Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities

 

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fuel is cheaper than other fuel types, and diesel cars have a reputation for lasting 

longer and being more robust than others. Our Green party supporter, then, finds 

him-/herself in the company of an entirely different community when issues of 

mobility and car use emerge than when general environmental politics are on 

the agenda; yet in both instances a particular micro-hegemony has been 

followed. The same occurs in the case of education: our Green party supporter 

wants ‘the best for his children’, and since highly ‘mixed’ schools are reputed to 

produce low quality standards in educational outputs, our subject again follows 

the most logical path in that field. For each of these topics, our subject can shift 

‘footing’, to use a Goffmanian term, and each time s/he will deploy an entirely 

different register, genre, viewpoint and speaking position (cf. Agha 2007).  

An individual life-project so becomes a dynamic (i.e. perpetually adjustable) 

complex of micro-hegemonies within which subjects situate their practices and 

behavior. Such complexes – we can call them a ‘repertoire’ – are not chaotic, and 

people often are not at all ‘confused’ or ‘ambivalent’ about their choices, nor 

appear to be ‘caught between’ different cultures or ‘contradict themselves’ when 

speaking about different topics. The complex of micro-hegemonies just provides 

a different type of order, a complex order composed of different niches of 

ordered behavior and discourses about behavior.  

The combination of such micro-hegemonized niches is ultimately what would 

make up ‘the’ identity of someone. But already it is clear that identity as a 

singular notion has outlasted its usefulness – people define their ‘identity’ 

(singular) in relation to a multitude of different niches – social ‘spheres’ in 

Bakhtin’s famous terms – and this is a plural term. One can be perfectly oneself 

while articulating sharply different orientations in different domains of life or on 

different issues. A left-wing person can thus perfectly, and unproblematically, 

enjoy the beauty of the works of Céline and d’Annunzio, notoriously fascist 

authors, since the criteria for literary beauty need not be identitical to those that 

apply to voting behavior. 

 

Discursive orientations and the quest for authenticity 

The foregoing argument is surely unsurprising; it can be empirically 

corroborated in a wide variety of ways and it undoubtedly reflects the life 

experiences of many of us. But we need to go further. What follows is a schematic 

general framework for investigating the complex and dynamic identity processes 

we outlined above. We can identify four points in this framework. 

a. Identity discourses and practices can be described as discursive 

orientations towards sets of features that are seen (or can be seen) as 

emblematic of particular identities. These features can be manifold and 

include artefacts, styles, forms of language, places, times, forms of art or 

aesthetics, ideas and so forth. 

b. To be more precise, we will invariably encounter specific arrangements 

or configurations of such potentially emblematic features. The features 

rarely occur as a random or flexible complex; when they appear they are 

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presented (and oriented towards) as ‘essential’ combinations of features 

that reflect, bestow and emphasize ‘authenticity’. 

c. We will inevitably encounter different degrees of fluency in 

enregistering these discursive orientations. Consequently, identity 

practices will very often include stratified distinctions between ‘experts’ 

and ‘novices’, ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’, and ‘degrees’ of authenticity. In 

this respect, we will see an implicit benchmark being applied: 

‘enoughness’. One has to ‘have’ enough of the emblematic features in 

order to be ratified as an authentic member of an identity category. 

d. Obviously, these processes involve conflict and contestation, especially 

revolving around ‘enoughness’ (s/he is not enough of X; or too much of X) 

as well as about the particular configurations of emblematic features (‘in 

order to be X, you need to have 1,2,3,4 and 5’ versus ‘you can’t be X 

without having 6, 7, 8, 9’). And given this essentially contested character, 

these processes are highly dynamic: configurations of features and 

criteria of enoughness can be adjusted, reinvented, amended. 

Let us clarify some of the points. 

1. We speak of identity practices as discursive orientations towards sets of 

emblematic resources. The reason is that, empirically, when talking about 

identity or acting within an identity category, people ‘point towards’ a wide 

variety of objects that characterize their identities. Particular identities are 

clarified – i.e. offered for inspection to others – by referring to particular forms of 

music (e.g. classical music versus heavy metal), dress codes (the suit-and-

necktie, Gothic style, dreadlocks, blingbling), food preferences or habits (e.g. 

vegetarians versus steak-eaters, oriental or Mediterranean cuisine, beer versus 

wine drinkers), forms of language (e.g. RP versus Estuarian British English; 

HipHop or Rasta jargon, specialized professional jargons, hobby jargons such as 

the discourse of wine experts, foreign accents etc.), art forms (e.g. Manga, 

contemporary or conceptual art; ‘pulp’ versus ‘high’ movies etc.), names (being 

able to name all the football players in a favorite team; being able to refer to 

Hegel, Marx, Tarkowski, Dylan Thomas, practices of ‘name dropping’) and so on. 

Discourses in which people identify themselves and others include a bewildering 

range of objects towards which such people express affinity, attachment, 

belonging; or rejection, disgust, disapproval.  One can read Bourdieu’s Distinction 

(1984) as an illustration of the range of features that can be invoked as 

emblematic of particular (class) identities. 

2. These features, however, need to be taken seriously because they are never 

organized at random: they appear in specific arrangements and configurations. It 

is at this point and by means of such particular arrangements that one can, for 

instance, distinguish discourses of identity-as-heritage as discourses in which 

the particular configuration of features reflects and emanates images of 

unbroken, trans-generational transmission of ‘traditions’, of timeless essentials, 

of reproduction of that which is already there. Discourses of identity-as-creation 

would, contrarily, be organized around configurations that enable an imagery of 

innovation, discontinuity and deviation. Thus, it is clear that administrative 

criteria for, e.g., Britishness include very different configurations of discourses 

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