A challenging exploration of the philosophical, biological, historical and sociopolitical issues underlying our conception of self and identity.
A unique feature of this book is its 16 in-depth interviews exploring the immediate social, cultural and political themes that shape contemporary identity issues. The interviewees include singer, songwriter and political campaigner Billy Bragg; scholar and writer Ziauddin Sardar; political exile Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; neuroscientist Paul Broks; geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys; philosophers John Searle and A C Grayling; and transgender critic and writer Roz Kaveney. Each interviewee approaches the subject from a very personal perspective, shining a light onto themes such as gender, minority politics, science, ideology, race and class, and their relationship to who we are and how others define us.
Featuring an impressive collection of writings and visual material – from diary extracts, newspaper cuttings, 19th-century wood engravings and photographs to fascinating artefacts and other paraphernalia – 'Identity & Identification' is a timely contribution to current debates around how we know who we are, how we are identified, and how the two are related.
Published to coincide with the exhibition ‘Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives’.
- Date published
- Format
- Paperback
- Extent
- 256pp
- ISBN
- 9781906155865
About the editors
Ken Arnold
Ken Arnold shares his time between two roles: in London as Creative Director at the Wellcome Trust and in Copenhagen where he is a professor at the university and Creative Director of the Medical Museion. His work at Wellcome focusses on international cultural collaborations and on the capacity for Wellcome Collection to host unusual types of research.