Are your cultural choices merely props with which to structure your identity?

No. This happens to be what I believe and what actually makes sense. No one stays the same person throughout their whole life and people are marked and changed by experiences. Stop being a smartass.

Experience will not change this view of the fluid self though because experience demonstrates that people do change over time. A person is the not the same at the age of 60 as they were at the age of 20. They may even be more mature. MAY.

It does seem to be a chicken and egg situation. What comes first: "identity" or cultural choices?

63. marathon jackoff frank kogan theory posts
-- the pr00de abides (wor...), October 23rd, 2005.

i'm not 100% sure that this notion has done any such thing. give me an example of how people's rights have been extended by critical theory, how quotidian life has been improved by it.

and I happen to agree with this concept.

fine.

OTOH, a stable identity is a central tenet of Western masculinist thinking that was popularised with Descartes' "I think therefore I am."

the reason cult-studs pisses people off is that it deals in ridonkulous monoliths like 'western masculinist thinking'.in *what way* does the notion of a stable identity lead to the oppression you're talking about? what kind of operation are you referring to? how did the work of this philosopher feed into the exploitation by european powers of the colonies -- a practice taking place, in the east, as he was writing? or the marginalisation of homosexuals and women, which easily pre-dated descartes. i just don't see it.

You don't have to agree with all aspects of the new theories to reject such thinking about "the pure" and "stable."

i haven't said anything much in favour of either of these concepts.

Feel free to disagree, but don't attack what others believe.

what about all those punks and goths who 'erroneously' believe in stable identities?

"Your voice is not your own, you are the product of a discourse," usually with some variation but occasionally served plain.

i just have my doubts about this, is all -- just as i have doubts about monolithic, unchanging 'dominant beliefs' lasting 400 years.

that said, eagleton is living, breathing proof the the 'mutability' and essential instability of belief. exposing myths certainly is important but i'm not trusting dudes like eagleton to do it.

xpost True.

So you can better understand who you are and what other things you might like?

i think my choices have become less self-conscious, though.

But isn't science based on trial and error, and constant reassessment and debunking?

althusser say: bourgeois science is; proletarian science, not so much. althusser was a tit, and his popularity with the cult-stud crew (including man like eagleton) is part of why i'm a sceptic.

So you can better understand who you are and what other things you might like?

Find me another reason, please. ;-) I have heard this one so many times. Said it myself way too many times. And will probably do it again...

OK, maybe I'm just dumb =)

(arghh xpost)

x-post; Both, Theorry.

I don't really agree with this, but I do like the way it suggests a sort of internal cultural ecology as an approach to this question. How are my affinities (I don't like that word 'choice' when talking about culture in the Blair era) influenced by genetic (hereditary) or by environmental (social) factors?

xpost

i didn't do "humanities"

in this thread i think sterling's first reply may be the most otm!

Im sorry, Im not trying to belittle anyone scholarly, I do this because I didnt do uni and its a reflex thing.

history is as much a science as an art, but then in the same way that 'literature' is abstracted from 'writing' so 'history' is abstracted from... 'history'.

This is amusing but really quite unfair, Henry, even with the "it's more sophisticated" caveat. A lot of discourse theory spends ages and ages tearing apart Stalin-style reflection theory and it's not just narcissism of small differences at work. I don't think it's really very controversial to say that we mostly operate within discursively produced social norms (which, of course, we can also adjust if we try hard enough/get enough people on board).

i wonder if perhaps the question should be whether we should try to adjust these, or whether it is a good thing if we do. (answer probably = "sometimes")

Um, precisely! There's little point changing something unless you don't like it or think you could come up with something better. But then I'm not sure anyone would posit it any differently (people who big up change tend to be people who take it for granted that the status quo sucks).

i think we're lacking specificity w. all these 'norms', and the 'discursively produced' bit -- again, specifics, examples, times when this has happened, are needed. these are whomping big generalizations.

WE ARE MELTING

So apologies in advance if the following aren't specific enough:

1) Language, obviously. A discursively produced norm. I write stuff in such a way that you will understand what I mean, but neither of us really invented the norm by reference to which we can understand eachother, we picked it up from around us. On the other hand, nor would a language mean anything if all its speakers didn't agree that it meant something - it would just be a bunch of noises/stylised marks.

2) Music. Styles and genres are "discursively produced norms", the sum totals of both the music itself and what is said about it, rules which are inherent in the thing itself and rules pronounced w/r/t the thing from outside it. e.g. House music is a discourse as much as it is a specific sound. The meaning of "house music" changes over time as the audience/producers/DJs/media gradually adjust the discourse of house - "that thing which we commonly agree is house" changes. That said, I probably can't effect such a change by myself: if I go to a house DJ and give him a Green Day CD and swear blind that it's house music, he's unlikely to believe me and start mixing it into his sets.

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe used to say on this issue:

"If I kick a spherical object in the street or if I kick a ball in a football match, the physical fact is the same, but its meaning is different. The object is a football only to the extent that it establishes a system of relations with other objects, and these relations are not given by the mere referential materiality of the objects but are, rather, socially constructed."

i think that's why i'm suspicious about the idea of 'norms'. language is where the ideas we're talking about more or less come from; but do the concepts derived from the study of language function elsewhere? i suppose you can make it do so, if you want to, but i don't think that what you say about house music there has much traction for me... even if there's *some* truth in it, i guess while i can see that discussing the 'discourse' of mental health has real-world repercussions (if done right), what gain is there from discussing house music in this way?

'merely' to show the paucity of the idea: "HERE is the base, HERE is the superstructure, one is MERELY the relfection of t'other"

How would you suggest we talk about it, Henry? I think it's fairly self-evident that genres of music are normative, and if you're going to critically engage with genre qua genre I'm not sure that you can just ignore that.

Styles and genres are "discursively produced norms", the sum totals of both the music itself and what is said about it, rules which are inherent in the thing itself and rules pronounced w/r/t the thing from outside it. e.g. House music is a discourse as much as it is a specific sound.

if a genre *really is* the music PLUS "what is said about it", you have no norms or rules in any meaningful sense. unless you restrict you idea of "what is said about it" in some way to exclude lots of what is said about it. which is ok, but you have to say that you're doing it.

The meaning of "house music" changes over time as the audience/producers/DJs/media gradually adjust the discourse of house - "that thing which we commonly agree is house" changes.

yes, the commonly held notion of 'house' changes, but this is about more than a discourse, it's about markets, technology, all sorts of non-discoursey stuff (unless we call it 'the doscourse of capitalism', 'the discourse of technology'...)

That said, I probably can't effect such a change by myself: if I go to a house DJ and give him a Green Day CD and swear blind that it's house music, he's unlikely to believe me and start mixing it into his sets.

indeed.

I think there's a few good non-abstract questions waiting to be asked here, like, "What do goths get out of being a goth?".

How does this follow, Henry? It's not like a normative discourse can't have contradictions - it's just a question of how many, and of what level of contentiousness. Two house fans can disagree about whether [x] track is house or not without the whole notion of house as a genre coming crashing down around their ears.

Such a disagreement is obv discursive - sonically the track remains the same no matter what genre it's said to belong.

I'm not sure why noting the above would merit the term "post-structuralist" even, let alone Stalinist.

"not like a normative discourse can't have contradictions - it's just a question of how many, and of what level of contentiousness." -- well, exactly, but then these are (commendably) empirical terms you've moved into. i don't think the emphasis of discourse-analysts in general has been on the contradictions, because they kind of upsetthe idea of 'norms' in the first place. or rather, they have played up the power of norms.

I dunno, I'd say that only a fraction of the stuff I've read has tended be like that, but maybe we're thinking of different people. Foucault tends to use "discourse" as if it has a capital D, I'll concede, but then he's speaking about very specific things.

It's kind of a glass half full/half empty thing anyway: which is more remarkable, the fact that house music has changed or the fact that it has remained largely consistent?

Style, to be Foucauldian about these sorts of things, may well be read as a technology of the self.

Someone could drop a little Bourdieu in here to liven things up, really. Or kill it dead.

Taste, people, taste. The embodiment and objectification of cultural capital. The idea that style is utterly transparent, and therefore manipulable, is somewhat misguided.

Therefore your question seems to accept that I am busy creating an identity for myself, by making choices that assist in that creation. I don't object to that view at all. It grants that I have some control over who I am and it doesn't impose any artificial restrictions on my freedom to change or grow in directions I choose.

The other part of your question is whether the choices I make are "merely props". I presume you are using "props" in its theatrical sense. If something is a theatrical prop, it carries quite a few connotations with it. First, it is brandished by an actor, but only so it can be appreciated by an audience. That same actor is involved in an elaborate pretense which may have little or nothing to do with their own internal feelings, desires, choices or meanings. These are subordinated to the needs of the story being acted for the benefit or enjoyment of the audience.

When I pull all this together, it appears you are asking whether I always value the reaction of some or other audience over my own reactions, needs or desires, whenever these two bases for making a cultural choice are in conflict.

No.