Identity: Where do I fit in?

In our culture, a saying is thrown around when referring to someone who seems to have lost one’s self amidst the fast-paced, ever changing world. We call this an identity crisis. Many times this term tends to label angsty teenagers who lash out to their parents and peers because they are “just trying to find themselves”, or a feed up middle aged father who buys a convertible so he can feel young again. However, the concept of an identity crisis can aptly be applied to the state of the feminine paradigm as we see it today in modern society. In Seyla Benhabib’s essay “From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea For the Nineties”, she highlights the constant struggle for women to form a united voice and finally become equal to their male counterparts. As she points out, since the birth of the feminist movement in “the eighteenth century and particularly in the period of their articulation in mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, feminism and the women’s movements have always struggled with dilemmas of equality and difference; equality with males versus being different from them; preserving a women’s separate sphere versus becoming full members of existing society by giving up women’s traditional spaces”(3). With the heavy burden of recognizing what women are as whole, the final plunge to gain equality once and for all seems very far away. If the female population struggles with such an outright identity crisis, how can we move forward?

Benhabib sheds light on the female identity crisis when she argues that the problem is that “the clash of multiple identities as well as of the allegiances which surround them have come out into the public; the continuous and inevitable fragmentation of identities has made it almost impossible to develop a common vision of radical transformation” (3). Although it can appear that women are the source of the problem since they simply cannot form a unified voice and identity. However, perhaps the root of this setback lies in where women first formed their ideas of themselves. As secondary components in patriarchal society, women have formed their self-concepts through the ideologies and epistemologies of men. No doubt, if you were told from birth that you were ugly and stupid, then you would grow up to believe you were both ugly and stupid, despite being told differently by others. The same thing has happened to women in our society. Despite the giant leaps that women have made since the eighteenth century, they are still being told they are lesser than men. An identity crisis is almost impossible to avoid.  Benhabib notes the power of identity when she states, “identities, personal as well as collective, are seen as ‘social constructions’ with no basis of givenness in nature, anatomy, or some other anthropological essence. Such social construction, most identity/difference theorists also add, is to be understood as a process of social, cultural and political struggle for hegemony among social groups vying with one another for the imposition or dominance of certain identity definitions over others”(5). Benhabib points out that identities are not inherent, but rather formed by social constructions. If this is true, then our own brain does not form our ideas of ourselves, but by the brains of others who came before us and forced us into a select category they felt comfortable placing us in.

With the knowledge of identity as a social construction, it is very easy to assume a submissive position, because what’s the point? Why should I care about my place in society if it has already been perfectly mapped out for me? Well, if I learned anything from this piece or Karlyn Campbell’s piece, it’s that despite what lot we are given in life, we have every right to challenge in order to make our own lives, as well as others, to change it for the better.

 -Clare Davis

Benhabib, Seyla. “From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the Nineties.”

            Web. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/94_docs/BENHABIB.htm.

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