My second and third blog posts were on this subject, where I complained about the tendency for identity to 'take over' subjects of thought, framing them in its own terms. Theories become identities (eg "Marxist"), motivations become identities (enneagram), thought structures become identities (neurotyping), and so on... everything must be framed in terms of some human-categorization system. It's easy to point out how ideologies are treated like star signs, chosen primarily for social signification. I think I went a bit broader with it, though.
I clearly didn't want to take identity seriously. Begrudgingly, however, I acknowledged that it had some descriptive value, which I tried to grapple with using hyperstition and complex systems jargon. Despite how silly, arbitrary, etc identity labels are, they are still valuable as hyperstitions, I thought. That's to say, even if a label is meaningless, it will tend to become meaningful by being treated as such. Social fields organize themselves in terms of their own understandings of themselves, which gives those understandings a 'realism' which must be taken seriously. This is what is meant by "social construction".
From my recent studies, I've found new ways of understanding this. Lacan gives me the concept of a semiotic social order, which Deleuze and Guattari push to its rhizomatic limits. Luhmann describes the autopoiesis of communication, including its self-observation through the drawing of distinctions. Ross Ashby and James C Scott show the utility of simple, rigid, apparently naive categorization systems as a kind of variety reduction, especially useful for control apparatuses.
What is social identity, then? It is an emergent property of social systems, the internal distinctions they draw in order to get an understanding of themselves.
...
I am not really happy with the analyses or conclusions (or writing) in any of those three posts. And, though these new concepts refine and recontextualize the identity-as-hyperstition theory, there's still something to be desired. Fundamentally, I had a frustration with the concept of "meaningless" identification. I could scrounge together some understanding of why these identities were a useful description of the world, but I still couldn't understand why anyone would want to be associated with them. What is the value of identification, for me?
But there's still a big part of me that wants to say, "Why are you doing that? Don't you know these categories are made up?"(me)
I wasn't lying, but I think I wasn't doing a good job recognizing my own feelings. There was something just beneath the surface I had difficulty understanding: If gender is meaningless, why do I want to be a girl?
Gender seems like the go-to case study for identity. The 'grounded' aspect (chromosomes) is sex, the identity aspect is gender. In making this distinction, we completely separate gender from the realm of directly observable reality, isolating the identity aspect. This forces us to have some theory of what identity is, exactly. Which, of course, I struggled with. But we're getting closer.
My major revelation here would be sparked by a very good CJ the X video. It more-or-less spells out what I had been looking for, I think.
People want to be told what to do, I guess. I find it insufferable, personally.(me)
Actually, I want to be told what to do quite a bit. A social script, role, or set of expectations to follow. These things are not, as it turns out, mere hinderences, but valuable tools for connecting with people! Maybe I didn't see them that way because I wasn't satisfied with the ones given to me. Or maybe it has something to do with the increasing cultural embrace of individualism CJ describes, the great deterritorialization of social codes, particularly online. I don't know.
My obvious-in-retrospect realization is that identity is communication. Gender isn't actually meaningless, it has social implications which affect the way you're perceived, and the expectations placed onto you. These implications, though 'arbitrary', aren't just a nuissance to be done away with, they're the whole point. All signifiers are arbitrary! The labels aren't meant to say anything concrete about who you are intrinsically, they serve a communicative function regarding how you fit into the social whole. How do you want to be perceived? Where would you like to slot yourself into the social order? How would you prefer to be understood? To reject social identities is to reject socialization, the "do not perceive me" approach corresponding to social atomization, to cutting oneself off from others. Socialization really requires identity, it would seem.
What about alienation? Accepting the premise that identifiers may be valuable, there will nonetheless always be disconnect, miscommunication, given the inherently imprecise nature of all this. Todd McGowan suggests embracing alienation. Per Lacan's framework, lack (alienation) produces desire, which, per Deleuze and Guattari's framework, is a movement. Identity need not be fixed. I've always thought it obvious that the search for some mythical "true self" is silly. In response, I may have been too quick to reject identity altogether. Perhaps one should instead embrace identity as a flow, a performance. (I still need to read Judith Butler.)
Perhaps relatedly, I've never understood the concept of finding "meaning", "purpose", or "narrative" for oneself. Inspired by pages 178-179 of Luhmann's Introduction to Systems Theory, I've come to understand it as a matter of self-description and self-prescription, finding an understanding of the world which contextualizes one's experiences, and gives them something to strive for. Christianity, for example, gives people "meaning" in that it contextualizes their lives within a larger theory of the world (all is God's creation), provides a comforting teleological fantasy (God's plan), and relatively clear-cut normative (moral) guidelines (clear-cut enough for most, anyway). It tells you how things work, how you fit into this, and what is to be done. Of course, most meaning-systems are shredded by modernity and its proliferating variety, creating a sense of "meaninglessness". Maybe this all sounds obvious, but I've really never had any idea what was meant by "finding meaning in life" until recently.
...
Anyway, this is not to say I'm 180ing and fully embracing identity and meaning and so on. But I at least now have some idea of what these things are, and why anyone would be interested in them. I will close by recommending n0thanky0u's blog post "Give Up On Life". n0 seems to share my confusion and skepticism toward these concepts, at least to some degree. This post might be characterized as an attempt to find meaning in the rejection of meaning? I find it very appealing, personally.