The human condition: Rene Magritte

Identity and Culture

B. Manjula, CMCS
manjula@tiss.edu

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 “We did not go up the stage
That was made in our name
Nor were we invited on to it
We were shown
Our place
With pointed finger
And we sat there (obediently)
We were highly appreciated
And ‘they’, standing on the stage
Kept telling us of our own misery
‘But our misery remained ours alone
it was never theirs’
We mumbled – uttered our doubts
‘They’ listened intently
And roared….
Pulling us by the ear admonished us
“Say sorry….otherwise….”
Vahru Sonvane : The Stage

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 A set of ideas which produces a
partial and selective reality. This in
turn serves the interests of those
with power in society. It has its
roots in the writings of Karl Marx in
the nineteenth century, arguing
that the property-owning classes
[bourgeoisie] were able to rule by
ideas which represented as natural
the class relationships of
production, therefore justifying
their own wealth and privilege.
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 Both the objective circumstances and subjective
ideas inevitably change and develop through
history, and this process is driven by the material
engine of economy.
 The kind of economic system under which a
person lived, and the position person occupies in
that system determine his identity,
consciousness and culture
 “It is not consciousness that determine the life,
but life determine the consciousness” Marx
 Ideology as False Consciousness
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Marx
 “No social order ever perishes before all
the productive forces for which there is
room in it have developed; and new,
higher relations of production never
appear before the material conditions of
their existence have matured in the womb
of the old society itself. Therefore mankind
always sets itself only such tasks as it can
solve….”

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Gramsci and Althusser
 Necessity of studying events, ideas, texts
and behaviours within their historical
context.”
 Knowing thyself, as a product of historical
process to date which has deposited in you
an infinity of traces ( Gramsci,1971)
 Relative Autonomy to Superstructure and
Culture
 Interpellation of Althusser
 ISA and RSA of Althusser

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Effects Colonialism
 The total or partial erosion of the colonized culture
 The mediation of the identity and subjectivity of the colonized
 The total rejection by some elements among the colonized of
everything western as a form of reaction and protest against the
colonizer.
 The categorization of the world into ranks, such as first world,
second world, the West and the rest with all the subsequent
stereotyping and prototyping that follows.
 The emergence of different forms of fundamentalism that aim at
purifying their local cultures from the residues of the colonial past
 The emergence of bourgeoisie classes in the colonies, modeling
themselves after their masters, who endeavor to maintain their
status quo by getting closer to Western culture
 The emergence of societies with a lot of contradictions and split
loyalties.

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 Post-colonialism
 The pioneers of Post-colonialism like
Edward Said, Franz Fanon, Homi Bhabha
among others, concerned themselves with
the social and cultural effect of
colonization. They regarded the way in
which the west paved its passage to the
orient and the rest of the world as based
on un confounded truths. They asserted in
their discourses that no culture is better or
worse than other culture and consequently
they nullified the logic of the colonialists.
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 The Assumptions of Post-
colonialism

 Cultural relativism. This means that the colonialists’ defilement of

culture is socially, morally and politically incorrect.

 The absurdity of colonial language and discourses. A careful study

of recent colonial narratives like Passage to India and Heart of
Darkness suggest that the colonialist is always rendered short of
expression to comprehend and fathom his colonial experience.

 Ambivalence towards authority. This ambivalence is born out of

the struggle and conflict between native and settler with the
outcome of the settler’s disposal. This victory over the settler
leads the native to question all forms of authority.

 Colonial alienation. Colonialism leads to the alienation of the

native in his own land. This is described as a traumatic experience
that erodes the individual’s identity.
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The postmodern’s initial
concern is to de-naturalize our
way of life; to point out that
those entities that we
experience as ‘natural’ (they
might even include capitalism,
patriarchy, liberal humanism),
are in fact ‘cultural’; made by
us, not given to us.

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 Today’s age is marked by distinct
and drastic differences in society,
culture and lifestyle.
Developments in mass media,
information technology and the
consumer society have an impact on
our understanding of more abstract
matters, like meaning, identity and
even reality. Old styles of analysis
are no longer useful. New approaches
and new vocabularies need to be
created in order to understand the
present

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Lyotard (1984), identified
various ‘metanarratives’ of the
‘modern’ Age of Reason.
These metanarratives, which
influenced all Western thought,
included:
 progress;
 optimism;
 rationality;
 the search for absolute knowledge
in science, technology, society and
politics; and
 the idea that gaining knowledge of
the true self was the only
foundation for all other knowledge
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Erosion of conventional
distinctions between high
and low culture;
fascination with how our
lives seem increasingly
dominated by visual media;
questioning of ideas about
meaning and
communication,
and about how signs refer to
the world; definitions of
human identity are changing
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 Foucault Critiqued two
features of Cartesian
Philosophy

 Philosophical
Foundationalism

 Institutional Normativism

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 Foucault contradicts
Certainties

 An External
Empirical Reality
to be Perceived and
Counted

 AnInternal
Certainty of a Solid
Subjectivity
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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism

Suspicion and
Master rejection of
Narratives and Master
Metanarratives Narratives; ironic
of history, deconstruction of
culture and master
national identity. narratives,
counter-myths of
origin.

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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
Faith in "Grand Rejection of totalizing
Theory" (totalizing theories; pursuit of
explantions in localizing and
history, science and contingent theories
culture) to
represent all
knowledge and
explain everything.

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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism

Faith in, and myths of, Social and cultural

social and cultural pluralism, disunity,
unity, hierarchies of unclear bases for
social-class and social/national/ethnic
ethnic/national values, unity.
seemingly clear bases
for unity.

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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
Sense of unified, Sense of
centered self; fragmentation and
"individualism," decentered self;
unified identity. multiple, conflicting
identities.

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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
Idea of "the family" Alternative family
as central unit of units, alternatives
social order: model to middle-class
of the middle-class, marriage model,
nuclear family. multiple identities
for couplings and
childraising

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 Modernism Vs
Postmodernism

Faith in the "real" Hyper-reality, image

beyond media and saturation, simulacra
representations; seem more powerful
authenticity of than the "real"; images
"originals" and texts with no prior
"original".
"As seen on TV" and "as
seen on MTV" are more
powerful than
unmediated experience.

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Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
Dichotomy of high Disruption of the
and low culture dominance of high
(official vs. popular culture by popular
culture) culture

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 Representation and the OTHER
The Politics of Representation
Representation and Misrepresentation
Subaltern Groups and the Power of Representation
The Burden of Representation

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 Deconstruction and
Subaltern Studies

 Binary Opposites
 Subverting the
centre -Periphery
relations.

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 Tribals
 Scheduling, Excluding and Alienating process of
the Colonialism
 Othering and Representation
 Customary Laws
 Land and Forest
 Displacement and Rehabilitation
 Tribal women: Multiple Exclusion of caste, class
and gender
 Insurgency signifies a moment of rupture or
disruption that generates a counter discourse to
the already experienced milieu of subjugation,
alienation and compulsion.
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 Blaming the Victim Theory

 Globalisation: Marginalising the

Marginalised

 Power Structures

 Commercialisation of Culture and

homogenisation
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 “We did not go up the stage
That was made in our name
Nor were we invited on to it
We were shown
Our place
With pointed finger
And we sat there (obediently)
We were highly appreciated
And ‘they’, standing on the stage
Kept telling us of our own misery
‘But our misery remained ours alone
it was never theirs’
We mumbled – uttered our doubts
‘They’ listened intently
And roared….
Pulling us by the ear admonished us
“Say sorry….otherwise….”
Vahru Sonvane : The Stage

B. Manjula, Centre for Media and Cultural 32

Studies