Social Location, Identity, and Difference -- Week 5 Self, Identity and Othering

First Woman Ascends to Top Drill Sergeant Spot
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/us/22sergeant.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

In this NY Times article, we learn about Sergeant Major Teresa King and her new position as the top Drill Sergeant in the U.S. Army.
Popular culture, especially “news media,” is filled with stories like this. Informative and significant, but spun to demonstrate that what is really significant, is the importance of social location.

In this article, we see the importance of social location in constructing meaning and in determining our subject positions, while we concurrently see how social location is used as a mechanism to make news stories more interesting/significant. The latter is particularly important to understand, as our culture has privileged discourses that emphasize the DIFFERENCES between aspects of our social locations (gender, race, career, income), rather than the similarities.

In the article, we can see simple examples of how the story’s significance hinges on discourses that emphasize differences in gender. For example, consider the following two quotes from the article:

“She is confident, no nonsense, but compassionate about what’s right for the soldier”
“Yet for all her gruffness, she can show surprising tenderness toward her charges.”

Notice how the quotes emphasize “traits” typically considered feminine (compassion, tenderness, empathy) as they are performed by a woman whose career (Army Drill Sergeant) is not typically associated with femininity. AND, while the quotes don’t specifically mention differences between men and women, the suggestion is that these aspects of the Sergeant’s behavior are different BECAUSE she is a woman, and NOT a man.
How, then, do these discourses inform us about the significance and impact of “differences” between people (i.e. differences in their social locations)? What do the discourses used in this article tell us about the way “news media” encodes messages about social location and identity? How does that encoding impact the way we understand “difference?” Does the use of social location in the article seem to coincide more with the idea of personality or identity?

Interestingly, the Sergeant Major herself provides a useful insight into the ways that discourses are internalized into subject positions, and thus shape identities. She is quoted saying, “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a female. I see a soldier.” In this statement, she has positioned herself within discourses of difference (and gender) in such a way that describes gender as not important, as a trait that doesn’t matter (this is in contrast to the discourses of difference in the rest of the article that suggest that gender DOES matter). From this quote we learn that the Sergeant Major’s identity does not prioritize the concept of differences between genders. Why? One explanation is that discourses within the military, heavily prioritize seeing oneself as part of a bigger group, a bigger more important community than that of gender--the U.S. Army. Thus, the Sergeant Major’s subject position as a soldier supersedes her subject position as a female, and she performs/behaves accordingly. However, even though we don’t “know” the Sergeant Major, is it possible there are some circumstances in which she might adopt the subject position of female, and thus position herself in such a way that gender becomes a more important part of her identity? What does the Sergeant’s comment tell us about the impact that discourses have on our identities? What does it show us about how we use discourses to construct our identities?