Predatory Identities

2021-02-07

Thematic issue of the journal Stan Rzeczy [State of Affairs], edited by Marta Bucholc (Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw) and Agata Łukomska (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw)

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 28 February 2021

Identity research is a dynamically expanding area; it is interdisciplinary and conceptually troublesome by nature. However, considering how the idea is used (not only in science) it might be concluded that identity is usually understood positively. We speak of a “strong” local, regional, or national identity, about “discovering one’s identity” in the process of maturation, about “expressing one’s identity” in interpersonal relationships, about the “shaping of identity” as a result of various experiences and of “maintaining a separate identity” in opposition to the pressure of those experiences. Naturally, it may sometimes occur that identity is a source of conflict – a cause of suffering for both the subject and the entire surroundings. Sometimes it would definitely be better for many if a given identity were different. But having an identity as such is invariably rated positively, as evidenced by the utterly unambiguous overtones of expressions such as “building identity” or “loss of identity” or even “identity decay.” This implicitly positive characterization of the concept of identity is in itself an argument for the thesis that the domination of the identity paradigm in research on otherness paves the way for the “tyranny of identity.”[1]

As soon as we move into the field of collective identity research, the risks associated with an uncritically positive perception of identity immediately become apparent. The starting point for identifying this risk is the neutral definition of identity as a “relational” concept: an identity can only be had in regard to someone who is not us. What does this mean in the social world? The fact that each “we” and each “sense of us” reflecting the emergence of a group identity can only arise on the basis of the recognition that someone does not belong to that “us” – someone is not “of us” because he/she/they is/are not like us. Identity implies being different. Otherness triggers a completely different sequence of associations – and actions. As Magdalena Środa writes in her book Obcy, inny, wykluczony [Alien, Other, Excluded] (2020):

Otherness is not only the reverse of “us-ness” – an alien is a threat. Excluded from society, dehumanized, stripped of rights, aliens do not inspire pity, but fear. They have different faces, most often that of a terrorist, thief, queer, conspirator or – as Zygmunt Bauman cites Bertold Brecht – “messenger of bad news,” that is, someone who reminds us of the fragility of our stable life. [2]

The stranger called into existence in the process of building our group identity is a completely different stranger than Georg Simmel’s “stranger who stays” – a distanced, objective arbitrator, against whom, yes, we notoriously discriminate due to generic perceptions, but whom we need in “our” societies – and we know it well.[3] This person is also a completely different stranger than the Obcy z wyboru [Stranger by Choice] of whom Andrzej Waśkiewicz wrote that he does not belong to any social category, because his homeland “is not of this world.”[4] The stranger in question is perceived as dangerous and harmful: a stranger who has no right to a homeland. He or she is not necessarily excluded because of being redundant – which would already be painful enough – but is actively fought, to the point of annihilation, because only exclusion of the stranger by (physical or symbolic) annihilation guarantees the ontological security of “us.”

Arjun Appadurai described identities that require such a radical elimination of other social categories for their protection as being “predatory.” Their “social construction and mobilization require the extinction of other, proximate social categories, defined as threats to the very existence of some group, defined as a we.”[5] Predatory identity, referring to otherness, condemns it to annihilation at the same time. As one of the basic mechanisms leading to the transformation of a non-threatening social identity into a predatory one, Appadurai indicates the mobilization of perceiving one’s own group as a threatened majority, a manifestation of the fear of small numbers that haunts the contemporary world.

By dedicating this issue of State of Affairs to predatory identities, we wish to encourage reflection on the contexts and mechanisms of the formation of such identities. We do not want to focus only on the perspective of the victim – the identities being eliminated or attacked by various predatory “we” groups. We are interested in the potential of the relational nature of the concept of identity; we are striving to understand the description of predatory identity as an authentic reflection of the collective perception of a group of people who experience this identity as their own.

We are particularly interested in articles dealing with any of the following topics, on the basis of any academic discipline or at the intersection of a number of them:

1) the tyranny of identity: the effects of the dominance of the identity paradigm and attempts to break it in the social sciences at the beginning of the twenty-first century;

2) recipe for a predator: the political, economic, cultural, and legal reasons for the formation of predatory identities;

3) how to stop being a predator: the disappearance and transformation of predatory identities;

4) the dialectics of the hunter: persecuted minorities as predators;

5) a predatory lyrical subject: literary representations of the predatory “we”;

6) mass mobilization and social movements in the service of and against predatory identities;

7) the predator in action: forms of operation of social categories that are the subject of predatory identities;

8) no entry to predators: conditions unfavorable to the emergence of predatory identities;

9) mystified predation: how to disarm your own predation.

/// We invite you to submit text proposals in the form of abstracts of no less than 300 words by 28 February 2021. No later than 15 March 2021, we will invite the authors of selected abstracts to submit full versions of the articles by 15 June 2021.

/// Instructions for preparing submissions can be found here: https://www.stanrzeczy.edu.pl/index.php/srz/about/submissions.

/// All texts will be subject to the standard review procedure.

/// Publication of the issue is planned for the end of 2021.

/// Abstracts should be sent to the editorial office: sekretarz@stanrzeczy.edu.pl

/// Any questions related to the topic of the special issue should be directed to the editors: Marta Bucholc (bucholcm@is.uw.edu.pl) and Agata Łukomska (agata.lukomska@uw.edu.pl).

[1]
See B. Czarniawska, Alterity/Identity Interplay in Image Construction, [in:] D. Barry, H. Hansen (eds.), The Sage Handbook of New Approaches in Management and Organization, London 2008, pp. 49–62.

[2]
M. Środa, Obcy, inny, wykluczony, Gdańsk 2020, p. 6.

[3]
G. Simmel, Obcy, [in:] G. Simmel, Socjologia, Warsaw 1975.

[4]
A. Waśkiewicz, Obcy z wyboru: studium filozofii aspołecznej, Warsaw 2008.

[5]
A. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, Durham and London 2006, p. 51.