WITNESSING AND POLITICAL IDENTITY

This search for identity I have embarked upon continuously spirals away from the straightforward course I envisaged. I feel as if I am sailing along the outer rim of a Sargasso Sea, straining against a current pulling me closer in to the eye of the whirlpool. The current engagement is with identity politics. This area concerns propositions that focus on the aspirations of particular social interest groups whose political views may be shaped by aspects of their personal identity such as race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation or some other characteristic. Many groups (African-Americans, Hispanic, Anglo-Indian, Native American etc.) have been actively promoting their political identity for some time. The writing of and about this identity has been with us for some considerable time. The signs and images witnessing the process have been displayed all round us for some time. In the later half of the 20^th century, the most influential of these political identities has been that of gender. The feminist movement has mushroomed in its effect on all western societies and is now a global concern, going behind the Muslim veil, deconstructing the cast system and many other societies and cultures where women have been traditionally subservient. The work of Judith Butler, Helen Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and many others, has been remarkable in its influence.

Minh-Ha

I recently came across the work of Professor Trinh Minh-ha, in particular When the Moon Waxes Red. Representation, gender and cultural politics (Routledge 1991). She is one of these extraordinary women. In an interview in 1993 she stated:

“I rarely think in terms of message. I think more in terms of processes of transformation. Every film that I make, for example, is a transformative process for me. I mean by that that whenever I start a film, I may start with an idea, an image or an impression. By the time I finish the film, lam somewhere else altogether, even though 1 have not lost what I started out with. In the process of making the film your consciousness has changed considerably. 

 It's the same with writing. I am not writing just to give a message, even though in my writings and my films I am always concerned with something that is very specific. For example, the subject that you have deliberately decided to focus on would be the site around which your energy would deploy. But, on the other hand, the subject is not all that there is in writing, and in filmmaking. One should always offer the reader and the viewer something else than just the subject. And that something else has to do with writing itself and with the tools that define your activities as a writer or a filmmaker. By focusing on these, you also offer the reader or the viewer your social positioning-how you position yourself as a writer and a filmmaker in society. So these are the issues that I immediately face in writing and in filmmaking.”

There are a couple of other passages from her book Moon Waxes Red:

“An objective constantly claimed by those who ‘seek to reveal one society to another’ is ‘to grasp the native’s point of view’ and “to realise his vision of his world.’ […] The injunction to see things from the native’s point of view speaks for a definite ideology of truth and authenticity; it lies at the centre of every polemical discussion on ‘reality’ in its relation to ‘beauty’ and ‘truth.’…To raise the question of representing the Other is, therefore, to reopen endlessly the fundamental issue of science and art; documentary and fiction; universal and personal; objectivity and subjectivity; masculine and feminine; outside and insider.”

“Whether we choose to concentrate on another culture, or on our own culture, our work will always be cross-cultural. It is bound to be so…not only because of…personal background and historical actualities, but also and above all because of the heterogeneous reality we all live today, in postmodern times – a reality, therefore, that is not a mere crossing from one borderline to the other or that is not merely double, but a reality that involves the crossing of an indeterminate number of borderlines, one that remains multiple in its hyphenation.’

Ms Minh-Ha goes on:

“Multiculturalism does not lead us very far if it remains a question of difference only between one culture and another. Differences should also be understood within the same culture, just as multiculturalism as an explicit condition of our times exists within every self. Intercultural, intersubjective, interdisciplinary. These are some of the keywords that keep circulating in artistic and educational as well as political milieu. To cut across boundaries and borderlines is to live aloud the malaise of categories and labels; it is to resist simplistic attempts at classifying, to resist the comfort of belonging to a classification, and of producing classifiable works.”

I would submit that the textual displays, signs and images, appearing all around us are evidence of identities and give witness to their existence within this multicultural world and the many levels within it.

Here is a film of a talk on witnessing given at the Gender and Women’s Stuidies Department at UC Berkeley, featuring the amazing Professor Patricia J. Williams and Professor Trinh Minh-ha.  Very much worth a view:

OF THE LAWS OF THOUGHT

My continuing journey towards the writing of identity has led me into a quagmire of ideas and thoughts. I confess this, not in the sense of a bad situation, but more in the sense of a fertile marshland, a sort of Everglades of cogitation.

The Aristotelian approach is contained in the first of his three classic laws of thought, i.e. the law of identity. It states that an object is the same as itself: A → A (if you have A, then you have A). While this can also be listed as A ≡ A (A is equivalent to A), this is redundant. Any reflexive relation upholds the law of identity. When discussing equality, the fact that "A is A" is a tautology.

In mathematics, a reflexive relation is a binary relation on a set for which every element is related to itself. In other words, a relation ~ on a set S is reflexive when x ~ x holds true for every x in S. An example of a reflexive relation is the relation "is equal to" on the set of real numbers, since every real number is equal to itself. A reflexive relation is said to have the reflexive property.

A binary relation on a set A is a collection of ordered pairs of elements of A. In other words, it is a subset of the Cartesian product A² = A × A. More generally, a binary relation between two sets A and B is a subset of A × B. The terms dyadic relation and 2-place relation are synonyms for binary relations

In logic, a tautology (from the Greek word ταυτολογία) is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation.

So when I contemplate a quagmire of ideas and thoughts, I am contemplating identical things:  A/idea = A/thought. The process of thinking perceives thoughts and as Goethe stated “Thinking is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” But is this swamp a reality, a tangible thing?  I would say yes, but some would argue no.

Arthur Schopenhauer discussed the laws of thought and tried to demonstrate that they are the basis of reason. He listed them in the following way in his Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason), §33:

•    A subject is equal to the sum of its predicates, or a = a.

•    No predicate can be simultaneously attributed and denied to a subject, or a ≠ ~a.

•    Of every two contradictorily opposite predicates one must belong to every subject.

Truth is the reference of a judgment to something outside it as its sufficient reason or ground.

Thus;

•    Everything that is, exists.

•    Nothing can simultaneously be and not be.

•    Each and every thing either is or is not.

•    Of everything that is, it can be found why it is.

There would then have to be added only the fact that once for all in logic the question is about what is thought and hence about concepts and not about real things.

—   Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains, Vol. 4, "Pandectae II," §163

To show that they are the foundation of reason, he gave the following explanation:

Through a reflection, which I might call a self-examination of the faculty of reason, we know that these judgments are the expression of the conditions of all thought and therefore have these as their ground. Thus by making vain attempts to think in opposition to these laws, the faculty of reason recognizes them as the conditions of the possibility of all thought. We then find that it is just as impossible to think in opposition to them as it is to move our limbs in a direction contrary to their joints. If the subject could know itself, we should know those laws immediately, and not first through experiments on objects, that is, representations (mental images).

Schopenhauer(On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason), §33:

Schopenhauer's four laws can be schematically presented in the following manner:

•    A is A.

•    A is not not-A.

•    A is either A or not-A

•    If A then B (A implies B)

I would argue that thoughts are real things. The fact that they can be spoken, written, read, in short, perceived, makes them real.

Aristotle wrote:

Now "why a thing is itself" is a meaningless inquiry (for—to give meaning to the question 'why'—the fact or the existence of the thing must already be evident—e.g., that the moon is eclipsed—but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given in answer to all such questions as why the man is man, or the musician musical, unless one were to answer, 'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just meant this.' This, however, is common to all things and is a short and easy way with the question.) - Metaphysics, Book VII, Part 17

So you see the quandary. How did I get into this problem of writing identity? Here's a little ditty about thinking:

MUSIC AND IDENTITY - MORE STUFF

Today I am rather overwhelmed with identity and information. There is so much stuff out there and some wonderful people. A while ago I had discussed the possibility of doing a joint Phd with Sophie Cotton [University of Manchester (MusB) and the Royal College of Music (MMus)] on the question of textual and musical displays of identity.
Today, I discovered the work being done by Miss Keelin Murray at the Univerity of Edinburgh. She is or has already completed her thesis on language and music from an evolutionary point of view and has lectured on Music and Identity. Her brief biography, which (I think) needs updating, posted on the University Website is as follows:

Murray

Keelin graduated from University College Dublin in 2008 with a BA (Hons) in Music and Linguistics, before studying towards an MSc in the Evolution of Language and Cognition in the University of Edinburgh. She is currently in the first year of a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, and her interests lie in the evolution of language (and music) from a proposed musical protolanguage. She is using an empirical approach to examine this hypothesis.

Her Lecture on Music and Identity involves:

Plan:

• Overview of concept of identity

• Music and national identity

• Music and teen culture

• Music and protest

Identity

• Our “self systems” are made up of numerous “self images” which exist in relation to particular situations in which we’re closely involved

• “Self identity” - overall view of myself in which these self images are integrated

• Self identity is closely tied up with group identity

• In-group vs out-group - very important in identity formation

• Self Identity Theory (SIT) predicts that people develop a sense of social identity as well as a personal identity

Through Ms Murray I have been led to  a number of websites including:

* Dr. Victoria Williamson’s blog Music Psychology – Music and Language overlap: The latest review:

http://musicpsychology.co.uk/music-and-language-overlap-the-latest-review/

* An article posted by Alicia Ritmundi at http://musicalsocialpsych.blogspot.co.uk/ entitled  Summary: What are Musical Identities, And Why Are They Important.

* Mind Over Music at http://mindovermusic.wordpress.com/

The investigation continues. All this stuff is worth looking at. I clearly have a lot to learn and much of the material I come across rather leads me to believe it's all been done before. Should I go on?

DA DA DA DAH

I looked for musical Identity on the web and came across a Multimedia Library that offers ‘the Electronic Dictionary of Musical Themes’.  This was originally compiled by Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern. It is one of the most generous compilations I have come across. On scrolling though I came upon the various themes for Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The themes are so familiar that on hearing the first couple of notes of any one of them, the piece is instantly identified. Perhaps I am mistaken in this belief, but I think not. I went on to you tube and listened to a wonderful performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Langrée. Have a listen, even if you didn’t know what you had listened to in the past, the music will remind you.