Identity is complicated everybody thinks they’ve got one.”- David gauntlet. Here David Gauntlet is highlighting to fact that nobody believes that their identity is constructed but rather having influences determine who we are, we decide for ourselves, therefore rather being part of an collective identity we all ‘think’ we have an individual one. Hence, identity has become complicated; take for example what merleau ponty said towards us and having identity: “we have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create new things builds our identity”. Thanks to advancement of new technologies people have created new things every day, this being through social networking.
Merleau, highlighted that “when we use or bodies to create new things”, our identity is formed, a typical example of this would be the creating of an online profile on facebook. By physically going out of our way to put subjects, topics and ourselves on the web, according to ponty we have begun to build our identity. But identity is complicated, because by creating a facebook account or twitter account we have decided to join an online community, where others share the same interests and disinterests as us, making us, the individual, to be part of a group thus forming our collective identity.
Collective identity can be defined as, “An individual’s sense of belonging to a group.” New technologies and media can be a perfect place to experiment with their identity to fit with a certain group. Henry Jenkins alluded to it by saying, “teens are constantly updating and customizing their profile online, adding photos and songs and posting on each other’s virtual walls. While this could be interpreted as just playing around these activities can be a means for teens to construct and experiment with identity. In particular it can be a space for exploring gender. Therefore young people in particular are adopting the winship notion of complexity by preparing themselves and finally recognising the ideal version of themselves so they might be able to fit in with their collective identity.
An example of collective identity would be the emos would only associate with the emos, or the popular people hang out with popular people, all the while each one believing they constructed their own identity.
But collective identity is not only constructed through others but mainstream media, and how the representation of a certain group influences our thinking. Take for example the latest new coverage of the riots, the news mainly focused on the negativity of the youths and blaming them for the increase of violence, leading youths into a stereotype. Richard Jenkins talks about that identity is formed by the way we interact with one another and media. So if a young person only sees’s media portraying youths to be instruments of violence, then sooner or later down the line that person will begin to conform to that stereotype building their identity and joining a collective one.
However some say that we can change our mediate our identity; Foucault believed this, he says; “we are born with a basic identity but we develop our collective identity when with others.” Therefore we as an individual’s change who really are when with others, but our basic identity is there we just mediate that personality for whom we meet. An example of this would by the way we speak to one another, so the way a student speaks to a teacher would be different to the way he would speak to his friends.
Foucault however believes that it can be limiting for what actually is developed is a stereotypical group and then people start to make assumptions.
Therefore I concluded that after considering all this information I fully agree with the statement “identity is complicated everybody thinks they got one”.
No comments:
Post a Comment