Karl Marx
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their identity but their
social being that determines their consciousness.” – Your identity is defined
by social forces – e.g. class, status etc
Freud
“You” are defined by your previous experiences and subconscious desires. Your
core identity is hidden from your conscience mind.
We are only aware of a
very small part of what makes up our personality; most of what we are is buried
and inaccessible.
Gillles Deleuze
“You” as a concept is unstable and ‘schizophrenic’. You are an ongoing project.
Mikhail
Bakhtin
The Russian
philosopher Bakhtin believed that individual people cannot be finalized,
completely understood, known or labeled. He saw identity as the unfinalised
self meaning a person is never fully revealed or known.
This ties in
with the idea that identity is a fluid concept, a life-long project that is
never complete.
Paul Ricouer
The Narrative Self - ‘You’ are a fictional character created to take part in
the ‘story’ of you life.
David Gauntlett (Media, Gender and Identity)
'It is the
case that the construction of identity has become a known requirement. Modern
Western societies does not leave individuals in any doubt that they need to
make choices of identity and lifestyle - even if their preferred options are
rather obvious and conventional ones, or are limited due to lack of financial
(or cultural) resources. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted - everyone
wants to 'live their own life,' but this is, at the same time 'an experimental
life'.'
Today we're bombarded with ideas about - being yourself, standing out or finding your place - we're encourage to define our existence in terms of what buy, do, earn money from or enjoy. Obviously finding an 'identity' is problematic especially when so many existing identities and roles are uncertain - think gender roles, career stability, upward mobility in class. So Beck is saying that we experiment with 'identities' to see what fits, works and is comfortable. And Gauntlett continues:
'Your life is your project - there is no escape. The media provides some of the tools which can be used in this work. Like many toolkit, however, it contains some good utensils and some useless ones; some that might give beauty to the project and some that might spoil it.'
One of the tools in this 'toolkit' is personalities and characters in the media that could act as 'role models'
'The role model remains an important concept, although it should not be taken to mean someone that a person wants to copy. Instead, role models serve as navigation points as individuals steer their own personal routes through life.'
Gauntlett explain the power relationship between the media and the audience:
'The power relationship between the media and the audience involves a 'bit of both' or to be more precise, a lot of both. The media sends out a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality, and lifestyle. At the same time the public have their own even more robust set of diverse feelings on the issues. The media's suggestions may be seductive but can never simply overpower contrary feelings in the audience.'
Sheldon
Stryker
We interact
with others to create an identity, this is called identity negotiation. This
develops a consistent set of behaviours that reinforce the identity of the
person or group. This behaviour then become social expectations.
This is
particularly relevant for collective identities (especially sub-cultures) that
develop a specific way of relating to each other (attitude, language, ideas)
that goes some way to helping construct our identity.
Judith
Butler
Butler says:
'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is
performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to
be its results.' In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you
do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are. The idea behind
this is our identity (specifically here gender identity) is not defined by
biology but is actually a performance learned as we grow. As media students we
can apply to our study of identity as many of these performances and notions of
idenity will be learned from the media.
Thomas de Zengotita
InMediated: The Hidden Effects
of the Media on You and Your World he asserts that almost everything
(info, values, news, role models) comes to us through some media (TV, print,
web, magazines, films) so will undoubtedly colour/influence our view of life
and therefore our own self-definition.
Jacques Lacan - Mirror Stage (we form ourselves by identifying with other images)
‘Lacan's
concept of the mirror stage was strongly inspired by earlier work by
psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and
humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age
of about six months, human infants and chimpanzees could both recognize their
reflection in a mirror. While chimpanzees rapidly lose interest in the
discovery, human infants typically become very interested and devote much time
and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images.
In a 1931 paper, Wallon argued that mirrors helped children develop a sense of
self-identity.’
Althusser's Interpellation
Here's one
definition. And here's an attempt to explain it: Interpellation is the process
where a human subject is constructed by pre-given structures. This has been
taken up some media theorists to to explain how media texts impose their
ideology (their set of ideas) on the audience. If you think about it, we're
bombarded by messages from the media, messages that make certain assumptions
about us (taste, place in society etc), and as soon as we engage with the
message we are positioned as a 'subject' rather than an individual. The idea is
that we are controlled by these messages and go some way to defining our identity.
Judith
Butler's Performativity
Butler says:
'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is
performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to
be its results.' In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you
do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are. The idea behind
this is our identity (specifically here gender identity) is not defined by
biology but is actually a performance learned as we grow.
COLLECTIVE
The concept
of a collective identity refers to a set of individuals' sense of belonging to
the group or collective. For the individual, the identity derived from the
collective shapes a part of his or her personal identity. It is possible, at times,
that this sense of belonging to a particular group will be so strong that it
will trump other aspects of the person's personal identity.’
Collective
Identity.net
‘A
collective identity may have been first constructed by outsiders who may still
enforce it, but depends on some acceptance by those to whom it is applied.
Collective identities are expressed in cultural materials – names, narratives,
symbols, verbal styles, rituals, clothing.’
Francesca
Poletta, James M Jasper, Collective Identity and Social Movements
‘Although
there is no consensual definition of collective identity, discussions of the
concept invariably suggest that its essence resides in a shared sense of
‘one-ness’ or ‘we-ness’ anchored in real or imagined shared attributes and
experiences among those who comprise the collectivity and in relation or
contrast to one or more actual imagined sets of ‘others’.
David Snow,
Collective Identity and Expressive Form