Identity and Difference

The shift from seeing identity as a fixed essence to seeing it as relational, produced through difference, and never finally settled.

Definition

On this view identity is not an inner essence but a relational and contingent construction: we define who we are through difference from what we are not, so identities are multiple, shifting, and always under construction rather than given once and for all.

Scope

This topic covers the anti-essentialist theory of identity in cultural studies: identity as relational and constituted through difference, the decentred subject, and the concept of identity as positioning rather than essence. It does not cover the specific identity categories of race or gender, which have their own topics.

Core questions

• Is identity something we have or something we continually make?
• How does difference constitute identity?
• What is the decentred subject?

Key theories

Identity as positioning

Hall recast cultural identity as a matter of becoming and positioning within history and difference, not a fixed essence to be recovered.

Identity through difference

The constructionist account holds that identities are marked out relationally against what they exclude, so difference is constitutive rather than secondary.

History

Drawing on post-structuralism and psychoanalysis, cultural theorists in the 1980s and 1990s, above all Stuart Hall, dismantled the idea of a unified, essential self. Hall's essays on cultural identity and diaspora and the textbooks of the period reframed identity as relational, decentred, and produced through difference and representation.

Debates

Anti-essentialism versus the politics of recognition

If identities are unstable constructions, critics ask, how can they ground claims for recognition and rights? Strategic essentialism is one proposed compromise.

Key figures

• Stuart Hall
• Kathryn Woodward
• Paul du Gay

Seminal works

• hall1990
• hall1996
• woodward1997

Frequently asked questions

What does the decentred subject mean?

That the self is not a unified, self-transparent core but is constituted from multiple, sometimes conflicting positions in language, culture, and the unconscious.