A Recognitive Theory of Identity and the Structuring of Public Space
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A RECOGNITIVE THEORY OF IDENTITY AND THE STRUCTURING OF PUBLIC SPACE Benjamin Carpenter [email protected] Doctoral Thesis University of East Anglia School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies September 2020 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. ABSTRACT This thesis presents a theory of the self as produced through processes of recognition that unfold and are conditioned by public, political spaces. My account stresses the dynamic and continuous processes of identity formation, understanding the self as continually composed through intersubjective processes of recognition that unfold within and are conditioned by the public spaces wherein subjects appear before one another. My theory of the self informs a critique of contemporary identity politics, understanding the justice sought by such politics as hampered by identity enclosure. In contrast to my understanding of the self, the self of identity enclosure is understood as a series of connecting, philosophical pathologies that replicate conditions of oppression through their ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological positions on the self and political space. The politics of enclosure hinge upon a presumptive fixity, understanding the self as abstracted from political spaces of appearance, as a factic entity that is simply given once and for all. Beginning with Hegel's account of identity as recognised, I stress the phenomenological dimensions of recognition, using these to demonstrate how recognition requires a fundamental break from the fixity and rigidity often displayed within the politics of enclosure. I further defend my account of recognition against several overarching critiques of the recognitive tradition, as postulated by Foucault, Oliver, and Markell – a defence which requires a break with these preceding traditions in exchange for a far clearer spatial and phenomenological grounding acquired through a turn towards the work of Hannah Arendt. This turn develops into an examination as to how political spaces condition processes of recognition through producing variable conditions of visibility, dynamics I explore through the works of Arendt, Ahmed, and Gramsci. Given that the politics of enclosure find striking f0rms of expression in social media fora, my final chapter provides a critique of these fora as spaces of appearance. Contra to techno-optimist accounts of social media technologies as de facto sources of popular, democratic empowerment, I contend that the pathologies of identity enclosure find a particularly intense expression within online spaces. I show that the praxeis of mainstream identity politics are severely hampered by these pathologies, and I argue that a praxis informed by a recognitive theory of the self would be better placed to achieve the transformative projects of these politics – particularly with respect to their underlying ethical motivations. 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction: The Vampire’s Masquerade ............................................................................................................................ 4 The Logic of Enclosure ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Identity and Visibility in Contemporary Discourses of the Self ..................................................................................... 9 1: Pathology and Mediation ................................................................................................................................................... 17 The Politics of Enclosure ................................................................................................................................................... 17 Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy as Regulative Identity Practices ....................................................................................... 25 Gender Identity and Black Culture as Abstract Universals ....................................................................................... 30 Engagement as Complicity – No Platforming as the Foreclosure of Critique .......................................................... 51 Obscured Privatisation ..................................................................................................................................................... 60 The Object Ontology of the Enclosed Self.................................................................................................................. 61 Immediate Self Knowledge ..........................................................................................................................................69 The Mechanism of Self-Disclosure: Essentialism Without Essence ........................................................................ 74 Pacification and Agency: Enclosure as Reification .................................................................................................... 78 2: The Dialectical Self and Subject ....................................................................................................................................... 84 Becoming Master and Slave: The Centrality of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in Readings of the Hegelian Subject........ 85 Unbecoming Master and Slave: A Return to the Dialectical Phenomenology of Consciousness .............................. 98 Reified Thought as the Pursuit of Essences: Identity Essentialism as a Rejection of Dialectical Thinking ............. 115 Towards Recognition ...................................................................................................................................................129 3: Rejecting Recognition: Responding to Critiques of the Recognitive Tradition .......................................................... 130 Michel Foucault – Resisting the Determination of the Subject .................................................................................... 131 Kelly Oliver – Recognition Against Testimony ............................................................................................................. 145 Patchen Markell – Recognition and Existential Temporality ...................................................................................... 156 My Account of Recognition ....................................................................................................................................... 169 4: The Structuring of Public Space ...................................................................................................................................... 176 Recognising Action: The Public Sphere as Performative Arena .................................................................................. 176 Orientations of the Self: Navigation within the Performative Arena ......................................................................... 190 Hegemonic Recognition: Structural Codifications of Modes of Encounter .............................................................. 204 5: Online Discourses of the Self: The Spatiality of Social Media and the Framing of the Online Persona ................. 222 ‘Appear Online’: Social Media Spatiality ....................................................................................................................... 223 Terms and Conditions: The Profile as the Ground of the Online Subject ................................................................. 236 Cybernetic Perdition: The Logic of Position and the Eternal Present ....................................................................... 249 Conclusion: Against the Enclosure of Identity ................................................................................................................. 259 Post-script: Flight into the Virtual ..................................................................................................................................... 263 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................................................................... 272 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the continued support of my family, whose encouragement and assistance helped to sustain my motivation to persevere with my research. The project furthermore owes much to the critical contributions of my supervisors Tom Greaves and Davide Rizza both of whom have helped me develop as a philosopher and writer. In addition to my supervisors, I extend my gratitude to other members of PPL, in particular Michael Frazer and Alan Finlayson for their guidance during my probationary, and Fi Roxburgh, for her continued enthusiasm for my work. I would additionally like to thank the many friends and interlocutors I have enjoyed conversation with over the past four years. I would thank Karyn, Lorna, and Darren as well as any others who have read through unedited drafts of my material and survived. I am further thankful to all I have had the pleasure of teaching over the past