Identity is constituted within representation rather than pre-existing it
Evidence
It is always within representation. Identity is not something which is formed outside and then we tell stories about it. It is that which is narrated in one’s own self. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 210
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Core definitional toolkit: identity as always-narrated/always-represented, not a pre-formed essence later described.
- XREF: Grounds the representation/construction-of-the-Other thread that downstream Islamophobia readings build on.
Related
- Identity is constituted through representation, not expressed from lived experience. (similarity 0.87)
- The new identification produces a self that did not preexist it. (similarity 0.87)
- Identity is perpetually in formation, never a completed essence. (similarity 0.84)
- Identity can only be understood through difference, never self-sameness (similarity 0.82)
- Human identity is constructed and occasionally invented, not natural and stable (similarity 0.81)
- Identification is always constructed through ambivalence and splitting. (similarity 0.80)
- Identity is positional and processual, never reducible to one fixed position (similarity 0.80)
- Identity is contradictory, multi-discursive, and constructed across the other’s silences. (similarity 0.79)
- Identity must be theorized as simultaneously fixed by and escaping meaning. (similarity 0.79)
- Identity is both a source of agency and increasingly constructed rather than given (similarity 0.79)
- Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality (similarity 0.79)
- Identity construction is an exercise of power through exclusion (similarity 0.79)
- Identity is a positional political choice, not an ascribed primordial given (similarity 0.78)
- Diaspora identities are positional political choices, not primordial ascriptions (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Identity functions as a costume adaptable to context.
#complicates(0.72) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 173