Contemporary Identity Research Articles

Hegel, Identity Politics and the Problem of Slavery

This article examines the relevance of Hegel’s philosophy and political thought, and especially his views on slavery, for contemporary identity politics. It offers an account of Hegel’s metaphysical beliefs and explores the relevance of those beliefs for our understanding of his views on ‘the self’. It is suggested that for Hegel all individual selves are comprised of two component elements, one of which possesses the quality of universality and the other that of particularity. The particular self, or the particular component of an individual self, is a social construction. It is this dimension of the self that provides all individuals with their determinate social identity. The article applies this insight to a reading of the well‐known ‘master–slave’ section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which presents Hegel’s understanding of the role that slavery has for the development of self‐consciousness. The article considers two interpretations of Hegel’s views on slavery. One of these considers slavery to be a socio‐historical phenomenon, a social institution associated with a particular type of society. The other thinks of ‘slavery’, using the term in a quite different sense, as being a necessary condition for the development of self‐consciousness in all societies everywhere. As such, slavery is an ahistorical or supra‐historical phenomenon that could never be transcended. The article concludes by suggesting that a modified version of this second interpretation of Hegel’s views on slavery in the Phenomenology has provided a source of theoretical inspiration for an anarchist critique of social institutions that was developed by a number of French social theorists and philosophers in the twentieth century.

F(r)ictions of Identity in The Human Stain

This essay deals with the issue of identity in The Human Stain . The novel invites us to reflect on identity constructions, on their difficult negotiations between the given and the chosen, between group identity and the freedom of individuals to define their own identity at the crossroads between fixed patterns and personal choices. By doing so, Roth also calls for a redefinition of interpretative patterns and theories of identity, in the sense that existing theories of identity based on monolithic categories fail to grasp the complexities of contemporary identity.

The Designed Self: Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Identities

The Designed Self: Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Identities

F(r)ictions of Identity in The Human Stain

This essay deals with the issue of identity in The Human Stain. The novel invites us to reflect on identity constructions, on their difficult negotiations between the "given" and the "chosen," between group identity and the freedom of individuals to define their own identity at the crossroads between fixed patterns and personal choices. By doing so, Roth also calls for a redefinition of interpretative patterns and theories of identity, in the sense that existing theories of identity based on monolithic categories fail to grasp the complexities of contemporary identity.

Theorizing the Haitian Fragment and Fragmenting Caribbeanist Theory in Émile Ollivier’s Passages

In a critical domain that privileges and promotes hybridity, metissage, and creolization favored models of contemporary identity, the Caribbean subject finds itself thrown center stage, paraded before the world the ideal postmodern being. A brutal, hellish history of deracination, slavery, colonialism, and (for some) independence has apparently been recuperated and reinterpreted the ideal context for the Caribbean subject's movement into fluid, non-originary, and relational identity. Indeed, without this violent history, such a movement would have been impossible, the latter has been interpreted the unintended yet endlessly auspicious product of the former (Bongie, Islands and Exiles 15). Much of this critical work has drawn on and been driven by edouard Glissant's theories; his highly persuasive, brilliantly-argued vision of the Caribbean an open-ended, outward-looking, inherently relational time-space has chimed with the concerns and theoretical perspectives of critics on the outside, tired of the perceived essentialisms and reductivism of humanist thought, and its related concept of the subject unitary, autonomous, and full. recuperation and reinterpretation of one particular prevalent trope of Caribbean culture exemplifies this critical shift from humanist modernism to anti-humanist postmodernism. trope of the fragment, the splintered, disconnected cultural and existential remnant has recurred throughout the relatively short history of Caribbean literature. For example, this sense of fragmentation, of the loss of a previous plenitude, structures and drives Aime Cesaire's poetry. From the opening lines of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal images of a negatively--experienced rupturing and fragmentation are used to characterize the Caribbean situation: At the end of the daybreak, the extreme, deceptive desolate eschar on the wound of the waters ... the flowers of blood that fade and scatter in the empty wind ... an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules ... this squalling throng so astonishingly detoured from its cry this town has been from its movement, from its meaning (1-2). Cesaire moreover draws a parallel between these cultural and existential ruptures and the physical fragmentation of Caribbean space in his view of the islands scars of the water ... evidence of wounds ... crumbs ... unformed (42). Such a deeply-felt sense of fragmentation has now been widely reinterpreted the raw material of hybrid identities, the divergent threads of culture and subjectivity that can be braided together by (or for) the Caribbean subject in a new dynamic of identity creation. Francoise Lionnet, for example, recuperates Caribbean fragmentation, and sees it the source of a new energy for positive change, saying that: The postcolonial subject ... becomes quite adept at ... using the fragments that constitute it in order to participate fully in a dynamic process of transformation (5). This recuperation of cultural and identitary fragmentation fits neatly into the dominant contemporary model of postcolonial, postmodern Caribbean identity a free floating, carnivalesque version of plurality, which ... constitutes a kind of abundance (Britton, The (De)Construction of Subjectivity 45). Such celebratory reinterpretations of Caribbean fragmentation may sit well with prevailing global theories of culture, and indeed promote the Caribbean to the very forefront of the world stage as a metaphor for the human condition, characterized by unceasing change and creative discontinuity (Dash, Other America 6). (1) Not for nothing did James Clifford famously state that in the postmodern world We are all Caribbeans now in our urban archipelagos (6). These celebratory readings fall apart, however, when applied to the context of Haiti, the Caribbean's troubling, troubled, and often forgotten forefather. Contemporary Haitian narratives stand apart from those of the other islands, and indeed challenge much current Caribbeanist criticism, in that they often express more nuanced, less celebratory interpretations of Caribbean existence. …

History, literature, and the writing of the Canadian prairies

The Canadian Prairie has long been represented as a timeless and unchanging location, defined by settlement and landscape. Now, a new generation of writers and historians challenge that perception and argue, instead, that it is a region with an evolving culture and history. This collection of ten essays explores a more contemporary identity, and reconfigures prairie as a construct that is non-linear and diverse, responding to the impact of geographical, historical, and political currents. These writers explore the connections between document and imagination, between history and culture, and between geography and time. The subjects of the essays range widely: the non-linear structure of Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries ; the impact of Aberhart's Social Credit, Marshall McLuhan, and Mesopotamian myth on Robert Kroetsch's postmodernism; the role of document in long poems; the connection between cultural tourism and heritage; the theme of regeneration in Margaret Laurence's Manawaka writing; the influence of imagination on geography in Thomas Wharton's Icefields; and the effects on an alpine climber of pre-WWII ideological concepts of time and individualism.

From Holy Man to National Villain: Popular Historical Narratives About Apaq Khoja amongst Uyghurs in Contemporary Xinjiang

AbstractThis paper explores contrasting attitudes of contemporary Uyghurs towards Apaq Khoja, a Naqshbandi Sufi leader who gained political control over much of present-day Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) towards the end of the seventeenth century. In seeking to account for these widely diverging approaches, the paper analyses the key role of historical narratives about Sufism in the shaping of contemporary Uyghur ethnic identities.

Individuality and the prejudiced personality

Many researchers maintain that individual psychological processes related to our human evolutionary inheritance, a person's particular genetic make-up, and/or childhood learning and socialisation patterns are a root cause of prejudice. The effects of collective processes on the individual are considered to be largely in the past, producing individual personalities and social attitudes that are relatively fixed and enduring. There is, however, an alternative perspective on the impact of the collective embodied in self-categorization theory (SCT). From the SCT perspective, the self is both personal and collective, and shifts in the nature of self-categorisation produce qualitative shifts in judgements of oneself and others. Through one's identity as a group member, contemporary social forces can shape the psychology of the person. This analysis not only has direct implications for how we understand the relationship between personality and prejudice, but also offers an alternative way of thinking about personality itself. What emerges from our own and related research on prejudice is a more complex analysis of individuality, one that is ineluctably embedded in contemporary intragroup and intergroup identities and the societal and ideological realities that define group life as well as in past learning and maturation.

Constructing the Irish of Britain: Ethnic recognition and the 2001 UK Censuses

Since multicultural policies in modern liberal democracies depend on the official institutionalization of ethnic diversity, systems of ethnic classification, such as those incorporated in the national population census, acquire a particular political significance. Ethnic activists who regard their group's identity and culturally specific needs as being ‘excluded’ from the multicultural framework can be expected to mobilize to secure inclusion. Ultimately it is politicians who decide which ethnic groups should or should not be included in systems of ethnic classification. In this way, official ethnic classifications have become sites of contest in contemporary identity politics. Through an analysis of the dynamics that led to the inclusion of an ‘Irish’ option on the ethnic group questions for the 2001 Censuses of Great Britain, this article shows how radical changes to the list of ethnic designations used on censuses can be driven by political expediency rather than considered understandings of sociological reality.

The "Nature" of Childhood: Ethnography as a Tool in Approaching Children in Archaeology

Studying contemporary children in the United States might seem like an odd place to seek information that can help inform the archaeology of childhood. It is our very familiarity with this cultural construct of childhood, as former children and as contemporary parents, aunts, uncles, or friends of children, that often draws criticism from scholars of childhood in archaeology and anthropology. An ethnographic study of four-year-old children from a Chicago neighborhood taking part in an outdoor camp demonstrates, however, that looking beyond the familiar is indeed possible and certainly fruitful for archaeologists wishing to study children in the past. Particularly, this research takes a historical approach to contemporary constructions of childhood and looks at how contemporary ideals affect children's behavior through adult input and the built environment. Exploring this relationship between cultural ideals and children's behavior and the ways they are mediated provides insight into how particularistic cultural constructions of children and childhood may be represented through the behavioral traces of them in the archaeological record.

Historical Models — Contemporary Identities: The Sección Femenina of the Spanish Falange and its Redefinition of the Term ‘Femininity’

The Spanish Falange was established in Madrid in November 1933 in an attempt to offer new solutions to the severe social and political problems which assailed Spanish society throughout the years of the Second Republic (1931-36) and to the perceived inability of the conservative Right effectively to face the growing threat to Spain’s religious and territorial unity. The Sección Femenina of the Falange (SF), which was founded in June 1934, existed for 43 years, reaching at its height a membership of over 680,000. Yet despite its impressive size and diverse activities, it received little attention from historians prior to the 1990s, partly due to a prevailing tendency of Spanish historiography to view women in right-wing entities as having little autonomy or independent authority. This article demonstrates that by using its relative organizational autonomy the SF was able to construct a new ‘discourse on femininity’ and to offer its members an identity which would take into account their self-perceptions as both women and Falangists in Francoist society. ‘Naturalizing’ and appropriating some so-called virile attributes such as heroism, forcefulness and intelligence served to establish a meaningful place for both the SF and its members on the public stage of Franco’s ‘New Spain’.

Holy Man of the Abruzzi and the Limitations of Papal Power

HOLY MAN OF THE ABRUZZI AND THE LIMITATIONS OF PAPAL POWER Celestino V (Pietro Del Morrone) 1294: Il Papa Angelica. By Peter Herde, edited by Quirino Salomone, translated by Anna Maria Voci. (L'Aquila: Edizioni Celestiniane. 2004. Pp. vii, 373, with color photographs 16 pp.) The translator, Anna Maria Voci, presents us with a precise and very readable Italian text of Peter Herde's biography of Peter of Morrone.' The footnotes are expanded where necessary, in order to provide the reader with the latest scholarly information,2 while the insertion of new data into the text is minimal and infrequent. The brief introduction has been rewritten with the same intent in mind. Since this edition focuses on the Italian reader, the Latin index and the Latin Vita or Texte remanie of the Bollandists of the German edition are not included.3 This biography is essential reading for the uninitiated. Although the author's picture of Celestine V seems to submerge him at times in ideas and politics, the pope's reaction to this world, namely, his hesitancy to assume the papal office and his persistence in continuing his hermit ways while in office, points to the singularity of his character. Since the author deals in great detail with Peter's election and pontificate, I shall conclude with these matters and refer the reader especially to two reviews for further commentary on ideas and politics.4 Peter of Morrone, the second youngest child of humble peasants in the village of S. Angelo Limosano in the Mouse region, entered the Benedictine order at S. Maria di Faifula in 1230. As the final battle between Pope Gregory IX and Emperor Frederick II-was taking shape in the years 1235-1240, Monte Morrone became his refuge from the world. Shortly thereafter he founded a hermitage on a neighboring mountain at S. Spirito a Maiella. In a document of 1268, Pope Clement IV urged the faithful of the dioceses of Valva-Sulmona, Chieti, and (S. Benedetto dei Marsi) to support the construction of a church at S. Maria del Morrone and granted them an indulgence of one hundred days for three years if they did so. Peter's adherence to poverty and his contact with several Spiritual Franciscans, dating sometime after 1270, should not lead us astray about the nature of his growing hermit community. It did not burst the bounds of solid orthodoxy; thus, the founding of S. Spirito a Maiella and of the chief monastery, S. Spirito at Sulmona, should be seen primarily as expressions of contemporary religious ideals. In 1264 his band of hermits was incorporated into the Benedictine order, but legal uncertainties about its status led Peter to go on foot with two companions to the second Council of Lyons, in order to eliminate them.5 In 1289 he obtained a church in Rome, S. Eusebio, not far from S. Maria Maggiore. Peter took over the abbey of S. Maria di Faifula in 1276, and an inscription there indicates work on its church under Peter as abbot. In 1291 he was general prior of his congregation. The Celestines adopted the term pater abbas for their general abbot or general prior, an office known since 1287, from the Cistercians with one difference: the pater abbas served a three-year term with re-election possible, whereas the Cistercian general abbot served for life. Peter's energy and commitment to his congregation knew no bounds. He was the guiding spirit in shaping its constitution and liturgy, and in implementing discipline. Donations accrued, the first in 1252, and powerful patrons such as Charles I of Anjou and his son Charles II gave as well.6 Thus, Peter laid the foundation for the longevity of the Celestines which would survive into the early Napoleonic era.7 Upon his election as pope (July 5, 1294), which was a genuine election of inspiration, the question arose whether he should go to Rome. The Angevin king Charles II made sure that he came to Naples. Disorder reigned at the papal chancery. The granting of privileges seems to have been uncontrolled. …

Identity Trouble and Opportunity in Women's Narratives of Residence

This article employs a narrative and discursive approach to investigate contemporary identities of place and meanings of place for identity. Transcribed interview extracts are analysed to illustrate how speakers discursively construct a place of residence and a new residential identity, and how this identity work in relation to place conforms to the individualized contemporary identities discussed by Rose, Walkerdine and others. A construction of a place of residence in terms of opportunity enables a speaker to take up a residential identity corresponding to a ‘choosing self’ and also to present her life course in terms of choices she has made. A claim to a new residential identity can offer an alternative positioning, for example, for people positioned outside the conventional born-and-bred narrative. However, this claim to a more individualized and agentic identity of place is not necessarily unproblematic, and presents particular issues for women speakers.

We wear the mask: African American contemporary gay male identities

This study examines the various ways African American men identify themselves sexually. Many African American men practice same-sex relationships but do not identify themselves as bisexual, gay, or homosexual. A case study approach was used to analyze data gathered in Atlanta, Georgia using 110 male respondents. The researcher found that these men divide their identity because of multiple social factors. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that homophobia, heterosexism, and poor constructs of black manhood are the foremost reasons African American gay men cannot accept a gay identity.

A historical contextualization of Sephardi apostates and self-styled missionaries of the seventeenth century

The article historicizes the behavior of a handful of penurious travelers of Jewish origin who were tried by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions in the seventeenth-century. Their crime was having themselves repeatedly baptized. In some cases, they also presented themselves to local conversos (the baptized descendants of Iberian Jews) and religious authorities as expert Jewish indoctrinators. Mostly unpublished and hitherto under-explored inquisitorial documents reveal that essentially the actions of these transients were not exotic. Rather, they replicated and, on occasion, parodied cultural models found among contemporary diasporic Sephardim, both ideals and modes of social and religious conduct.

Problem? what problem? Personhood, late modern / postmodern rootlessness and contemporary identity crises

This article surveys changing perceptions of personhood in pre-modernity, modernity and postmodernity. Human personhood and identity was not perceived as an issue until modernity placed a heavy emphasis on the independence of the individual. Personhood should not be located exclusively either in essence or in relationships.

Symbolic Interactionist Reflectionson Erikson, Identity, and Postmodernism

Erikson theorized about identities as both typified epigenetic outcomes and adaptations to cultural-historical circumstances. Neo-Eriksonians have emphasized the former, with a more narrow focus on the identity struggles of adolescents. Postmodern theorists have strongly emphasized the latter. Reflecting a postmodern perspective, Rattansi and Phoenix (1997) emphasized the ephemeral and manipulated aspects of contemporary identity dynamics that diminish self and weaken core self-understandings. We argue for a symbolic interactionist perspective that incorporates both perspectives on identity within a theoretical scope that posits selves as embodied agents struggling for meaningful identities by adapting to their social and physical environments and sometimes working to change these environments through individual and collective action.

Proliferating Theories: Self and Identity in Post-Eriksonian Context: A Rejoinder to Berzonsky, Kroger, Levine, Phinney, Schachter, and Weigert and Gecas

Focuses on the documentary issues significantly considered to the current study of teenagers and their identities. Interpersonal identity formation during early adolescence; Criticisms on feminist perspectives in its relevance for contemporary identity development research; Examination of the ego identity status paradigm.

Rue britannia or rule britannia? British identities in Scotland and Wales

British identity is in flux, especially in Scotland and Wales, where devolution invites many Scots and Welsh to consider what it means to be British. This article employs Q-methodology to investigate the complexities of British identity in Scotland and Wales. Six separate types of British identity are uncovered, three each in Scotland and Wales. Analysis of the commonalties among these very different types of British identity outlines the ‘core’ of contemporary British identity. Furthermore, looking at the primary differences between positive and negative British attitudes suggests that the political parties in Scotland and Wales face significant, albeit very different, obstacles in getting voters to embrace their party's preferred vision of devolution, Britain, and British identity.

‘IL COLORE DELLA MIA PELLE”: RENEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN SHIRIN RAMZANALI FAZEL'S LONTANO DA MOGADISCIO

This article examines aspects of contemporary identity theory in relation to one particular Italian ‘immigrant’ text, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel's Lontano da Mogadiscio. It establishes the ways in which Fazel outlines and renegotiates facets of her identity, in particular the notions of linguistic, national and racial identity, within the context of theories on postcolonial and immigrant writing. It analyzes, builds on and applies associated and relevant theories of Otherness, black women's writing, diaspora, place and home to the specific context of this text, focusing on the reassessment and redefinition of certain aspects of identity as a direct result of Fazel's experience of migration.