A trial to weave together the different parts of this thread:
When faced with seemingly overwhelming amounts of perspectives, ideas and
directions in connection to a subject, I find it's best to leave your
"brain" alone to figure it out by itself. "Brain" usually comes up with a
picture, if you've treated it good, feed it regularly, poked and prodded its
musings and now and then demanded that it will perform in an understandable
(within your own matrix) manner. Thus, this is the "picture" of "identity"
delivered in a small apartment in Stockholm this morning: human identity as
a vorticist painting of the individual.
If identity can be seen as comprising of:
1. private characteristics functioning on the internal individual level.
2. personal definition of self directed at self as well as used in
interactions with others.
3. group belongings as chosen by the individual.
4. group belongings as chosen by others and used to label individuals or
groups.
5. societal structures presenting possibilities and obstacles.
6. ideological messages contained within structures of society - material,
legal, cultural etc.
7. probably loads of other aspects and levels - identity isn't static
neither is thought.
In a vorticist painting every part of the human being is abstracted and
presented in a geometrical way. This multitude of spaces, planes and angles,
each resting in perfect stillness, is positioned in connection to create
insecurity, movement emanating from the painting and pulling the viewer into
its vortex. Depending on the characteristics of the space where it's
exhibited the light and shadows, characterised by their sources, highlights
and cloaks different aspects of the "whole" painting.
In identity shaping these lights and shadows then invades or are invited
into the "painting"/the individual parts of the human being and changes
them. As if some of the planes are painted in heat or cold sensitive
materials or luminous or reflecting materials.
Thus the issue of cure could be exhibited within individual identities in a
multitude of ways depending on the level we approach the individual, the
situation she's in and the group belonging put on or chosen by her. It could
also be viewed differently depending on the specific audience and the
exhibition space. Disability studies is one space with its own light and
shadows, media another.
The research questions we chose, create the exhibition space, rig the
lightning and define the audience. The questions, thus, limit the possible
answers. When we debate issues in this forum there are generally no
specified questions and therefore the waves of the discussion create a swell
of answers, sometimes overflowing our thoughts. Methodology, which could
make this tidal wave manageable, is forever locked within specific research
projects. So while, research projects are valid reliable and general, their
results inhabit an unreliable, unspecified and for ever changing arena.
Research can at best weed out some of the abstract parts, provide some
shelter and security and one matrix for the rigging on the larger arena.
Nothing more. Still a worthy cause. And maybe, a place for feeling at home,
whether we live in Sweden, the UK or somewhere else.
I've thoroughly enjoyed this thread, as you probably have noticed. It's
provided me with some interesting thoughts, expanded my ideas on identity
both on a personal and communal level, and last but not least, restored my
belief that academe isn't necessarily a place of exile, not a neutral
country :-)
Susanne
Found this explanation of vorticism on the net. I think it's a good
expression of the human predicament and the different positions available to
us when faced with the tornado of life - and thus identity.
"The goal of, according to Vorticists, human "life must be to manage our
instinctive attachments" (Kush 67). People can try as much as they want to
develop autonomy, but there certainly is safety in the security of the
collective. What fuels the art of Vorticism is that humankind "refuses to be
committed one way or another" (Weistein 31). Because human beings are pulled
between autonomy and absorption into the machine [the communal human machine
- my comment], the Vorticist is at "his maximum point of energy when
stillest" (Lewis "The New Ego" 148). The effects the two extremes has on a
Vorticist can be seen as a "violence of the whirlpool about a center of
stillness" (Allen 66). The violence of the whirlpool is created by the
opposing temptations created within the self. If a person is completely
absorbed in the machine, or if they are strong willed, then no dramatic
action exists. The greatest point of energy is in the center of the vortex,
where one is stuck at their most unsure point between the violent extremes
of autonomy and absorption. The area in the center of the vortex is an area
of maximum potential energy, a state of being both "static and dynamic"
(Cassidy 29)."
http://joshuasperber.tripod.com/vortex.htm
-------------------------------------------------------
Susanne Berg
Luntmakargatan 86 A
113 51 STOCKHOLM
Sweden
telephone/fax +46 (0)8 15 73 54mobile phone +46 (0)70 515 73 56
e-mail [log in to unmask]
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