"Identity and Identity Politics"

Lecture # 16:"Identity and Identity Politics" Mikaela Lundahl, History of Ideas

Here are the highlights:

The History and Meaning of Identity
- “Idem” is the Greek word for same or sameness.
- Common interpretation: Identity is the feeling and recognition of being the
same today as you were yesterday and the expectation that we will be the
same tomorrow.
- This self-reflective idea was developed philosophically in Europe in the
17th and 18th centuries by Descartes and Locke.
o Descartes- Debated his identity: I think therefore I am.
o Locke- Liberal thinker, developed ideas about political identity
o These thinkers tried to distinguish the individual from the collective.
o Of course, they were not the only thinkers on this subject but they were the most famous.
- The French Revolution led to the formulation of inherent human rights and it was at this time that ideas about society were transformed.
- The 1800s saw big identity movements such as abolitionist, labor and suffrage movements.
- Collectivist thinkers emerged in the 1800s as a reaction to individualist thinkers.
- According to Foucault, the individual was born in the classic era (17th and 18th centuries).
o This is when the concept of the human was invented.
o Ways of thinking about humanity changed dramatically around 1700.
- The idea of the insular man was challenged by other thinkers including Hegel.
- Hegel developed the master and the slave dialectic which theorized that no one can recognize himself as an individual without the recognition of others.
o This was essential to all social relationships.
o Identity is a continual process that needs renewal; the feeling of recognition doesn’t last forever.
o The slave cannot legitimately give the master recognition thus the recognition machine for the master is problematized.
o Sooner or later the relationship is changed and the slave becomes freer.
- Hegel postulates that there are always at least two people in a meaningful society.
- The fight for recognition is later taken up by Marx.
o Marx adds a more materialistic twist. Thus the slave knows reality through his labor which gives the slave the ability to challenge the master.
- In the 20th century, identity becomes even more problematic.

Identity Movements
- Collectivist thinkers challenged the traditional conception of identity as the white bourgeois.
- These thinkers believed that the theorized “human” was silently assuming the bourgeois, white, Christian, male identity.
- Society was extremely dependent on colonialism which led to the establishment of race theory around 1800. Race theory was not abandoned/ discredited until after World War II.
o Race theory attempted to reveal racial inequalities scientifically.
o Race theory was used to justify slavery and colonialism.
- Gender theory emerged around 1800.
- Race and gender theory were used to justify privilege, exclusion and inequality.
o Women were seen as weak and emotional.
o Thus men were better suited to work outside the home and in the public sphere.
o These theories were used to separate and sort people.
- Theories of class were also developed to show that members of the working class were different cerebrally. This theory was used to legitimize the class system.

19th/20th Centuries
- Anti-colonial movements, abolition movements, suffrage movements, etc. began to take root in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- In these movements, identity becomes an important question as well as the effect of these movements. However, these movements did not explicitly address identity.
- Marx:
o Knowledge can result from what you do, ie. labor.
o Most people are disconnected from the tools/ fruits of their labor thus they live in a “false consciousness.”
- Nietzsche:
o God is dead. The discursive God no longer has meaning and is no longer a point of social reference.
o People want to gain power—“will to power” — thus they are disconnected from reality; they see the world in ways that favor their ambitions. Reality is complex.
- Freud:
o Desire determines the way we see the world.
o Desire is unconscious.
- Simone de Beauvoir:
o The Second Sex
o One is not born a woman; one becomes a woman.
- Jean Paul Sartre:
o Existence comes before essence.
o Essence is a concept that has often been discussed in connection with identity.
o “The fear of essence”
o Essence is the result of a lived life or a historical situation.
o First we live as a person in a collective.
o During this era, essences (male, female, class, race) are sought.
- Marx, Nietzsche, etc. help to destabilize previous ideas of identity.
- Post-modernism: A way of discussing modernity without taking it for granted.
- After post-modernism, thinking about identity changes.
- Derrida challenges the concept of the autonomous individual in terms of the relationship between “I” and I.
o When a person talks about herself, she has to step outside of herself.
o The individual reconstructs himself/herself and the content is relative.
o The sign is different from the signified.
o There is a constant, on-going oscillation between the sign, “I,” and the signified, I.
- Identity politics emerged in the 1960s, 70s and 80s because people started to see a problem.
- Movements produced identities.
- When identity becomes more diversified, it also becomes more homogenized.
- People began to look beyond the old strata of identification.
- Intersectionalism: Builds upon the idea that everyone is the product of many intersections such as class, race, gender, etc.
o This is connected to Cyborg Feminism.
o There are different ways to say that identity is constructed within a system.
o Intersectionalism coordinates with hybridity.
- One can conclude either that identity has become hybridized due to modernity or that identity was always hybridized/creolized.
- The stability of culture and identity are a myth.