OUGD501: Context of Practice 2 (Lecture) - Identity

james.beighton@leeds-art.ac.uk

Lecture Summary

To introduce historical conceptions of identity
To introduce Foucault’s discourse methodology
Yo place and critiquer contemporary practice within these frameworks, and to consider their validity
To consider postmodern theories of identity as fluid and constructed.

Theories of Identity

Essentialism (transitional Approach)
Physiognomy
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) - Founder of positivist criminology - the notion that criminal tendencies are inherited.

Phrenology

Physiognomy legitimising Racism.
Anglo-teutonic,
Irish Iberian
Negro
Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516) Christ carrying the cross, llid on panel, c. 1515.
Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996. - suggesting that mary was something other than the blond hair blue eyes stereotypical beauty.
Historical Phrases of Identity
Douglass Kellner - Media culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the modern and the post modern, 1992.

Pre-Modern Identity

Modern Identity 19th and earth 20th Centuries

Charles Baudelarie - The painter of Modern Life (1863)
Baudelarie introduced the concept of the flaneur (gentlemen stroller)
Veblen - conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure
Gustave Callibeotte (1848-94)
Le Pont de l’Europe 1876
Not having to work is an indication of your class
Simmel - Trickle down theory, Emulation, Distinction, the mask of fashion
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-94
Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877.
Georg Simmel
The feeling os isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically chose personal at a party on the train or in the traffic of a large city.
Simmel suggests that; because of the speed and meltability of modernity -.-

Post-Modern Identity

Discourse Analysis
Identity is constructed out of the discourse culturally available to us.
What is discourse?
'A set of recurring statements the deinf e particular cultural object, eg. madness, ciminallity, sexuality, and provide concepts and terms through which such an object can be studied and discussed' Cavalaari (2001)
Possible Discourses
Cass
Nationality
Race/ethnicity
Gender and Sexuality

Class

Humphrey Spender/Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937
To know where you fit in, you need to know what the other classes are.
Set up by Spender, a social anthropologist, to observe Britain living.
Documented in Bolton - mass observation.
Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside, from The Last Resort, 1983-86
Condescending way of viewing lower classes.
Perpetuationing a stereotype of a different class.
Martin Parr, Ascot, 2003,
Society reminds one of a particularly shrewd cunning and pokerfaced paler i the game of life, cheating if given a chance flouting rules whenever possible.

Nationality

Martin Parr, Sedlscombe from Think of England 2000-2003
Cultural appropriation
Las Vegas - is American a real identity? Fake, replicas, taken from other nationalities.
Disney World, all the con ties are much closer together.
Race/Ethnicity
Icons being depicted as in a different light, the holy virgin Mary being black, for example.
(Chris Ofili, Captain shit and the Legend of the Black stars, 1994)
Chris Ofili No Woman, No Crime 1988
Gillian Wearing, from the signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, 1992-3
Representation of black people, models being used in provocative nature.

Gender and Sexuality

Post Modern Theory

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