1992
Pre-mordern identity - Personal identity is stable defined by long standing roles
Modern identity - Modern societies began to offer a wider range f social roles. Possibility to start choosing your identity rather than simply being born into it.
Pre-modern ‘Secure’ identities
Farm-worker - Landed gentry
Soldier - State
Factory worker - Industrial Capitalism
Etc.
Charles Baudelaire - Painter of modern life
Introduces concept of the flaneur (Gentleman-stroller)
It’s a male thing, french word form, Only men can do it.
Feminists write about this
New Identify formed
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure.
Beginnings of Consumerism. If you dress a certain way, it shows you can stay off, you’re a different class and further up the scale.
Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the Leisure class (1899)
Georg Simmel - Metropolis and mental life (1903)
- Trickle Down theory
- Emulation
- Distinctions
- ‘Mask’ fashion
Simmel was one of the first to notice the way fashion works, Trickle down theory works by Rich people dressing upper class, while the Lower class attempt to emulate the rich people to emulate them. The rich people then try to move on by Distinction and the same happens again. (still applies today)
‘Mask’ fashion the construction of your identity you hide behind.
‘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’
Post- Modern Identity
‘Discourse Analysis’
Identity is constructed out of the discourse culturally available to us.
Discourse is a set of recurring statements, allows you to categories and analyse them, leads towards stereotypes of people.
You assign people identities
Possible Discourses
•Age
•Class
•Gender
•Nationality
•Race/ethnicity
•Sexual orientation
•Education
•Income
These are all things that may effect your identity and how you assign your self.
Discourses to be considered
•Class
•Nationality
•Race/ethnicity
Gender and sexuality
Gender has a focus towards women, due to a patriarchal society/ history.
Otherness is anything that is separate to the norm, transgender. Etc.
Class:
To know where you fit in, you need to know what the other classes are.
Mass observation - Big project to view all of Britain and the classes. Bolton.
Stereotypical images. Comical interchanges.
Loaded assumptions, working classes.
Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside.
'Celebration of british life.’
More condescending then anything else, taking cover in shadow of a JCB.
It’s photographs for Upper class people to view lower class. A self congratulatory thing from looking at how bad these people have it.
‘ “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’
To be viewed by the upper class, It’s the lower class emulation of the rich. Champagne Vs a Pint.
Las Vegas, American Identity, Is it a real identity, Appropriated from elsewhere, a construction. None of it is real.
‘I didn’t like Europe as much as I liked Disney World. At
Disney World all the countries are much closer together, and
they just show you the best of each country. Europe is more
boring. People talk strange languages and things are dirty.
Sometimes you don’t see anything interesting in Europe for
days, but at Disney World something different happens all the
time, and people are happy. It’s much more fun. It’s well designed!’
Disney land shows the best of all the whole, dumbed down into a little environment. Americans don’t need passports when they have everything in their own Country.
Perception of black people. Stereotypical. Gives a voice to black society.
Chris Offili. No superheroes that aren’t white. Captain Shit.
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)
Obviously lots of photos aren’t shown, so the images are picked to dumb down, to apply to the lowest common denominator. Applies to stereotypes.
Alexander McQueen.
Gingers.
‘Hair has been a big issue throughout my life… It often felt that I was
nothing more than my hair in other peoples’ eyes’
Emily Bates, Textile Designer/Artist
Gender and Sexuality.
The fashion industry is not he work of women, but men a “gigantic unconscious hoax” perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War –male homosexuals secret hatred of women by forcing them into exaggerated, ridiculous, hideous clothes’
Wilson, E. (1985), Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London, I.B. Tauris, page 94
The aren’t many strong female characters, they’re in it to look pretty for the consumption of men.
Cindy Sherman.
Theres an assumption that men are artists, thats why there is a Female Artist section. Women are in a minority in what they do.
Wonderbra. ‘I can’t cook, but I have huge breast’ or is it. ‘a women isn’t tied to the kitchen’
Objectify stereotypes.
Gillian wearing, Lynne. 1993 - 6
Post modernity.
•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
We take on multiple different personalities to apply to different situations/ contexts/ scenarios and perform in different ways.
Zygmunt Bauman
Identity (2004)
Liquid Modernity (2000)
‘Yes, indeed, “identity” is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, “an objective”’
You work towards you identity to contextualise your self.
Introspection, people are no longer thinking about their thoughts, they’re absorbed in mobile phone messages incase someone needs us.
‘We use art, architecture, literature, and the rest, and advertising as well, to
shield ourselves, in advance of experience, from the stark and plain reality in
which we are fated to live’.
Theodore Levitt, The Morality (?) of Advertising,1970
We celebrate how bad someone else’s life is to make us feel better. Solace is found in those less fortunate.
Post Modern Identify.
I think therefore I am.
‘I shop therefore I am’ - Barabara Kruger.
Called out for been a sell out. Is it the perfect place to view it while it’s critiquing it.
Religion today is consumerism. It’s where we now get our solace and peace.
“If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my
favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation
of who I am in order to get sex or approval. (‘I like
Facebook,’ said another friend. ‘I got a shag out of it’)”
Tom Hodgkinson (2008), ‘With friends like these …’, Guardian, 14/01/08
Constructed Identity to get approval through the internet.
Second life, Real and Virtual collide. Man and Women divorce in game and real life over online happening. Has an affair with a online DJ.
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