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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] ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.