Course:LIBR559A/ Johnson, C. (2005).

From UBC Wiki

Purpose:

“Issues of identity are crucial in current political debate. This article analyses narratives of identity using three very different examples, namely colonial-settler Australia, lesbian romance genres, and the role of class in contemporary American and British politics. It explores both privileged and marginalized identity narratives and the tensions between them. For example, lesbian romance narratives are contrasted with religious right arguments against same-sex marriage. Some argue that the complex intersections, compatibilities, and differences between conflicting narratives of identity reveal a great deal about how specific concepts of identity are formed. The narratives examined do not produce explicit binary constructions of dominant and subordinate identity categories. Rather, being able to imagine (or not imagine) other narratives plays an important part in the process of constructing identities within these discourses. Narratives that foreclose empathy facilitate the denial that discrimination or subordination is taking place. Similarly, privileged narratives of identity facilitate subjects’ ability to think well of themselves and their treatment of others

Main argument:

Examination of the making of identity by outside, mainstream, groups and the expectations of those groups upon the identity of minority members

Method:

An analysis of conflicting narratives on forms of identity (p 38) within mainstream group identities

Topics:

Systems design, aboriginal, class, colonial-settler society, group norms, lesbian narrative, mainstream groups, marginalized identity, privileged identity, same-sex marriage

Novel ideas/weakness:

Johnson examines how structures in society prescribe identity, specifically identity of minority actors, from the context of a dominant models and interpretations of what is deemed correct. Johnson examines sturctures of privilege which other authors have deemed as “whiteness” by including more factors and a non-singular name: ie whiteness. Johnson is then positioned to examine structural practices of discrimination from a perspective that is more nuanced and more inclusive of diversity than single term definitions allow. The author stresses the complexity of the approach and that one-to-one comparisons are difficult. However the complexity and difficulty underlie real-world structures and emphaize “the way in which dominant and suborinate identity categories are deiscursively constructed, [also] emphaizing the mechanisms by which such power relations are explicitly denied” (p 38). Johnson seeks to illuminate structures of inequity and marginalization while not directly engaging in identity politics. Johnson cites Judith Butler’s rationale “that engaging in identity politics risks reproducing relations of subordination, rather than effectively challenging them” (p 38).

Page author: Erin Brown