Formation Of Identity Analysis

Beginning with the question, how to understand the concept of ‘Identity’, the first thing we need to understand is that, at an individual level, the formation of identity involves a number of factors including the fact that how we see ourselves and how the world interprets us. When it comes to the formation of identity, we have to think in terms of such formation at the level of self and its implications at social level are ignored.

If we look at Erving Goffman’s work on the question of formation of identity, he talks about identity in link with the self and the society. To him, identity relies on our own consciousness and on active presentation of self, along with the notion of thoughts about which we are not conscious, i.e. the unintentional

If we look at the example of West which is considered the superior and dominant mindset among all, ‘The West’ is a consolidation of the people living in specific geographical region having mutual trends and culture and a shared civilization. What makes them ‘superior’ is a false belief among the masses because earlier the term ‘west’ was used for the indication of direction only but with the increasing reverie among the people, West has now been considered a higher class in terms of their intellect, caliber as well as in terms of possession of power and capital, which is now actually the case to an extent. So this identity of ‘West’ has a crucial role in personality formation of Westerners at the level of self also. One important factor is that the formation of identity is an outcome of differences, if there is no difference, there is no identity. Therefore the identity of West is determined in comparison with the Rest. ‘Orientalism’ was emerged as a field of study, which is the way to see and imagine the difference of Eastern people and cultures in comparison with the West. That study includes the study of religions in parts of Asia also. Since the Rest has been seen as backward and even at times a dangerous mindset and in the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the European paintings the Rest was used to be

Referring to the very first reading of this course where we talked about the great Holocaust, that how Nazi’s forces exterminated the people from different ethnic and religious groups, more specifically the Jews. Millions of Jews were killed because of their religious identity. But the thing is that it was not a unique event at all. Other barbaric events which happened earlier in the Soviet Union and also the German extermination of Herero people in Hitler’s childhood were the part of that series of genocides which is still ongoing even today. So the great holocaust was an identical event and this same-ness is not good at all in the name of ‘Progress’. ‘Progress’ has suffered due to these ongoing identical genocides, and it is not the identity we were looking for. But history is bitter syrup and can’t be re-written unless you forcefully re-write it. Every intellectual is aware of the fact that Jewish extermination was not a unique event at all and it has been in the record that similar other events happened earlier and even still going on. But the thing is that it requires guts and tolerance to face that bitter truth because very many royal clubs were also used to be the part of that dirty game. For instance, the royal family of Britain would not want to be made public the