You are here: Home / Archives for identity
post

Action, Speech, and the Public Realm

29/10/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Action and speech are so closely related because the primordial and specifically human act must at the same time contain the answer to the question asked of every newcomer: 'Who are you?' This disclosure of who somebody is, is implicit in both his words and his deeds; yet obviously the affinity between speech and revelation is much closer than that between action and revelation, just as the affinity between action and beginning is closer than that between speech and beginning, although many, and even most acts, are performed in the manner of speech. Without the accompaniment of speech, at any rate, action would not only lose its revelatory character, but, and by the same token, it would lose its subject, as it were; not acting men but performing robots would achieve what, humanly speaking, would remain incomprehensible. Speechless action would no longer be action because there would no longer be an actor, and the actor, the doer of deeds, is possibly only if he is at the same time the speaker of words. The action he begins is humanly disclosed by the word, and through his deed can be perceived in its brute physical appearance without verbal accompaniment, it becomes relevant only through the spoken word in which he identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do.

No other performance requires speech to the same extent as action. In all other performances speech plays a subordinate role, as a means of communication or a mere accompaniment to something that could also be achieved in silence. It is true that speech is extremely useful as a means of communication and information, but as such it could be replaced by a sign language, which then might prove to be even more useful and expedient to convey certain meanings, as in mathematics and other scientific disciplines or in certain forms of teamwork. Thus, it is also true that man's capacity to act, and especially to act in concert, is extremely useful for the purposes of self-defense or of pursuit of interests; but if nothing more were at stake here than to use action as a means to an end, it is obvious that the same end could be much more easily attained in mute violence, so that action seems a not very efficient substitute for violence, just as speech, from the viewpoint of sheer utility, seems an awkward substitute for sign language.

In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and sound of the voice. This disclosure of 'who' in contradistinction to 'what' somebody is— his qualities, gifts, talents, and short-comings, which he may display or hide—is implicit in everything somebody says and does. It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a wilful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this 'who' in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the 'who,' which appears so clearly an unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visibly only to those he encounters.

This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for nor against them—that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure, and this neither the doer of good works, who must be without self and preserve complete anonymity, nor the criminal, who must hide himself from others, can take upon themselves. Both are lonely figures, the one being for, the other against, all men; they, therefore remain outside the pale of human intercourse and are, politically, marginal figures who usually enter the historical scene in times of corruption, disintegration, and political bankruptcy. Because of its inherent tendency to disclose the agent together with the act, action needs for its full appearance the shining brightness we once called glory, and which is possibly only in the public realm" (Arendt 1998:178-180).

Arendt, Hannah
1998[1958] The Human Condition, second edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Citation Style AAA

Filed Under: Editor's Notes Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Gadamer on the Technologizing of Public Opinion

01/09/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Still more perilous is the effect of the technical penetration of society by means of the technologizing of the formation of public opinion. Today this is perhaps the strongest new factor in the play of social forces. The modern technology of information has made available possibilities that make necessary the selection of information to a heretofore unimaginable extent. Any selection, however, means acting in the name of everyone else; that cannot be otherwise. Whoever does the selecting withholds something. If he were not to make a selection, things would be still worse. Then one would lose the last remnant of understanding to the relentless stream of information by which one is flooded. It is inevitable, then, that the modern technology of communication leads to a more powerful manipulation of our minds. One can intentionally steer public opinion in certain directions and exercise influence on behalf of certain decisions. Possession of the news media is the decisive issue, which is why in every democracy more or less impotent attempts have been made in the administration and structuring of the public news media to bring about balance and control. That this is never accomplished to the degree that the consumer of the news can be assured of a genuine satisfaction of his need for information is clear from the increasing apathy of mass society with regard to public affairs.

The increase in the degree of information, then, does not necessarily mean a strengthening of social reason. Instead it seems to me that the real problem lies right here: the threatening loss of identity by people today. The individual in society who feels dependent and helpless in the face of its technically mediated life forms becomes incapable of establishing an identity. This has a profound social effect. Here lies the greatest danger under which our civilization stands: the elevation of adaptive qualities to privileged status.

In a technological civilization it is inevitable in the long run that the adaptive power of the individual is rewarded more than his creative power. Put in terms of a slogan, the society of experts is simultaneously a society of functionaries as well, for it is constitutive of the notion of the functionary that he be completely concentrated upon the administration of his function. In the scientific, technical, economic, monetary processes, and most especially in administration, politics, and similar forms, he has to maintain himself as what he is: one inserted for the sake of the smooth functioning of the apparatus. That is why he is in demand, and therein lie his chances for advancement. Even with the dialectic of this evolution is sensible to each one who asserts that ever fewer people are making the decisions and ever more are manning the apparatus, modern industrial society is oppressed by immanent structural pressures. But this leads to the degeneration of practice into technique and — through no fault of the experts themselves — to a general decline into social irrationality" (Gadamer 1993:73-74).

Gadamer Hans-Georg
1993[1981] Reason in the Age of Science. Frederick G. Lawrence, trans. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Citation Style AAA

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

Colonization of the Lifeworld

28/03/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"The crises associated with late capitalism affect society and individual and threaten-both objectively and subjectively-the identity of society and individual. Objectively speaking, late capitalism manifests an identity crisis or inner contradiction between incompatible steering imperatives. The state is caught in the midst of a system crisis in which it vacillates between behaving like a socialist state and behaving like a liberal capitalist state. Like a socialist state it funnels public revenue into welfare projects and the economy (through tax breaks, economic stimulus, etc.). Like a liberal capitalist state, it reacts against its mounting debt by reversing course, in effect 'downsizing' and privatizing public services while deregulating markets. Seen from another perspective, the state behaves dictatorially (bureaucratically) and democratically, paternalistically and in a laissez-faire manner. Shifting its contradictions from one system to another, the schizoid state also engenders a subjectively felt identity crisis within its own citizens, who experience themselves as active and passive, independent and dependent.

In his book Legitimation Crisis (1973) Habermas says that the 'system' onto which the contradictions of economy and state are pushed is 'society.' Society becomes anomic-persons lose respect for one another; they lose respect for government, which they see as incompetent, unjust, and illegitimate, and lastly (and most important) society fails to instill the proper motivation in citizens to produce and succeed (TCA 2 143,386). Motivation crises reflect the limits of bourgeois ideology in motivating single-minded devotion to work and consumption. Yet, in principle they can be forestalled to the extent that socialization is 'uncoupled' from a culture that encourages critical inquiry, aesthetic illumination of new sensitivities (through postauratic modern art that abjures authoritative representations of timeless beauty for the sake of social commentary), and autonomy and equality (universal morality)….

Written almost a decade after Legitimation Crisis, The Theory of Communicative Action expands further on the identity crises besetting late capitalism. Here, however, Habermas has in mind something besides social crises reflecting a loss of respect for law, government, and social values, namely, two tendencies that directly undermine the reproduction of cultural meaning and identity, on the one hand, and personal psychological well-being and reflective agency, on the other. These tendencies exploit these other resources (cultural patterns and personality structures) in the process of temporarily ‘resolving’ crises of anomie, legitimation, and motivation (TCA 2 386). In their place, they leave psychopathology, stunted education, and alienation (on the side of disturbances affecting the personality structure) and loss of meaning, identity, and traditional continuity (on the side of disturbances affecting the transmission of cultural patterns) TCA 2 143).

The first tendency, which Habermas dubs the colonization of the lifeworld, involves substituting strategic forms of economic and legal action mediated by money and power for communicative forms of action responsible for socialization, cultural transmission, and social integration. Also directly implicated in the colonization of the lifeworld is the second tendency, which Habermas characterizes as cultural impoverishment caused by the splitting off of elite subcultures. This second tendency involves truncating or suppressing critical discourses within everyday communication in a way that produces a 'fragmented consciousness' incapable of integrating cognitive, normative, and aesthetic understandings of reality in a critical way" (Ingram 2010:271-272).

Ingram, David
2010 Habermas: Introduction and Analysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Citation Style AAA

Habermas: Introduction and Analysis at Amazon.com

Filed Under: Capitalism, Identity Tagged With: , , ,
post

Mlabri Nation-Vanishing Identity

28/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“The Mlabri in Thailand travel across the forest with ease to visit other Mlabri. There are two areas in which they live, one area is in Nan Province and the other is in Phrae Province. Traditionally, they traveled in small bands comprised of three to four families each seeking food and safety. They had no problem with the identification of who they are. Their language, customs, knowledge and even their blood all told them about their identity. The idea of a nation bounded by internationally recognized borders does not fit their history or even their present day status. They are more akin to the First Americans who to this day identify themselves by nation. But the question now asked is: Can they remain who they were without changing their identity? I believer the answer is, “no, they cannot remain who they were unless a part of them changes.” Then, if this case, to what extent can they be considered a nation, or in civic parlance, a community? Apart from issues of nomenclature, the important point here is that a group of people live in more than one world at the same time with little opportunity to come into parity with any of the others in their world- such as the government, other people groups–Thai and Hmong, or the missionaries. Identity based in the traditional concept of the individual does not have the authenticity or depth to help us think about who we are in today’s transidentified world.

The Mlabri do not refer to themselves as belonging to a country as much as to a group of people. The Mlabri are in a sense a transnational community over three countries. This community resides as much in the memory of the Mlabri as it does on various kinds of land. Some of the land belongs to the Thai government, some is the personal property of Hmong farmers, and still other land is part of sparsely populated forest areas in Laos and northern Burma. The boundaries of the physical land lack definition and are highly porous. More accurately, the Mlabri reside in their memory and imagination which are the source of any future for them if they are to retain aspects of their identity and not completely vanish physically and culturally. To repeat, identity is not individual, rather our concept of self is evidenced only within the context of others. Hence, the Mlabri, and all others, take on identity only in relationship to others. Because our identity is centered in relationship to others, there is a dual nature in what we traditionally identify as individual identity. Herein enters Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity in which two natures of the self can be held together authentically through emplotment—the bringing together in ways that make sense of the concordance and discordance in our life.

Stories about ourselves hold the contradictions, sufferings, hopes, the past, and the imagined future in a plot that allows us to make sense of our lives. Each of us has two aspects to our identity in order for this sense to come alive. Ricoeur argues (1992) that the self is constituted by an idem-identity and ipse-identity – the idem aspect of our identity is that part that remains the same over time. It is our character.

Yet over time, a person changes which reflects the ipse aspect of our self. We hold both the permanent sense and the transitory sense of self in a narrative identity. The stories that the Mlabri tell of their past are also found in the stories they tell about their present. How anyone imagines their lives to be in the future requires the wakening of the social imagery housed in each of us. Without reflecting on our past to find those very elements of our lives that did not come to bear, there is no future. In other words, the future is housed in the reawakening of our memories” (Herda 2007).

Herda, Ellen
2007 Mlabri Nation Vanishing: Horizons of Social Imagery in Development. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May (CD-ROM proceedings).

Citation Style AAA

Filed Under: Narrative Identity Tagged With: , ,
post

Social Systems, Identities, and Crises

04/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“The range of tolerance within which the goal values of a social system can vary without critically endangering its continued existence or losing its identity obviously cannot be grasped from the objectivistic viewpoint of systems theory. Systems are not presented as subjects; but, according to the pre-technical usage, only subjects can be involved in crises. Thus, only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crises. Disturbances of system integration endanger continued existence only to the extent that social integration is at stake, that is, when the consensual foundations of normative structures are so much impaired that the society becomes anomic. Crisis states assume the form of a disintegration of social institutions.

Social systems too have identities and can lose them; historians are capable of differentiating between revolutionary changes of a state or the downfall of an empire, and mere structural alterations. In doing so, they refer to the interpretations that members of a system use in identifying one another as belonging to the same group, and through this group identity assert their own self-identity. In historiography, a rupture in tradition, through which the interpretive systems that guarantee identity lose their social integrative power, serves as an indicator of the collapse of social systems. From this perspective, a social system has lost its identity as soon as later generations no longer recognize themselves within the once-constitutive tradition. Of course, this idealistic concept of crisis also has its difficulties. At the very least, a rupture in tradition is an inexact criterion, since the media of tradition and the forms of consciousness of historical continuity themselves change historically. Moreover, a contemporary consciousness of crisis often turns out afterwards to have been misleading. A society does not plunge into crises when, and only when, its members so identify the situation. How could we distinguish such crisis ideologies from valid experience if social crises could be determined only on the basis of conscious phenomena?” (Habermas 1975:3-4).

Habermas, Jürgen
1975[1973] Legitimation Crisis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Citation Style AAA

Filed Under: Identity Tagged With: , , ,