Identity

Definition
Topics
questions
Identity as a process

Definition of Terms

• Identity: "The conceptions we hold of ourselves are we may call self-identity, while the expectations and opinions of others form our social identity" (Barker 165).  "The positions which we take up and identify with constitute our identities" (W 39)
• subjectivitiy: "the condition of being a person and the processes by which we become a person, that is, how we are constituted as subjects" (Barker 165).  "Subjectivity include our sense of self.  It involves the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions which constitute our sense of 'who we are' and positions within culture."  (W 39)

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Possible Topics:

 

I. Nature --  Essentialism vs. Constructionism Gendered, Racialized, National  Identity and Difference, "the Constitutive Outside"	I. Nature -- Self-Identity as a (narrative) project From Enlightenment subject to fractured identity
II.  Formation Discursive and Psychic formations of identity interpellation and investment III. Politics  Crisis of identity (globalization -- W 15-19; Dislocation W 21) Politics of Identity, of location Strategic, positional definition of identity Diaspora identity (W 58)Agency, articulation	IV. Identity and --  Identity and language/representation (W 14-15) Identity and Body Identity and History (W 19 -

• What are Identity and Identification?
• Questions on Woodward p. 11: "If identity is marked by difference, how are differences between people manifested and represented?"
• Questions on Woodward p. 13: "Is it possible to confirm ethnic or national identity without claiming a recoverable history which supports a fixed identity?"
• What is politics of identity and what are its possible problems?  (Ref. W 24)
• Questions on Woodward p. 13: "Are identities fluid and changing and can such an understanding of them sustain political commitment?"

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Identity is relational (based on sameness and difference, depends on a classificatory system--W 29 - ), exclusive, marked by symbol (Woodward 9), maintained through social and material conditions (Woodward 12).

Identity as a process -- Derrida (S 2); discursive approach (S 2); psychoanalytic (S 3)
"I use 'identity' to refer to the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to 'interpellate', speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be 'spoken'.  Identities are thus temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us (S 6).  

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