On the nature of identities

Yes, but others can also ascribe an identity to you. For example, whether someone participates in what makes a Catholic a Catholic, many people will consider that person one, even if that person has lapsed.

Again, this is not an identity, but a perception. I can perceive someone to be, say, a Catholic, but if they identify with being Jewish, which person would be "wrong"?

Now if someone identifies with being, say, a Catholic, and we prescribe to that person all the cliches and tropes that are supposedly associated with Catholicism without knowing how said individual may practice their faith, then you have a problem dealing with how definitions are created (in this case, this presupposed that the masses, or large groups of people, will define a certain identity).

Good lord, OP, that's one impressive wall of text.

"...what is identity? When do we stop acting like something and actually become that something? And are these things performative, or innate?"

Going to go for a third option here, but let me lead up to it.

"identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results."

I disagree, but again I'll get to that...

"If I identify, and believe myself to be something I am clearly not and incapable of becoming, am I that thing?"

"It's something I think of regularly in my head, since my identity is particularly fluid." - Close

"Identity works in a similar fashion. We can identify with a general concept of who we are as humans, but we can't necessarily define it for one reason or another" - Getting closer

"My natural tendency is to think of identities in terms of rules and restrictions—e.g., if your identity is straight, you can't have sex with men." - demonstrably wrong, sorry.

That's enough to get the gist of the comments here. The mistake I think many of you are making is to consider "identity" as an intellectual concept that could in theory be expressed in words, and attached to an object, much like a tag is attached to a web-page.

I don't think that's really how it works. Identity is an emotion, a feeling-state, which is impossible to express linguistically, but which approximates a sense of personal continuity we feel as we go from situation to situation over time. I feel myself as having something in common with the person who actually experienced the events I hold in my memory (although objectively there are reasons to question that). We use concepts and categories we borrow from others to label various aspects of this self to ourselves- therefore our identity is the attempt by our conscious selves to analyze our whole selves. It's an attempt, a process, not a performative outcome- therefore what we use as an identity changes from moment to moment as we collect new information about ourselves directly from introspection and from other people reacting to us, however, the feeling-state I mentioned earlier doesn't change (that's why we feel a sense of continuity in the first place). The "real" or "original" part of our self is the inexpressible part, and the expressible part is merely the outcome of our own and others' attempts to assess and label the real part.

"I am a man" means that I associate my gender with the feeling of self-continuity that I have, but if I changed my priorities and de-emphasized my gender (or underwent a sex change operation) that sense of self-continuity would not change. I would still feel a connection, a sense of having been the same person. I would still "identify" with my "self" even though outwardly many important things had changed. Now some people make this mistake- in Kurushio's words they confuse the performance with the participation. You are not the labels you attach to yourself, you are really something more primal than that.

We never become what we claim to be, not perfectly at least, because our claims are framed in symbolic language, and symbolic language is our map to what we are, but is not the terrain itself. However, our internalized claims regarding what we are do influence what we think and do, which in turn become more information we gather about ourselves, and therefore can be regarded as important feedback. "I am a man" really means "I am trying to be a man" and most likely succeeding in some ways, and falling short in others. Whether or not one is somehow really a man is unanswerable and is in many ways actually missing the point. This equally applies whether one is discussing one's gender, one's birthplace, one's morality, or any other aspect of the self.

"I am"- everything else is deduction.

Agreed with a lot of that. Identity is a fluid thing, and it's hard to not only pinpoint, but define as well.

Sadly, when people ask, we need to give an answer, which doesn't do much on its own.

I also find that the search for identity parallels rather nicely with the search for purpose. A reason may be that some people find purpose in things we can define (hobbies, viewpoints, morality, religion, etc.). Just a thought.

^^ I dunno—I'm with Descartes on the idea that someone in an insane asylum who identifies as a pumpkin still isn't a pumpkin.

edited 28th Mar '11 11:51:13 AM by feotakahari

Then you and I are in agreement.