CHAPTER 16
“When Did I Become Us?”
Group Identity as a Leda or
as a Castor
So far we have not discussed one extremely important aspect of being a clone in Orphan Black, an aspect that may or may not be true for future individuals originated by cloning but one that could be very important: group identity. The Ledas, upon learning of each other’s existence and meeting each other, come to have a group identity. The Castors seem to have been raised with one.
THE ROBBERS CAVE EXPERIMENT
First, let’s take a moment to better understand the formation process of such a group identity.
The Robbers Cave Experiment, the most widely known example of a theory in social psychology called “realistic group conflict theory” (and an experiment that, like the infamous Milgram experiments on obedience to authority or Zimbardo’s prisoners-and-guards experiments, probably could not get past institutional review boards today), provides a classic example of how quickly individuals form a group identity. In the early 1950s, researchers took twenty-two white, middle-class boys aged eleven or twelve, who had never met before, and had them live together as two groups of eleven for three weeks in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, in a two-hundred-acre summer camp.
At first, the group of eleven were just eleven individuals, but once researchers made the two groups aware of each other and started competitions between them, such as tug-of-war and setting up tents quickly for valuable prizes that only one group could win, they became something more than just individuals. At this point, the groups named themselves Eagles and Rattlers, and tensions began between the two. The names they chose became associated with qualities group members were proud to possess: for Eagles, modesty, prayer, and non-cursing; for Rattlers, braggadocio, emphasis on masculinity, and exaltation of combat.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this group formation is the importance for bonding of having something to be against. So the Ledas bond against Dyad and Topside, and maybe against a world that, if it were aware of their existence, might be against them. Similarly, the Castors seem to have been raised seeing everyone in the world as their enemy except their “Mother” Coady. This “us against the world” mentality and feeling of being under siege by outsiders fuels a close-knit bond.
It also fuels further conflict. In the Robbers Cave Experiment, the two groups soon began raiding each other: They captured, burned, and shredded each other’s flags. At one point, just as Philip Zimbardo had to stop his experiments when Stanford students role-playing as guards got carried away and started abusing students assigned to play prisoners, researchers had to intervene to stop one group from attacking the other with rocks.
CULTURE AND GROUP IDENTITY
The distinguished Ghana-born philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah uses the Robbers Cave Experiment to describe how social identity arises in groups (see his The Ethics of Identity). In particular, he stresses that in the experiment, each group’s name, hostility toward the other group, and conflicts with that group arose in just four days.
It makes you wonder what could happen over years to a bunch of women bonded together by the same genes, who realize they were created by secret experiments, and who have common, real, dangerous enemies. Makes for a very powerful tribe.
Appiah also uses the Robbers Cave Experiment to make a bold conjecture: that identity precedes culture (I do X because I am Y), not—as commonly supposed—the other way around (I am Y because I do X). The culture of the group is emphasized only after a social identity is formed in response to conflict with another group. So the Malay people of Indonesia and Thailand only came to know each other as such after the arrival of the Chinese—and so Sarah Manning first came to identify as a Leda, as a member of a cloned sisterhood, in response to their shared mistreatment by Dyad and Topside, after which point she and the other Ledas began to form their own culture, with special language (such as “clone club”) and traditions (such as, say, impersonating one another).
Appiah sets out several aspects to building an identity in a social group—let’s call that group “L.” First, there must be some kind of identifiable social conception of the “kind of person” that is an L. Although it may be simplistic, prejudiced, and partly untrue, the social caricature or stereotype is necessary for the demarcation. These social conceptions often involve characteristics over which individuals have no control: female, Hispanic, gay, African, straight, male. People are often simply born into such descriptions. This is certainly true of the Ledas and Castors, who had no control over their unique origins.
Second, a name or label must evolve that describes the group. Although Appiah does not say it, to have a label connotes both a value judgment and a certain critical mass. There are no labels for vegetarians in Alabama because it is not important to most Alabamians or non-Alabamians to mark off such a group; whether or not one eats meat is low stakes, and there are not enough such people for it to matter to the majority. But there are still labels for “Yankee,” “liberal,” and “fundamentalist.” For people originated by cloning, a powerful label already exists: “clone.”
Third, individuals in the group must internalize the L label and apply it to themselves: “Yes, I am a bioethicist,” for example. In Orphan Black, we see such internalization beginning early in season one, when Alison explains to Sarah in season one, episode three, “We’re clones! We’re someone’s experiment . . .” Although that particular expression of internalization is negative, another one, the Ledas’ acceptance of their relationship and mutual support of one another, is more positive.
Fourth, there must be a pattern of behavior by others toward members of this L group. Often this is a bad pattern born in prejudice. Although we don’t know for sure that such a prejudiced pattern of behavior would exist toward cloned people, Orphan Black certainly makes us feel that it would, for example, because of the similarity of its world to our own, as well as the fact that cloned humans remain a secret.
Appiah concludes, “Where a classification of people as Ls is associated with a social conception of Ls, some people identify as Ls, and people are sometimes treated as Ls, we have a paradigm of social identity that matters for ethical and political life.”
So for the Ledas, they are classified (by those who know their secret) as clones, and in particular as products of Project Leda; they come to identify with this description, and with their sisterhood; and they are treated differently (by Felix, Dyad, police officer Arthur Bell, and Topside) because of it. So for the Castors, they are classified (especially by the military) as clones, the products of Project Castor; they identify as a group; and they are treated by Dr. Coady and others differently from other members of the military, like Paul, as a result.
KEEPING YOUR CLONES CLOSE
Although Appiah certainly was not thinking of clones in providing his analysis of social identity, I think his analysis perfectly fits clonal identity in Orphan Black and what might happen with cloned humans in reality.
Consider also another aspect of social identity not discussed by Appiah but that is very relevant to the Ledas and Castors, and which we touched on in the last chapter in the context of a group of two, twins: the pressures, within and without, to remain in the group and adhere to its standards. First, individuals who betray group identity feel guilty. There are some Americans who, when traveling abroad during times when sentiment runs high against America, claim they are New Zealanders or Canadians, then later feel guilty. Second, group members put social pressure to remain on individuals who try to break away. The social forces that bind individuals together in a group can act just as powerfully in preventing aberrant members from leaving. Mark discovers both of these things when he tries to abandon the Castors for Gracie, as does Alison when she initially rejects membership in the Leda sisterhood.
We see this in real-world groups all the time. The Pueblo tribe doesn’t permit religious freedom among its members, who own property communally; a breakaway member who wants to adopt a different religion may lose his property rights. A young woman trying to break away from Mormon culture may face almost insurmountable pressures to stay in the fold. A Bengali girl rejecting an arranged marriage may be left on her own, with no means of support. African American teens who are perceived by their black peers as studying and reading what they consider “too much” may be accused of acting “too white”—they may be threatened with the withdrawal of group membership for violating assumed group standards.
Following Appiah’s analysis of social identity in a group, it makes a profound difference whether individuals cloned from the same ancestor are raised in isolation with different families or together as a group. The Ledas feel these group pressures and exhibit these hallmarks of group identity despite having met only as adults; from what we have seen of the Castors, both factors appear intensified, given their upbringing. Whether the same would be true of cloned humans in our world—how they would see themselves, in either circumstance—is a fascinating question yet to be answered.