Thanks, Francoise for asking this question,
At 10:07 AM 1/10/96 -0800, Francoise Herrmann wrote:
>
>Hi everyone, A while back in side-channeled communication over a
>paper that Jim Wertsch and Bill Penuel Wrote about identity, Jim
>Wertsch told me that when looking at issues of resistance, it is
>never clear WHO is doing the resistance. I think that this says
>much about co-construction of action, the mututality and
>responsability of it.
>
>Francoise Francoise Herrmann fherrmann who-is-at igc.org
Actually, I should admit that I have similar questions that I'm afraid to
ask because they sound so stupid, so naive but rather real for me. I have a
suspicion (although it could be wrong) that notions like "identity,
resistance, shared knowledge, internalization" etc., are part of our
"espoused theory" or "mythology." I should stress that I strongly belief in
usefulness of both espoused theories and mythology even if they are wrong
because they mobilize us for some very useful actions that can be difficult
to carry without them in some situations. However, it is also important to
know their limitation. I suspect that the terms above are manifestors of
some important sociohistorical and cultural phenomena like "witchcraft" for
some societies rather than useful conceptual notions.
Why do I feel that these terms are not "real" conceptual notions? Well, I
think that these terms transform (or better to say distort) relations and
processes into entaties that beling to individual. To me to say that
somebody has an identity is to say that an object has a name. I more
believe in object's name being a mediator in relationship among some people
than object having name. The object's name is not in the object nor in the
relationship between the person talking about the object and the object. It
is in the relationship of people talking about the object. Similarly, it
seems to me that talk about identity is a mediative discourse that shapes
relationship of the talking people. For me the most interesting question is
when, why, how, and uder what historical and sociocultural circumstances
people have started talking about their identies (I think it happend rather
recently: no more than 80-100 years or even more recently). Of course, I
can be wrong entirely or about specific terms that I used here. What do you
think?
Eugene Matusov
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Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz