Poetics of Identity (or How to Avoid Genocide)

Introduction

This project is an investigation into creative principles, practices that speak to aesthetic experience. John Dewey's idea of "art as experience" informs our conception of aesthetics as acting with the world.

through the lens of decolonial aesthetics, the progressive and complex disruption of the historical colonial enterprise, and its aftermath. It questions beliefs, understandings, and perceptions of identity and critiques identity politics for its participation in the polarization of relations among human beings and the world around them. However, it recognizes the value of identity politics and identities-in-politics, that is, identity-conscious ways of attending to both group and individual needs. Walter Mignolo writes: “A politics of identity [identities-in-politics] is different from identity politics – the former is open to whoever wants to join, while the latter tends to be bounded by the definition of a given identity” (Mignolo 2009, 172-73). A politics of identity mobilizes individuals and groups from different social backgrounds as identities-in-politics, forming a broad view from which multiple perspectives affect social decision-making. I argue that poetic aesthetics can create decolonial and ethical modes of identifying and relating that endorse (poly and sym) biotic or vital ways of experiencing the self as individual freely producing identities both coincidental and intentional with a group. This project adds to the understanding that as human beings we are complex, multiplicitous in identities, singular-such-as-we-are, yet live collectively. This project considers the possibilities of reconciling the conflict between identity politics and identities-in-politics, both of which build towards resolutions and reparations for group and individual recognition and growth.