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Showing posts from August 30, 2012

Understanding Identity as Both a Binding and as an Exclusionary Force

What is your identity? What does it mean when someone asks who or what you are? How do you answer them in a single word, a single phrase, a single sentence? Perhaps how you answer is dependent upon who asks you and what context or situation you are in at the time. If you are being asked this question while attending a Church, you might say you are Greek Orthodox or Catholic, or Protestant or Baptist, let's say. If you are asked who or what you are outside of a voting booth, you might say you are a Democrat or a Republican, or an Independent. If you are, let us say, attending an ethnic festival, you might say that you are Greek, or Lebanese or wherever mother country your descendants harken from. And if you are a newborn baby, your mother or father will speak for you and say that you are a boy or a girl....and that is who you are. But who one is, is so much more than just being a label or a conglomeration of labels  One is so much more than simply a concatenation of