Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The influence of science and technology and pop culture in fashioning a civilization that is global and all-participatory cannot be overemphasized. The necessity of these apparatuses of civilization to the advancement and evolution of humanity weaves everyone into the civilizing process that is ubiquitous, tempting, inevitable, irresistible, and in its final analysis, an identity which is postmodernist. This paper examines identity on the level of the individual and the collective. It resolves the dichotomy between the new identity and the old within the postmodernist temperament where identity is fluid and as a result, allows for a universal and individual choice of identity and space irrespective of history, language, colour, culture, race, or space. By extension, this paper deconstructs labels of identity such as “Other” and “West” given the existential choice to negotiate individual identity and space. As a theoretical framework, this paper explores postmodernism and postcolonial discourse – both being theories that – at best – engage the Cartesian functionalist concept of identity and emerged at a time when the individual began to demonstrate the ideals of existentialism in practice. Theorists such as Bell Hooks, Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, and Leopold Sedar Senghor among others will be referenced given their contributions and studies on identity.