21 Identity I (Theory)

Dr. Neeraja Sundaram

Introduction: Identity in Cultural Studies

Identity refers to how we understand and express ourselves as individuals and how this sense of our “selves” governs our participation in everyday social interactions, our membership in various social groups. In other words, identity defines us or locates us in a particular socio- cultural milieu, providing us with a distinctive understanding of who we are. Identity is thus a central issue in cultural studies, concerned as it is with the several ways in which individuals and groups construct, defend and negotiate what they understand to be their ‘selves’. Identity in cultural studies is generally understood as a critique of the notion of an autonomous, essential self. That is, identity cannot be understood as the inherent quality a person possesses and moreover, cannot be seen as fixed and unchanging. This mode of thinking about identity in cultural studies has its roots in several schools of critical theory, namely, poststructuralist, postcolonial, feminist, queer, Marxist and critical race studies. Each of these schools has rethought identity and defined it against the notion of a coherent, unitary and autonomous mode of understanding the self, which was a dominant mode of thinking in European philosophy.

Poststructuralist scholars, for instance, posit that identity is a product of discourse. Discourse can be understood as particular kinds of writing, speech and language through which knowledge is created, controlled, shared and used. Discourse is also about power because it involves an authority who exercises the right to define, classify and control the knowledge thus produced. Identity within poststructuralism thus involves questions of power, difference and acts of representation and knowledge production. A person’s identity as ‘healthy’ for instance, is produced by the discourse of health as the ‘normal’ state of being. The idea that achieving ‘health’ through a set of rituals and practices is ‘normal’ is codified by experts (doctors/dieticians), validated by systems of knowledge (scientific articles/studies in the popular domain that link certain kinds of food and lifestyle practices to states of ‘health’ and ‘illness’) and disseminated via lifestyle products and mass media (products that are expressly labeled as ‘organic’ or ‘herbal’ and the suggestion through the wide proliferation of thin, muscular bodies in contemporary cinema/television that obesity is ‘deviant’, ‘unhealthy’ and ‘undesirable’). Several other schools of criticism from the mid 20th century onwards have rethought identity in several related ways. Postcolonial theorists, for instance, have examined the construction, control and dissemination of knowledge or discourse about several races that were once dominated and ruled by European countries. The ‘identities’ of these dominated races or the means through which the people inhabiting nations in Africa and Asia understood their ‘self’ was determined by the knowledge constructed about them by their European rulers. The ‘white’ rulers of these countries understood their own identities as being not only different from but ‘superior’ to those of their ‘non-white’ subjects. Postcolonial theorists thus examine the ‘identities’ resulting from situations of unequal power relations that involve not only questions of difference but also a continuous process of resisting and decoding identities that are deemed to be ‘stable’ or ‘natural’. Marxist scholars similarly attempt to study the processes through which identity appears to ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. Marxist theory posits that people are ‘situated’ or placed in a certain social and cultural milieu from their birth into a particular class, family, belief system. Our identities are thus the result of being ‘conditioned’ or ‘taught’ by the authority figures in our respective socio-economic structures – the education system, the family, religious institutions – to believe that who and what we are is ‘natural’ rather than a result of years of ‘cultivation’ and learning. Feminist theory rethinks the woman’s identity as one that is limited to specific roles like ‘mother’, ‘wife’ and associated with negative ideas like ‘weakness’, ‘irrationality’ and ‘hysteria’. These roles and ideas for and about women are constructed and shared continuously via cultural symbols and texts (cinema, television, advertisements) that are responsible for determining the real conditions in which women inhabit society and influence the way they construct their sense of ‘self’. Identity is thus also an important means of determining one’s relationships with others in society – how we are seen and treated by others at school, at the workplace, in the eyes of the law, religion and medical science is dependent on our own and others’ understanding of who we are. Thus, identities that are understood as ‘deviant’ or ‘harmful’ are not visualized or represented within everyday social life. Queer theorists and critical race studies for instance, look at how certain kinds of sexual and racial identities (lesbian/gay and black for instance) are denied opportunities and recognition. They argue that homosexual and non-white identities are constructed as inferior to or as the ‘deviant’ counterpart of dominant identities like ‘white’ and ‘heterosexual’. We can now move on to a discussion of the various processes through which a person’s identity is constructed, understood and formed.

 Processes of Identity Formation

In this chapter, we will examine four major processes of identity formation.

a) Difference: You will remember from the previous section that an important aspect of our understanding of our ‘selves’ or who we are is based on an understanding of who we are not or a ‘non-self’ or ‘other’. We have already discussed how our identity is the result of a system of knowledge that is controlled, created and shared by a certain authority. One of the crucial processes through which we make sense of our identity is through a certain grammar of ‘signs’ or the ‘cultural imaginary’. The cultural imaginary can be understood as the several ways in which our knowledge of ourselves and others is organized. The cultural imaginary is a set of ideas, images, stories and beliefs that works to inform us about our sense of ‘self’. We are able to understand or express an opinion about ourselves and others because we have a common language in which to do so. This common language is the cultural imaginary, which provides a reference for our identities and those of others, thereby making them seem familiar and natural. Let us consider the case of the following Fair and Lovely advertisements (AV 1a, b and c).

Several ‘familiar’ images are used here to communicate the usefulness of a fairness cream in these advertisements – an audition, a job interview, the significance of one’s appearance in attracting a partner and in determining ‘uniqueness’. Viewers are already familiar with such situations, given their prominence in several popular texts. We know the importance of appearing ‘unique’ and ‘confident’ in order to be successful in competitive situations because of the many stories/representations of such situations in movies, magazines, advertisements and our own experiences. The Fair and Lovely advertisements equate a lighter complexion with success, confidence and a space in everyday life. In the first of these advertisements, AV 1a, a young girl is denied the lead position in a dance performance on account of a darker complexion. Similarly, in AV 1b, a young woman is seen as being denied the opportunity to work at a ‘modern beauty company’ on account of being dark-skinned and dressing in a ‘traditional’ style. In AV1c, a young woman at a village fair is seen comparing her own dark complexion to that of her companion (who is fairer) and is dejected at being ‘ignored’ by a young, attractive man attending the fair. In each of these instances, the fairness cream is offered as a way of re-entering social life on the terms that are interpreted as ‘normal’ by the advertisement. Professional success, poise and confidence are the qualities suggested by the advertisements as ‘inherent’ or ‘natural’ for a woman’s identity in contemporary times. The advertisement achieves this by suggesting a difference between the levels of desire attributed to different kinds of identities. Identity in these advertisements is suggested as being the combination of dress, physical appearance and attitude and others’ affirmation or recognition of these. Dressing in a traditional manner, being resistant to change, appearing unconfident or being dejected is seen as characteristic of an identity that is not ‘recognized’ and is thus seen as being excluded from normal, everyday life. Such an identity has no space within what viewers recognize as ‘normal’ activities – participating in a cultural program, securing a job, being attractive to others and feeling contentment. These advertisements communicate to viewers that certain bodies are visible and desirable while others are not. Beauty or a fair complexion is equated in these advertisements with confidence/ success and contrasted with a poor/dark complexion suggesting a difference in social standing/professional success. Our notion of self, communicated using familiar ideas from our cultural imaginary about requiring success, contentment and requiring validation from others is based in the difference between desirable and undesirable identities.

b) Interpellation – Interpellation is an important process of identity formation where each of us accept and perform particular social roles that appear to be a free choice but are in fact determined for us by outside forces. The ways in which we are convinced that these roles are ‘appropriate’ are invisible to us and appear to be a natural progress of events in our lives. One of the invisible processes through which we embrace our identity as ‘students’ and ‘professionals’ is the ‘acculturation’ process. This means that we are taught by our families and the education system that respect, self-esteem and satisfaction can only come from competing with others around us to succeed. While it may appear natural to us that we enter places of learning and work and feel motivated to ‘work hard’ or feel let down when we cannot, it is our process of ‘acculturation’ that provides us with beliefs about ‘hard work’, ‘determination’ or even ideas of ‘laziness’ and ‘unproductivity’. We are ‘taught’ by our family and the education system to enter social life by building specific identities. These identities are understood as roles played by us in our interactions with others in daily life. We are taught to desire or pursue identities that are already visible and marked as ‘desirable’. Most college advertisements for instance carry visuals of young men and women clad in the uniforms of various professions – doctors, lawyers and businessmen. We are thus constantly reminded that professional success is a visible and desirable identity that guarantees a place in social life while being uneducated and unemployed ensures invisibility. The identity of a ‘student’ or ‘professional’ thus appears normal and natural and ‘choosing’ one’s career path appears to be a free and obvious choice. However, all of us are not equally positioned with respect to social and economic resources. Education and a professional life is often not a matter of choice, but is determined by the amount of social and economic resources a person has access to. Interpellation thus renders the process of identity formation invisible by drawing attention away from unequal social relations.

Let us consider the case of this particular Kellogg’s commercial (AV 2). Here, a woman is visualized within her home, at the kitchen, preparing breakfast for her husband, who is in a hurry to leave for work. This advertisement works with familiar images in the viewer’s imagination of the space of the home and the kitchen and by recreating the familiar ‘pressures’ of morning activities. While the advertisement expressly seeks to sell breakfast cereal, something that helps consumers avoid the labor of ‘cooking’ an important meal, it also provides images of specific identities for men and women. The woman/wife in the advertisement is seen as ‘naturally’ assuming the role of ‘preparing’ the cereal and the man, her husband, is seen never entering the kitchen space at all. It is the woman who addresses the audience with instructions for a special recipe using Kellogg’s cereal in a cheery manner, all the while ensuring that her labors towards preparing breakfast are also time-bound since we are informed at the start of the advertisement that the man is in a hurry to reach a meeting at work. Here, we are offered a ‘naturalized’ way of thinking about the man and woman’s social roles and their representation of a family unit. Therefore, a woman’s identity is interpreted by the advertisement as one who labors at home for the family and whose day begins ‘the right way’ (Kellogg’s tagline) not only because she uses Kellogg’s cereal but because she has ensured that her husband could leave for work on time. The image of a woman in the kitchen, as being fulfilled entirely by the act of caring for another is already familiar for the viewer, whose cultural imaginary is already informed by other such representations. Such images create specific identities that reduce social roles (even those that are oppressive like the unequal sharing of labor in the home by men and women) to a person’s sex. In other words, such images attempt to stabilize and create a sense of ‘naturalness’ or normalcy around an identity whose formation and circulation is determined socially or culturally. A woman’s identity as homemaker is not an inherent or natural characteristic that she possesses, but rather, is created, managed and shared through the institutions of the family, the education system and mass media.

c) Identity as Performative – We have explored how our identity is not a ‘natural’ or ‘inherent’ property of our ‘self’ but is in fact governed by the various social roles and rituals we reproduce everyday. These roles and rituals are not freely determined by us but are in fact created, controlled and shared by various authority figures. One of the important aspects of our identity is that it is performative. A performative identity implies that we have to act a certain way in our everyday life to make sense of who we are. The Kellogg’s commercial (AV 2) shows us what it means to be a man and woman through a representation of their ‘performance’ of identity. Viewers’ recognition of the woman in the commercial as wife is contingent upon the ‘performance’ of an interest in cooking (she shares a recipe with the viewer), home management ability (she works with the sole interest of ensuring her husband’s timely departure to work) and a selfless interest in the family’s well-being (we don’t see the woman eating although she is concerned about the ‘health’ of her husband). The man similarly performs a preoccupation with work (his anxiety about leaving home on time), absentmindedness within the space of the home (he forgets his mobile phone and is reminded of it by his wife) suggesting his inappropriateness here as opposed to his ‘natural’ place in the office/the world outside the home. The everyday rituals performed by this couple are therefore responsible for identifying them as ‘man’ and ‘woman’. These identities only have meaning within this particular family unit, coded by the advertisement as ‘normal’. Our gender identity as male and female is thus constructed through repeated acts and rituals in our daily life that are constructed and circulated through dominant modes of representation. Similarly, our understanding of our ‘self’ as belonging to a particular class, religion, nation, age or race also draws from a performance of each of these ‘selves’. Since our identity derives meaning only upon being ‘recognized’ by others with whom we interact, a repeated performance of a particular ‘self’ is what will gain visibility or be ‘recognized’. To be recognized as being ‘old’ or a ‘senior citizen’ therefore, I have to perform my identity by retiring from professional life, availing government benefits like particular seating arrangements in public transportation and provide proof of my advanced age. Similarly, racial, national, religious and sexual identities are also constructed and understood through the repetition of various social and cultural rituals with respect to food, clothing, lifestyles and other aspects of everyday life.

The performative or repetitive aspect of identity can also be utilized as a mode of resistance and as a means of exercising power. Dominant representations of particular identities are often limiting or contradictory to a person’s sense of their ‘self’. For instance, a person can ‘resist’ the identity of an ‘old’ or ‘aged’ person by performing rituals or acts that conflict with such an identity. Such resistance can include a refusal to ‘retire’ from active professional life, a refusal to ‘appear’ old – dyeing one’s hair, using cosmetic aids to remove physical markers of age like wrinkles or even dressing in youthful styles and colors. An identity is resisted on the basis of the degree to which we ‘identify’ with particular discourses about our ‘self’ and ‘nature’. In other words, several communities, cultures and bodies that are marked by dominant discourses as ‘undesirable’, ‘invisible’ or ‘deviant’ may ‘identify’ with or find varying degrees of ‘meaning’ in such representations. For instance, writers of African origin may emphasize issues that are central to African identity like the history of slavery and the oppressive conditions of being ruled by white races and being denied equal opportunities, resources and rights. However, these writers also often ‘resist’ their dominant representation of being ‘identified’ through the color of their skin, belonging to a particular race, geographical location and system of beliefs and instead focus on the ‘mixed’ or ‘shared’ nature of their identities. Popular instances include the writer Audrey Lorde (who focused in her works on issues of femininity and sexuality in addition to race and later in her life, issues of health and disease), Octavia Butler (who is famous for creating fictional, futuristic societies in her works that are composed of ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ races, often combining human and non-human subjects) and Zadie Smith (known for her representations of multicultural families with a mixed heritage, a growing feature of modern day Britain). These writers refuse a ‘unitary’ identity of black, woman or immigrant and instead create, through their writings, ‘multiple’ ways of belonging in the world where one can simultaneously identify in varying degrees with one’s social, racial, economic and cultural location.

d) Identity as a Project – We have already examined how identity is not static, unitary and pre- determined, rather, it is determined and constructed by discourse and has to be performed as a set of repetitive acts in order to be recognized as such by others. Moreover, identity is also a matter of resistance and challenge and is formed as the result of varying degrees of ‘identification’ or meaning attached to dominant discourses about who we are. We can now move on to the conceptualizing of identity as a ‘project’. The idea of identity as a ‘project’ is linked to certain characteristic features of our contemporary era – the advancement of medical and scientific technologies that allow us to modify our very bodies, the proliferation of globalization and its production of ‘hybrid’ spaces of consumption, the rise in travel and emigration resulting in ‘mixed’ heritage and multicultural societies and the advent of social networking and microblogging platforms along with a culture of publishing personal stories and ‘autobiographies’ that have resulted in a ‘multiple’, ‘fragmentary’ and ‘fluid’ ways of thinking about our ‘selves’. Individuals today can ‘compose’ their identities through an array of technological aids that also simultaneously allow a constant ‘editing’ or ‘modifying’ of identity. Plastic surgery, prosthesis, tattooing and piercing allow us to ‘modify’ and ‘edit’ our very physiology and enables us to constantly ‘work’ on our bodies as though they were as yet incomplete. Similarly, medical technologies now ensure a longer life for people suffering from chronic diseases with the help of modified lifestyles, consistent use of medication, surgical intervention and personalized body monitoring devices like blood pressure monitors and heart rate monitors. Such technologies thus encourage us to think of our ‘self’ as requiring constant monitoring, improvement and work. Our identity as ‘healthy’ is thus a ‘project’ that has to be undertaken over the duration of our lives and can be modified at any time with accidental occurrences like disease and injury. We ‘work’ to ensure that our bodies can be ‘repaired’ after the advent of disease, injury or often self-harm (in the case of disease and injury resulting from careless or reckless behavior). Supermarkets offering gourmet food products from all over the world and malls showcasing international brands encourage us to think of our ‘identities’ as ‘changeable’. We can choose to partake in cuisines from different cultures everyday of the week while inhabiting one particular geographical space, culture and time and thus belong simultaneously in several cultures. Social networking platforms similarly offer their users a sense of ‘fluid’ identities that allows us to modify/alter at any time, our relationship status, physical appearance and interests. Users’ identities on Facebook for instance, are typified by their ‘status’ message, something that can be altered with regularity on a daily basis. Facebook’s timeline feature allows users to construct/narrativize a life story by organizing the images, stories, events, profile edits they share into ‘phases’ that can be viewed as a daily chronology of changes. Consider the ‘testimonial’ feature on the social networking platform Orkut that allows friends and relatives of the user to share their versions of the user’s ‘self’ on his/her profile. Identity here is understood as having multiple versions/origins where several others’ views/stories/information about us is what we use to construct a sense of who we are. However, it is important to remember that identity as ‘project’ is also determined by discourse, performance, repetition and recognition. Changing/altering one’s identity on social networking platforms also requires an adherence to system of signs and meanings – for instance, being ‘recognizable’ on Facebook to other users involves an active engagement with the tools of communication and interaction that the platform provides. Therefore, users have to frequently change their ‘status’, keep a photographic log of their ‘real’ life activities and experiences, ‘like’ others’ opinions/views/stories about ‘real’ events, ‘send’ and ‘accept’ requests for friendship. A repeated performance of such activities is required to achieve the ‘fluidity’ of identity that Facebook promises.

Crisis in Identity

Our identity derives meaning or ‘validation’ from a certain context of signs, rituals, beliefs and ideas, which are governed by different kinds of authority figures. Dominant representations of identity are what enables our ‘selves’ and those of others to be recognized and understood in particular ways. However, as we have seen in the case of identity as ‘resistance’ and identity as a ‘project’, dominant representations often fail to reflect the ‘lived reality’ or ‘particular experiences’ of people. A crisis in identity can be said to arise from an inability to align one’s personal experiences, preferences and ideas with those associated with a dominant identity. Dominant representations of Muslim communities as being ‘militant’ and ‘violent’ for instance, conflicts with the everyday, lived reality of individual Muslims all over the world. Dominant representations of ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ identities are often ‘general’ or ‘universal’ in the sense that they do not consider the particular, individual contexts of people who have varying degrees of power/advantage over scarce social, economic and cultural resources. My identity of being ‘overweight’ and thus ‘undesirable’ draws from an endless repetition of signs in our cultural imaginary that equate a ‘flat’ stomach and a narrow waist with ‘beauty’, ‘health’ and ‘desire’. Consider the advertisements for weight loss clinics that proclaim their success rates through ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of the same person, who is seen to achieve confidence, opportunities and a ‘re-entry’ into social life after weight loss. An ‘overweight’ body or a person’s identity as ‘fat’ is constructed through discourses that are validated by science (through codes like the body mass index and an ‘ideal’ weight for a person’s height and by marking ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ eating practices) and thus construct a ‘thin’ identity as both ‘desirable’ and ‘healthy’. The dominant representation of ‘desirable’ bodies is thus at odds with our individual, lived experience of our own ‘body’. Each of our bodies is determined by multiple individual contexts like heredity, illness, access to socio-economic resources that is at odds with the dominant representation of an ‘ideal’, ‘healthy’ body. The ‘crisis’ in one’s identity thus generally arises from a lack of ‘identification’ with or ‘recognition’ of dominant, universal representations of this identity. Children of immigrant parents for instance, may not ‘fit’ dominant representations of their family’s identity or even that of children inhabiting the country of their birth. For instance, children of Pakistani parents living in America may not ‘identify’ with their parents’ origin stories about a homeland they left behind. Their only knowledge of Pakistani culture comes to them via stories/experiences/information related to them by their parents. However, these children may not ‘fit’ easily into an American identity either, for although America is the country of their birth, their everyday experience of ‘culture’ is a dual one – at home, their families still the keep traditions, rituals of food and lifestyle of their home country alive, in stark opposition to the dominant white American culture they are exposed to in the education/employment system. Moreover, such immigrant children are more likely to be identified through their ‘cultural’ identity of being Muslim rather than through a national identity of ‘American’ or ‘Pakistani’ on account of dominant portrayals that linked a ‘terrorist’ or ‘enemy of the nation’ with particular ethnic communities in America after the 9/11 attacks. Such a dominant representation of the ‘terrorist’, controlled and circulated by the media draws upon the idea of a hierarchy of loyalty to identities. ‘Terrorists’ are considered a ‘threat’ or a ‘dangerous’ identity to assume because here a person performs loyalty to an ethnic or religious identity as opposed to a national one. Therefore, one may act against the interests of those inhabiting one’s immediate geographical territory (the nation) to serve the interests of another community (an ethnic or religious community bound together by common cultural practices rather than proximity) where a greater sense of belonging and familiarity can be experienced. It is thus significant to remember that the performance of identity is bound by a politics of affiliation (varying degrees of familiarity, recognition and affinity with the multiple social and cultural locations one inhabits) that is not governed solely by birth, geographical location, dominant representations or even personal freedom/choice. Our identity is formed in relation to the immediate/distant social groups we inhabit and is thus not merely restricted to the individual. In the case of the Pakistani immigrant child, the identity of being ‘Pakistani’ at home cannot be privileged over being ‘American’ in school or at the workplace because this child’s ‘individual’ rights to cultural practices are seen as a ‘threat’ to the ‘social’ and ‘national’ group of Americans he inhabits. Similarly, the identity of being ‘fat’ or ‘overweight’ is constructed via discourses of health and medicine as undesirable and harmful not only for the individual but also for the social group he/she inhabits. Thus, the individual identity of appearing ‘healthy’ by performing an active lifestyle or by sporting a ‘thin’ body is essentially a commitment to a ‘social’ identity of not harming others in one’s immediate social group. Since an ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ body is also constructed as being a vehicle for disease, performing the ‘treating’ of such a body to return to a state of health involves privileging the social ‘ideal’ of ‘health’ or an ‘absence of disease’ over personal rights to one’s appearance, choice of diet and an individual notion of states of ‘health’ or ‘illness’.

Audio-Visual Quadrant

This AMITY advertisement is an instance of constructing ‘visible’ professional identities that are marked as ‘desirable’. Students are reminded here that professional success is a visible and desirable identity that guarantees a place in social life while being uneducated and unemployed ensures invisibility.

This print advertisement for Lifebuoy handwash that asks readers “Have you washed your hands with Lifebuoy?” also demonstrates the performative nature of a ‘healthy’ identity. One has to repeat the ritual of maintaining clean hands, use a specialized product for this ritual everyday in order to be ‘recognized’ as ‘healthy’.

A ‘thin’ body is constructed as desirable here by representing the man’s ‘recognition’ of such a body. In addition, the advertisement situates the man and woman in specific roles and naturalizes them – the woman is seen standing, her image placed closer to the the product logo indicating the necessity for woman to work on their ‘appearance’ and to perform the role of being an ‘object of desire’. The man is seen reclining in the background, his role distanced from the ‘feminine’ realm of building a shapely body.

The ‘obese’ body is presented in this VLCC advertisement only partially to demonstrate its undesirability. The ‘fat tummy’ represents the identity of being obese as well as it’s disruption to everyday life – here the overweight body is seen as being unable to ‘fit’ in the everyday, familiar structure of public transportation.

References:

• Fair and Lovely cream advertisements: a) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZTdH_6BeEA (b) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPIVb8CobT0 (c) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjNxwhyhZb4
• Kellogg’s advertisement featuring the ‘normal’ family unit and providing a ‘cultural imaginary’ for family roles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZrdqMXsoo
• A lecture on the concept of identity in cultural studies, comprising part of the cultural studies lectures series organized by IIT Guwahati: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AfcMuosdh4
• A series of four short films on dominant cultural stereotypes and their effect on identity formation made by PBS (Public Broadcasting Service): http://www.pbs.org/special/film- festival/who-are-we/
• A resource on identity offering a basic introduction to the concept along with multimedia links that explore the relationship between media and identity. This resource also explores the work of major theorists of identity like Judith Butler and Antony Giddens: http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr- iden.htm
• Hall, Stuart and Paul du Gay (eds). Questions of Cultural Identity. Sage, 1996.
• Evans, Jessica, Peter Redman and Paul du Gay (eds). Identity: A Reader. Sage, 2000.

Storyboarding/Instructional Design

Slide 1

Slide 2 Cultural Imaginary