Identity - Essentialsim

Identity;
Overview of the lecture
Essentialism;

• People who were born a certain way, will therefore have a certain personality, that people were born with certain characteristics and identities.
• Thinking about identity.
• We still draw on essentialist ways of thinking.

Identity and 'the other' in visual representations

• Creation of identities
• Concepts of 'otherness'
• Analysis of visual examples
• Identity - who are we and how others perceive who we are.

Identity creation; What makes you, you?

• Apperence
• Education
• Upbringing
• Morals
• Family and friends
• Personality
• Physical attributes (deformities)
• DNA
• Clothes
• Fears
• Sense of humour
• Skills and abilities
• Religion and beliefs
• Accent
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Essentialism vs anti-essentialism

How do you express and communicate your identity?

• Clothes
• Attitude
• Behaviour
• Languages
• Music
• Lifestyle
• Choices - vegetarian - conspicuous consumption
• Body modifications - piercings - boob jobs
• Job/Career 
• Emotional availability 
• Social networking
• Reality vs projected identity

A desire to project an identity about yourself, no simple answer to essentialism vs anti-essentialism debate.

The circle of culture;

Culture is the framework within which our identities are formed, expressed and regulated. We cannot discuss our identity without discussing, representation, regulation, consumption, production.

Identity formation;

• Process from psychoanalysis
• Jacques LACAN
• The 'Hommelette'
• The 'Mirror Stage'

When you are born you have no self awareness, LACAN called this 'Hommelette', a play on the word omelette, for a scrambled mess.
The mirror stage is a metaphor, a baby seeing itself in the mirror for the first time, seeing they are real, a thing, something whole and solid, 6-18months old.

• Sense of self (subjectivity) built on.
• An illusion of wholeness.
• Receiving views from others.
• RESULT=own subjectivity is fragile.

Constructing the 'other';
In the same way that we create our own identities, in opposition to what we are not, so does a society.
Problems; relies on the assumption of opposition and radical otherness.
 - I am a women as I'm not a man
 - I am white because I'm not black
 - I am straight because I'm not gay.
It is in the same way that we create our own.
 - Shores up unstable identities through illusion of unity.
 - Shared fashion, belief systems, values
 - Subterranean values (Matza, 1961)