Identity politics reconsidered; Dominick LaCapra (eds. Linda M. Alcoff and Satya P. Mohanty)

Pg 230 – “Let us then look to the OED’s definitions of “experience.”
OED: 1. “The action of putting to the test; trial.”

~ I love this part of the definition. To me this is the important part of experience. Having part or pieces of the self tested/threatened/put to trial so that the working self-concept might provide more information to the rest of the self as to which selves are more important and should be ranked higher and which ones are less important and should be ranked lower.

Pg 230 – “2. “Proof by actual trial; practical demonstration.” I would simply point out, in the first two definitions of experience, the role of process, specifically the process of testing – or putting to the test – self or other. I would also note the juridicial dimension of the concept, arguably related to judgment, and even the proximity of experience to the ordeal. With the notion of “practical demonstration” there is a movement or even slippage toward a meaning obsolete in English but not in French: experience as experiment, which suggests an active, indeed performative, implication or even intervention of the observer in the observed – an implication that cannot be reduced to observation alone since it also changes what is investigated.”

~ So not only is experience the actual trial of the self and its identities, it’s proving those identities to be valid or not.

Pg 230 – “3. “The actual observation of facts or events, considered as a source of knowledge.” Here I am reminded of Satya Mohanty’s oft-quoted definition of experience: “ ‘Experience’ refers very simply to the variety of ways humans process information.” I would note that this is a definition, apparently restricted to humans, that may refer to a necessary dimension of certain forms of experience, but it does not seem to get at either additional sense in the OED or still others one might offer. Thus it may have to be supplemented by other considerations before it can qualify more comprehensively as one definition of experience.”

~ Experience is the trial, proving the identities to be valid, and using the trial and proving of identities as information for to build or rebuild other selves with. It’s the personal heritage’s fount of knowledge. The personal heritage uses experience to process information because of its testing ability on other selves.

Pg 230 – “4. “The fact of being consciously the subject of a state or condition, or of being consciously affected by an event. Also an instance of this; a state or condition viewed subjectively; an event by which one is affected.” Here the OED explicitly links experience to consciousness as well as to subjectivity. The linkage with subjectivity sits somewhat uneasily with the stress on “The actually observation (231) of facts or events” which would seem aligned with objectivity. In addition, one may note the typical linkage of experience with the subject and subjectivity as well as its extremely problematic nature, indicated by the appearance of objectivity with the attendant double binds of the subject-object aporia. But one may also argue that one should not oppose subjectivity and objectivity, notably when one introduces the question of subject positions that are crucial in identity-formation and mediate the relation between the self and society, as I shall later suggest. The OED’s stress on consciousness would seem to exclude unconscious processes from experience. One may find this exclusion, frequent in phenomenology, to be definitional of a certain conception of experience. But one is then left with a limited concept of experience that ignores the problem of the unconscious and of that which impinges upon, indeed internally differentiates or even splits, et is not encompassed by the conscious control of, the presumably unified subject – a problem I shall address when I ask the question: What is not experience or at least not entirely derivable from, or reducible to, experience (or at least a certain conception of experience)?”

~ So not only is experience as test/trial, but it is also something that consciously affects us. Experiences take place in the active part of the mind, not the subconscious. Unconscious things that take place are not part of experience, they might be like a self-reflection, but not experience.

Pg 231 – “6. “What has been experienced; the events that have taken place within the knowledge of an individual, a community, mankind at large, either during a particular period or general.” This is a very expansive definition of experience, but it at least serves to bring up the question of the relation between those who have directly experienced a series of events (e.g., slavery, apartheid, or the Holocaust) and those who are related to them through memory or at times through a shared heritage or subject position (say as African-American, black South African, or Jew or as non-African-American, white South African, or German). I doubt whether knowledge in a delimited sense would be enough of a basis for arguing that a later generation’s relation to the past is in some significant sense experiential or related to complex processes of identity-formation. At least there would have to be memory not reducible to (but also excluding) objective knowledge claims, and perhaps one might also require affective response – a feeling for the history of a group and one’s (232) inherited, acquired, or earned involvement in it.””

~ Experience in the past can affect either the larger, cultural level or the smaller, individual level. If it is an event in the past than the experience of those who lived through it and those who are just culturally affiliated with it is significantly different.

Pg 232 – “Another experiential and existential dimension not reducible to knowledge would be bearing witness in a secondary, nonidentitarian way to that past and its primary witnesses while recognizing and respecting their difference from oneself. By circumscribing a relation to the past within delimited forms of knowledge and representation, commentators…have argued that there is nothing experiential in any relevant sense about “memory” of a past one did not personally and directly live. Indeed, for them, what is at issue in movements beyond delimited claims to knowledge is only a misguided identity or memory politics. The latter misappropriates past experience as symbolic capital in the service of current political and social self-interest.”

~ This claims that experience that is through cultural affiliation is not really experience, as much as it is the heritage of the culture. The culture’s heritage can affect the individual due to their identification as a member of the culture, but it does not affect their personal heritage because they did not live through the actual experience.

Pg 232 – “7. “Knowledge resulting form actual observation or from what one has undergone.” The OED combines two quite different definitions here. Actual observation may be that of an eye-witness who remains a bystander distanced from events. Undergoing something characterizes someone having the experience, those (perhaps unconsciously) identifying with (even being haunted or possessed by) him or her or, in distinguishable ways, those empathizing with him or her while recognizing and respecting alterity and even resisting identification. I think the process of undergoing or “going through” is crucial for an acceptable definition of experience, and it would involve an affective, not only a narrowly cognitive, response, with affectivity having a significant relation to an attempt (however cautious, constitutively limited, nonleveling, imperfect, and at times failed) at understanding the other (who may sometimes be, in the most significant respects, opaque or standoffish). It is also crucial for giving an account of the relation between one directly having the experience, belated effects of certain experiences in later life (notably traumatic experiences), and the response to the experience of various third parties, including those born later – an issue that involves the question of subject positions vis-à-vis identities.”

~ So the actual testing/trial and the information gained from the testing/trial are both known as experience. One can observe something and “experience” it or one can go through something and “experience” it. These are two very different forms of experience, but they both relay information to the personal heritage of the person. The author argues more for the going through than just observing.

Pg 232 – “8. “The state of having been occupied in any department of study or practice, in affairs generally, or in the intercourse of life; the extent to which or the length of time during which, one has been so occupied; the aptitudes, skill, judgment, etc. thereby acquired.” We here, perhaps (233) inevitably, veer once again toward the extremely general and “spongiform.” But one can give many ordinary examples of what seems to be suggested in this definition: the experience of a graduate students, and so forth. It is also common to refer to someone with much or little experience in a given activity. Fortunately, the OED stops with this definition about which there seems relatively little interest to say that has not already been said about the other definitions.”

~ So any identity that has been occupied at any point in time is experience that leads itself into the personal history of the individual

Pg 235 – “Anxiety related to trauma and the idea that at least humanistic and interpretive social-scientific disciplines should in certain significant ways always be in a state of crisis, including a kind of post-traumatic identity-crisis wherein what is open for debate bears on the identity or constitution of the discipline itself.”

~ So trauma that causes anxiety turns into identity crisis. This is not always a bad thing because identity crisis leads to a debate on the identity and the self must self-reflect and determine the value of that identity.

Pg 236 – “With respect to identity-formation, one should make special mention of the founding trauma in the life of individuals and groups. The founding trauma is the actual or imagined event (or series of extreme or limit events) that poses in accentuated fashion the very question of identity yet may paradoxically become the very basis of an individual or collective identity. It may be undergone in the form of the deconversion or the conversion experience, even the sequence or coming together of the two, and it disorients and may reorient the course of a life. It may also become the basis of a new identity.”

~ “Founding trauma” would be the actual event/experience that leads to the building of an identity. Really important for the theory. The formation/deconstruction/redistribution stages are hinge on the founding trauma.

Pg 237 – “Another major set of problems not entirely encompassed by (a certain conception of) experience is the unconscious or, more precisely, unconscious processes such as displacement, condensation, repression, denial, disavowal, and compulsive repetition (related to the acting out of trauma). These processes, to which I can only allude, have experiential effects but, insofar as they are unconscious, are in one sense not directly experienced.”

~ The unconscious’s processes can affect experience, but only indirectly.

Pg 237 – “Especially interesting in this respect is the role of belatedness or what Freud termed Nachtraglichkeit. For Freud there was a period of latency between an initial, potentially traumatizing event and a later event that in some sense recalled it and triggered a traumatic response. The trauma depended on the interval or period of latency between events 0 an interval that was not itself experienced but related to a very intense form of experience in the acting out or compulsive repetition of the past itself experienced as if it were fully present. One may also refer here to the role of belated recognitions related to a passage of time and a series of subsequent developments that enable one to see something in the past that agents in the past (including oneself) could not see in that way themselves.”

~ So sometimes the “founding trauma” or experience that creates identity crisis does not happen immediately, but follows a period of latency of the event joining into the personal heritage and some other event or reflection on the event later triggering the crisis.

Pg 238 – “One may have a subject position without experiencing it, and often one’s experience of it depends on a recognition, at times an insulting recognition, coming from others. But subject positions are crucial for both experience and identity. Identity-formation might even be defined in non-essentialized terms as a problematic attempt to configure and, in certain ways, coordinate subject positions-in-process. This attempt would involve a limited, variable, but significant role for the responsible agency of individuals and groups, with the possibility of creating new subject positions (ones not beholden to victimization, for example). With respect to subject positions and their role in social life, one may ask whether there has ever been a politics that has not in some significant sense been an identity politics and whether criticisms of certain forms of identity politics are, often implicitly, made in favor of other (often idealized past or utopian) forms of identity politics (e.g., a nostalgia for the 1960s idealized or selectively remembered as a period of universalistic values and alliance politics).”

~ So identity formation might actually just be the self trying to reflect and sole the problems of and coordinate the issues related to one’s subject experience.

Pg 238 – “I have intimated that identity-formation is a matter of recognizing and coming to terms with one’s subject positions, coordinating them, examining their compatibility, testing them, and either validating them by a process of reproduction and renewal or transforming them through questioning and related work on the self and in society. Any resultant identity would have at most an internally dialogized and self-critical coherence. Moreover, insofar as experience is a (if not the) basis of identity, the problematics of experience carry over into identity.”

~ Experience and identity are interrelated and cannot be separated. While the process involved in bringing experience to identity is long, it comes after much self-reflection and critical analysis of the experience and what it means for the self.

Pg 241 – “Objectification is a process through which the other is positioned as an object of description, analysis, commentary, critique, and experiment. It distances one from the experience of the other, notably in terms of empathic or compassionate understanding, and it restricts one’s own experience in the production of knowledge to the process of objectification itself, hence to aloofness and at times ironic or critical detachment. Objectivism carries this process to extremes and makes it the exclusive basis of valid knowledge, particularly within certain disciplinary contexts.”

~ Objectivism is taking the emotion and the self out of experience. If one objectifies a situation one might create dissonance within oneself over what happened, and what one feels like happened.

Pg 241 – “Processing information is often construed as an objectifying procedure. With respect to extreme or traumatizing events and experiences, objectification not only functions to produce knowledge but also serves as a protective shield for the investigator which may be necessary in warding off possibly disorienting types of identification.”

~ We have to objectify information on experience in order to process it. We typically choose to objectify by only processing that which we know and understand and ignoring the emotions and ideas of what others might have experienced and known.

Pg 241 – “Objectivity in a desirable sense should be seen as a process of attempting to counteract identificatory and other phantasmatic tendencies without denying, or believing one can fully transcend them. Rather, limited but significant objectification should be (242) cogently related to other discursive and signifying possibilities depending on the nature of the object of study and how one is able to negotiate one’s own subject positions. Objectification is bound up with reality-testing that does not eliminate affect or involvement in one’s responsive attempt to understand the other but may check unmediated identification and related modes of phantasmatic investment, including being haunted or possessed by the other (something I indicated may be inevitable for victims of trauma and perhaps for those empathetically unsettled by their experience). Moreover, the distance required for critical analysis becomes deceptive if it is not itself tested and contested by an empathic attempt at understanding others and their contexts of behavior.”

~More information on objectivity. Not really sure if this is important yet.