OUGD501 - Lecture 2: Identity

• To introduce historical conceptions of identity
• To introduce Foucaults discourse methodology
• To place and critique contemporary practice within their frameworks, and to con sider their validity
• To consider postmodern theories of identity as guild and constructed (in particular Zygmunt Bauman)
• To consider identity today, especially in the digital domain

Essentialism

• Our biological make up makes us who we are
• We all have an inner essence that make us who we are
• Post modern theorists disagree

• Physiognomy - the idea that race dictates intelligence - how facial structures determines how smart you are - relates to Nazi Germany's mission to keep the perfect people (Blonde hair, blue eyes, etc)
• Phrenology - the idea that the brain is made up of different parts
• Cesare Lobomroso (1835 - 1909) - founder of positivist criminology - the notion that criminal tendencies are inherited

• Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1516) - Christ carrying the cross, 1515
• Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996

Douglas Kellner - Media Culture
Pre modern

• Personal identity is stable - define by png standing roles
• Related to the church, monarchy, government etc.
• Secure identities:
• Farm worker....landed gentry
• Soldier....the state
• Housewife...patriarchy
• Husband-wife...marriage/church

Modern identity

• Modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibilities to start 'choosing' your identity, rather than simply being born into it.
• Charlies Baudelaire - The painter of modern life (1863)
• Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
• Boudelaire - introduces concept of the 'flaneur' (Gentleman-stroller)
• Veblen - Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods in a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure
• Simmel - Trickle down theory. Emulation. Distinction. The 'Mask' of Fashion.
• 'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stinger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or in traffic of a large city.'

Post modern

• Can change to who you want to be. Identity is constructed out of the disco use culturally available to us.
• 'Discourse analysis'
• Michael Foucault
• Possible discourses: Age, class, race/ethnicity, education, income etc.
• Class 
• In order to know which class you are in, you need to know what the other classes are and how/why they are that class.
• Humphrey/Spender/Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937 - project to observe Britain - upper class photographers going up to Bolton (Working class) to observe them - took stereotypical pictures etc. - making assumptions of working class people
• Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside, from The Last Resort, 1983 - 86 - potentially condescending photographs of working class on holiday - almost like a self congratulatory way of looking at people of a lower class
• Society...reminds one of particularly shrew, cunning and pokerfaced player in the game of life, cheating if five a chance, flouting rules whenever possible' - Bauman (2004)
• Nationality
• Martin Parr images again - stereotypical images
• McQueen fashion show - Much of the press coverage centred around accusations of misogyny because of the imagery of semi-maked staggering and brutalised women, in conjunction with the world 'rape' in the title. But McQueen claimed that the rape was of Scotland, not the individual models as the theme of the show was the Rebellion.
• Papanek, V (1995)
• Race/ethnicity
• Chris Ofili - starts thinking about the perceptions of black people - references to black culture
• Gillian Wearing - made a series of photographs in 1992 - won the Turner prize 
• Gender
• Emily Bates - 'Hair has been a big issue throughout my life...it is often felt that I was nothing more than my hair in other peoples eyes' (red head)
• The fashion industry is the work not of women, but of men
• A gigantic unconscious hoax perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War - male homosexuals
• Femininity

• In post modernity identity is constructed through our social experience
• Erving Goffman - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)
• Goffman saw life as 'theatre'
• Bauman - Identity (2004), Liquid Modernity (200), Liquid Love (2003)
• Andy Hargreaves - 'Introspection is a disappearing act. Faced with moments alone in their cars, on the street or at supermarket checkouts, more and more people do not collect their thoughts, but scan their mobile phone messages for shreds of evidence that someone, somewhere may need or want them'
• Levitt - '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're fated to live'
• Descartes - Enlightenment philosopher: 'I think there I am'
• Barbara Kruger, I shop therefore I am
• Darley, Visual Digital Culture (2000)
• Hodgkinson, 'With friends like these...' Guardian, (2008)
• Bauman, Identity (2004)