A Critical Discursive Approach to Identity 175constitution of identities as interactional (not mentalistic) phenomena that
are organized as part of the social maintenance of relationships and daily
life (see Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2003). The analytic end goal of
positioning is thus identities, not identities as a route to examining
discursive action. The present approach thus conceptualizes positioning as
the vanguard for an interactional approach to identity.
The use of the term positioning is not without precedent. Positioning
has had a somewhat varied and complicated history. Historically,
positioning has been conceptualized as either the outward expression of a
world beneath the skull or as the realization of a shared societal order. For
instance, Wendy Hollway’s (1983) seminal work on positioning saw acts
of positioning as driven by an interior psychodynamic operation of
unconscious and irrational defense mechanisms. Post-structural thinkers
like Althusser (1971), and Laclau (1993) discuss positioning by theorizing
that social agents are comprised of ‘subject positions’ that are constituted
by ideological and discursive regimes, making subjectivity an ideological
effect (see Wetherell, 1998 for review). And since the early 1990’s, Rom
Harré and his colleagues (see Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré & van
Langenhove, 1999) have variously advanced ethogenic and ontological
constructionist discursive views of positioning, where acts of positioning,
though immanent in conversations, are fundamentally the product or
expression of an extant societal realm of rules and/or social
representations. These approaches to positioning tend to capitulate to
interiority metaphors (psychodynamic or cognitivist) or post-structural
assumptions about the relationship between our minds, our social worlds,
and our discourse (for an extended discussion, see Korobov, 2010).
The present approach to positioning avoids treating discourse (and thus
identities) as the product of something more primary (see Korobov, 2006,
2010; Korobov & Bamberg, 2004a, 2004b, 2007; Wilkinson and Kitzinger,
2003). The discursive-positioning approach advocated for here is anchored
in the epistemological discursive psychology of Edwards and Potter
(Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996; Potter & Edwards,
1999, 2003). An epistemic discursive psychology (hereafter, epistemic DP)
sees talk and identities as having a performative rather than referential