Identity

A person's Identity can be one of many things depending on where and when you live. In the lecture we talked about how there have been many different kinds of Identity throughout history. There was the pre-modern Identity, where the institutions of various forms of power determined the identities of the populace. Things like Marriage, The Church, Monarchy, Government, The State, and Work all had a say in the overall identity of the individual. Some examples of these identities are the farm worker, soldier, factory worker, housewife, gentleman, and the idea of Husband and Wife.

During Modern times, Identity evolved into something different. There were a few different ideas behind it. Some of it was based on social class and fashion that dictates one's outer identity. In this instance, people were more able to "choose" their own identity, meaning people became more outwardly self conscious about how they acted and looked within a group. People were no longer born into an identity that stuck with them throughout the rest of their life.

In the post-modern setting, ones Identity is completely constructed for an by the person. It accepts a fragmented form of oneself, with various discerning points to flesh it out. Examples of these would be Education, Age, Income, Nationality, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Gender, and many other things. In art, many of these ideas have been explored these identities through various mediums.

“The notion ‘you are who you pretend to be’ has a mythic resonance. The Pygmalion story endures because it speaks to a powerful fantasy: that we are not limited by our histories, that we can be recreated or can recreate ourselves... Virtual worlds provide environments for experiences that may be hard to come by in the real”

Sherry Turkle (1994), Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality

Within the internet as a whole, online communities have become more and more popular, and with that comes the possibility of a completely constructed persona, one that might not be anything like the person sitting behind the desk. This has resulted in a very new kind of Identity, where you don't even have to meet the person or be anything like the real you in order to show an identity.

Identity has been one of the defining traits in humanity since the start of civilisation, and has become more and more broken down as time has gone by. Its an interesting phenomenon to see.