Lecture 3- identity

Lecture 3- identity

Theories of Identity

-ESSENTIALISM (traditional approach)
-Our biological make up makes us who we are.
-We all have an inner essence that makes us who we are.
-POST MODERN THEORISTS DISAGREE
-Post-Modern theorists are ANTI-ESSENTIALIST (more of this later …)

Historical Phases of identity

Douglas Kellner – Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and

Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern, 1992

-pre modern identity – personal identity is stable – defined by long standing roles
-Modern identity – modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility -to start ‘choosing’ your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to ‘worry’ about who they are
-Post-modern identity – accepts a ‘fragmented ‘self’. Identity is constructed

Modern identity 19^th and early 20^th centuries

Baudelaire – introduces concept of the ‘flaneur’ (gentleman-stroller)

Veblen – ‘Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure’

Simmel

-Trickle down theory

-Emulation

-Distinction

-The ‘Mask’ of Fashion

Georg Simmel

‘The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or in the traffic of a large city’