Abstract

The article analyses the problem of national and gender identity, using examples from Lithuanian contemporary art. It raises the question of how to speak about national or gender identities and discusses the nature of any identity in general. The article is based on the anti-essentialist assumption that any identity is both contingent and relational in character. Any identity functions as an empty signifier, which has no stable content and is constantly redefined in the symbolic order. So, instead of speaking about identity per se, we should rather focus on the process of identification and ask, “Who is this Other?” for whom the subject is enacting its role. When interpreting national or gender identities we should ask: whose gaze is considered when the subject identifies himself / herself with a certain image? Slavoj Žižek makes a distinction between imaginary identification, i. e. identification with the image in which we appear likeable to ourselves, and symbolic identification, i. e. identification with the very place from where we look at ourselves so that we appear to ourselves likeable. According to this definition, national identity as well as gender identity can be interpreted as a masquerade played for the gaze of “the Other”. This means that not only national, but also gender identity is constantly redefined by different regimes of power