Cultural Identities

Research Area 6: Cultural Identities

picture_culture_and_identities Focussing on the concept of identity, this RA explores the cultural construction of gendered and social identities in various disciplines, periods and regions. Building on the recent critique of identity and acknowledging that the concept requires further critical reflection and concretisation, the RA draws on multi-disciplinary approaches, while emphasising that the latter need to be more clearly articulated. Research on identity conducted in the social sciences and history has demonstrated just how controversial the category is because of its unhappy tendency to reproduce dichotomies and essentialisms (Brubaker/Cooper; Niethammer). This has resulted in a more sceptical use of the concept of identity in projects in linguistics and literary studies, the social sciences and history currently being carried out at the GCSC. Specifically, the RA is developing identity concepts that stress difference (Altnöder et al. 2011) and that are based on a translational, anti-essentialist understanding of culture that considers identity to be more a task of translation rather than a mere construct. Whereas the focus of the RA during the first funding period has been primarily on the analysis of ‘identity’ as a question of representation, on stereotypes, comparative imagology and memory as well as narrative studies, the RA aims in the second funding period to focus more on historical and sociological approaches. This will involve more attention to the contextualisation and localisation of identities as well as an analysis of life worlds and an exploration of how concepts are transformed and processes of hybridity occur. Work in this direction has already got underway in the graduate research group on “Culture-Ethnicity-Nation: Identities in Eastern Europe” and during the “Regions of Culture – Regions of Identity” summer school (Baumbach 2010). The relationships between the empirical methods of various disciplines need to be emphasised in order to break out of the straitjacket of mere reflection on concepts and to account more for contexts – local, historical and social. In addition to intersectional gender research and Queer Studies, the fields of research will include Post-Human Studies, Material Culture Studies, Animal Studies and Spatial Studies. This will also open up avenues to post-colonial critiques of identity in the direction of multiple identities and identity-building processes, e.g. in the field of Diaspora Studies, with its emphasis on identity displacement.

Activities

The research area’s activities and focus emerge from within the participants’ interests and projects, serving as a common platform for exchange, synergies and new ideas. In discussions with visiting experts, workshops and symposia, the thus “emerging concepts” of identity will also be linked with the activities of the other research areas and GCSC’s “travelling concepts”. Furthermore several members of the research area have established a working group which focusses on the question of cultural identity in Eastern Europe.

Former Research Focus and Activities

The research area Culture & Identities explores the different ways in which identity is constitutive of culture and in which cultures forge identities. For a long time, the concept of identity has served as a privileged category of research and self-reflection in the humanities and the social sciences, for instance in philosophy, psychological and sociological theory, postcolonial studies, historical linguistics and contemporary cultural history. Contemporary research agrees on the fact that identities do not exist prior to processes of remembering, but are an outcome of ephemeral, emergent narratives of the past (J. Assmann). Identity as a relational and process-based construct on collective as well as on individual levels is closely connected to cultural and psychological concepts of alterity (Goffmann, Said, Kristeva). Collective images of the self and the other and the differentiating impact of identity and identification on the levels of race, religion, class and gender have been studied in the frameworks of postcolonial and cultural studies (Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’, Hall’s ‘cultural identities’ or Butler’s deconstruction of ‘sex and gender’) and through questions of identity politics (Frazer) and popular culture (Hall, Yúdice). This critical reflection on identitary constructions also shows the persistence and re-emergence of essentialist, apparently solid and stable identities on an individual and collective scale (for example in still quite common conceptions of sexuality or gender roles, and in different forms of nationalism).

Deconstructions and Developments

In response, critical theory has questioned these kind of identitary politics and strategies (Adorno, Horkheimer) and, deconstructionist and poststructuralist the-ory has analyzed the very mechanics of the “effects of evidence” in linguistic and symbolic significance (Derrida, Foucault), as well as in images of the self and the other (Lacan, Baumann). Postcolonial studies have drawn attention to the fact that collective-cultural identities are never homogenous, monolithic and definite entities, but rather inherently syncretistic and constantly shifting phenomena, which are based on intricate processes of cultural contact, exchange, and differentiation (for example Spivak on ‘subalternity’, hooks on ‘race/class/gender’ or Gilroy on ‘nation and racism’). Material, social and mental elements (such as languages, art objects, people, institutions, ideas and concepts) are transferred from one culture to another and in this process shape and alter concepts of identity.

Research Approach and Further Projects

The cross-fertilization of issues of cultural identity with notions of transcultural dynamics has a great, and so far scarcely tapped, interdisciplinary potential: Both concepts play an important role in virtually all disciplines constituting the study of culture, for instance, in literary studies (‘transculturación’ and ‘hybridity’ in Latin-American and New English Literatures for example; cf. Ortiz, Rama and Bhabha), in linguistics (‘creolization’ of languages as identity markers) and in cultural history (‘appropriation’, Burke).

Recent work

Winter term 2011/12 - Summer term 2012: The RA concentrated on theories of multiculturalism and the study of ethno-cultural identities in relation to aspects of gender and religion. For this, we engaged in the work of Jürgen Habermas, Susan Moller Okin, Tariq Modood and others. We went on to discuss the concept of multiculturalism in contrast to concepts of inter- and transculturalism, mainly drawing on Wolfgang Welsch's notion of 'transcultural societies'. Finally, we focused on Jacques Derrida's understanding of culture as 'not-being-identical-to-itself', developed in his text Das andere Kap/The Other Heading, and on Andreas Reckwitz' work on subject analysis and cultural theory in Das hybride Subjekt.

Literature (selection):

Jürgen Habermas (1994): Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State
Susan Moller Okin (1999): Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?
Tariq Modood (1998): Multiculturalism, Securalism and the State
Wolfgang Welsch (2005): Auf dem Weg zu transkulturellen Gesellschaften
Jacques Derrida (1992): Das andere Kap
Andreas Reckwitz (2006): Das hybride Subjekt

Summer term 2011: The work of the RA will be dedicated to current debates about collective identity, strategic essentialism and its limits, focussing on questions such as: how much agency can identity (or a strategic essentialism) provide? What about the dangers of static and therefore rather repressive categories? Different identity concepts discussed include gender, age, ethnic and national identity. We will gain deeper insights into the problematics of the concept of identity in the Master Class with Doris Bachmann-Medick on: “Identität. Eine umstrittene Kategorie” (07/06/11).

Winter term 2010/11: We focussed on one author, Stuart Hall, to grasp his approach to cultural identity, multiculturalism and ethnicity. The master class “Key thinkers on Identity 1: Stuart Hall” (02/02/11) and the keynote lecture “Perspectives of Cultural Studies” (02/01/11) with Rainer Winter that we organized, completed these discussions at the end of the term. Additionally, the RA co-organized the Master Class with Oliver Marchart on “Ästhetik des Öffentlichen” (11/15/10).

Literature:

Hall, Stuart: Who Needs Identity?
Hall, Stuart: The Question of Cultural Identity
Hall, Stuart: The multi-cultural question
Hall, Stuart: New ethnicities
Fiske, John: Remarks on Hall

Summer term 2010: The RA discussed the projects of its members, concentrating on the topics: Construction of Nations, Theories of Identity in Sociology and Social Psychology, Individual Processes of Identification in Corporations.

Literature:

Renan, Ernest: Was ist eine Nation?
Thom, Martin: Tribes Within Nations. The ancient Germans and the history of modern France
Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities
Sommer, Roy: Merkmale kollektiver Identität
Bhabha, Homi K. (1990): DissemiNation
Brewer, Marilynn/Gardner, Wendy (1996): Levels of collective identity and self representations
Cooley, Charles (1902): Society and the individual
Mead, George Herbert (1934): The self
Ravasi, Davide/Schultz, Majken (2006): Responding to organizational identity threats
Keupp, Heiner et al. (2008): Identitätskonstruktionen

Summer term 2008 – winter term 2009/10: The RA discussed different viewpoints of the complex subject of identity, concerning migration, knowledge, ethnicity and the question of the limits of identity. Identity was analyzed in terms of different categories and contexts, such as identity in postcolonial struggles, national identity, corporate identity and identity as category in Social Psychology. We organized the workshop: “Kulturelle Funktionen literarischer Identitätskonstruktionen” (12/14/09).

Literature:

Langenohl, Andreas/Kim, John N.: Translation and Migration from the Viewpoint of the Idiom
Wirth, Uwe (2006): Aufpfropfung als Figur des Wissens in der Kultur- und Mediengeschichte
Hitchcock, Peter: The Genre of Postcoloniality
Anonymous: Introduction to “Learning the Arts of Linguistic Survival”
Kaser, Karl: Religionszugehörigkeit und Ethnizität der albanischen Bevölkerung im südöstlichen Europa. Verhandlungsspielräume und ihre Grenzen
Langenohl, Andreas/Kim, John N.: “After Identity”? Idioms, Translations and Migration
Iser, Wolfgang (1979): Ist der Identitätsbegriff ein Paradigma für die Funktion der Fiktion
Derrida, Jacques/Kamuf, Peggy (1992): Given Time: The Time of the King
Hitchcock, Peter – The Failed State and the State of Failure

Workshop 12/09:

Freud, Siegmund – Das Ich und das Es
Elias, Norbert: Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation
Boccaccio, Giovanni: Das Dekameron
Simmel, Georg: Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben
Benjamin, Walter: Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert

Winter term 2007/08: The RA focussed on cultural functions of constructions of identity in literature. We (co-) organized an opening workshop (04/07) and a workshop on national identities with Marcel Vejmelka (06/11/07).

Literature:

Hall, Stuart: Kulturelle Identität und Globalisierung
Rama, Angel: Processes of Transculturation in Latin American Narrative
Davis, Mike (2001): Magical Urbanism. Latinos Reinvent the US City
Barthes, Roland (2003): Das Reich der Zeichen

Workshop 04/07:

Niethammer, Lutz (2000): Kollektive Identität: heimliche Quellen einer unheimlichen Konjunktur
Kaufmann, Jean-Claude (2005): Die Erfindung des Ich: eine Theorie der Identität
Iser, Wolfgang (1979): Ist der Identitätsbegriff ein Paradigma für die Funktion der Fiktion?
Marquard, Odo (1979): Identität. Schwundtelos und Mini-Essenz

Workshop 06/07:

Huntington, Samuel P. (2004): The Hispanic Challenge
Said, Edward: Orientalism
Lehrmann, Albrecht: Reden über Erfahrung
Gilroy, Paul: Der Black Atlantic

Participating scholars

Dr. Doris Bachmann-Medick
Theresa Beilschmidt
Silvia Boide
Dr. Jordana Greenblatt
Lauren Greyson
Valerie Hantzsche
Andrea Härtel
Miyako Hayakawa
Franka Heise
Natalija Ivanusa
Mariusz Kałczewiak
Glory Lueong
Janne Mende
Julia Michael
Dr. Beatrice Michaelis
Franziska Ochs
David Scheller