Social Transformations in Relation to Cultural Studies - Essay Example

Task: Art and Identity Introduction The paper seeks to research on society transformations in relation to cultural studies that explore changed ways of living in by groups of people and networks which individuals use in communication with one another. Stuart Hall states that our geographical origins, natural position or class position stand to lose their relevance at this point in time. (http://www.northwestern.edu/clcst/pdf/hall.pdf) The issue of identity has created problems amongst different countries in the world. Different races, culture, creed and religion have demarcated boundaries as a result of identity amongst the members of the society .Struggle for resources has always been fuelled by the idea of identity whereby a group of people feel that other persons are not supposed to enjoy the available resources simply because of their identity. (Hall &Whannel 49) As a result, conflicts and wars have been regarded as the order of the day. Political instability in most countries has been fuelled by the idea of distinctiveness. In the recent past, a lot of discussions and critique has been going on the issue of identity. The debate has been revolving around three notions namely unified identity, original identity and integral identity. Assessment of self-sustained attention is at the core of debate in advanced philosophy (Hall &Whannel 44). The idea of subjectivity and unconscious formation processes was developed within the dissertation of cultural disapproval and feminism. Researchers have come up with different theoretical concepts to critique national, ethnical and racial conceptions pertaining locational politics and cultural identity in the most grounded procedures. Research indicates that identities are not unified and have recently fractured and fragmented in the modern society. The concept of identity is subjected to historicization and is considered to be undergoing transformation and change. http://www.northwestern.edu/clcst/pdf/hall.pdf An identity therefore is constituted within and does not form part of outside presentation. It will also be prudent to state categorically that the theory behind identity can be related with tradition as an invention. Thesis statement Identity is regarded as a role undertaken by individuals expressing different lifestyles and new customs premised on self-decisions .People create varied characters depending on the situations that they face. Whereas some people are habitually secure and constant with their identity, others usually become unsure and change to fit in their identity. Identity suffers changes frequently adapting to fresh specific fashion identities, changing names and application of physical changes as regard to individuals’ life. The sociological fraternity has been divided about the issues pertaining to identity given that trends are quite ambiguous, complex and recent. Researchers have also indicated that identity has become underdeveloped and difficult to understand in present social science to be tested. Why the debate on identity? The debate on identity revolves around arguments focusing upon perspectives and self -interest social collections and politics of people determined by ones identity through class, religion, nation, culture, sexual orientation, gender, historical background and profession. However the debate does not necessarily involve all the members of social organizations. The discussion on identity has always been empowered by individuals or social groups feeling marginalized and oppressed. http://www.northwestern.edu/clcst/pdf/hall.pdf In the modern society, identity can be attributed to ethnic movements, feminism, lesbian and gay liberations who have always fought for their rights in the public domain. In the recent past, gays have come out publicly to defend their sense of belonging in the society despite other countries signing laws that do not favor them. Ideologically, identification is premised on the main aspect of recognizing shared characteristics and origin with other groups of people or persons with the same ideal, foundation established on the same allegiance and natural solidarity closure. In divergence opinion with naturalism, discursive approach indicates that identification is a process that is never complete and is regarded as a form of construction. It is always in the processing mode. It is very clear that identification can either be continued or abandoned or attained or lost. Even though without determinate circumstances of existence, including both material and symbolic resources meant for sustaining it, identification in the long run is conditional, stuck in an eventuality. Once identification has been secured by individuals or a group of persons then the difference is not eliminated (Hall &Whannel 57). Identification is therefore referred to as a process of expression, a suturing, a lack and a totality. Identification obeys the philosophy of more than one person. Since it is a process that is said to operate across the concept of difference, it involves discursive work, marking and binding representative boundaries. The question of identity The identity question has been enthusiastically debated on social platforms. In principle, the debate argues that old identities which made the social world stable for a long period of time has deteriorated, paving way for fresh identities and disintegrating modern individuals as united subjects. The identity crisis is viewed as a transformational process which will be used to dislocate dominant structures and modern societal processes which undermine frameworks that give individuals steady anchorage in the world. (Hall &Whannel 61) In the twentieth century it has been said that structural changes are transforming present societies. These transformational changes have fragmented cultural landscapes of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity and nationality. The transformations have also shifted from personal identities hence deflating our sense of belonging integrated as subjects. The loss of sense of self is usually referred to as de-centering or dislocation of subjects. The set of dislodgments which entails de-centering individuals from their cultural and social world from themselves is said to constitute crisis of identity to an individual. (Hall &Whannel 48) It is at the time of crisis or when something has been fixed that the concept of identity creates issues amongst individuals or social groupings. The issue of identity also arises when the stability of individuals or social grouping is displaced by experience of uncertainty and doubt. The aspects creates a representation of wide-range and fundamental transformational processes which clearly shows that modernity is being transformed .In what is usually referred to as post- modern world, the essentialist concept of identity also comes in. Since Enlightment, the conception identity has been referred to as the essence or core of our being to ground human existence as subjects. Who requires identity? There has been a heated debate recently revolving around the perception of identity and at the same time subjected to critique. The discussion is premised on different discipline areas which in a way are critical to the concept of unified identity, integral or originary. At the core of post-Cartesian metaphysics, the analysis of self -sustained subjects is comprehensively advancing in philosophy. The query of prejudice and unconscious formational processes is developed within discourse of analytically influenced cultural and feminism criticism. The question on who needs identity can be looked into two perspectives. The first scenario is by observing something unique about deconstructive critique by which essentialist concepts are subjected .Unlike critiques which aim to displace insufficient concepts with true ideas or aspire to produce positive knowledge, the deconstructive theory puts essential impressions under erasure. This is a clear indication that they are not serviceable in their unreconstructed form. Since the concepts have not been dialectically superseded and there is no option for replacement, it remains the only way of thinking although in their reviewed forms. This will ensure that they will not operate within the given paradigm which they were originally created. Study reveals that this approach is regarded as limited thinking within intervals. The second answer lies on the significance of politics and agency. In terms of politics, the concept of identity is significant in modern political movement forms. Its crucial relation to locational politics manifests instabilities and difficulties which typically have affected most contemporary identity politics. Despite identities being constructed within, it needs to be understood that they are a production of specific institutional and historical sites encompassed within specified discursive practices and formations by particular strategies. (Hall, Held, Hubert&Thompson, pg617) Furthermore, they surface within the confines of power hence are a product of creating exclusion and difference than marking a sign of constituted unity and identity. The traditional meaning of identity implies inclusiveness, seamless, sameness without any form of internal differentiation. Above all, identities are usually constructed through and not separate from difference. Identities could also act as points of attachment and identification because of the capacity to render out, leave out or exclude individuals or social groupings. Each given identity has an excess or something more that it feels it owns and that they are denied through marginalization. The internal homogeneity and unity, which identity regards as foundational and not natural but a created method of closure, recognizes identity as very necessary even if unspoken or silenced. The social identity constitution is a very powerful tool that affirms itself by inhibiting what attempts to threaten it. Identity constitution is anchored on eliminating something and instituting a passionate hierarchy between two resulting poles. Consequently, the unities that identity assert are constructed within forms of exclusion and power which results to over-determined and naturalized processes of closure and not inevitable totality. If identities can be viewed differently by not considering the aspect of difference as a point of stability and origin, but by constantly destabilized scenarios, then we can hypothesize its emergence. Diversity, difference and differentiation raise a plethora of questions with the new methods of conceptualizing identity. According to Hall, identity refers to meeting points or practices and discourses which endeavor to hail us or speak to people as social subjects. Identities are temporary forms of attachment in respect to subject positions which conversational practices construct. Identity therefore constituted to form a central issue by which psychoanalysis gets into the field of politics. (Hall, Held, Hubert&Thompson, pg615) Debate on how individuals identify as female or male seems to create fundamental questions on subordination and inequality. Inferiority driven by human critique and consciousness philosophy undertakes fundamental historicization of subjects’ category. Subject is a product of an effect within and through a given discourse as stipulated within particular discursive formations and with no existence or identity. Moreover, the crucial questions surrounding power and the impression that address itself is both regulated and a regulative formation of which its entry is determined by constitutive power relations that infiltrate social realms. However, with respect to identity and subject, certain problems continue. One of the implications of power conceptions is radical deconstruction of body as the final hiding place of man and reconstruction in form of genealogical, discursive and historical formations. Regulatory power has the notion that it produces controlled subjects and that power is not just imposed outwardly but operates both as normative and regulatory avenues which creates the formation of subjects. Psychoanalysis is guided by how specific guiding standards form sexed subjects with regard to establishing varied bodily formations. Art and nationalism Nationalism is regarded as a broad term with is definition ranging from ideology in political movements seeking to be autonomous: groupings striving to improve or achieve their social, political, cultural and economic rights in a state. Nationalism is one fundamental principle that has shaped present world. It is evident nationalism is a creation of modernity. Other researchers have argued that nationalism encompasses cultural phenomenon. Nationalism comes before a nation. This is to imply that nationalism is an invented and historical phenomenon which can get its ground on cultural spheres in an imagined community referred to ads nation. Both the ideas of nation and nationalism can unite the structural aspects of a given society. (Hall &Whannel 50) The link between nationalism and contemporary art is quite problematic and complicated. The main reason is that understanding present art is critical and subversive. In its general definition, art in the twentieth century is presumed as obvious cancellation of fixed conceptual formulations by which nationalism is a visible example .Modern art is said to have emerged at unprecedented nationalism age and grand expansion. (Hall &Whannel 50) Despite modernism imagining transcending boundaries of ordinary state, global arts challenge national posturing in the present day society. Seemingly, the new staging by both the local and global advancements are playing either national or international dynamics. Fresh discourses appear to replace nationalism by relying on language that has been borrowed from universal capitalism. It is important to comprehend the interaction between international modernism and nation with respect to how present-day discourses concern global dynamic changes. Modernity is branded by features such as economical organization, work and production; governance and order with specific emphasis on significance of culture. The criticism on trying to connect the contemporary art with nationalism is self –referential and problematic every day given that nationalism takes different practices every time. Despite nationalism taking a cultural phenomenon, it takes unrefined, predictable, bare and violent forms. Its intelligent and processed forms could be the most dangerous. Conclusion Most psychological theories attribute collective identity to cognitive functions. The rational perspective advances from the notion that human and social associations are organized through elaboration of self-categories whereby individuals organize themselves in social relations. Collective categorization shows that individuals recognize themselves as members of a particular group. This mentality contributes to reduction in social complexity for persons or groups hence rendering its comprehensibility. Reduced social complexity declines social ambiguity. In cognitive point of view, collective categorization is usually is viewed as fundamental in determining self-concept or identity. Categorization of one as a member in a social grouping depends on range and salience that present current moment. Works Cited Who needs Identity" Stuart Hall from this link http://www.northwestern.edu/clcst/pdf/hall.pdf Minority Art, Folk Art and Popular Art" Hall, Stuart. In the Popular Arts. Hall, Stuart and Whannel, Paddy. Hutchison EducationalPress, 1969; pp 45-66 Narrating the Nation: An Imagined Community" Hall, Stuart inModernity: An Introduction to modern Societies. Hall Stuart, Held,David; Hubert, David; Thompson, Kenneth. Blackwell Publishers, 1996.pp- 613- 618 Read More