"As a black woman, I have to deal with identity or I don't exist at all." -Audre Lorde
We had a small discussion based around this quote on Wednesday and at one point came to the conclusion that you have to have an identity in order to assert yourself, but I ask what is identity? I believe I've addressed this in previous posts, but it's a prevalent question in our society worth bringing up again. How we define ourselves and more specifically, how we define the criterion we use to define ourselves drastically alters not only how we are perceived by others, but how we create ourselves.
Further, identity is amorphous and in its own way hard to define. It is simultaneously both inclusive and exclusive. I've heard the word essentialism (which I had to look up) mentioned and I agree that this plays a role in how we categorize and think about identifying: there are certain properties of identity that without them you cannot identify anything. But each essence, as the name essentialism suggests, isn't always clear. Philosophy has been waffling for years trying to figure out exactly how you classify something as human. So I'm not even going to try to touch that subject any further than I have just yet.We are each defined by multiple spheres of influence: society, family and various cultures. In my AP US Government and Politics class my senior year of high school we called such varied influences cross-cutting cleavages, and they don't always run parallel to each other. More often than we like, our base identities clash and we have to choose which social/economic/familial belief or affiliation dominates our identity.
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