Title
Has cultural blending changed the way we define ourselves as individuals?
Has cultural blending changed the way we identify ourselves as individuals?
Introduction
- Introduce and explain the question and topic
What are the different ways in which we define ourselves?
- Brief overview of internal and external definitions of identity.
- How does this relate to the question?
Main Body
Blending of cultures HAS changed the way we define ourselves.
- Taiye Selasi “all experience is local, all identity is experience”
- Power of society, how it conditions our thoughts and behaviours.
- ‘Culture may be commodification but it is also communication.’ (McRobbie, 1999 : 29) Marxist theory of commodification - when something is produced by human labour and is available for sale. The quote is saying that culture is now something that is available to buy and people use it to communicate things. For example hip hop culture communicates ideas of rebellion and transformation and people buy into this.
- ‘Consumer culture is instead an arena of female participation and enjoyment. This runs the risk of inducing a sense of political complacency.’ (McRobbie, 1999 : 31) We spend for enjoyment and are complacent about the fact we don’t understand the meaning of what we are buying.
- Capitalism - manipulates man to conform to ideals.
- ‘manipulates ‘him’ into mass conformity in the name of democratic ideals.’ (Adorno 1978 : 280)
- Postmodernity de-centred these concepts. the man became the subject and is therefore ‘subjected’ to the language that constructs ones identity.
- Roland Barthes - we accept the ‘doxa’ (public opinions, voice of nature, whats given without saying’ we are recruited as subjects by ideology -we are subjected to social values and and made to internalise them as natural. (Barthes 1977 : 47)
- ‘As social groups and classes live, if not in their productive then in their ‘social’ relations, increasingly fragmented and sectionally differentiated lives, the mass media are more and more responsible (a) for providing the basis on which groups and classes construct an image of the lives, meanings, practices and values of other groups and classes; (b) for providing the images, representations and ideas around which he social totality composed of all these separate and fragmented pieces can be coherently grasped.’ (Hall, 1977)
- ‘the ‘individual’ became the ‘subject’.’ (Hutcheon, 2013 : 125) identity became replaced by the term ‘subjectivity’, subject to different influences
- ‘it is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its ‘secret’ identity and communicates its forbidden meanings.’
Use factors from different places to form your identity.
- The postmodern self was not seen as one thing of identity, it is always seen as having part of other things within itself, as though identity is but from numerous factors.
- ‘What the postmodern did was deprive the modern of its idea of a single anchoring centre.’ (Hutcheon, 2013 : 124)
- ‘incredulity toward metanarrativeness’ (Lyotard 1984 : xxiv)
Race
- ‘Race turns out to be a false idea that has had, and continues to exert, powerful global consequences even after its fundamental falseness has been recognised.’ (Amoko, 2013 : 132)
- ‘its boundaries are notoriously unreliable and its identity categories … are internally incoherent.’ (Amoko, 2013 : 132)
- race is thought to be part of your inbuilt identity as if it comes from within but ‘we now know that race is socially constructed’ (Amoko, 2013 : 132)
DEFINITION: reactionary - opposing political or social progress..
he describes ‘the inventedness and falseness of race’ as ‘beside the point, if not reactionary.’ (Amoko, 2013 : 133)
Describes how we talk about race as a ‘lousy language’ (Smith 1991 : 66)
Blending of cultures HAS NOT changed the way we define ourselves.
- Essentialism - biological makeup, your soul
- Humanism - places man at the centre and hand a unique identity. He still partakes in universalised human nature.
- Heritage
- ‘one’s particular national culture and history had a determining effect on one’s theorising.’ She goes on to speak about some of the factors of this being ‘religion, gender, race, ethnicity and sexual choice.’ (Hutcheon, 2013 : 125)
- ‘situated knowledges’ (Harraway, 1991 : 195) the local and the particular became the anchors of postmodern situated knowledges, more focussed on the theories of identity listed above.
- Cultural appropriation - can it be a way of expressing identity or is it actually irrelevant to us and merely a show.
- ‘but there are still remain large gaps between how culture is understood in policy and how it is theorized in cultural and media studies.’ (McRobbie, 1999 : 24) The authentic policies of a certain culture are warped and lost as it moves into the media and becomes more readily available to the public as a cheapened and less meaningful version of the original. This is not just physical goods but also the morals and ethics of cultures which can be misinterpreted along the way.
- What people wear: Factors such as budget and personal taste have an impact on this, but it is also a method of communicating your place in society, your beliefs and interests.
- ‘I speak through my clothes.’ (Eco, 1973)
- ‘subcultures can be said to transgress the laws of ‘man’s second nature’.’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 103)
How do these concepts affect creative practitioners?
- Blending of cultures makes something new
- ‘a credible image of social cohesion can only be maintained through the appropriation and redefinition of cultures of resisitance’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 85)
- an example being… jazz music, originally in black culture being …
- the music changed as it was ‘fed into mainstream popular culture during the 20s and 30s’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 46)
- white swing epitomises how jazz has been modified, it now had a much wider audience and had ‘none of the subversive connotations of its original black sources.’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 47)
- … the hipster was … [a] typical lower-class dandy, dressed up like a pimp, affecting a very cool, cerebral tone - to distinguish him from the gross, impulsive types that surrounded him in the ghetto - and aspiring to the finer things in life, like very good ‘tea’, the finest of sounds - jazz or Afro-Cuban … [whereas] … the Beat was originally some earnest middle class college boy like Kerouac, who was stifled by the cities and the culture he had inherited and who wanted to cut out for distance and exotic places, where he could live like the ‘people’, write, smoke and meditate.’ (Goldman, 1974)
- ‘The hipster style was assembled in relatively close proximity to the ghetto black.’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 48)
- Hipster and beat subcultures were ‘organised around a shared identity with blacks’, the nature and styles of these new subcultures were different.
- when discussing how the mods break down into numerous other subcultures, he describes it as ‘an ensemble which had been composed on the cusp of the two worlds, embodying aesthetic themes common to both.’ (Hebdige, 1979 : 57)
- Does their work reflect their identity anyway? Is it the maker’s or the consumer’s interpretation that matters more?
- Barthes writes "to give a text and author is to impose a limit on that text". He also says that the author is seen as a "father to his child" when in fact, a father and son are two totally different people only connected by their bloodline. The same with the author and text, there is sometimes nothing in common between the two other than that one is the other's creator.
- ‘commodities give rise to meaning-making processes which are frequently at odds with the intended meaning or usage.’ (McRobbie, 1999 : 34) We concsciously or subconsciously buy things which reflect our interests, beliefs or desired image but the things we buy into have a much deeper rooted meaning than what we perceive them to have.
Conclusion
- It depends whether we identify internally or externally.
- External factors have the most impact on the average human, even though this may not be a conscious thing.
- Is it only part of your identity if it is not a conscious decision?
Bibliography
Adorno, T. (1978) On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening. In: Arato, A and Gebhardt, E. ‘The Essential Frankfurt School Reader’, New York, Random House.
Amoko, A. (2013) Race and Postcoloniality. In: Malpas, S and Wake, P. ‘Critical and Cultural Theory’, Oxon, Routledge, pp. 120-130.
Barthes, R. (1968) 'The Death of the Author', London, Fontana.
Barthes, R. (1977) ‘Image, Music, Text’, trans. Stephen Heath, London, Fontana.
Eco, U. (1973) Social Life as a Sign System. In: Robey, D. ‘Structuralism: The Wolfson College Lectures 1972’, Cape.
Goldman, A. (1974) ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce’, Panther.
Hall, S. (1977) Culture, the Media and the “Ideological Effect”. In: Curran, J. ‘Mass Commuication and Society’, Arnold.
Hebdige, D. (1979) ‘Subculture - The Meaning of Style’, Oxon, Routledge.
Hutcheon, L. (2013) Postmodernism. In: Malpas, S and Wake, P. ‘Critical and Cultural Theory’, Oxon, Routledge, pp. 120-130.
Lyotard, JF. (1984) ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’, trans, Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Manchester, Manchester University Press.
McRobbie, A. (1999) ‘In The Culture Society’, London, Routledge.
