Collective identities, empty signifiers and solvable secrets
TL;DR: The authors identify the public and private modes of dealing with empty signifiers through collective traumatic repressions, private resentments, public discourses adhering to argumentation ethics, and individual fabulations.
Abstract: In modern societies collective identity is both an empty signifier and a sacred center: even as its existence is taken for granted, what is or should be is subject to a host of different and often conflicting interpretations. However, the narratives and representations of collective identity are in no way undermined by these public debates; these signifiers are seen rather as a problem that is in principle amenable to solution, as something that ought to be (re)solved. In fact, the empty signifiers of collective identity are constructed as solvable secrets precisely and primarily in public speech, open debate and perpetual critique. This article identifies the public and private modes of dealing with empty signifiers – through collective traumatic repressions, private resentments, public discourses adhering to argumentation ethics, and individual fabulations.
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TL;DR: In this paper, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism are discussed. And the history of European ideas: Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 721-722.
13,842 citations
Journal Article•
4,902 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The a random walk down wall street is universally compatible with any devices to read, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of the authors' books like this one.
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01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The introduction to the work of marcel mauss is universally compatible with any devices to read and is available in the book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly.
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TL;DR: The authors review a selection of the literature on identity at work in Management and Organization Studies (MOS) in order to raise critical questions concerning what we see as the dangers of a certain amnesia and myopia, and show how this failure to interrogate identity is far from benign since it often results in reinforcing everyday preoccupations with the self that can turn into narcissism and deflect and curtail alternative practices of embodied engagement.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to review a selection of the literature on identity at work in Management and Organization Studies (MOS) in order to raise critical questions concerning what we see as the dangers of a certain amnesia and myopia. Insofar as some of the contemporary literature neglects to engage with the historical and multidisciplinary past and present, there is a tendency to leave common-sense understandings of identity unexamined, thereby reproducing everyday preoccupations with securing the self. By contrast with such rational individualism, we seek a more embodied understanding of identity, where it is a means of building our ethical engagements and capacities for community living. By failing to problematize identity, there is little recognition of how attempts to secure the self are invariably self-defeating if only because they are necessarily contingent on the other who is unpredictable and uncontrollable. The main contribution of the article is to show how this failure to interrogate identity is far from benign since it often results in reinforcing everyday preoccupations with the self that can turn into narcissism, and deflect and curtail alternative practices of embodied engagement. We trust that our deliberations will be helpful in advancing the ‘road less travelled’, where studies advance beyond taking identity for granted, and move instead towards more embodied understandings of ethical engagement.
83 citations
Cites background from "Collective identities, empty signif..."
...Identity, it has even been argued, may be an empty or floating signifier (Laclau 1996; Levi-Strauss 1987, p. 63) for ‘it is precisely the nontransparency of identity . . . that forces us to continuously invent it’ (Giesen and Seyfert 2016, p. 114)....
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References
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TL;DR: In this paper, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism are discussed. And the history of European ideas: Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 721-722.
13,842 citations
"Collective identities, empty signif..." refers background in this paper
...We believe, even though we are not eyewitnesses and though we have no independent proof (Castoriadis, 1987); nor have we ever encountered the majority of the collective (the people, the nation, the community of faith) (Anderson, 1991)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.
8,858 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the logic of sovereignty and the paradox of sovereignty in the form of the human sacer and the notion of potentiality and potentiality-and-law.
Abstract: Introduction Part I. The Logic of Sovereignty: 1. The paradox of sovereignty 2. 'Nomos Basileus' 3. Potentiality and law 4. Form of law Threshold Part II. Homo Sacer: 1. Homo sacer 2. The ambivalence of the sacred 3. Sacred life 4. 'Vitae Necisque Potestas' 5. Sovereign body and sacred body 6. The ban and the wolf Threshold Part III. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern: 1. The politicization of life 2. Biopolitics and the rights of man 3. Life that does not deserve to live 4. 'Politics, or giving form to the life of a people' 5. VP 6. Politicizing death 7. The camp as the 'Nomos' of the modern Threshold Bibliography Index of names.
7,589 citations
"Collective identities, empty signif..." refers background in this paper
...the fact that it bears a certain characteristic (Agamben, 1998)....
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...The hero’s counterpart is the traumatized victim who has no name, no face and no space within the group and who – even though innocent – can be killed, solely due to the fact that it bears a certain characteristic (Agamben, 1998)....
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TL;DR: In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim set himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity as discussed by the authors, and investigated what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia.
Abstract: 'If religion generated everything that is essential in society, this is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.' In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim set himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigated what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. Aboriginal religion was an avenue 'to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity'. The need and capacity of men and women to relate socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe. The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
6,633 citations
"Collective identities, empty signif..." refers background in this paper
...Collective identity thereby proves to be a particular articulation of the sacred of a society (Durkheim, 2001)....
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5,429 citations