Lecture 1b: Toward a Theory of Identity

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Lecture 1b Toward a Theory of Identity
Trinity from The Matrix

• Professor Daniel Bernardi

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In the last lecture

• My Background
• What kind of distance learning course is this?
• Assignments?
• Whats this course really about?

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In this lecture

• What is identity?
• What is mediated identity?
• Why study identity
• on the web?

Stuart Hall
Lecture Hint Pause the lecture and click on one
of the hyperlinks (text that is underlined).
Return to the lecture after you have visited the
site.
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What is identity?

• Lecture 1b Part 1

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Stuart Halls Identity

• Jamaican Raised Educated in the U.K.
• Marxist-Leaning Scholar
• Not a Strict Economic Determinist
• Gives Considerable Weight to Ideology
• Leading Cultural Studies Scholar
• Post-Structural Theorist
• Concerned w/ Knowledge as Power
• Concerned w/ Language Culture as Terrains of
  Ideological Struggle
• Self-Conscious about Methodology

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Common Sense Definition of Identity

• Stable
• Deep Inside You
• Transparent or Masked

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The Logic of Common Sense Sense of Identity

• The logic of identity is the logic of something
  like a true self. And the language of identity
  has often been related to the search for a kind
  of authenticity to one's experience, something
  that tells me where I come from. The logic and
  language of identity is the logic of depth - in
  here, deep inside me, is my Self which I can
  reflect upon. It is an element of continuity. -
  Stuart Hall (1991)

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4 Great De-Centerings that Destabilized Identity

• Marxs Economy - Conditions Informing Identity
  are Outside Reach
• Freuds Unconscious We Arent Masters of Our
  Own House
• Saussures Language - Identity is Limited by
  Language Structures
• Nietzsches Truth Truth is One Episteme Among
  Many

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Marx, Freud, Saussure Modernism

• In the face of modernity's promise of the great
  future I am Western man, therefore I know
  everything. Everything begins with me, modernism
  says, Hold on. What about the past? What about
  the languages you speak? What about the
  unconscious life you don't know about? What about
  all those other things that are speaking you?"
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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Nietzsches Postmodern Turn

• When that installation of Western rationality
  begins to go and to be seen not as absolute,
  disinterested, objective, neutral, scientific,
  non-powerful truth, but dirty truth - truth
  implicated in the hard game of power - that is
  the fourth game that destabilizes the old logic
  of identity."
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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Halls Collective Identities

• Cultural (Race, Ethnicity)
• Economic (Class)
• Gendered and Sexualized
• Nationalized / Globalized / Alien
• Identities, for Hall, are always
• crossed and re-crossed by several historical
  formations.

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Halls Fragmented Identities

• Local yet Global
• Historical Process
• We have now to re-conceptualize identity
  as a process of identification, and that is a
  different matter. It is something that happens
  over time, that is never absolutely stable, that
  is subject to the play of history and the play of
  difference.
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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Identity is a Political Choice

• I said to my son, who is the result of a
  mixed marriage, You're Black. No, he said,
  I'm brown. You don't understand what I'm
  saying! You're looking to the wrong signifier!
  I'm not talking about what color you are. People
  are all sorts of colors. The question is whether
  you are culturally, historically, politically
  Black. That's who you are."
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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Your Identity is also Defined By Your Relation to
the Other

• We define ourselves by what we are not (or what
  we think we are not).
• We define Others (races, genders, etc.) by what
  we do not want to be.
• Yet in doing so, we define ourselves against the
  other making us, logically speaking, the
  structured Other.
• The master is the slave to the system of slavery
  that he has defined.

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Halls Example

• The English are racist not because they hate the
  Blacks but because they don't know who they are
  without the Blacks. They have to know who they
  are not in order to know who they are. And the
  English language is absolutely replete with
  things that the English are not. They are not
  Black, they are not Indian or Asian, but they are
  not Europeans and they are not Frogs either and
  on and on."
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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The Big Point

• So the notion that identity is outside
  representation - that there are our selves and
  then the language in which we describe ourselves
  - is untenable. Identity is within discourse,
  within representation. It is constituted in part
  by representation. Identity is a narrative of the
  self, it's the story we tell about the self in
  order to know who we are. We impose a structure
  on it ."
• - Stuart Hall (1991)

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What is mediated identity?

• Lecture 1b Part 2

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Another Hall Essay(read for your edification)

• Cultural Identity and Cinematic
  Representation(2000)
• Identity is Historical
• Identity is Political
• Imposed on You
• Elected by You
• Identity is Constituted in Representation

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Representation Media

• Media Represents Identity
• We Use Media to Broadcast Identity
• we should think of identity as a
  production, which is never complete, always in
  process, and always constituted within, not
  outside, Representation.
• - Stuart Hall (2000)

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Media Culture

• Cultural identity is a matter of becoming as
  well as of being. It belongs to the future as
  much as to the past. It is not something which
  already exists, transcending place, time,
  history and culture. Cultural identities come
  from somewhere, have histories. But, like
  everything which is historical, they undergo
  constant transformation.
• - Stuart Hall (2000)

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Media Culture Includes the Web

• We Are Represented On the Web
• Race, Gender, Sexuality, Nation
• We Represent Ourselves on the Web
• Email, Chartrooms, Games, Courses
• Todays Web is Yesterdays TV
• But the Web Today is Global
• We are living in a time of global
  identity production and co-production.

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Why study identity on the Web?

• Lecture 1b Part 3

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Identity is One With the Web

• We are increasingly dependent on the Web to
  communicate, organize, learn.
• The Web is an entertainment medium.
• The Web is an economic platform.
• The Web is an ideological medium.

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On the Web

• Women are Identified as Objects
• People of Color are Identified as Others
• Children are Sold into Pornography
• National Borders are Erased, Eclipsed and
  Westernized at High Speed

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And yet

• We Can Challenge Constructed Identities
  Construct Our Own Identity
• We Can Express Ourselves Outside the Bounds of
  Identities Imposed by Subjects
• We Can Struggle to Resist Invasion, the Hegemony
  of Capital and the Tyranny of the Majoritys Need
  for Efficiency

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Why study identity on the Web?

• The Web is fast becoming the local and global
  terrain where we learn about and constitute our
  identities. This is the terrain of cultural
  networks and networked cultures that serve to
  reinforce, redefine and even challenge the
  histories that comprise how we are perceived by
  others, how we perceive ourselves, and how we
  represent each other.

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End of Lecture 1b
Player Name Karsten (Germany)

• Next Lecture
• Understanding Ideology