The Middle-Class Nature of Identity and its Implications for Education: A Genealogical Analysis and Reevaluation of a Culturally and Historically Bounded Concept

We consider identity as a historically emerging discourse that requires genealogical analysis ― not to discover the roots of our identity but to commit [ourselves] to its dissipation (Foucault 1977 , p. 162). We suggest analyzing identity through the history of socio-economic classes, their life struggles, ambitions, development, and reproduction. We see learning not as a project of transformation of identity, but rather as developing access to socially valuable practices and developing one‘s own voice within these practices (through addressing and responding to other voices). The access and voice projects free agents from unnecessary finalization and objectivization by oneself and others (Bakhtin 1999 ; Bakhtin 1990 ). In education, we should develop indigenous discourses of learning and develop a conceptual framework that makes analysis of diverse discourses possible. We argue that learning, as transformation of participation in a sociocultural practice to gain more access, is a better conceptual framework than learning as transformation of identity.