06/01/2010: "Identity, and other works in progress"

Even a small museum is a treasure trove to those that wander through it. The McMaster Museum of Art is just around the corner from me so I wander there quite often.

Today I found an Oil Cloth Lunch, and other reasons to be cheerful, as reported in an earlier post. But that was only a scratching of what was on offer.

The upstairs exhibit was a reinterpretation of iconic Canadian paintings, demonstrating "the nation-form as a work in progress". The introduction was a quote by French Marxist philosopher Etienne Balibar: "All identity is individual, but there is no individual identity that is not constructed with a field of social values, norms of behaviour and collected symbols."

I entered the museum on the way home from work, our corporate identity on my mind, so I read Balibar's quote in that context. I think it holds true for identity on every level, personal, corporate or national. Our story is always in the process of unfolding. Our identity always a work in progress. To hold on to any self concept too tightly, is a futile thing. And a predictable source of misery whenever it is attempted.

Three morals in this story:

1. Our identity is always a work in progress.
2. We construct our sense of self from a field of social values, norms of behaviour and collected symbols.
3. I am. And even that reality is subject to change.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene