S. During Identity
In this article, During tackles the difficult concept of identity. It is a difficult task because defining anything about identity can be fraught with ambiguities and generalisations as identity is an intrinsically personal and individual thing, and yet we share many of identities with those around us.
During states that identity defines us by a shared trait for instance gender, race, religion, and this place us in a group, thereby reducing individuality.
In society, we are placed and judged in terms of a trait that society defines as an identity, however, the particular trait is chosen arbitrarily however natural it may seem to define people by their gender, skin colour or ethnicity.
The most important statement of the article, in my opinion, is the fact that identity constitutes our relation between society and ourselves. It must logically follow that without an identity, we cannot participate in society. I’m not exactly sure about this, as there must be some people who have no concept of identity, I’m thinking of people with extreme mental disability or people who had no contact with humans during childhood, such as ‘Genie’ and several other cases. Do we need to know what an identity is to have one? Do people such as ‘Genie’ have an identity? And if not what is their relationship with society?
Another important point that I was not aware of until now is the fact that we all have multiple identities. I guess that we are not aware of this because to us, we are one whole. This is because identities are based different traits that carry different and unequal importance at different times in different places.
It is also important to note that we have identities that we are given and identities that we adopt. Sometimes we struggle to ‘disidentify’ ourselves with an identity that has negative implications for our lives, an example from my own life comes from my father who came from a family of extreme privilege, when he was about 18 years old he joined the royal marines where he tried very hard to hide this fact from his new friends because he thought they would treat him differently if they knew about his family.
My father told me this a long time ago and I had always wondered why it bothered me, after reading this article I have a better understand of how our identities ‘constitute the framework’ of our lives and can cause us hardship or pleasure depending on how we relate to this identity and how society perceives it.
I thought the concept of ‘identity hybridity’ was very interesting even though During believe that it ‘does not move sufficiently beyond identity politics’. It certainly seems to have relevance to myself. There have been times when I have identified with certain identities but because I no longer ‘enact these identities’ since I don’t listen to heavy metal, smoke weed or go to Narrabundah College anymore, I have lost these identities and replaced them with new ones.