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Start > Masterprogramm Humanities & Social Sciences: Kulturwissenschaften - Culture, Arts and Media [ab Studienbeginn WS 13/14] (M.A.) -> Minor Kulturtheorie -> Sozialität und Kulturalität

Lehrveranstaltungen

Problematizing Identity (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Christoph Brunner

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Dienstag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 01.04.2019 - 05.07.2019 | C 5.325 Seminarraum

Inhalt: Is identity back? In recent years the notion of identity seems to return into the political agendas of cultural discourse, from social media, to identity politics and social theory such as Francis Fukuyama’s recent book “Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment” or Andreas Reckwitz’s book “Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten.” If the longe durée lasted from 1968 till the promising and emancipatory conceptions of alternative netcultures celebrating possible forms of new collective modes of globalized and cosmopolitan life until the early 2000s, the last decade marked a return to the individual and the rise of figures of resentment. Michel Foucault prominently announced the end of the individual and the emergence of the subject. At the same time François Lyotard developed his argument against the grand narrative of linear history. Black queer-feminist writers such as Audre Lorde defended difference as a non-identitarian concept and Gilles Deleuze prominently staged difference as a philosophical concept against the figure of identity. Following these moments Judith Butler proposed a floating conception of sexual subjectivity through her understanding of gender and political philosophers from Toni Negri to Paolo Virno or Silvia Federici developed an idea of the multitude and feminist commons all working against a logic of identity. Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha (to name just a few) investigated cultural identity through the experience of racial and ethnic conflicts from a post-colonial perspective. Today, identity receives renewed attention mostly by liberal democratic theories such as Fukuyama or Reckwitz, or aligns with (far) right-wing politics such as the Identitarian Movement (building on “theories” of Alain Benoist) or the Alt-Right. Taking the title at its word, the seminar aims at “problematizing identity.” With the term problematizing a philosophical approach will be taken that asks how, under which conditions, by whom, with which aims and effects. Identity is not a given idea but requires historical, cultural and theoretical contextualization, emphasizing its many shades and variations. Starting from a philosophical point of departure in the works of Plato and Aristotle, we will explore more recent concepts of identity in Adorno, the subject in Foucault and Difference in Deleuze. Dismantling identity as a potentially Western construction, the second part of the seminar focuses on post-colonial and posthumanist critiques of identity through the works of Stuart Hall, Spivak, and Donna Haraway. A third part will then revisit the debates on identity politics in relation to gender and critical race studies in the works of Judith Butler, Paul B. Preciado, and the Combahee River Collective amongst others. The seminar is developed in relation to current political shifts in the cultural landscape revolving around the term identity and will use material from research on current strategies used by the Alt-Right and Identitarian Movement in order to ground the theoretical approaches in empirical practice. As part of the seminar we will have Dr. Ines Kleesattel give a seminar input on Adorno.