Introduction
A person’s identity is formed and developed under the influence of various factors through psycho-physiological development and maturation. Human identity is multidimensional as it is brought by the impact of many different social groups. Vertical identity is passed from generation to generation through DNA and upbringing received from parents and family. It includes nationality and ethnicity, language and cultural norms, as well as all the parameters acquired by the child in the family hierarchy. From generation to generation, traits and features are transmitted from parent to child through DNA connections and the assimilation of cultural norms (Solomon 364). Nevertheless, the family is not the only social group influencing the child’s development. Moreover, parents cannot meet all the child’s identity development needs. It happens partially because their children live in different times, communicate with other people, and meet novel challenges, but additionally just because children are their own individual people with separate identities.
Therefore, often a person may have innate or acquired traits that are absent from his parents. Andrew Solomon reveals various aspects related to the desire to reveal the true horizontal identity, which serves as a support for human development. He refers to horizontal identity as acquired from a peer group rather than family and parents (Solomon 364). Solomon suggests that “such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors” (Solomon 364). Often, horizontal identity is associated with the manifestation of otherness – homosexuality, disability, psychopathy, criminal behavior, etc. This is because unwanted elements are pushed out of the vertical identity.
Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel” and Azar Nafisi’s “Selections from Reading Lolita in Iran” serve as an example of demonstrating the importance of the issue of identity in society. Individual qualities cannot be studied, categorized and comprehended outside the socio-cultural context. Moreover, this is true up to the features of appearance, the grounds for evaluation which are rooted in intersubjective ideas about masculinity, femininity, beauty, and attractiveness. All these components of identity are rooted in the exercise of power and social hierarchies. Furthermore, since personality formation takes place in the socio-cultural space, the vertical dimension can be considered secondary to the individual’s horizontal connections.
The Citadel and the Islamic Republic Only Tolerate Identities of a Vertical Kind
Within a culture, vertical identity is encouraged and perceived as desirable, while horizontal identity often fades into obscurity, in subcultures, countercultures and closed spaces. At the same time, horizontal identity is essential for a person, as it allows to express subtler and more specific features, preferences, and personality traits (Solomon 379). Especially controlling authoritarian and totalitarian cultures that socially encourage only vertical identities, places begin to emerge that become spaces for expressing horizontal identities and the manifestation of the human personality in all its nuances. People in such sites can avoid forced sameness and show their otherness and individuality (Nafisi 277). They seek close contact with others seek a real contract with themselves.
Looking at the works of Susan Faludi and Azar Nafisi, one can trace the dichotomy in which Iranian society heavily depends on vertical identities. Consequently, such ideas permeating people because of the totalitarian regime significantly affect the situation of various groups, such as women or minorities. It is necessary to highlight Solomon’s (367) quote: “Self-acceptance is part of the ideal, but without familial and social acceptance, it cannot ameliorate the relentless injustice to which many horizontal identity groups are subject and will not bring about adequate reform.” Thus, the central semantic axis of identity represents the features of the relationship between the individual and collective principles of personality, which can be conditionally designated as “I” and “We.”
Azar Nafisi in “Lolita in Tehran” talks about a reading group that creates a space of self-understanding, allowing one to move away from a vertical identity and join a group of equals through a horizontal identity. In public, women are required to wear a veil, which makes them unified. Taking off the cover, the students become individuals; not national and cultural similarities but personal differences take special significance. Nafisi says that “gradually each took shape and form, becoming itself, unique” (279). Subcultural and even countercultural practice allows women to discover and begin to explore their own horizontal identity. The conditionality of this separation is due to the fact that “We,” like “I,” is a personal trait, the loss of which destroys the individual’s identity. In this context, these principles represent vectors in the formation and understanding of the level of normality that determines the horizon of a person’s life.
Nafisi shows a highly reduced version of vertical identity – women in society look precisely the same. They are deprived of any opportunity to manifest their personal traits through their vertical identity, as they are silent and even visually incapable of expressing themselves. A closed room is characterized by Nafisi as an “open space,” despite the fact that it is objectively something quite the opposite (Nafisi 293). However, subjectively, the room “had become a protective cocoon, and the censor’s world of witches and goblins outside” because it robs the dehumanizing practices of the outside world (Nafisi 293). is so great that it dehumanizes women. Therefore, the closed space of a room without restrictions is felt as an expanse of freedom.
In “The Naked Citadel,” an essential issue of forming traditional values for cadets as a particular predicate of normality and reality is considered. Such totalitarian influence is reflected in how the totalitarian regime shapes the perception of women in society. Faludi examines the story of Shannon Faulkner, who sought to change the “girls keep out” tradition at Citadel. In this case, the author considers the question of how cadets react to this event. The reaction of the cadets was adverse and even reached direct threats to the life of the Faulkner family (Faludi 77). The presence of a woman in the Citadel disrupted the space into which the men fled in order not to face the vertical hierarchy of the outside world. The company of a woman destroyed the potential to create spaces for the manifestation of a horizontal identity, so it was perceived as a threat.
It is indeed very revealing, as it allows readers to understand the problem that vertical identity forms a misconception among cadets about the position of women in society. It is necessary to quote from the essay: “they say her presence in the Corps would absolutely destroy a basic quality of their experience as Citadel men. She would be what one Citadel defender called in his court deposition a toxic kind of virus” (Faludi 78). This attitude becomes the basis for forming a negative perception of the image of a woman as unworthy of being in the exalted lifestyle of cadets. A similar dichotomy can be traced in the views of the male population, which significantly limits the possibilities for the disclosure of horizontal identities by Iranian women themselves.
In this sense, the Citadel is a twofold space, which, on the one hand, projects a rigid hierarchy and forces men to often publicly demonstrate their vertical identity. However, on the other hand, being only a male space, the Citadel leaves an opportunity to create secret horizontal communities and connections within itself. Such an opportunity is extremely small, but sufficient for men to be attracted to her in the hope of gaining emotional intimacy. It can be said that the Citadel constantly generates a conflict between vertical and horizontal identities. When the tension associated with the demonstration of feelings reaches its climax, it results in hazing and bullying (Faludi 79). Emotional impulses are shamed, and the guilty are forcibly returned to the framework of true masculinity.
The manifestation of horizontal identity requires a space of freedom and human interpersonal contact. Solomon writes about how external violence affects the balance of expression of a person’s inner and outer world. Healing and a deeper understanding of one’s identity are achieved through bringing people together in a subculture (Solomon 375). Therefore, for example, the Citadel cannot be a place of search for oneself and emotional calm. The external pressure of the hierarchy on the cadets never diminishes in the Citadel, constantly producing a desire to alleviate the growing stress through a return to a strict vertical order.
Resistance to the Vertical Identities
Human identity is multifactorial and includes cultural norms, national characteristics, and even physiological traits. In part, a person’s identity corresponds to a vertical identity, which allows him to function in society and find pleasure and opportunities for self-expression in the process. However, man is a complex and multidimensional being, having a large number of diverse characteristics that are being squeezed out of mainstream culture. Each person begins to search for places and people who will create a space for further self-expression and search for oneself in nuances and not in general cultural norms. This process is expressed in creating subcultures and countercultures that oppose vertical identity and its totalitarian manifestation.
Identity is a person’s involvement with a specific culture, in the context of which the formation of a personal Self takes place. Such participation presupposes the transformation of intersubjective forms of culture that define the horizon of identity into a vertical of subjective structures that formalize the uniqueness of the content of the human Self. In this case, the ideas of Andrew Solomon (379) are essential: “Modern life is lonely in many ways, but the ability of everyone with access to a computer to find like-minded people has meant that no one needs to be excluded from social kinship” and “If you can figure out who you are, you can find other people who are the same.” Accordingly, identity can be represented as self-understanding, in the context of which there is a search for defining values through correlation with normative patterns. At the same time, developing these values, which makes it possible to achieve superiority in certain life practices, takes a person beyond the norms of the identification society, sprouting personal traits.
The creation of a class for reading foreign literature has become, for Azar Nafisi, one of the ways to resist and overcome the totalitarian influence of the significance of vertical identities. For her, this is one of the ways of knowing “freedom denied me in classes I learned in the Islamic Republic” (Nafisi 284). Thus, the author offered women some alternative in the form of literature, through which they could better know themselves. Due to such an analysis of Western art, women are provided the opportunity to realize the significance of the definition of horizontal identity. In “Lolita in Tehran,” Azar Nafisi discusses how the women in the narrative rebel against the prejudice they experience and break the regime’s restriction against assembling in privacy. They all have the same perspective of living life uniquely and act against the regime’s stringent rules in various ways. The intra-cultural conflict between the imposition of a vertical identity as the only one and the inner world of people is so strong that even a small space of self-expression is an act of rebellion.
Identification in the context of self-creation of a person does not just show the respective sides of her being, and the sum of identities is not their simple mechanical connection. Each offers a person the horizon of the significant, allowing them to be realized as a Person. The organic unity of personality in the diversity of its identifications is achieved precisely through the interiorization of values inherent in these identifications. The search for these values in the revealed norms and their justification are inseparable from self-understanding, the result of which is self-creation and self-understanding of oneself as a subject of one’s life.
Conclusion
Summing up, the horizontal and vertical dimensions of identity appear as phenomenological and metaphysical aspects of the individual’s self-understanding. At the same time, super subjective values, the bearers of which are social ideals, receive a personal dimension and become personal values that determine the significance of their Self. The stories described in the works of Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel” and Azar Nafisi’s “Selections from Reading Lolita in Iran” really allow us to understand better and interpret the theory of Andrew Solomon. Iranian society heavily depends on the dominant perception of people’s vertical identities (Nafisi 277). Thus, there are few opportunities for women and minorities to explore and acquire their true Selves. The first is connected with the formation of a person in various social groups, and the second is aimed at personal uniqueness, uniqueness of the inner world, and life experience.
In both cases, people are drawn to seek close emotional contact, allowing them to explore themselves and reveal aspects that remain silenced in society. Without the expression of a horizontal identity, people lack a sense of Self, and the ability to express and understand their most profound experiences. The examples of the Citadel and “Lolita in Tehran” show that the desire for self-expression and search for oneself is indestructible. People, under fear of physical punishment and bullying, continue to create subculture spaces. However, vertical and horizontal identities form a common understanding of “I.” The craving for a more intimate search does not cancel the desire to be connected with the society around shared values, culture, language, and nationality. These percentages should not oppose each other but should complement the overall search for oneself.
Works Cited
Faludi, Susan. “The Naked Citadel.”, 1989, pp. 70–100.
Nafisi, Azar. “Selections From Reading Lolita in Tehran.”, 2003, pp. 277–295.
Solomon, Andrew. “Son.”, 2012, pp. 363–384.