Assignment paper 205

Name : Latta J. Baraiya 

Roll no : 11

Paper : Cultural Studies

Semester : M.A sem 3

Topic : Identity : Cultural Studies

Submitted to : Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Introduction

We all are aware of the identity we are having. That can be on name, cast, class, religion, gender. The identity of a person depends on the roles played by the person that designates that person. Identity is constituted through experience, and representation is the significant part of the experience. Experience includes the consumption of sign, the making of meaning from sign and the knowledge of meaning. 

However cultural studies believe that experience also masks the connection between different structures in society. We do not always understand that we are not in control of our lives, and that we are subject to ideological control. That is experience often makes us believe that we are free agent, when we are in reality victims of discursive and ideological regimes that treat us as consumer alon. We do not have always power of choice, that is in itself an illusion generated through representation. 

People have pride for their names and caste, village and for their gender also. But that birth was not given them by their choice. It's all accidents ! So taking pride for all that identity is foolish thing. But people can't even understand it. 

IDENTITY

In a modern society where the globalization process is deepening,continuous contact with individuals from different cultural backgrounds will lead to thinking about cultural identity. Cultural identity is the cornerstone of national identity and national identity. In recent years, it has become an important field of interdisciplinary and one of the topics of interest to psychologists. In the perspective of psychology, the study of cultural identity mainly focuses on the fields of developmental psychology, social psychology and cross-cultural psychology. The perspective of developmental psychology emphasizes that the construction and formation of individual cultural identity is a complex process of change. Social identity theory focuses on the relationship between cultural identity and self-esteem.Safe national identity strongly promotes the level of individual self-esteem. The theory of cultural adaptation emphasizes the different coping strategies of individuals in the development of cultural identity, such as integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization. 

WHAT IS IDENTITY AND HOW IS IT CONSTITUTED? 

Within the historical evolution of the concept of the identity, there are two common, but opposite, approaches to the questions of what identity means and how it is constituted. In prevalent and traditional approach, especially before the industrial revolution, identity is defined as a constitution based on the recognition of familiar and shared derivations including but not limited to ethnic, linguistic, religious, historical, territorial, cultural and political attributes with other people, groups or ideal. The concepts of familiarity and share in this definition are also associated with the meanings of sameness, belongingness and unity. From this perspective, cultural identity is a 

“one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self,’ hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves,’ which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common”

(Hall, p. 394). 

As Grossberg contends, the problematic belief in this analysis is that there is some intrinsic and essential content to any identity which is characterized by either a common origin or a common structure of experience or both. One can be deemed to be born along with his or her identity that appears to act as the sign of an identical harmony. In this regard, identity is determined more likely as a naturalistic and static formation that could always be sustained. This conventional view sees individual as a unique, stable and whole entity. 

According to this constructionists and discursive view, an individual is a socio-historical and socio-cultural product and identity is not biologically pre-given to a person, instead, he or she occupies it, and more importantly, this occupation may include different and multiple identities at different points of time and settings.  

Although both approaches are trying to explain the same concept, their conflicting point is the existence and sustainability of a true, stable, fixed or authentic identity. While the former view of identity is “fixed and transhistorical”, the latter one advocates the identity as being “fluid and contingent”, not an essence but positioning. In social and cultural studies, this debate refers to a tension between essentialists (Descartes, Karl and Husserl) and constructionists/anti-essentialists (Hume, Nietzsche and Sartre) or in recent discussions, a transformation from the conception of modern identity to postmodern identity. This is how Bauman (1996) explains this transformation: 

If the modern problem of identity was how to construct an identity and keep it solid and stable, the postmodern problem of identity is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open. In the case of identity, as in other cases, the catchword of modernity was creation; the catchword of postmodernity is recycling. (p.18)

Identities are usually produced within the play of power, representation and difference which can be either constructed negatively as the exclusion and marginalization or celebrated as a source of diversity, heterogeneity and hybridity suggesting that they are relational to other identities. This involves the process of persistently distinguishing one identity from others by means of discourse as a symbolic and representative meaning tool which contributes to the identity formation. Gender, race, class and sexual identities can be given as examples of identity construction out of difference, exclusion and subordination. Said`s work on “Orientalism” and its counterpart which Robertson describes as “Occidentalism”, also demonstrates the very same idea. The identity of Oriental culture is seen as a subaltern culture and constituted through its exclusion from the Western culture; therefore it is the West that has given identity to the Orient. As Sakai (cited in Morley & Robins, 1995) states, 

“if the West did not exist, the Orient would not exist either” 

(p. 155) 

The notion of difference as a constitutive of identity is integral to an understanding of the cultural construction of identities and has been related to the language and representation including signifying practices and symbolic systems through which the production of identities and meanings take place. 

language operates as a representational system and helps us represent to other people our concepts, feelings and ideas. It is in this sense that language as a signifying system that provides possible answers to the questions: 

• Who am I? 

• What group am I belong to? 

• What do I want to be? 

Language used here as signifier of identity refers to not only written and spoken language but also texts, advertisements, visual images produced both by hand and technological means, songs, games, clothes, foods and so on. Discourse is concerned with the relationship between power and knowledge and how this relationship operates within what he calls discursive formations. Foucault argues that: 

Here I believe one’s point of reference should not be to the great model of language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power not relations of meaning…Neither the dialectic, as logic of contradictions, nor semiotics, as the structure of communication, can account for the intrinsic intelligibility of conflicts. 

(cited in Hall, 1997) 

Let's go through the example so the Idea become more clear in our mind. If we see

• Amar

• Akbar

• Aenethani

What we think first ? We think about three religion. That represented through the name. Amar represent Hindu religion, Akbar represent Muslim religion and Aenethani represent Christian religion. So the point is the we always look at the people by their other identities and that identity given by their family, society, religion or atmosphere. That's not their true identity. 

There is movie also with this name. Their clothes also significantly represent their identity. In PK movie we also see in one scene, where that dhongi baba recognise people on the base of their clothes, but thay all hve wear cross clothes. They wear others religion's clothes. But yes their name also reveals that who they are and from which religion they belong. This advantage is very harmful to people. That creat bias in people's mind. So the identity become very important to study in cultural studies. 

Conclusion

So at the end we can say that the system, that gives us identity by giving name has to be changed. We hve to creat number kind of identity. Because name and surname reflect their caste, so people decide how much respect given to them. Yes, money become very powerful weapon in today's time. If you have enough money people will give you respect and behave nicely with you. So the identity is connected with money also. 

References

Bauman, Z. (1996). From pilgrim to tourist - or a short history of identity. In S. Hall & P. du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 1-17). London: Sage Publications. 

Hall, S. (1994). Cultural identity and diaspora. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (pp. 392-403). New York: Columbia UP.

Hall, S. (1996). Introduction: who needs identity? In S. Hall & P. du Gay (Eds.), Questions of cultural identity (pp. 1-17). London: Sage Publications. 

Hall, S. (1997). The work of representation. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 13-64). London: Sage Publication 

Koc, Mustafa. “CULTURAL IDENTITY CRISIS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION AND  TECHNOLOGY.” The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 2006.

Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of identity: Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural 

boundaries. London: Routledge. 

Robertson, R. (1991). Japan and the USA: The interpretation of national identities and the debate about orientalism. In N. Abercombie et al. (Eds.), Dominant Ideologies, London: Unwin Hyman. 

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 

Yan, Anfu. “Cultural Identity in the Perspective of Psychology.” Researchgate.net, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328534190_Cultural_Identity_in_the_Perspective_of_Psychology/fulltext/5bd330c0a6fdcc3a8da8ee2e/Cultural-Identity-in-the-Perspective-of-Psychology.pdf.