The idea of core identity through paintings and photography - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal The concept of identity has been a of intense debate and speculation perhaps since the dawn of civilization. From as far back as Plato, the world had some understanding that the way a person thought about themselves was partly an internal process and partly an external process, both shaping and forming the other in a simultaneous and mutually dependent never-ending cycle. Modern philosophers and scientists have begun to unravel the complicated ways in which this process occurs, but in spite of this knowledge, it remains difficult for individuals to break out of the expectations they have for themselves and that society has formed for them. Sociological imagination is the way in which we stratify ourselves within our society and plays a large role in how we create our own identity. By linking our own personal experience with the collective understanding of what that represents, we classify not only ourselves but others within specific social groups. An example of how this process works is found in the writings of Edward Said. Said makes three observations. The first one centers on the idea that the term ‘Orient’ refers not to the truth of the geographical region, but rather to an idea that has been developed in the minds of Europeans. This idea tends to group all individuals of the Middle East and East as belonging to a single cultural and religious sector. Although not based on actual truth, this concept is naturally present in the European culture in the form of academic and other social institutions, the established vocabulary, the imagery utilized and the colonial styles. Secondly, ‘the Orient’ has been established as the Other, allowing the Europeans to define themselves as a colonizing country against the inferior culture they had themselves defined. Finally, building off of the ideas proposed by Michel Foucault, these distinctions made between Orient and Occident as well as the vocabulary, imagery and other sanctioned discussion regarding it, has confined the Orient, making it impossible for Europeans to consider the Orient without finding it necessary to first actively combat these limitations on thought or action. These ideas are equally applied to the individual, regardless of race. “The construction of identity … involves the construction of opposites and ‘others’ whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from ‘us’” (Said, 1979). The three main aspects of the sociological imagination include race, class and gender. Class is based upon a variety of factors including profession, income levels and educational attainment. People with a high level of education are typically seen as holding higher level professional positions which typically pay at higher rates than more commonly educated individuals. This is, of course, not always the case, but remains one of the ways in which we determine our rank in association with those around us. While class is, to some extent, quite flexible, race and gender remain relatively constant and difficult to change. Race is determined based primarily upon physical characteristics, but can also be influenced by ethnic concerns. Generally, ethnicity is considered to refer to your national origin, language, religion, dietary practices or common historical heritage. While race is inherited through a person’s genes, ethnicity is inherited through the process of socialization from one generation to the next. Similarly, gender is a learned identification with a particular biological sex – male or female – while sexuality refers to the way in which people organize their world based on sexual identity. Using the sociological imagination, it can be seen that before identity can be fully determined, one must have an understanding of where they stand in the world, which typically depends upon an understanding of some element of society as the lowest or inferior. Throughout recent history, white males have held most of the power in society, first because the more technologically advanced countries were predominantly peopled by white people and controlled by white men and later, because of their subjugation of other nations thanks to their advanced tools and weapons. By withholding education and opportunity from people with color and from women, white men were able to retain their power and establish a system in which women and people of color were seen to be socially inferior. By setting those with color socially below white people, even the lower class was able to feel superior to someone. Through the same channels, men managed to dominate over women. Women were socially constrained within homes, legally oppressed and deprived of an education throughout a great deal of history, thus keeping them at low levels of the social scale. These social stratifications help the individual to place themselves within the greater world just as the various behaviors the individual participates in help to define that identity to the external world. The idea that individual identity and external influences, primarily as they are reflected in the popular opinion or media of the age, are intimately linked emerged as early as Plato. In his argument against what he terms poetry but which really refers to all forms of public communication, “He [Plato] is asserting, though without filling out the psychological mechanisms in the detail for which one would wish, that from childhood up, mimesis shapes our images and our fantasies, our unconscious or semi-conscious pictures and feelings, and thereby shapes our characters, especially that part of our nature prone to what he thinks of as irrational or non-rational” (Griswold, 2003). In other words, the pictures we receive and the stories we hear help us to form our understanding of how the world is ‘supposed’ to be and causes us to establish these ideas as our model for the type of individual we will become. Plato recognizes the power of literature to have a profound effect upon the audience of that literature by pointing out that while the stories are full of nothing but falsehoods, they are nonetheless treated as models of good behavior within the society. Their popularity has them told over and over again, but, because the minds of the young are very malleable, they are easily shaped by the stories that they hear. “For the child is unable to discriminate between what is allegorical and what is not; whatever he receives and believes at that early age is apt to become permanent and indelible” (Plato, p. 36, 378). Although this discussion is geared toward illustrating how the literature of the period could affect the development of the individual identity, literature is not the only contributing factor – the scenes of the household and the public square, the stories of the family and the expectations of society also contribute greatly to the development of identity, as was illuminated by more modern thinkers. The beginnings of our modern understanding regarding the concept of identity can perhaps be said to have originated with scholars like Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the 20th century. Freud’s ideas changed the perspective of how individuals understood themselves through his introduction of psychoanalysis, a system of theories relating to the ways and methods in which a human mind is developed and operates. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis deals with the fundamentals of how the mind works, introducing the concepts of the id, the ego and the superego into the world’s vocabulary. The id represents that part of the brain that operates on an almost instinctual level and governs all those aspects of our makeup that involve raw emotion. The ego centers upon the conscious person, the everyday thoughts and actions that people experience. Finally, the superego represents the higher portion of our being, the spiritual, highly moralistic side of us that is analogous to the voice of the parent (Freud, 1940). These concepts suggested the possibility that a person could be constantly pulled in two or more directions at once – between the strong raw emotions and pleasure center of the id and the conscious ego that wants to present an acceptable face to the world and the morality or ethics of the superego which shapes its concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, from the environment in which it developed which refers back to the concepts of sociological imagination. Other philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, have contributed to our understanding of identity as well but again refer to the interactive nature of individual development and sociological environment. Sartre is generally hailed as the leader of the Existentialist movement which argues that everything that makes up an individual is contained within that individual and the relationships he has with the world around him. Essentially, existentialism is the study of the effect of these external and internal elements working individually and collectively upon the conscious presence of the individual. “This philosophy is concerned with what man is. It is a study of concrete living man. Sartre propounds that human existence is its own value. It creates its own values. It is not a means … of discovering transcendental values. The Existentialist believes that man is free, and that this total freedom, which at first is inseparable from the experience of anguish, is the basis of man’s reconciliation with self” (Fowlie, 1965). Existentialism places the personal experience at the center of the equation, insisting that it is through personal commitment to something outside of the self that shapes and defines what man is. Sartre based these ideas on his own personal experience as he investigated elements of his early life. He wrote of his experience as the only child in a household of adoring adults years later saying “… there is no lack of applause. Whether the adults listen to my babbling or to The Art of the Fugue, they have the same arch smile of enjoyment and complicity. That shows what I am essentially: a cultural asset. Culture permeates me, and I give it off to the family by radiation, just as ponds, in the evening, give off the heat of the day” (Sartre, 1964, p. 25). His sharp affiliation with books at a young age determined the scope and breadth of his later career: “It was, then, words that made him, and it was through words that he, creator and magician, could in turn make things” (Grene, 1973, p. 8). As Sartre learned he could influence the external world by using the same words that the external world had used to influence him, so have the millions of people who have walked the planet since the beginning of time learned that they can influence the perception others have of them by participating in specific activities or presenting themselves in specific ways that build upon the same social expectations that have fed their own individual identity. Building upon this basic understanding of identity as a combination of internal and external social and individual expectations of self, the present research is focused upon gaining a greater understanding of how people’s identity is formed in the modern century, what affects identity on an internal and external plane, how identity is damaged with today’s outlook on the aging and how much influence individuals or organizations have on changing their social identity through the simple medium of clothing choice or deliberate activity. More than simply attempting to understand the present conception of identity as a result of internal and external elements of social and personal thought, the purpose of the present research is to discover whether these concepts can be influenced or changed through the simple change of outwardness and whether this is a positive or negative effect. Works Cited Fowlie, Wallace. “Introduction.” In What is Literature? Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Freud, Sigmund. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1940. Grene, Marjorie. Sartre. New York: New Viewpoints, 1973. Griswold, Charles. “Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (December 22, 2003). September 23, 2009 Plato. The Republic. A.D. Lindsay (Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 360 BC (reprinted 1992). . Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Words. Bernard Frechtman (Trans.). Greenwich, CT: George Braziller, 1964. Read More