CoP Lecture - Identity

In this lecture we talked about identity and how it is viewed today and the historical conceptions of identity. We started off looking at the different phases of identity, which are Pre-modern, Modern and Post-modern. Pre-modern conception states that personal identity is stable and is defined by long standing roles, like married, the church, monarchy, government, the state and work. Modern and Post-modern conception states that identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us, discourse meaning a set of recurring statements that define a particular culture 'object' for example, madness, criminality and sexuality. This provides concepts and terms through which such an object can be studied and discussed.

Identity can also be related to stereotyping, and a good example of this is by a woman called Tracey Emin and her art piece 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995)'. This piece was a tent which was lined with the names of people she had ever slept with, but often mistaken by people as being symbol of all of her sexual partners. At the first look of this tent many people would shame her for being over sexually active and would judge the piece and its value before stepping inside and finding out the actual truth about it. This piece is about all the people she had shared a bed with and yes most sexual partners are mentioned but most of the people mentioned are family members and friends.

In animation it also shows strong identity using stereotypes in character design, for example if a designer tends to a smart character they will give them glasses, a big head and a straight face, where as if they design a dumb character they will give them a tall thin body, big eyes and asymmetric facial features. This is portrayed in the animated TV series 'Dexter's Laboratory' where Dexter is very smart and has his own secret lab and his sister (the dumb one) keep annoying his and interrupting

his experiments.