Identities

"Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

"Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

PART I: PERSPECTIVES AND CONCEPTS

Chapter 1. Identity: Desire, Name and Difference
Heidrun Friese

Chapter 2. Identity and Selfhood as a Problématique
Peter Wagner

Chapter 3. Personal and Collective Identity: A Conceptual Analysis
Jürgen Straub

Chapter 4. Identities of the West: Reason, Myths, Limits of Tolerance
Barbara Henry

PART II: REPRESENTATION AND TRANSLATION

Chapter 5. The Praxis of Cognition and Representation of Difference
Martin Fuchs

Chapter 6. Constructions of Cultural Identity and Problems of Translation
Shingo Shimada

PART III: WOMEN AND ALTERITY

Chapter 7. The Performance of Hysteria
Elisabeth Bronfen

Chapter 8. The 'Jewess Pallas Athena': Horizons of Selfconception in the 19th and 20th Centuries

PART IV: BOUNDARIES AND ETHNICITY

Chapter 9. Collective Identity as a Dual Discursive Construction: Dominant v. Demotic Discourses of Culture and the Negotiation of Historical Memory
Gerd Baumann

Chapter 10. Historical Culture in (Post-) Colonial Context: The Genesis of National Identification Figures in Francophone Western Africa
Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink

Chapter 11. Identity as Progress – The Longevity of Nationalism
Christian Geulen

Chapter 12. Culture and History in Comparative Fundamentalism
Emanuel Sivan

Notes on contributors
Bibliography
Index