Cultural identity: an osmosis but also a distinction between identical and diverse (original) (raw)

Identity, Difference and Cultural Worlds

The primary concern of this chapter is to analyse several concepts of ‘identity’ influential in European philosophy, and to show that identity should be viewed as a cultural and linguistic phenomenon, not a relationship between things in objective reality. This is because any single ‘thing’ can be strictly identical even with itself only during an infinitely short span of time. The differences in cultural perceptions of identity can be compared to possible worlds discussed by analytical philosophers – different conceptual structures give rise to different cultural worlds, all of which arise as reflections of reality. All these worlds should be considered equally valid and only linguistically constructed models of reality, even though they are the only forms of reality the human mind can access. What defines a ‘thing’ in a cultural world, it is proposed, is the sum of properties which in that particular world are con- sidered essential. The chapter also hopes to show that flexibility in defining what ‘things’ are considerably increases the openness of a particular cultural world and enables its carriers to understand the logic of other cultural worlds more clearly.

Identity and Culture. Cultural identities in a globalized world.

Third International Cross-Cultural Communication Conference (“Cultural Identity and Diversity as Assets to Global Understanding”), 2019

There is a painting by the Renaissance master Pieter Bruegel (who became known as “The Old Man”) whose original name is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”, which Homi Bhabha (Rato, 2015) observes that should make us think. In the picture a small detail shows us Icarus, son of Daedalus, fallen from the sky to drown solitarily in the sea, after he tried to fly too high and burned the wings for having been near the sun, and no one noticing his drama. The picture is supposed to be from the dreadful perspective of Daedalus, watching impotently from above the misfortune of his own son. This leads to a question by Bhabha: “After all, who is the moral witness of human suffering, today?” According to the scholar, this is one of the questions that Culture can make the world. A self-reflexive question, as the role of witness is one of the places of Culture. Another question is to think if Culture is not the peripheral and secondary detail that makes us reconsider the whole system, just like the legs of Icarus, when we finally look at them, at Pieter Bruegel’s picture. The concept of “Culture” has several meanings, continuing to be problematized and reformulated constantly, making the word complex and impossible to be fixed in an unique way. The same happens with ‘identity’, that is a concept that must be declined in the plural. In the current paradigm crisis, the identity plan integrates a broader process of change that has shaken the frames of reference that previously seemed to give individuals some stability. Stuart Hall notes that identity theories have shattered, and identities are in the process of disintegration as a result of cultural homogenization and ‘postmodern-global’ logic stemming from the globalization process. Thus, to talk about the existence of an eventual centrality of culture, it is necessary to leave behind the idea of absolute truth (Hall, 1997). Identity and difference are thus faces of the same coin (Martins, 2007), and memory must be preserved in a balanced way, in order to avoid amnesia and indifference from becoming dangerous ingredients of any barbarism, and so that resentment does not occupy the place of humanity. As Claude Dubar (2011) points out, the crisis is not only due to the passage from one economic cycle to another, but it has to do with the new ways of living together in the world, which highlight preconceived ideas about another, about himself and about the world itself. It is the acceptance of the ‘other’ which, moreover, there is, to determine the beginning of an ethical dimension, as stated Umberto Eco (1998). Or it shall be understood by an ‘other’ ubiquitous, in the design of Dominique Wolton (2003), who is no longer abstract or distant, but does not mean that it is more familiar or understandable. It is therefore an ‘other’ that will be understood as a sociological reality, integrating all elements resulting from cultural diversity, but also those that establish links, at the societies scale. With this communication, we propose a reflection on the relationship between identity and culture, observing how cultural identities are located in a globalized world.

A Focus on (Cultural) Identity: From Instrument to Object of Research

in V. Cicolani, G. Florea (edd.), Autoreprésentations et représentations culturelles en Europe : symbolisme et expression de l’idéologie dans les sociétés de l’âge du Fer de l’Europe tempérée, Pessac, Ausonius Éditions, collection NEMESIS 2, 2024, 9-16, [en ligne] https://una-editions.fr/a-focus-..., 2024

Now more than ever, the term and the notion of identity are central to historical research. However, their use, which is widely accepted, is not without problems: as cultural anthropology studies have clearly shown, the word often proves to be ineffective in terms of the development of research and therefore of historical interpretation. In the brief notes that follow, I will take stock of the situation, retracing the major problems posed by the identitarian logic and attempting to assign identity itself the correct position and function with regard to historical investigations, taking account of its original values and meanings.

The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought

2014

This paper overviews European Identitarian and/or New Rightist philosophy regarding the issues of ethnicity, culture, race, and identities and politics related to these. Topics discussed in the paper include the following: the conception and sociology of collective identities, ethno-cultural identity, inter-cultural interaction, the role of racial type in identity, the problems of mixing and miscegenation, the idea of differentialism as opposed to racism, the value of community in identity, types of ethnic separatism (the class and caste System, nationalism, Traditionalist imperial federalism, Identitarian separatism or federalism), the idea of organic democracy, and the Theory of a Multipolar World. References are made especially to the writings of Alain de Benoist, Alexander Dugin, Pierre Krebs, Tomislav Sunic, Guillaume Faye, and Julius Evola.

CULTURAL IDENTITIES: ROOTS OR ROUTES

The issue that the identities are acquired congenitally or created in the collective past has been opened to debate in the last century. The challenge made to the fact that the identities have fixed " selves " , has argued that the identity is not a given structure. According to this view, identity is a constructed structure and this construction process is always in the construction phase. No identity can ever be completed. There is an endless transformation. The past, which was given reference by the identity, has a variable structure just like the identity itself. The accumulation of what has happened in the past, changes in accordance with the viewpoints of both those who narrate the past and those who try to conceive the past. Moreover, in the reconstruction of the identity and the past, man is not the sole authority. People are constantly open to the external influences during the construction of their identities. Thus, the identity is constructed in an individual and collective way. The emphasis in this study is on the fact that the identity is constructed with the effects created by the future expectations rather than the effects from the past. Since, both the identity and the past can be reconstructed today, the identity has no self and the identity is a variable. Future expectations decide on how the identity shall be reconstructed as much as the past. The identity is in the roots as well as towards the routes. The uncertainty of the identity is caused by the fact that it carries in itself the uncertainty of the future. Due to this reason, in identity policies and studies future plans of the people or the groups forming the identity should be examined as much as the past.