MC: Doris Bachmann-Medick: Identity - A Contested Category

Although the height of the identity debates in the 1980s and 1990s seems to have passed, the category of “identity” is still, surprisingly, flourishing. Contemporary discussions depict this “umbrella term” as a problematic, highly contested (but still useful?) category, whose analytical scope as well as positive and negative evaluations will be explored in this class. To what extent can we even make the worn-out “identity” category productive for our own work again?

We should distinguish between identity as a category of practice and organization of social movements, processes of migration, etc. and identity as an analytical category of research. An aim of this class will be to differentiate this ubiquitous term in a critical way. Our discussions will go beyond questions of personal identity towards issues of collective identities – of agent-oriented versus ascription-oriented forms of identity and identification. We will try to develop (new) alternative terms that might work in functionally equivalent ways while avoiding the pitfalls of the identity concept. In doing so, taking up problems from our own projects could be stimulating.

This class consists of three parts. In its first part, an introductory lecture on different approaches to the identity concept will be presented – including cross-disciplinary insights into contemporary problem fields and discourses of political, ethnic, cultural, gender-oriented and migrational identity. In its second part, we will discuss a critical, thought-provoking  and seminal essay: “Beyond ‘Identity.’” In its third part, our focus will be directed towards discussing connections between this topic and our respective dissertation/research projects, stimulated by previously submitted questions from the participants. The class will end with an even stronger focus on the applicability of identity concepts in an additional output-session.  

Text for discussion:

Rogers Brubaker/Frederick Cooper: “Beyond ‘Identity’”, in: Theory and Society, vol. 29, no. 1 (February 2000), 1-47.    

// Dr. Doris Bachmann-Medick (GCSC)