Identity

Aristotle, a generally respected guy in the Western word, is famous for many things, including saying this:

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."–Aristotle

But when it comes to understanding why self-knowledge or a sense of our own identity is so important, I prefer another thinker: Erik Erikson. In addition to coining the phrase “identity confusion” which later led to “identity crisis”, this guy had a fascinating, yet tough life that also produced fascinating research. He once said:

“In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity”.

Even though you can read all about his life on Wikipedia, it’s important to know that Erikson was someone of intensely mixed identities. He was born in Germany to a mother who was Danish and Jewish. He was raised by a man who wasn’t his father, but he didn’t know that until his late adolescence, and he never knew his biological father. He left Europe in the 1930s and eventually became an American citizen. Fairly late in life, he changed his last name to Erikson, a completely made up name, which he said was one way to address his “identity confusion”.

Reading this, probably made you think about your combinations of identity that range from you in terms of yourself, your family, your nationality, your religion, and countless other identities that you carry with yourself every day. Many psychologists (in addition to Erikson) suggest that identity is so important to us because it gives us a sense of direction, purpose, meaning, and even self-control, but when we start to think about identities that go beyond ourselves, that’s where things get political.

Those collective or social identities psychologically link us as individuals to bigger groups of people. These social identities can take so many different forms, such as groups linked to biological or demographic factors like ethnic groups or groups that are based on belief systems like religious groups. Even the fans of a football or baseball team can have a social identity that exerts influence over the way we think, feel, or behave.

All of these kinds of social identities can have some influence over us , but perhaps the most important influence - especially in terms of politics - is the sense of belonging we feel with other people who share our social identity. When you consider that sense of belonging (or the lack of it) in terms of one of the most politically relevant identities - national identity - you can see how inherently political this is. Feeling like you belong or don’t belong in your own country shapes everything from which political party you join, who you’ll vote for, if you’re willing to join the military, and so much more.

Some scholars theorize that social identities and the resulting sense of belonging have incredibly deep, evolutionary roots, and they might even be one of the things that evolved in early humans bond them together in close knit groups. That’s a whole other post though, because we have to get into evolutionary psychology and pre-historic humans and cooperation/competition yadda yadda. But very cool stuff, because it suggests that even though the term “identity politics” is a 21st century invention, our identities - especially our social identities - have probably always been central to politics and how we negotiate power.

This post barely scratches the surface of the role of identity in politics. Here are a couple things to read if these ideas really get you going:

Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, by Lilliana Mason

Summary of Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory, by Gazi Islam

Understanding National Identity, by David McCrone and Frank Bechhofer