This week the reading focuses on the subject of identity. Your identity can be seen as anything from a physical characteristic, your hair or eye colour, to a personal trait. Your identity therefore, places you with people who share the same characteristics or traits. As During explains “identity is won at the price of reducing individuality”. Your identity does not define who you are as a whole, you don not posses just one trait at any given time. As During exclaims “identities are not given in terms of what individuals are as a whole, but in terms of more or less arbitrarily selected features that they possess”.
Your identity is generally given to you from the outside. Socially, people identify with you in a certain way, whether your male or female, African or European. The concept of identity politics in simple words is united people sharing the same identity, examples being feminists, gays, African Americans, becoming political groups based on their common goals, rights. The problem with identity politics is that with sharing political goals for that specific group, other groups are ostracized in the process. Identity politics also erases “internal difference” within the group at hand. Although these groups identify themselves strongly with one characteristic, they can’t exclude the fact that they also belong to another.
To address the problems identity politics brought about, the hybridity theory was developed. The hybridity theory focuses on the idea that your identity isn’t a solid “a stable trait shared across all groups” but rather something changeable, that constantly mutates depending on your context.
As During explains, our identity is inescapable. Our identity is part of who we are, we use it to be part of groups and associations and it links hand in hand with our culture. Our identity mutates based on time and context and is greatly affected by social change. through the use of media and the convergence of different technologies, our identities are constantly able to change and acquire different traits. Within the country where we live, our identity is always reinforced with nationality, which is a major part of who we are. If we think about when the Olympic Games are on, and the amount of national spirit that can be seen across Australia, identity becomes all the more apparent. The media gives us the option to pick and choose parts of our identity. Whether your a fan of Harry Potter or you prefer comic book heroes, there is always someone else out there who shares that certain trait with you.
