Session 4: Identity and Subjectivity (Summary and Qs)

Summary of readings:

1) Sherry Ortner: Identities: The Hidden Life of Class

Ortner’s first chapter on Identities focusses on question of foregrounding and/or backgrounding race/ethnicity and class. She has used class as defined by Marx as a position created by the mode of production, although, she continuously challenged any uniform notion of class in her essay. Her main argument is the essay is that “American class discourse is in certain important respects fused with ethnicity and race” and it is not separate from each other. Her analysis is based on the question of what constitutes American middle class, how it is constituted and where does race/ethnicity fall in this constitution. She argues that race/ethnicity and class do not exist in pure form, separate from each other but as a fusion and it needs to be seen like that, that each is hidden within the other. This essay also attempts to show that race and ethnicity are class-ist in notion and class is also socially constructed.

Ortner argues that although class appears to be an economically generated category, it is racially and ethnically constructed and same can be said for the other way round. She also critically engages with the term ‘middle class’ and what it contains. There is no sanitised form of “class” that exists. It continues to transform, break apart and gets reformed depending on the times we live in. There is no one constant characteristic of any class. Each person has their own way of categorising themselves and also separating themselves with other classes. This self-identification also has to do with the racial and ethnic identity of people which are clearly divided.

Where class has been considered objective category defined through the position in mode of production, race and ethnicity are natural and categories. She also mentions that class is not well understood by people as opposed to race and ethnicity. For race and ethnicity, everyone has some presuppositions about the particularity of behaviours, history, and culture of that group.

Ortner mentions that in the ethnography of Hollywood culture, the ethnic identity is not shared to be a contributing element to the insecurities among the filmmakers but rather a general personal economic insecurity. The author refused to account for the insecurity that comes with being Jewish. In the ethnographic study on Hollywood, an economic class is formed of particular ethnicity which is not given due analysis by the author.

Ortner highlights that some scholars argued that Jewish were not with middle class values but rather their economic success led to them having middle class values and this success was due to certain specific material and historical factors which included federal programs to support middle class, rather than cultural factors. She argues against this notion and attempts to even go the extent of possible calling the middle class to be inherently Jewish implying that all middle class has Jewish like values. This case was made through role of media, especially films, television and journalism which also contributes to the making of what we think as middle class and American culture and also that Jews dictated media and what being "American" means and what are the middle class values.

These questions about which (race/ethnicity and class) influenced what has also given rise to the debate on the genesis of capitalism itself. Where Weber claimed that it was credit to Protestants, Sombart contested that it was Jews after all.

Although Ortner continuously mentions that what constitutes class has forever being under transformation, there is an inherent assumption of what a particular class identity constitutes of. This essay nowhere clearly defines the what middle class identity or what Jewish values she is implying to, though there are certain references to an American dream but it appeared little too vague considering the project she undertook of dismantling the race/ethnicity and class separation in the literature.

The question here also arises on how do we talk about class in India? The middle class is formed of all kind of groups but a certain economic class in a certain domain is also ethnically divided. How to incorporate these in the Indian scenario? What is middle class here? What does media showcases?

2) Sherry Ortner: Subjectivity and Cultural Critique

Chapter 5 is more theoretical with philosophical undertones. Ortner attempts to provide a background on the creation of subjects within the discourses of freedom and constraint. How the subject exists if it does, and if it doesn’t then why? What other scholars have opined about this.

For Durkheim, "subject" was merely a tool through which "social" operated. It lacked "agency", for most part. Levi-strauss took away whatever little agency that Durkheim provided the "subject". Myths operate in men's mind without them being aware of it. “Freedom” here implies contained within the subject and “constraint” implies the social that bounds that subject. Arguments for structuralism were where individual seizes to hold control. Unconscious social takes precedence over conscious subject.

Bourdieu argued that subjects act within the limit of social structure, their habitus while Giddens - emphasised on agency. Ortner, in her essay is calling to focus on the human in the so called human science thus wants to bring back the focus on subjectivity. Also, she further mentions, that it is politically important. Agency is necessary to understand how people act when they are constantly acted upon. In that, she agrees with Giddens that actors are partially knowing. However, Ortner's analysis is in complement to Bourdieu's habitus and not a replacement of it. She uses subjectivity as both an individual's psychological sense (inner feelings, desires, anxieties, intentions etc.) and at larger cultural formation level.

Geertz defined culture as the worldview and ethos of a particular group of people, shared by all members of that group and culture process within philosophical and literary theory which emphasises on the construction of meaning, and of subjectivities though symbolic processes embedded in the social world.

Ortner argues against the first notion of Geertz "culture". Firstly, how can everyone share the same worldview and same orientation towards it, given the various forms of social differences and inequalities? And secondly, by seeing culture to be homogenous for a group, it also essentialises the group. That some single essence can define all of that one group. This essesntialism is catastrophic since one culture can be defined by acts of few and prejudiced accordingly. She agreed more with Raymond William who viewed culture as hegemony. Many studies have portrayed culture as a political critique. Many marginalised communities make meaningful lives for themselves within the groups that they inhabit. Culture is part of a shared history, identity, worldview and ethos. Culture is also, in some sense, resistance to the structures of dominations.

Weber argues that Protestant doctrines shaped the capitalist subjects. The doctrines about loneliness and fate both provided with the problem and the solution- to be involved in intense worldly activities, systematic self-control etc, which served to be a capitalist subject. Thus the argument that Ortner makes here is that cultural and religious subjects are produced by a complex set of subjectivities, feelings, fears etc. Weber discussed the ways in which Protestantism has shaped the consciousness of the early modern subject. The doctrine of predestination has the psychological bearing that one's fate is decided and it cannot be discovered. The agency from the individual is taken away and given to some remote entity.

Ortner uses the study by Jameson and focusses on the example of the hotel which can be seen as a metaphor for the postmodern world that we are living in. It lacks personalisation, is like a maze, over bearing and there is feeling of getting lost in this. There are no road maps here to guide guest. However, the guests seem to have retaliated since the colour coded signs were recently added indicating objection from some people. And this is where the agency of the individual exercised where the world is not taken for granted and questioned.

Ortner is trying to argue that late capitalism has profoundly affected the consciousness- job insecurity, no transparency in working culture, no longer engagement with the company, short term outsourced projects, bias against older workers. While this is the case that in this new regime of capital, confusion, lack of clarity, depression, indifference etc. form the subjectivities of the workers, agency is not absent in this chaos and indifference. Ortner agrees with Sennet that there is a need for coherent personal narrative. Individuals need to make sense of their own experiences and have a coherent narration of that. Ortner is arguing in her essay that focus should be on both, the state of mind of the actor and also cultural formations that shape that mind.

3) Stuart Hall : Who needs identity?

Hall begins by asking question around identity, what it is and 'who needs it'? Borrowing from the Derridian idea of a concept that is operating 'under erasure' looks at questions of agency and politics. Conceptualisation of identity is done using discourses of discursive and pschyoanaltics alongside of fields of semantics. While discursive approach looks at identity as an ongoing process, psychoanalysis along with semantics looks at identity as first form of association with another being.

Contextualisation of identity with the lens of historicity and power structures then becomes a product of 'difference and exclusion' rather than naturalist mode of seemingly 'identical'. Therefore identity is formed in context of the other rather than the similar. Hall also critics the homogeneity assumed in identity as it can never be all encompassing and the margins that lay within any identity formation and what it leaves out in process of identity formation. He recognises the duality of meeting point of 'discourses, practices, tradition' in the 'social' while also looking at individual 'subjectivities'.

In a postmodernist world, hall looks further away from the stabilised, unified and predictable identities to more fragmented identities. Identity as being plural, open ended and perhaps in conflict with one another. The idea of ideology and belief system which is overarching under the modes of socio-economic system that one is part of and the individual psychic lead to these complexities of identity formation.

4) Zygmunt Bauman: From Pilgrim to Tourist or a short history of identity

Bauman in the piece tries to reflect upon the question of identity from a vantage point of modernity and post-modernity. The primary argument is based on "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."

This is done through understanding and meaning making of pilgrim identity. Looking at various identities that one can take and discard in the notion of pilgrim. Understanding the concept of pilgrim is embedded in historic reference from the point of view of Catholic Christian where the pilgrim visit to city is not about the structures of the city but about meaning making with god. However the Protestants morphed the definition to ‘inner worldly pilgrims’ and embarked upon pilgrimage without leaving home. Using the metaphors of desert, journey and meaning making of identity of pilgrim to a vagabond or to stroller and that of tourist ambivalent nature of these identities is pointed out.

5) Chris Weedon: Subjectivity and identity

Weedon understands identity not as an accomplished fact, but a continuous process of reconfigurations and productions. Individuals are situated within specific discourses and they continue to perform modes of subjectivity associated with the same till the point that they are naturalized as a part of their lived subjectivity. The practices and positions that they assume come to define what it means to identify with a particular discourse, rather than the discourse defining the former. Identities may be socially, culturally and institutionally assigned whereby social and cultural practices produce discourses which solicit active identification and compliance on part of the individuals.

Identities are often internalized to the point that they are assumed repeatedly over the course of one's daily life. This is what Judith Butler defines as 'performativity'. Performativity should not be understood as a singular or deliberate act but a reiterative practice, where individuals are situated within specific discourses and they continue to perform modes of subjectivity in their daily lives, to the point that the effects of such performances and the practices are viewed as correlational and interchangeable. Through continued usage and performance of such functions and roles that are associated with certain identities, these subjectivities become internalized. Depending on the position of a particular identity in the broader societal power structure, these practices and themes of identification either seeps into and defines mainstream culture or become the basis of dis-identification and counter-identifications which seek to reject hegemonic identity norms.

Certain identities that are operational in society are not open to appropriation by everyone and are often restricted to specific groups that are segregated on the basis of distinct discourses. Non-identification by an individual leads to a sense of non-subjectivity, lack of association and thereby, agency. Consequently, s/he must fall back on subjectivities to which access is not stringently regulated. Mobility amongst these varying categories of identity is guided by the situational context in which individuals find themselves. Individuals navigate in between these identities, associating with those categories which would secure for them the maximum social advantages in a particular situation. In most instances, such decisions are motivated by an array of considerations ranging from the fear of dissociation from the group with which individuals seek associate, to establishing associative links with a collective for the purpose to attaining certain commonly acknowledged ends with which the individual can identify.

According to Weedon, identity can best be understood as a limited and temporary setting for an individual, situated within a specific type of subjectivity. Association with or identifying with a particular identity limits the possibility of multiple subjectivities and gives the individual a singular sense of self and belonging. The process involved in the formation of identities involves the familiarization of the subjects to the meanings and values that are associated with the discourse within which they engage. This enables them to attain certain subject positions on issues, which are viewed as absolute within the discourses with which they relate, thereby forging a strong sense of identification and association with others subscribing to the same values and positions.

Identifying with a particular discourse is founded on a certain pre-supposed degree of self-recognition and identification which is often defined in relation to what one is not, making the entire manner of identifying, relational. Usually, these are drawn out in the form of binarized understandings of the ‘other’, whereby differences constitute the primary plan along which the self is asserted. These differences are usually linked to language, class, race, ethnicity, gender and other markers of differentiation.

In certain instances, identities operate along multiple planes of differentiation simultaneously, as is visible in the case of national identity. Such identities tend to establish preponderance of the majoritarian discourses surrounding different planes of identification ranging from culture, language, ethnicity and religion through questionable historical corroborations. These constructed histories are subsequently extrapolated onto the larger social order without accounting for the experiential divergences that exist across different communities and spaces, more often than not to perpetuate hegemonic domination by establishing a hierarchical relationship between ‘superior’ and ‘subordinate’ groups. The identity of the majoritarian self is thus founded upon the segregation of the other. However, the effects of globalization and the growing accessibility of spaces across nation states have challenged the notions of identity that are purported by nation states.

Nimisha, Surya and Priya