- Gender identity: I love being a woman and believe that it is the best thing in the world (of course, I have never tried being a man, so my view must be a little biased.) However, the kind of femininity I practise is far from mainstream. I feel different from many other women much more often than I experience a solidarity with them. I identify myself as feminist but my feminism is very different from what it is generally considered to be in North America today. I have been told by "real" feminists that I am actually a male chauvinist in disguise. My theoretical findings on women's issues are often not very palatable to other feminist scholars.
- National identity: I strongly believe that any kind of patriotism is profoundly unhealthy, but many people talked about the insidious nature of nationalism before me, so I won't repeat their arguments.
- Linguistic identity: I don't have a native language. This has both positive and negative consequences. I could never engage in any creative writing because for that you really need a language you feel as your own on a very profound level. On the positive side, I move between different languages and different cultural spaces all day and every day. This is a very enriching albeit arduous way of being. Language is not just a way to organize words into sentences. Living in a language means adopting the whole civilization that comes with it.
- Professional identity: I love being a scholar and an educator. I do, however, find it difficult to meet colleagues whose view of the profession and our goals within it would coincide with mine.
- Local identity: In the past 10 years I have moved 8 times. And this summer I will be moving two more times. It is obvious that with this way of life it is hardly possible to preserve a strong sense of attachment to any locality in particular.
- Political identity: Some of my political views are so far to the left that some people might consider them radical. For example, I believe that women should have a right to abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy whatsoever. At the same time, my political beliefs also rely on certain concepts that are considered to be deeply conservative. For instance, I am a strong believer in individual responsibility. As a result of these seemingly contradictory views, I have never been able to identify with any political party or program.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Collective Identities
People often ask me why I am so interested in collective identities as a category of analysis. I believe it's because I don't have any and feel very content living without any collective identification. So people who abdicate parts of their individuality (or even give their lives) in order to promote an attachment to a collectivity perplex me. Here is my position in relation to different kinds of collective identities:
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8 comments:
You left out sexual identity.
You are absolutely right! That is heteronormativity for ya. :-( I will not correct the post because that will feel like cheating.
Are you sure that you do not interpret having complex identities with not having ones at all? For example, it is difficult for me to fathom why would someone who lived in one (maybe somewhat bilingual) country until... 18?.. early 20s?.. claim not to have a native language.
It is also interesting to look at all you wrote through the prism of the theories which say that every scale is actually not a straight line with two extremes as far as possible from each other, but a cycle (you seem to have similar theories at least concerning political left and right)...
V.
A collective identity for me entails being able to think in terms of "we" about a certain group of people (that you don't know). I don't feel like that about any group.
As for the language, I don't really speak Ukrainian any more, as sad as it is. And as for Russian, I never felt it as my own, and I never really liked it or felt anything particularly strong for the culture. I couldn't, for example, write fiction in it (and not only because of the total lack of talent). It's hard to explain but I just don't feel it.
Weird, I know.
That's quite interesting... I also have a great difficulty with attaching my identity to the collective identity of "the Russians", whatever that is. Especially now, when they experience this weird nationalist-ortodox wanna-be-superpower-again renaissance. Encountering even otherwise intelligent Russian "patriots" (you know where :) ) makes me want to join Estonian Nationalist Movement... :) (But then it dawns on me that I cannot attach my identity to them either.) However, I have no doubt that my primary language is Russian... Even though I am fluent to the point of being able to think, joke, understand cultural context-intensive jokes etc in several other languages...
Interesting...
V.
I know I have a Ukrainian accent in Russian. And I make "mistakes" with preposiotions and accents. And there is some emotional resentment against the language, as well. So, while it is definitely my primary language as well, I can't feel it as a "native" language. Maybe I'm deluding myself in thinking there is a difference.
If you are happy without identifying to any kind of collective identities, then why are you defining yourself as a Jewish woman? i would never define myself as a German man or as a Catholic man, because nationalism and religion do not matter to me.
My point is that, unfortunately, we are shaped by collective identities. You can't escape from them, at the very best you can be critical about them. You always need an Other to create your own identity. And when you are lucky enough to choose your collective identity/ies, the choice is always ideological.
Of course, I can't help having an ethnic origin and a gender. But I can avoid getting emotionally attached to them. I can avoid fostering in myself a fake sense of commonality of interests and goals based on these things.
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