5 - Identity à la carte: you are what you eat

Summary

Food in history and culture

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, human identity was generally viewed rather simply. It was assumed that identity achieved its final form in the course of childhood and adolescence, culminating in the famous Eriksonian “identity crisis,” the successful resolution of which ushered in a competent adulthood. While experts disputed just when and how the larger aspects of individual identity congealed – gender identity for instance – and argued as well about the relationship between individual and group identity, identity was not seen as something adults actively worked on or typically experienced conflict over.

In recent years, prodded by feminist and queer theorists, students of identity have radically changed their views. Increasingly they see human identity as a continual work in progress, constructed and altered by the totality of life experience. While much of the work in support of this belief concentrates on the larger aspects of identity – especially gender, ethnicity, and sexual preference – in fact human identity involves many other categories. Identity is constructed in complex ways, more or less consciously and overtly. Some aspects of identity, in particular those listed above, are applicable both to individual identity and a person's identification as a member of a cohesive and coherent group.

Other aspects of individual identity are more subtle, perhaps less prone to being problematized, and not linked to group membership in any obvious way.