Identity Theories and Collective Memory

Flashcards about identity theories, alterity, race and racism, monuments, and collective memory.

Identification

The process by which the infant assimilates itself to external persons or objects.

Identity achievement

Participation in society, internalizing cultural norms, playing different roles.

Essentialism (primordialism)

A core idea that identity is seen as inherent, stable, and unchanging - something you are born with or that stems from deep, internal, or primordial characteristics.

Something given like: gender or religion

Representatives: Freud & Erikson

Constructivism

A core idea that identity is not fixed, but constructed through our social interactions, cultural context, and life experiences. It is fluid, relational, and dynamic.

Identity is constructed, flexible ans responsive to context

Representatives: Mead & Goffman & Bourdieu

George Herbert Mead

The idea of the social self - we become who we are by taking the role of others and seeing ourselves through their eyes.

Erving Goffman

The concept of identity as performance - like actors playing roles on a stage depending on the audience.

Pierre Bourdieu

Emphasized how social structures, like class and culture, shape identity. He introduced concepts like habitus (our internalized habits, skills, and values) which are shaped by our environment.

Alterity/ othering

From latin alter: other, opposite. The concept of "otherness" or difference, often in the context of identity and social relations, recognizing and valuing diversity.

describes the experience of encountering something or someone that is perceived as different from one's own identity or group

Sartre's view on alterity

Being seen by others reduces your freedom, because they define and limit you — and you start to see yourself through their gaze.

Lacan: Le stade du miroir/Lacanian psychoanalysis

Childs self-recognition in the mirror, realizing it’s a reflection/illusion -> an other.

Unconscious desire to be recognized by big other (parents)

Verb: to other

To other, othering (mettre en altérité; ver-andern).

Race

Socially constructed human classification system distinguishing between groups of people with phenotypical characteristics. Dominant groups shape racial categories to maintain power.

Racism

Ideology -> byproduct of racial categorization focusing on hierarchical arrangements of groups.

Racialization

Process -> shifts racial boundaries because of social pressures for inclusion or exclusion.

Feindbegriffe/ Asymmetric counter-concepts (Koselleck, 1985)

Conceptual pairs that are not equal or neutral opposites but carry a value-laden, often hierarchical structure.

Hellene / Barbarian

Christian / Heathen

Human / Nonhuman

Transatlantic slave trade

Transatlantic slave trade was a key historical event that involved the forced transportation of enslaved Africans to the Americas, significantly impacting economies and societies across continents. Racism as belief in (intellectual and moral) White superiority developed with the Transatlantic slave trade

R justifies S & S reinforces R

Intersectionality

Describes the idea that different forms of discrimination, such as gender, race, class, disability and sexuality, do not operate independently of each other, but are interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

Imagined Communities (Anderson)

Nation as vorgestellte Gemeinschaft (Weber).

Social frameworks of memory

Family, Friends, clubs (neotribes), Not face-to-face imagined communities: nation, religious group.

Memory assemblages

Memorials and museums are housed associated in a common structure, but follow two distinct logics: Commemoration, Education + Entertainment = « edutainment ».

Justification of slavery through the Bible

Noahs curse → Canaan found his father I a tent naked ans asleep, the father woke up and cursed him and his descendants to be servants to his other brothers