Ideoscapes and Personal Identity

Ideoscapes and Personal Identity

Arjun Appadurai, a leading thinker on the subject of globalism, asserted that Enlightenment values have been distributed throughout the world by means of colonialism, primarily that of Great Britain and the United States. These values, many of them attributed to the pen of John Locke, have thus been adopted by many cultures around the world. However, these values have almost always been altered or “deconstructed” by the adopting culture. Thus evolution has played its part in modifying these Enlightenment values, values which do not necessarily mean what they did when first penned by Locke or his protégés. The Lockeian concepts of natural rights and individual freedom have been translated to fit the culture in which they have been subsumed (Appadurai).

Appadurai focused his analytical sensibilities on mass movements or global flows of various objects he called “scapes.” He tended to focus on the political, large-scale picture and theorized from there. In this essay, I would like to address the individual within the context of one of Appadurai’s scapes – the ideoscape.
Appadurai affirmed that ideoscapes, like mediascapes are “concatenations of images.” Ideoscapes are thus classes of images related to ideas and more specifically the ideas of freedom, welfare, natural rights, representation, democracy and others. These are the aforementioned Enlightenment values.
I enjoy the term “ideoscapes.” Appadurai used it very specifically to describe what appears to be happening within the post-modern phenomenon Marshall McLuhan called the “global village.” In my attached art piece entitled “I AM?,” I attempted to express the ideoscape concept beyond it’s post-modern application. I tried to visually capture how ideas have been flowing around the world since humans began to communicate; how individuals have often become either master, slave or somewhere in between with regard to these ideas (McLuhan).

Every individual person has a physical body as well as emotional and mental faculties which are functions of that body. The body is capable of processing physical matter through its gut and assimilating valuable nutrients while discarding that which is of little or no value. This physical process provides the energy to act, think and emote. In similar fashion to this physical process of digestion, the emotional and mental faculties of the human body are capable of assimilating ideas, “digesting” them and casting off that which is of little or no value. While the body unconsciously and efficiently handles the removal of physical wastes for us, each individual must edit and remove wasteful or harmful ideas and emotions for themselves. This is not generally easy to do. The flow of ideas today is constant and ever increasing, making it difficult to sort and select only that which is of value. It is even harder to throw off the harmful or unnecessary ideas inculcated during the impressionable and vulnerable days of our childhood.

My attached art piece, “I AM?,” depicts a series of ideological changes within an individual over time. This individual is a young girl, although you are unable to tell at first. Initially, all you see is a “concatenation of ideas” compressed within what appears to be a human form. You can’t see the “person,” only the ideas which lie upon that person’s surface. Is this person a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian? Is this person an American, White, Gay, a Democrat, a Republican? As you progress from frame to frame, the labels attached to the individual dissipate and resolve into a little girl standing on a beach, looking out at a vast ocean of infinite possibilities. She is no longer confined by ideas but is able to choose the ideas which will form her personal identity; even from among those which she may have previously discarded. From this place of clarity and freedom, she can now make her choices. The girl then leaves a hole in the scene. She has passed on. Next, the entire ocean scene disappears, relaying the notion that we can see our ideas and labels within the context of our own impermanence.

Can a child really be a Democrat? Can a child really be a Christian? What other labels do we affix to children which really don’t and can’t apply until they are old enough to choose? When are they old enough to do so? Seven? Eight? Should we place these labels on children? Is it moral and ethical?
Should we apply these labels to ourselves as adults? Have we truly thought about the value of the labels and ideas we accept and reject? How could changing out our old set of labels for a new one impact ourselves and our neighbors, both near and far? Could the world be made better by “conserving” labels or by “progressing” them?

I am one who likes to challenge ideas and labels. I’d called myself a devil’s advocate but I don’t like the idea of a devil. I’ve cast that idea away as waste. I prefer to think of us humans as independent agents in a world where we need to get along and lift one another to ever higher standards of happiness. We are free, even without Locke’s permission, to choose our ideas, our values and our labels. Let’s begin to make better choices about the one’s we choose for ourselves and others.

Work’s Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," from Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, 1996.

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Global Effects of Video-Related Technologies," The Global Village (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp. 83-129.