Bauman and Identity

I returned to Bauman's Consuming Life in order to take my discussion of his ideas beyond my own housing issues (although they are still significant and interesting to me). As it relates to my own focus in both teaching and research, Bauman's discussion of identity was most powerful to me.

On this topic, he writes

In the liquid modern society of consumers no identities are gifts at birth, none is 'given', let alone given once and for all and in a secure fashion. Identities are projects: tasks to be undertaken, diligently performed and seen through to infinitely remote completion (p. 110).

I'm of two minds in thinking about this statement because on the one hand, I like very much the idea of identities in a constant state of becoming (the post-structuralist notion of identities as fluid, not fixed). And I'd hesitate to say this is a quality exclusively of a liquid modern state, although perhaps things are more fluid now. And I would agree that the project of identity is something more evident in media than before. The ability to reinvent yourself or to be 'born again' can be found everywhere.

Bauman goes on to say,

Remember that consumers are driven by the need to 'commoditize' themselves -- remake themselves into attractive commodities -- and pressed to deploy all the usual stratagems and expedients of marketing practice for that purpose (p. 111).

Here is where I am of another mind (or on the other hand -- whichever of my metaphors you prefer to follow) because I do see how this remaking of identity is problematic given the 'commoditization' of self and the need to make oneself attractive to others. In the first sense of identity as fluid, one need not be any one thing, but in this second sense, one need be all things to all people. In other words, the marketing of the self means that someone, somewhere determines whether you fit the right criteria for a particular way of being.

This is similar to to Bauman's earlier discussion of England's immigration policy where the needs of the market are given "the right to define the 'needs of the country' and to decide what (or whom) the country needs and what (or whom) it does not need" (p. ?). And what the market seeks, according to Bauman, is the "exemplary consumer."

We can bring such thinking back to education as well. Schools are constantly under pressure to prepare students for a global, neoliberal world where market forces drive the needs of the work force. Locally, then, schools are forced to constantly reconsider the ways in which to prepare their students in a competitive market. And on the level of the individual, students need to be what James Gee calls "shape-shifting, portfolio people" -- fluid not only in skill, but fluid in being as well.

Bauman also brings in the growing ubiquity of online worlds where identities are even less fixed (if that's possible). He writes, "The wondrous advantage of the virtual life space over the 'offline' consists in the possibility to get the identity recognized without actually practising it" (p. 114).

What strikes me as ultimately important here is the need for identities to be recognized if they are to be legitimate at all. So while there seems to be agency in the fluidity and constant becoming of identities, structural forces also stand ready to name some identities more valuable than others. And according to Bauman, those identities are those most able to consume. The failed consumer, or the underclass of which Bauman writes, does not have the agency to write the stories of their own identities.

The second part of Bauman's quote above, about practising identity (love the British spelling) also has significance to education. If we want our students to be constantly shape-shifting, does this mean they perform any of their identities well? In fact, if getting recognized is what defines an identity, perhaps doing an identity well enough is all that matters.

Consuming Life

With the housing market on my brain lately, Bauman's discussion of the urge and haste to discard and replace in a consumerist society instead of protecting for durability and longevity struck me as relevant to my own situation. Upon first meeting with potential realtors to help sell my house, the need to update my stove and refrigerator was made clear -- despite never having had a problem in all of the time I owned them. Now prettier and less solid items sit in their place, but it takes a little longer to boil water. The producers of my old Sears Kenmore stove from 1960 would be proud to know that their product made it through several tides of change over the years, while the sales person for my new model hardly tried to sell me a warranty. What's the point, right? I'll just get a new one when this one breaks down. Perhaps this example is a little mundane, but I think Bauman gets at something important when he writes:

So when those objects of yesterday's desires and those past investments of hope break their promises and fail to deliver the instant and complete satisfaction hoped for, they should be abandoned...

Consumerism is tied to our hopes and our desires -- who we imagine ourselves to be. My stove and fridge represent more than working appliances. They represent the illusion of a better life, a new beginning. The entire "staging" of my house for potential buyers relates to this illusion of a better way of being available through the purchase of my house.

Is this illusion, founded on a lie, what Bauman refers to as "subjectivity fetishism"? That in a consumerist society out selves become what we fetishize? The Cartesian "I shop, therefore I am"? Here's a spot where I need some class discussion.

I have more I want to think through in this post, but in the sake of time I think I'll just move toward an ending with this: I'm intrigued as well by what Bauman's Consuming Life means for education. I'm worried, as he is, about the "causalities of consumerism" -- those who are marooned by the shift from a producer to consumer society. As students imagine and design their futures, for example, can their illusions ever become reality? Does our society push them ever toward NOT reaching their goals and meeting their desires (so they'll abandon them and move onto to new hip, interest free ones)? How does the uncertainty of time and the impossibility of 'telos' inform our teaching and students' learning?

Questions to ponder. In a later post, perhaps. Until then.