Thursday, August 4, 2011

What is Identity?

What exactly is “identity”? Is it how we perceive ourselves? Is it how others perceive us? Or is it a combination of both? According to Stuart Hall by way of Chris Barker there are “three different ways of conceptualizing identity” (Barker 218) and those are: the enlightenment subject, the sociological subject, and the postmodern subject. Each of these “subjects” has a different way of looking at how we form what we call our “identity”. Honestly though, how many times have you looked in the mirror and asked ‘who am I’ or ‘how did I become this person’? I believe we all ask ourselves this question at least one time or another in our lives. I know I have. So here are the ways that Hall believed one may form an identity. If one is an enlightenment subject they believe that “I think, therefore I am” which is well known as the famous saying of Decartes. The way that I interpreted this was that the enlightenment subjects believed their identity to be their own, and one without influence and made up completely of reason and conscious actions and reactions; although, I have a hard time believing this to be possible. To me we as human beings naturally want to be accepted. I believe that our lives and personalities or “identities” begin being formed when we are born; by our parents, and then our peers, then our teachers, and then the workforce. This does not mean that I believe we have no free will to make our own decisions; we do, but those decisions we make have been influenced by the information and morals and values fed to us our entire lives. According to Hall’s conceptualization of identities I would guess that my way of thinking would fall somewhere between the sociological subject and the postmodern subject: the sociological subject being one who is completely formed by ones social surroundings and the postmodern subject being “composed not of one but several, sometimes contradictory, identities” (Barker 220). From my experience with people and myself it seems that we often times have one identity when with our family and those closest to us, another when we are in an academic environment, and another when in a new or uncomfortable social situation or employment situation. But I don’t believe that these different and sometimes contradictory “identities” are deceiving; instead I think that this is where the sociological part comes in. We are told from a young age and throughout our growing years that there is an appropriate way to act in different situations. When we are with family and those closest to us it is less important to censor one’s self but when we are in school or work we are expected to act polite, work hard, and put our best self forward. We all know the appropriate way to act and we know how we learned this “appropriate” way but we never consciously think well could I have changed this or made this different? This is why I don’t believe that the enlightenment subject is realistic, nor do I believe we can be held to just one strict way of forming an identity. Much of what we do is done subconsciously, and always through a different channel or avenue that we have be taught or picked up along this road of life. We only begin to consciously think about it when asked questions like “what is identity to you” and “how did you form this identity”. So what is identity to you?

Barker, Chris. Culturl Studies Theory & Practice. Sage, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC, 2008.
             

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