Seminar 2 Flashcards
essentialism
Certain embodied identities are assumed to be biological and natural and according to this they already exist before a person is born ( for example: a man will marry a women). These identities are also assumed to be ahistorical and universal.
Non-essentialism
There are no identities created before birth because these identities are shaped and become meaningfull in and through culture.
social constructionism
Identities are socially constructed, there are cultural and historical variations. There is room for transhistorical and universal experiences.
subjectivity
The condition of being a person and the processes by which we become a person. That is how we are constituted as persons and how we expierence ourselves.
self-identity
The language that we use to describe ourselves and the our emotional identifications with those self discriptions.
social identity
the expectations and opinions that others have on us.
self identity - Anthony Giddens
- we create a self-identity by making a story about
yourself that you repeat every time if you introduce
yourself - it’s a social and ongoing process
- socialization: the process whereby a helpless infant
becomes a self aware, knowledgeable person, skilled
in the ways that of the culture in which she or he is
born. - culture produces social identities
- identity is how you see yourself and how others see
you
Stuart Hall - the question of cultural identity
Identity is a fractured subject
- people have various identities, they are shifting, they
can be the opposite or they can be multiple
- our identifications are not organised around a
coherent self
identity politics
- a group that comes together based on a shared
identiy - they have the power to change something, to create a
new language or new concepts - this does not mean that everyone in this groups
shares the same thoughts or behaviour - Spivak
– postcolonial feminist scholar
– sees the temporary groups around identities as
structural essentialism
– minority groups can use this common identitiy to
make a change
– you have to focus on the things you have in common
but you can’t forget the differences
Politics of representation
- Stuart Hall
- he works from his own expierences, he is from
Jamaica, living in Great Britain so he did an effort to
understand the representations - according to him, representations are not value free,
they are not trivial, they are not neutral but they are
ideological - politics of representation is that you are able to
maintain the social and cultural status quo - media, tv… have the power to question the norms and
to go against this status quo
Stereotyping
Lippmann
- We define something or someone before we actually
see it. This define is influenced by the culture where
we grow up in. Your gaze is coloured by your culture
and based on that you’re gonna categorize people
and things
- we don’t have time to observe everything. We are
gonna make it ourself easier by making categories.
You’re not gonna categorise people with whom you
have a close relationship. You see them as actual
persons and not as types.
Dyer over Lippmann
- he partly agrees with Lippmann about the
characteristics form stereotyping but he says there is
a lack in dept and does not address enough the
persons and the istitutions who engage in stereotyping
- Different kinds of stereoptyping
1. act of economy and giving order
- who is bringing this order and how?
- partial truths are presented as whole truths
- it’s creating hierarchies
2. a short cut
- if you see someone, you’re gonna make an
interpretation of their social identity and their values
- this will maintain power dynamics
3. expressing our values and norms
- consensus of the in group about the out group
- consessus of the out group about the in group
- people are gonna protect their values and truths
- people are gonna mask internal diversities or
common identities, values or norms with the out
group
Ideologies creates types
- social types
– living by the rules of society
– open ended, flexible
– for example: charming cliché about a flemish shared
identity that does not question hierarchy
- stereotypes
– rules disigned to exclude them
– rude, unchangeble
– for example: fall thruths about gay men, migrants… in
order to other them or create fear
Stereotyping in popular media culture
Social types and stereotypes
- Dyer’s chapter on stereotyping
- representing people as social types and stereotypes
- social types will be white, middle class, heterosexual.
Stereotypes will be people at the margins of society
- what is the issue with stereotypes? Some of them can
be true but the problem is that they are created and
forced by the majority group
Stereotypes through iconography
- In sitcoms you only have 20 minutes per episode so
you don’t have the time to describe a whole
personality so that’s why they are gonna use
stereotypes –> short cut –> after only 1 minute you
already know what kind of person it is, just because of
language, appearance and the way they behave
Stereotypes through structure
- function of character in the text structure
- static structures
– ideology or material conditions of the imagined or
represented world
– for example: white privilege, heteronormativity,
middle class norms
- dynamic structures
– plot in which the character moves, develops, acts
– suicidal LGBTQ characters, moslim and terrorism…
Sex and the city 2
- very stereotype movie
- there is social types and stereotypes in this movies
- the problem is how this movie represents the arabic
world - the in group are the 4 women who are on a holiday in
the Arabic world, the out group is the whole Arabic
poplulation - the out group doesn’t get a voice, you don’t see
something from their perspective - the ingroup doesn’t have contact with the out group,
they are just there to be looked at - there is no international dialogue –> they take the
western gaze to look to the Arabic world - they are using the othering thechnique on the out
group to make the stereotyps stonger
Stuart Hall’s trans-coding strategies
- How to challenge stereotypes?
- if as a producer you use a problematic stereotype,
take the problematic part out of it and do something
different with this
1. reversing the stereotype - use the opposite of the stereotypes –> black people
become the in group, white people become the out
group - stereotypes remain present
2. positive and negative images - replace negative or absent images with exclusively
positive ones - these images with diversity does not challenge social
inequalities enough
3. through the eye of the representation - this is Stuarts favorite
- locates itself within the complexities and
ambivalences of the representation - identities are unstable, fractured, moving
stereotypes, hyperstereotyping and nuances
- getting rid of stereotypes is not the solution
- Gray on hyperstereotyping: it’s gonna mock the
procces of stereotyping - you have to be aware why these stereotypes are so
problematic and why they are used - some people may feel insulted because of it but some
people will also be happy with it because it shows
how stupid stereotypes are
