Identity: The Dialectics of Belonging, Being, and Becoming

• In Event: Cultural Historical Perspectives on Identity: A Tool for Dismantling Inequality and Promoting Just Educational Possibilities

Abstract

1. Objectives

Identity as a complex multi-dimensional socio-cultural phenomenon has been fairly well researched in the socio-cultural approach (Dang, 2013; Daniels, 2007; Penuel & Wertsch, 1995; Roth, 2007; Wertsch, 1995, 1997). However, there is little research into the phenomenon of identity in terms of cultural-historical theory (Author 1, 2020). This paper discusses how the cultural-historical theoretical framework might inform the empirical studies of identity. Through the concepts of drama, mediation and perezhivanie taken as analytical tools, identity can be approached not only as a phenomenon (a sense of belonging), but as an integral aspect of the dialectical process of being and becoming.

2. Frameworks and Thesis

Cultural-historical approach allows change the focus of studying interactions between the social and individual to study how the social becomes the individual. Becoming an individual is a complex and dramatic process. The drama of the personality as a participant in the dramatic events is the essential contradiction and the moving force for the development of identity. Identity, thus, might be seen as a unique outcome of how the human being addresses and manages the challenges and dramatic collisions within the social environment and social situations of development.

Cultural mediation (narratives, mediated actions) is important to study identity as a socio-cultural phenomenon. The cultural-historical approach is not focused on mediated actions per se, but on a human being who uses or creates cultural tools to reorganise the social situation and overcome existing challenges. Mediated actions are the results of development and they are important for maintaining or re-establishing a sense of identity. Mediating activities are activities of a human being who actively creates and recreates his/her sense of identity by interacting with the socio-cultural environment.

Perezhivanie is a complex phenomenon involving cognitive (perception, imagination, understanding, interpretation), volitional and emotional components. Perezhivanie of an individual is a kind of psychological prism, which determines the role and influence of the environment (Vygotsky 2019, p. 71). The individual is always a part of the social situation and the relation of the individual to the environment and the environment to the individual occurs through the perezhivanie (Vygotsky 1998, p. 294). The social becomes the individual, but the dialectics of this process of becoming is that only those components of the social environment refracted by the perezhivanie of the individual obtain the developmental significance. The refraction is a principle that shows the dialectical relations of being and becoming.

3. Significance

The concepts of drama, mediation and perezhivanie allow new perspecives studying identity: (1) What are key components of social and cultural contexts and environments and their influence in the process of creating and recreating an identity? (2) How social changes may influence the process of becoming an identity? (3) How are they refracted through different perezhivanie of an individual and what are the outcomes of this refraction in terms of individual trajectories of developing identity? (4) What are key developmental characteristics of an individual’s perezhivanie of identity, especially in dramatic situations of social change when identity is challenged?

Author

• Nikolai Veresov, Monash University
  Presenting Author