Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality
Evidence
We have the notion of identity as contradictory, as composed of more than one discourse, as composed always across the silences of the other, as written in and through ambivalence and desire. These are extremely important ways of trying to think an identity which is not a sealed or closed totality. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 211
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Definitions identity as constituted across silence, ambivalence, and desire — a non-sealed totality.
- XREF: This anti-essentialist model of identity is a load-bearing premise for later analysis of how ‘Islam’ and ‘the Muslim’ are discursively constructed.
Related
- Identity is contradictory, multi-discursive, and constructed across the other’s silences. (similarity 0.96)
- Identity must be theorized as simultaneously fixed by and escaping meaning. (similarity 0.83)
- Identification is always constructed through ambivalence and splitting. (similarity 0.82)
- Identity can only be understood through difference, never self-sameness (similarity 0.82)
- The new identification produces a self that did not preexist it. (similarity 0.81)
- Every identity is constituted relationally through what it excludes (similarity 0.81)
- Identity is simultaneously about belonging and about differentiating from others. (similarity 0.80)
- Identity emerges in discourse rather than preceding it (similarity 0.80)
- Identity is perpetually in formation, never a completed essence. (similarity 0.80)
- Identity is a positional political choice, not an ascribed primordial given (similarity 0.80)
- Multiple modes of relating define the world simultaneously, not as guises but identities (similarity 0.79)
- Muslim identity is real but never the sole or primary form of social self-understanding. (similarity 0.79)
- Rejecting essentialism need not collapse into postmodern nomadism that erases difference. (similarity 0.79)
- Identity theories lag behind the linguistic research that has made identity central. (similarity 0.79)
- Identity is positional and processual, never reducible to one fixed position (similarity 0.79)