Shifting Identities: Research Presentation

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Shifting Identities Research Presentation

• Teresa Chen
• teresa.chen_at_gmx.net
• www.teresachen.ch
• Z-Node
• Zurich, November 2006

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Possible Research Aims

• To investigate how media (e.g. film, television,
  photography, Internet) and migration affect
  contested concepts of identity and ethnicity.

3
Possible Research Aims

• To investigate how media (e.g. film, television,
  photography, Internet) and migration affect
  contested concepts of identity and ethnicity.
• To explore how institutional structures
  (political and representational) affect knowledge
  about cultural difference.

4
Possible Research Aims

• To investigate how media (e.g. film, television,
  photography, Internet) and migration affect
  contested concepts of identity and ethnicity.
• To explore how institutional structures
  (political and representational) affect knowledge
  about cultural difference.
• To analyze visual representations of difference
  in media.

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Possible Research Aims

• To investigate how media (e.g. film, television,
  photography, Internet) and migration affect
  contested concepts of identity and ethnicity.
• To explore how institutional structures
  (political and representational) affect knowledge
  about cultural difference.
• To analyze visual representations of difference
  in media.
• To examine the concepts of diaspora and cultural
  hybridity as models of integrating pluralistic
  kaleidoscopic views and to compare historical and
  current forms of media and art as communication
  tools and exhibitions for these views.

6
Possible Research Aims

• To investigate how media (e.g. film, television,
  photography, Internet) and migration affect
  contested concepts of identity and ethnicity.
• To explore how institutional structures
  (political and representational) affect knowledge
  about cultural difference.
• To analyze visual representations of difference
  in media.
• To examine the concepts of diaspora and cultural
  hybridity as models of integrating pluralistic
  kaleidoscopic views and to compare historical and
  current forms of media and art as communication
  tools and exhibitions for these views.

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Shifting Identities Research Presentation

• Part I Representation and the Other
• Part II Cultural Hybridity

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Shifting Identities Research Presentation

• Part I Representation and the Other
• Part II Cultural Hybridity

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How language is used to represent the world

• Reflective Does language reflect a meaning which
  already exists?

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Two ideas of how language is used to represent
the world

• Reflective Does language reflect a meaning which
  already exists?
• Constructionist Is meaning constructed in and
  through language?

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Ferdinand de Saussure and signs

• sign signifier (form actual word or image)
• signified (corresponding concept)

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Ferdinand de Saussure and signs

• sign signifier (form actual word or image)
• signified (corresponding concept)
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
  the signifier and the signified.

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Ferdinand de Saussure and signs

• sign signifier (form actual word or image)
• signified (corresponding concept)
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
  the signifier and the signified.
• Signs are members of a system and are defined in
  relation to the other members of that system.

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Ferdinand de Saussure and signs

• sign signifier (form actual word or image)
• signified (corresponding concept)
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
  the signifier and the signified.
• Signs are members of a system and are defined in
  relation to the other members of that system.
• Signifiers have to be organized into a system of
  differences to produce meaning.

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Ferdinand de Saussure and signs

• sign signifier (form actual word or image)
• signified (corresponding concept)
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
  the signifier and the signified.
• Signs are members of a system and are defined in
  relation to the other members of that system.
• Signifiers have to be organized into a system of
  differences to produce meaning.
• Each language produces not only a different set
  of signifiers, but also a different set of
  signifieds.

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Roland Barthes Denotation and Connotation

• Denotation simple, basic descriptive level of a
  sign

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Roland Barthes Denotation and Connotation

• Denotation simple, basic descriptive level of a
  sign
• Connotation links these signs to broader,
  cultural themes, concepts or meanings (wider
  semantic field of culture)

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Roland Barthes Myth today (1957)
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Roland Barthes Myth today (1957)
Meaning 1 a black soldier is giving the French
flag a salute
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Roland Barthes Myth today (1957)
Meaning 1 a black soldier is giving the French
flag a salute Meaning 2 that France is a great
Empire, and that all her sons, without any colour
discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag,
and that there is no better answer to the
detractors of an alleged colonialism than the
zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called
oppressors.
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Barthes Myth today (1957)
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Barthes Rhetoric of the image (1977)
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Andy Warhol 32 Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)
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Foucault and discursive representation

• Physical things exist, but only become meaningful
  and objects of knowledge within discourse.

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Foucault and discursive representation

• Physical things exist, but only become meaningful
  and objects of knowledge within discourse.
• Discourse, representation, and knowledge are true
  only within a specific historical context. (e.g.
  homosexual as social subject was produced in
  late 19th century)

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Foucault Knowledge, power, truth

• How knowledge through discursive practices in
  institutional settings regulate conduct of others.

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Foucault Knowledge, power, truth

• How knowledge through discursive practices in
  institutional settings regulate conduct of
  others.
• Not only is knowledge a form of power, but power
  is used to decide whether or how knowledge should
  be applied.

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Foucault Knowledge, power, truth

• How knowledge through discursive practices in
  institutional settings regulate conduct of
  others.
• Not only is knowledge a form of power, but power
  is used to decide whether or how knowledge should
  be applied.
• Knowledge is more important that truth knowledge
  with power assumes authority of truth but also
  has power to make itself true.

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Foucault regime of truth

• Each society has its regime of truth, its
  general politics of truth that is, the types
  of discourse which it accepts and makes function
  as true, the mechanisms and instances which
  enable one to distinguish true and false
  statements, the means by which each is
  sanctioned ... the status of those who are
  charged with saying what counts as true.
• (Foucault M. 1980. Power/Knowledge, pp. 196)

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Foucault Power and subject

• Traditional subject an individual, the core of
  the self, and the independent, authentic source
  of action and meaning

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Foucault Power and subject

• Traditional subject an individual, the core of
  the self, and the independent, authentic source
  of action and meaning
• For Foucault
• Discourses bearers of various subject-positions
• Subject is produced within discourse and
  subjected to discourse
• Subject position we must locate ourselves in the
  position from which the discourse makes most
  sense and become its subjects by subjecting
  ourselves to its meanings, power and regulation.

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Foucault The Order of Things (1970)
Velasquez, Las Meninas, 1656
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Different disciplines and discussions of
difference

• Linguistics (Saussure) difference is essential
  to meaning

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Different disciplines and discussions of
difference

• Linguistics (Saussure) difference is essential
  to meaning
• Language theory (Bakhtin) we construct meaning
  through a dialogue with the Other

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Different disciplines and discussions of
difference

• Linguistics (Saussure) difference is essential
  to meaning
• Language theory (Bakhtin) we construct meaning
  through a dialogue with the Other
• Anthropological (du Gay, Hall, Douglas,
  Levi-Strauss) culture gives things meaning by
  classifying them and difference is basis of
  symbolic order which we call culture

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Different disciplines and discussions of
difference

• Linguistics (Saussure) difference is essential
  to meaning
• Language theory (Bakhtin) we construct meaning
  through a dialogue with the Other
• Anthropological (du Gay, Hall, Douglas,
  Levi-Strauss) culture gives things meaning by
  classifying them and difference is basis of
  symbolic order which we call culture
• Psychoanalytic (Freud, Lacan) the Other is
  fundamental to the constitution of the self, to
  us as subjects, and to sexual identity

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Ethnographic exhibitions An example of
representing difference

• Semiotic aspect practice of producing meaning
  through internal ordering and displaying of
  objects
• Discursive aspect role of exhibitions and
  museums in production of social knowledge

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Exhibiting Others in the West

• Live exhibitions of non-European people in Europe
  and USA
• Most popular in 19th century through mid-20th
  century
• Natives performed various ceremonies, rites,
  dances
• Trophy heads and other body parts still part of
  many Western museums collections (e.g. The
  British Museum and La Musee de l'Homme, France)

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The Hottentot Venus
Ah! how comical is nature.
Oh! God Damn what roast beef!
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Coco Fusco Guillermo Gomez-Pena Undiscovered
Amerindians (1992)
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Yellow Peril
1899 editorial cartoon with caption The Yellow
Terror in all his glory
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Fu Manchu(1913) Bad/EvilAsian
Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline,
high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and
a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and
long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest
him with all the cruel cunning of an entire
Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect,
with all the resources of science past and
present... Imagine that awful being, and you have
a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow
peril incarnate in one man. (Rohmer, S. The
Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, 1913, p. 17)
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Charlie Chan (1925) Good Asian
He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the
light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were
chubby as a baby's, his skin ivory tinted, his
black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes
slanting. (Biggers, E. The House Without a Key,
1925, p. 76)
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Renee Tajima Lotus Blossoms Don't Bleed (1989)

• Dominant stereotypes of east Asian women in North
  American media
• Lotus Blossom Baby shy and delicate China Dolls
  and Geisha Girls
• Dragon Lady often prostitutes and devious madams
  or killers

Picturing oriental girls a (re) educational
videotape by Valerie Soe, 1992.
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Anna May Wong Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
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Anna May Wong Shanghai Express (1932)
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Nancy Kwan The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
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Lucy Liu Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003)
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Shifting Identities Research Presentation

• Part I Representation and the Other
• Part II Cultural Hybridity

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History and use of hybrid

• Biological Cross between two species
• Botanical e.g. grafting a vine or a rose onto a
  different root stock
• Use in vocabulary of the Victorian extreme
  right which regarded different races as
  different species
• (Young, R. 1995. Colonial Desire, p. 10)

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Hybridity and fertility in the 19th century

• Naturalists have generally admitted that animals
  of the same species are fertile, reproducing
  their kind for ever whilst on the contrary, if
  an animal be the product of two distinct species,
  the hybrid, more or less, was sure to perish or
  to become extinct .. The products of such a
  mixture are not fertile.
• (Knox R. 1850. The Races of Man, p. 487)

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Garth Williams The Rabbits Wedding (1958)
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Mixed Blood in USA

• Anti-miscegenation laws in USA until 1967
• Hypodescent assigning a child of mixed race the
  race of his or her more socially subordinate
  parent
• One-Drop Theory one drop of non-white blood
  classified as black
• Mulattos, quadroons, octoroons, quintoons

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Bahktin Linguistic Hybridity

• Uses hybridity in language theory to describe
  phenomenon of multivoicedness within a single
  speech act as linguistic and social
• What is hybridization? It is a mixture of two
  social languages within the limits of a single
  utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an
  utterance, between two different linguistic
  consciousnesses, separated from one another by an
  epoch, by social differentiation or by some other
  factor.
• (Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination, p.
  358)

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Bahktin Hybridity as subversive

• Authoritative discourse by its very nature
  incapable of being double-voiced it cannot enter
  into hybrid constructions (Bakhtin, M. 1981. The
  Dialogic Imagination, p. 344)

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Postcolonialism

• Literally, refers to period following decline of
  colonialism - e.g., end or lessening of
  domination by European empires

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Postcolonialism

• Literally, refers to period following decline of
  colonialism - e.g., end or lessening of
  domination by European empires
• Focuses on persistence of colonial forms of power
  in contemporary world politics - how social
  constructions of race, gender and class
  differences uphold relations of power

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Postcolonialism

• Literally, refers to period following decline of
  colonialism - e.g., end or lessening of
  domination by European empires
• Focuses on persistence of colonial forms of power
  in contemporary world politics - how social
  constructions of race, gender and class
  differences uphold relations of power
• Responses and resistance to colonial dominant
  thought, through literature, visual arts,
  performance, and politics.

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Postcolonial literary theory

• How literature of colonial powers has been used
  to justify colonialism, through perpetuation of
  representations of colonized people as inferior
• How writers from colonized countries have
  attempted to articulate and celebrate their
  cultural identities and reclaim them from
  colonizers

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Homi K. Bhabha Post-colonialism and hybridity

• Subverts the narratives of colonial power and
  dominant cultures

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Homi K. Bhabha Post-colonialism and hybridity

• Subverts the narratives of colonial power and
  dominant cultures
• Interested in the narrated or imagined
  qualities of nations

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Homi K. Bhabha Post-colonialism and hybridity

• Subverts the narratives of colonial power and
  dominant cultures
• Interested in the narrated or imagined
  qualities of nations
• Critical of essentialism and conceptualizations
  of original culture

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Homi K. Bhabha Post-colonialism and hybridity

• Subverts the narratives of colonial power and
  dominant cultures
• Interested in the narrated or imagined
  qualities of nations
• Critical of essentialism and conceptualizations
  of original culture
• All cultural relations are ambivalent,
  subversive, transgressive and hybrid

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Bhabha Cultural identity and differences

• Liminal or in-betweenness of cultural identity
  across differences of race, class, gender, and
  cultural traditions

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Bhabha Cultural identity and differences

• Liminal or in-betweenness of cultural identity
  across differences of race, class, gender, and
  cultural traditions
• Cultural identity is always and already a
  conglomeration of differences

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Bhabha Cultural identity and differences

• Liminal or in-betweenness of cultural identity
  across differences of race, class, gender, and
  cultural traditions
• Cultural identity is always and already a
  conglomeration of differences
• Traces and traits of the Other make up the
  identity of the self

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Bhabha Cultural identity and differences

• Liminal or in-betweenness of cultural identity
  across differences of race, class, gender, and
  cultural traditions
• Cultural identity is always and already a
  conglomeration of differences
• Traces and traits of the Other make up the
  identity of the self
• No cultural meaning is separable from its
  originally multi-cultural production

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Bhabha Hybridity and the third space

• For me the importance of hybridity is not to be
  able to trace two original moments from which the
  third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the
  'third space' which enables other positions to
  emerge. (Bhabha, H. 1990. The Third Space in
  Identity Community, Culture, Difference, p. 211)

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Bhabha Cultural hybridity as performative

• Terms of cultural engagement, whether
  antagonistic or affiliative, are produced
  performatively. The representation of difference
  must not be hastily read as the reflection of
  pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the
  fixed tablet of tradition. The social
  articulation of difference, from the minority
  perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation
  that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that
  emerge in moments of historical transformation.
  (Bhahba, H. 1994. The Location of Culture, p. 2)

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Hybridity Past and present

• Hybridity in particular shows the connections
  between the racial categories of the past and
  contemporary cultural discourse it may be used
  in different ways, given different inflections
  and apparently discrete references, but it always
  reiterates and reinforces the dynamics of the
  same conflictual economy whose tensions and
  divisions it re-enacts in its own antithetical
  structure. There is no single, or correct,
  concept of hybridity it changes as it repeats,
  but it also repeats as it changes. (Young, R.
  1995. Colonial Desire, p. 27)

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Hybridity Future?

• To develop my own theory of hybridity to use in
  my own practice

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Thanks!