Understanding Identity (An Arnold Publication)

198 Pages·2003·3.67 MB·English

by  Kart Woodward

Understanding Identity
For Steve, Richard, Tamsin,
Jack and Sophie and my sister Sarah
Understanding
Identity
Kath Woodward
A member of the Hodder Headline Group
LONDON
Distributed in the USA by Oxford University Press, New York
First published in Great Britain in 2002
Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group
333 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
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Distributed in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© 2002 Kath Woodward
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accurate at the date of going to press, neither the authors nor the publisher
can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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ISBN 0 340 80849 7 (hb)
ISBN 0 340 80850 0 (pb)
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Contents
Introduction vii
Acknowledgements xiv
1 Knowing me, knowing you 1
Identity: the story so far 1
Self, subject, identity 2
Setting the scene: some of the big questions 5
The looking-glass self 7
The 'I' and the 'Me' 8
Acting the self 9
Ethnomethodological accounts of the self 11
Troubled selves 13
Identity and the unconscious 16
Conclusion 20
2 Stories we tell 24
Hi-tech stories 26
Storied lives 28
The self in psychotherapy 34
Psychoanalytic approaches 36
Object relations 40
Ways of knowing 44
Conclusion 45
3 Mapping the self: journeys we take 48
Home 49
Migration 51
Globalization 54
Diaspora identities 62
Changing places; placing changes 68
Conclusion 72
vi Contents
4 Re-presenting identities 74
A cultural turn 77
The science of signs 78
Myths and culture 80
The semiotic and the psychoanalytic: interpellation 83
Consuming identities 84
Postmodernist readings; sign values 88
Discourse and power 89
Seeing is believing 92
Portraying the self 94
Visual culture 98
Conclusion 100
5 Embodying identity 102
Sex/gender 107
Post-binaries 110
Do identities need bodies? 113
Body projects 118
A sporting diversion 120
Imperfect bodies; faulty selves? 124
Maternal bodies; maternal selves 128
Conclusion 133
6 Roots and routes 135
Looking for certainties: the problem of essentialism 138
Where do you come from? 144
Whiteness and identity 145
Representations of whiteness 148
Beyond essentialism? 153
Conclusion 156
7 Conclusion 158
Postmodernism and poststructuralism: different
ways of thinking identity? 164
Revisiting the dimensions of identity 166
References 169
Index 179
Introduction
Who am I? It looks like a question that cannot be answered without some
reference to you, us and them; to the other people with whom I have contact.
Who I am is closely interwoven with ideas about the society in which I live
and the views of others who also inhabit that same social context. Ideas about
who I am and possible answers to the opening question demand acknowl-
edgement of the social as well as the personal. Identity involves personal
investment, often on a massive scale, to the extent that people are willing to
die to claim or protect their own identities, but it is always socially located.
Identity matters, but how and why it matters depends on time and place and
on specific historical, social and material circumstances. This book address-
es the importance of identity as a concept in the social sciences and as
part of the experience of everyday lives. My aim is to outline some of the
paths that the concept has travelled and to look at the ways in which under-
standing identity can contribute to understanding social relations and
social change. However, before we start thinking about the routes that the
concept has travelled, we must have some idea of what it is that we are
talking about.
Identity offers a way of thinking about the links between the personal and
the social; of the meeting place of the psychological and the social, of the psy-
che and the society. It is the embodiment and location of the psycho-social.
As we shall see, at different historical moments and in different places greater
or lesser emphasis has been given to one side of the personal/social equation.
Some historical moments have greater resonance than others and provide a
particular focus on the meaning of identity.
On 11 September 2001, with the destruction of the twin towers of the World
Trade Center in New York and of part of the Pentagon in Washington, the
United States was plunged into a state of war against an enemy who could
not be immediately identified. More alarming even than the devastation
and destruction of life on US soil was the immediate uncertainty about
who had committed the atrocity and thus the uncertainty about the action
viii Introduction
which should be taken. What was certain is that the USA, its way of life and
what it embodied, had been attacked. The US president George W Bush
declared,
Freedom itself was attacked this morning and I assure you freedom will
be defended. Make no mistake. The United States will hunt down and pur-
sue those responsible for these cowardly acts.
In his address to the American people on 15 September he described the con-
flict in the following terms:
This is a conflict without battlefields or beachheads, a conflict with oppo-
nents who believe they are invisible ... Those who make war against the
United States have chosen their own destruction ... We are planning a
broad and sustained campaign to secure our country and eradicate the evil
of terrorism. Americans of all faiths and backgrounds are committed to
this goal.
Yesterday I visited the site of the destruction in New York City and saw an
amazing spirit of sacrifice, patriotism and defiance. I met with rescuers who
have worked past exhaustion, who cheered our country and the great cause
we have entered ... A terrorist attack designed to tear us apart has instead
bound us together as a nation. Over the past few days, we have learnt much
about American courage. In the past week, we have seen the American peo-
ple at their very best. Citizens have come together to pray, to give blood
to fly our country's flag. Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meet-
ing it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for
others. Because this is America. This is what our enemies hate and have
attacked. (The Observer, 16 September, 2001: 3)
What does this rhetoric tell us about what we mean by identity? This is the
rhetoric of war that has an immediacy that gives expression to strongly held
feelings. Thousands of people had lost their lives in this most surprising of
attacks, and as president, Bush had to give voice to the shock but also to gal-
vanize the people of the USA in response to an enemy he cannot as yet name.
Hence, in this instance oppositions are expressed as abstract nouns, such as
'freedom', which is set against 'terrorism'.
Identity is about difference; it is about marking out 'us' and 'them', and what
is understood as war is a time when this distinction must be clearly marked
in a most conflictual manner. This difference is also marked through direct
oppositions, which exaggerate the dualisms that so often characterize identi-
ty formation. Identity requires a classificatory system that picks out those who
Introduction ix
share an identity and distinguish them from those who do not. However,
identity also involves the management of difference. Each of us has to
manage different selves even on an occasion such as this, when oppositions
are emphasized, there has to be an acknowledgement of heterogeneity even
among 'the American people'; especially among the American people, with
their diverse faiths and cultures.
Identity also involves an understanding of agency and of rational choice.
In this scenario, and in Bush's speech rationality is the prerogative of the US
subject. The USA and her allies are rational, whereas this rationality is set in
opposition to the lack of rationality of the enemy, according to this concep-
tualization. This raises matters of both agency and rationality and invokes ques-
tions that relate to difference. Whose agency and which rationality? How do
we define what is rational and might one person's rational decision be another
person's mindless folly?
Identity is marked through symbols, notably the symbol of the flag, which
has particular resonance in the USA, where allegiance to the flag is a require-
ment of citizenship and of loyalty. Following the events of 11 September, not
only was the US flag displayed most prominently by patriotic Americans, it
was also burnt in some other parts of the world as a symbol of some people's
hatred of the Americans. Symbolic systems mark the difference and provide
the means of signifying identities.
Identity formation involves setting boundaries. These boundaries locate the
parameters of difference and of sameness. Those with whom we share an iden-
tity are marked out as the same, in contrast to those who are different. Same-
ness is featured by the use of 'we' and 'us' and 'our' pronouns which draw in
those with whom the identity is shared and exclude those who are characterized
as 'other'. 'Us' is the USA, the American people, but in this instance, sameness
also has to embrace difference, people of 'every faith and background' are
included. However, securing identity includes managing different selves.
Boundaries are not as secure as might at first be thought, especially in the con-
text of political rhetoric. Establishing secure boundaries includes naming those
who are included and those who are excluded. Laying claim to an identity
involves being named; the American people are named, on several occasions
in this speech and national unity is invoked. The problem in this case is that
'the enemy' cannot as yet be named in the conventional discourse of war. The
enemy is referred to as 'terrorist' but as yet has no name. Even when Osama
bin Laden was named as the most likely suspect and his Al Quaeda group cited
as the most likely instigators of the attacks, the 'enemy' could not be identi-
fied as a nation state or group of nations. In the case of Pearl Harbor, with
which the events of 11 September 2001 were compared, an enemy was imme-
diately identified that conformed to a set of expectations about the form that
such an enemy could take. It is possible to declare war against a nation, which