Week 4, Identity

Question 1

When did identity shift from being related to community to the individual?

Answer 1

18th and 19th centuries.

Question 2

What does “identities as socially constructed” mean?

Answer 2

Identities are

• contextual
• socially performed
• produced by certain forms of knowledge

Question 3

Louis Althusser

Answer 3

Role of social institutions in reproducing ideology.

Ideological state apparatuses reinforce dominant ideas about how to be through ideology.

Quite impossible to change identity dominated by ideology.

Interpellation.

Tutored Foucault.

Question 4

Foucault

Answer 4

Discipline

Discourse

Discipline as bodies of knowledge around certain ideas

Discourses produce identity categories as objects of knowledge, put into practice in institutions

Panopticon, internalization of surveillance

Question 5

Internalization of Surveillance

Answer 5

Soft Power

Social scrutiny acts as “ the guard”

Culminates in “mode of self construction” created in response to systems of social power

Question 6

ISA

Answer 6

Ideological State Apparatus

Centrality of social structures through which ideology is reproduced

Question 7

Interpellation

Answer 7

Process by which individuals are compelled to identify with social roles offered to them.

Question 8

What does “identities are contextual” mean?

Answer 8

Identities are specific to a time and place.

Question 9

What does “identities are socially performed” mean?

Answer 9

Identities are performed in self presentation, it’s what we do, not simply who we are.

Question 10

Discipline

Answer 10

Discourses produce identity categories as objects of knowledge.

Individuals internalize discourses about identity and self -regulate in accordance with them.