Reconstructing Identity : A Transdisciplinary Approach 978-3-319-58427-0, 3319584278, 978-3-319-58426-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction (Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou)....Pages 1-15
Front Matter ....Pages 17-19
If My Brain Is Damaged, Do I Become a Different Person? Catherine Malabou and Neuro-identity (Christopher Watkin)....Pages 21-40
Identity and Psychiatric Disorders (Farhana Omer, Matthew R. Broome)....Pages 41-59
Biological Identity (Kevin G. Moffat)....Pages 61-82
Front Matter ....Pages 83-85
Outside in the House of Colour: A Second Look at Postcolonial and Transnational Feminisms (Mridula Nath Chakraborty)....Pages 87-112
Gendering the Favela: Brazilian National Identities on Screen (Sarah McDonald)....Pages 113-130
Queering Identity: Becoming Queer in the Work of Cassils (Cath Lambert)....Pages 131-155
Forms of Self-Translation (Rita Wilson)....Pages 157-177
Front Matter ....Pages 179-181
Autoethnographic Journalism: Subjectivity and Emotionality in Audio Storytelling (Mia Lindgren)....Pages 183-206
Technologically Mediated Identity: Personal Computers, Online Aliases, and Japanese Robots (Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou)....Pages 207-242
The Role of Narrative in the Creation of Brand Identity (Gabriel García Ochoa, Sarah Lorimer)....Pages 243-263
Conclusion (Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou)....Pages 265-272
Back Matter ....Pages 273-332

Citation preview

reconstructing identity a transdisciplinary approach

edited by Nicholas Monk Mia Lindgren Sarah McDonald Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou

Reconstructing Identity

Nicholas Monk  •  Mia Lindgren Sarah McDonald  •  Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou Editors

Reconstructing Identity A Transdisciplinary Approach

Editors Nicholas Monk IATL University of Warwick Coventry, UK

Mia Lindgren Faculty of Arts Monash University Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Sarah McDonald Faculty of Arts Monash University Clayton, Victoria, Australia

Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou Faculty of Arts Monash University Clayton, Victoria, Australia

ISBN 978-3-319-58426-3    ISBN 978-3-319-58427-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948737 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design by Samantha Johnson Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This project came out of a dynamic and innovative teaching experiment, and as such we owe a debt of gratitude to our students and the bravery they showed in undertaking this experiment with us. It was their enthusiasm that stoked the fire that kept this research project going. We would also like to thank the Monash-Warwick alliance for the funding they provided that allowed our project to be realized. We would also like to thank the Monash Office of Learning and Teaching, which invested the funds to create the Portal teaching space to match the wonderful facilities at Warwick. Both institutions’ investment in the idea of Portal teaching gave us the opportunity and the freedom to try something truly new. Lastly, we need to thank Gail Philips, whose contribution in editing this volume has been invaluable, and her patience is very much appreciated.

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Contents

1 Introduction   1 Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, and Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou

Section 1  Biological Identity

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2 If My Brain Is Damaged, Do I Become a Different Person? Catherine Malabou and Neuro-identity  21 Christopher Watkin 3 Identity and Psychiatric Disorders  41 Farhana Omer and Matthew R. Broome 4 Biological Identity  61 Kevin G. Moffat

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Section 2  Structures of National and Personal Identity

  83

5 Outside in the House of Colour: A Second Look at Postcolonial and Transnational Feminisms  87 Mridula Nath Chakraborty 6 Gendering the Favela: Brazilian National Identities on Screen 113 Sarah McDonald 7 Queering Identity: Becoming Queer in the Work of Cassils 131 Cath Lambert 8 Forms of Self-Translation 157 Rita Wilson

Section 3  Creating and Mediating Identity

 179

9 Autoethnographic Journalism: Subjectivity and Emotionality in Audio Storytelling 183 Mia Lindgren 10 Technologically Mediated Identity: Personal Computers, Online Aliases, and Japanese Robots 207 Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou 11 The Role of Narrative in the Creation of Brand Identity 243 Gabriel García Ochoa and Sarah Lorimer

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12 Conclusion 265 Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, and Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou Appendices 273 Index 315

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 A skeletal problem for biological identity? Can we really tell anything about our identity from looking at our skeletons? You would be able to tell the sex, the age, and obvious deformities. You might even be able to use the skull to try and recreate facial features from knowledge of anatomy. If we dug into the bone marrow, perhaps we could recover more cells and DNA that might tell us more. However, the extent to which the skeleton can reveal all the traits of a human being, including whether they were a “pirate” or not, is a matter of active debate Fig. 7.1 Heather Cassils, Time Lapse, 2011. Archival pigment print, 60 × 40 inches (Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York) Fig. 7.2 Advertisement: Homage to Benglis on poster advertising for the Homosexuality_ies exhibition, Schwules Gallery, Berlin Fig. 7.3 Heather Cassils’ Becoming An Image. Performance Still No. 3 (National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London). 2013. C-print 22 × 30 inches (Photo: Heather Cassils with Manuel Vason. Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York) Fig. 7.4 Heather Cassils, After, 2013. Modelling clay (Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York) Fig. 10.1 Layers of technological mediation Fig. A.1 Autoethnography Wordcloud

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1 Introduction Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, and Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou

Identity as a subject for analysis and discussion, and as a lived reality for all of us, has never been more complex and multi-faceted. Uneven though they are, technological advances and globalization change the ways people understand their identities. Social media, as a synthesis of both, shapes the identities of the groups we belong to and the identities of individuals and other groups that have hitherto existed beyond our view. Reflection on, and thoughtful reconstruction of, identity exists side-by-side with simplistic and hostile categorizations on Facebook and other social media. Personal online expression can be met by equal shares of sympathy and

N. Monk (*) IATL, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK M. Lindgren Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S. McDonald • S. Pasfield-Neofitou Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_1

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e-bile, in what Emma Jane calls “the recreational nastiness that have come to constitute a dominant tenor of Internet discourse” (2014, 532). Brands take on identities of their own, mental health deteriorates in Western countries, and crises and celebrations of identity occur over nationality, sexuality, culture, and politics. That these shifts and complexities in public and private identities take place across such a range of human interactions, and on a global scale, is significant. Under these conditions, our identity escapes from disciplinary bounds to a place where the sophistication and complexity of its existence have to be matched by openness, analyses, and reflections that also transcend disciplinary categorization. This book attempts analyses of this kind, and its structure is designed to be sympathetic to this aspiration in that it moves from disciplinarity through multidisciplinarity to transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity. Two overlapping thrusts exist in this book, which are interdisciplinarity and identity. We will write more on both shortly, but before we do we should explain the origins and structure of this book. The book is divided into three sections: Section 1: Biological Identity Section 2: Structures of National and Personal Identity Section 3: Creating and Mediating Identity These sections suggested themselves during the editing process and, like everything else about this book, they have grown, organically, as the editors have discussed and developed them. The idea of an organic structure is so important to us because of the way the larger project, of which this book is a part, grew. Such a structure, too, reflects our own perceptions of identity as fluid, malleable, open to telling and retelling, or composed of elements that may be rearranged to create different narratives. Form and content are interwoven, therefore, throughout this project. Practical pedagogy provided the impetus for this book, and it owes its dynamic and unpredictable life to the design, delivery, and outcomes of a teaching module, or unit, called Forms of Identity for honors level undergraduates, the creation and delivery of which was shared by the University of Warwick in the UK and Monash University

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in Australia1 (for a background on the Forms of Identity portal pedagogy teaching project, see Monk et al. 2015). The chapters that follow reflect the diversity of the contributions made to the Forms of Identity module by a variety of lecturers, as well as perspectives from academics working in connected areas. This is by no means, though, a textbook nor a guide to teaching and learning. Material that relates to learning and teaching is included only if it has informed and changed the thinking of the editors and contributors. We hope that such a process has enabled what we might describe as “teaching-led research”, in some of the more sophisticated examples, where the learning and teaching space has acted as a crucible for an understanding of identity (for both the editors of this book and the students involved) in a particularly self-reflexive fashion. The translation of ideas into the learning and teaching unit, the effects of these ideas on tutors and students, the development of these ideas, the collection of these ideas in this book, and the use of this book to inform further thinking on identity are precisely performative of the form–content relationships we have sought to encourage, which have created an experience for many of us that is greater than the sum of its parts. The experience, itself, has an identity—one of fluidity and interchangeability. And part of this project is to narrate that identity. The experience of sharing the module with our students, of teaching them, and of learning from them has reinforced for us the fluidity of identity, the elusiveness of an easy or succinct definition of it, and its persistent facility to escape disciplinary classification. More specifically, in terms of the students’ interaction with us, our interaction with them, and their interaction with each other and with the disciplinary material we offered them, the module required that we all encounter identity in an embodied way that moved beyond the module into the world outside the academy. We “did” identity on a daily basis in an academic setting and beyond, not merely in our roles as academics and students, but in terms  The module is one of a number of similar interdisciplinary “modules”, as they are called at Warwick, or “units”, as they are called at Monash, hosted jointly by the institutions. The terms “unit” and “module” will be synonymous and interchangeable in the remainder of this volume. A different disciplinary specialist was present each week, as well as a facilitator from each university at either end of the link. Completing the picture were individuals from Information Technology Services who also became part of the process. For more details on the practicalities of the teaching and learning experience for students and staff at the two universities, see Monk et al. (2015). 1

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of our cultures, nationalities, politics, gender, and race: epistemology came face to face with ontology. That our students set up Facebook groups independently of us is evidence of this, as was the flirting between students that took place occasionally across the teleconferencing link. Everything about the production of this work and what has preceded it in terms of teaching and learning and research activity is performative of the ideas of identity that underpin its development: again, the “doing” of identity. We write for example of globalization: the collaboration that is at the core of this book and that motivates us to publish it features staff from universities at opposite ends of the globe, and the undergraduates with whom we have worked on the module represent 14 different nationalities. When we teach we ask students to document these processes of changing and fluctuating identity through reflective journals in which we demand only that students are “immediate” and “honestly reflective”—in other words, they document their experiences according to their condition at the time of that experience, and in the light of the intellectual material with which they are provided. We ask that our students become, in a methodologically unprescriptive fashion, autoethnographers, or documenters of the self.2 To mirror this process, we close the book with a commentary on the experience derived from the self-reflections of the four editors on what it has meant to us to be teachers, or facilitators, and how this relates to our professional and personal identities, and our understanding of identity as a concept. (The conversation is transcribed in full in Appendix 1.) Taking an autoethnographic approach, we become the object of study alongside the material that we offer in writing or in other mediums. The book is divided into sections that collect current thinking from international scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, history, science, cultural, media and translation studies, performance, and marketing. Each section of the book begins with a meta-analysis which provides a  Autoethnography is an expression of the desire to turn social science inquiry into a nonalienating practice, one in which I (as a researcher) do not need to suppress my own subjectivity, where I can become more attuned to the subjectivities of others, where I am free to reflect on the consequences of my work, not only for others but also for myself, and where all parts of myself—emotional, spiritual, intellectual, embodied and moral—can be voiced and integrated into my work … It’s a response to an existential crisis—a desire to do meaningful work and lead a meaningful life. (Bochner 2013, 53) 2

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short commentary that guides the reader through disciplinary transitions, and that permits passage through a threshold of extradisciplinary understanding which facilitates reconstruction of the notion of identity. In other words, the book aims to develop our understanding of identity and what it means to be human, a notion that is central to many disciplines, and should be central to all. We begin with the fundamental relationships of mind to body, move through exploration of narratives of identity, and finally, consider the performance of identity. Alongside these disciplinary essays, which lay a foundation, we describe an extradisciplinary space that we created for our students in which we try to divest them, and ourselves, of our disciplinary baggage in order to reconstruct an understanding (or understandings) of identity that matches the conditions and complexities we describe above. From these positions of extradisciplinarity and disciplinarity, we move to a space in which identity can be considered as a multidisciplinary, and then as an interdisciplinary, concept. Finally, we consider the ways in which identity may have become a transdisciplinary phenomenon that demands of us as academics that we change the way we think about our approach to our own disciplines and to problems and challenges that exist in the world beyond our departmental and faculty structures. Some definitions are necessary here, but we wish to avoid an extensive analysis or review of the literature available on interdisciplinarity. Lack of space and infinite regress are also potential pitfalls, but we recognize that any discussion of what constitutes the various categories of disciplinarity is, itself, a question of identity, so we require a workable theory based on both the literature and our experiences in the learning and teaching and research activities that inform this book.3 Robert Frodeman’s (2014) Sustainable Knowledge: A Theory of Interdisciplinarity is a suitable guide for us in theorizing interdisciplinarity because its analysis grows organically from practice and principle in the same ways that the idea of identity does in this book. Frodeman uses  There are many definitions of theories of interdisciplinarity, a small number of which would be sufficient to fill this book if they were analyzed in detail. Our selection is necessarily selective and, therefore, focused on ideas that seem most relevant to our own experience. As our work emerges from a pedagogic space in higher education, we would refer the interested reader to the Higher Education Academy’s report on interdisciplinary provision in higher education for further reading and information (Lyall et al. 2015). 3

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a case study of medical diagnosis that is highly personal to him in order to draw out his definitions. His practice is actually very similar to our own rather more extended analysis of ours’ and the students’ experiences on the identity unit. Frodeman’s definitions begin with disciplinarity— which is characterized as being based on the false assumption that the world divides naturally into different kinds of things. It is the case, rather, that these disciplinary categories are nominal only and do not form coherent epistemic units. In this, Frodeman is close to Gregory Bateson (1972) who insists that what is required is not “a set of categories which will throw a light on the problems, but rather the schematic formulation of the problems in such a way as they might be separately investigable” (Bateson 1972, 62). For Frodeman “the simplest way to define interdisciplinarity is in terms of a focus outward, away from a group of peers” (2014, 36), or the co-production of knowledge within the academy. Frodeman defines transdisciplinarity as “the co-production of knowledge between academic and non-academic actors” (ibid., 61). The cardinal virtue of the transdisciplinary for Frodeman is that it breaks the stranglehold of peer review on the creation and production of knowledge. We diverge from Frodeman here, only in the sense that we would not wish to be so specific: the “trans” prefix of transdisciplinarity does imply for us the notion of transcendence, but it is our view that such transcendence can take place within the university, and particularly in work with students, where the master and novitiate relationship begins to dissolve. Frodeman offers, too, the notion of “dedisciplinarity” (ibid., 84) in which philosophy and the sciences escape disciplinarity to, once again, transcend “regional ontology” (ibid., 85) and move “beyond the walls of the disciplinary academy” (ibid., 86). Our understanding of the transdisciplinary in this volume is a combination of Frodeman’s version, along with his concept of dedisciplinarity.

Forms of Identity Module For us it is the nature of the subject or object of study that determines its disciplinary condition. So, for example, for Kevin Moffat (who provides a chapter in this collection) to investigate genetic mutation in fruit flies

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(in the discipline of biology) is one thing, but for him then to talk about identity in this context (introducing an interdisciplinary perspective) in a group of students from the arts and humanities, who may challenge him on the basis that in their view gender is wholly a social construct (introducing a transdisciplinary perspective), is quite another. If these students then take their discussions and their understanding of the ideas they have helped to create in the seminar out into the world (also transdisciplinary), the idea of identity escapes its bounds. The final category, but the first one we actually use in the module, is “extradisciplinarity”. We felt as facilitators that we needed to create a space for students in the first minutes and hours of the module that removed them from their customary disciplinary environments and where our own disciplines as professional teachers and researchers shrank into the background. The creation of an extradisciplinary space was actually made easier by the unfamiliarity of the learning and teaching environment we had created for the students. At the University of Warwick we had installed around £50,000 worth of teleconferencing equipment in what became the portal pedagogy space— a seminar room in a 1980s building. Monash University installed similar equipment in a similar room. We went to the extent of decorating the rooms in the same color, and using similar furniture. The spaces, together, represented not only a point between the two universities in a virtual arena but also a point at which the virtual and physical learning space intersected. We hoped that students would experience this space as unique, with an identity of its own, and feel able to take ownership of it. We built into the design of the shared spaces a number of features. The first was that there was no lectern from which academics could deliver material to the students; instead, the keyboard, screen, mouse, and document visualizer were placed off to the side. For the international sessions, academics who wished to deliver material via these means stood adjacent to the screen and either faced a moveable head-height camera on their left to address the remote students or simply turned slightly to their right to speak to the physically co-present students, with the equipment close at hand while not coming between teacher and students at either end. Each group of students was able to see the other and they could speak at any time as both rooms had ceiling microphones to pick up interjections. Displayed on the screen at both ends were large projections of the other

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group, and any content that formed part of a PowerPoint or was relayed through the visualizer could also be seen. Either display could be minimized or maximized according to the requirements of the session. What the space enabled us to do, as a group of learners and tutors, was to see and hear each other clearly, and to converse as though we were in the same space geographically rather than merely virtually. The technology created a membrane, a window between continents, connecting the student cohorts located in different hemispheres. The immediate consequence was that UK-based students realized there was more than one eight o’clock in the day, and Australian students were horrified by the poor March weather in the northern hemisphere. At a deeper level, it became apparent that the space had permitted us to create a safe and practical way for students to begin to explore one aspect of the notion of identity itself in a virtual space that was as close to a real learning environment as possible. Above all, however, this was a space that represented no disciplinary focus: it was not a lab, nor was it a seminar room, still less, a lecture theater. From the outset, students could see themselves and others performing, or embodying, a range of identities in significantly different cultural environments. As one student noted: [t]he technology, how it is set up and the appearance of people just being on the other side of the wall is really important and meant that I could integrate the students in the UK, even though I was standing in Australia, in a way that I have not been able to do before in other forms of remote teaching. It was like a window and I could look through the window and they were real people actually moving and laughing and participating and it really made me feel like we almost didn’t have the distance.

Another feature we found particularly useful in the design of the space was a circle of carpet, adjacent to the screens at either end of the link, of a different shade to the surrounding area. This provided students with a naturally constituted seating arrangement in which they faced their on-­ screen colleagues in a semi-circle with the facilitator at the intersection of the two semi-circles. The design of the space also permitted tables to be folded and stored in a purpose-built area behind doors, so we were left,

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for the purposes of our sessions, with an open space, free of furniture but for the students’ chairs. The facilitators at both Monash and Warwick universities each joined their own semi-circle, and we felt ready to begin. We created a number of activities for students which we describe in the commentaries that link each section of the book. It is worth pausing to note that the outcomes of these practices and activities often exceeded our expectations and were sometimes unpredictable. It is only post facto reflection and discussion between ourselves and our students, and our engagement with their reflective journals, that has permitted us to perceive patterns developing and results emerging that certainly did not feature in the set of learning outcomes we devised during the design of the module.4 The various categories of disciplinarity we have elucidated above is one example, and another is the sheer complexity of identity and the fact that it is so profoundly relevant to thought and  It is worth recording these learning outcomes here to show where our thinking was before the module began. Students were invited, with us, to: 4

1. Encounter abstract and complex ideas from a range of disciplines (multidisciplinary), and to synthesize these into thoughtful intellectual responses (interdisciplinary), that lead students to insights that may lie beyond the scope of a single discipline (transdisciplinary). 2. Understand the symbiotic potential of traditionally distinct disciplines. 3. Participate in “active” learning in order to foster the notion that participation and experiential learning permit a deeper understanding of complex multi-faceted material. 4. Enhance and consolidate their academic and research abilities in a collaborative environment, engaging with methodologies and “languages” across the disciplines. 5. Make productive links between theoretical ideas and practical applications. The module’s aims were to offer honors level undergraduates a rich and pluralistic appreciation of “identity” that would be relevant throughout their personal and professional lives and to ask that they respond to notions of identity that are framed as problematic and incompatible, or where such ideas exist in conflicted constellation in the purviews of different and differing disciplines. The module sought, therefore, to encourage students to: 1. Investigate in detail the means by which identities are formed, changed, or imposed—as seen through the lenses of different disciplines. 2. Understand notions such as the nature of individual identity broadly, national identity, bodily identity, gender identity, racial identity, and spiritual identity. 3. Reflect both upon the increasing prominence of consumer, hybrid, border, and marginal identities and upon the notion that identity can shift, that it can be fragmented, and that a variety of identities can exist simultaneously. 4. Develop an awareness of how their subject knowledge and disciplinary approach can be made accessible to wider publics. 5. Explore the relationship between the mind and body in the formation of identity.

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life both inside and outside the academy. We might indeed characterize identity as a “threshold concept”. According to Meyer and Land’s (2005) theory: A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time, with the transition to understanding proving troublesome. Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people “think” in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend, or experience particular phenomena within that discipline (or more generally). (Meyer and Land 2005, 374)

The kinds of transformation Meyer and Land describe here seem akin to those taking place for our students in their interaction with the material on identity. Student essays, reflective journals, and their contributions to seminar discussions show sometimes radical transformation in view and understanding over a very short space of time. This does not seem to us, however, to be best characterized as an experience of reaching and passing a “threshold”, rather it seems to consist in the experience of engaging at an intellectual point that is at the convergence of a collection of disciplines and intellectual approaches to a single subject. These “convergent concepts” seem to have a power of their own to escape the disciplinary silos that contain them under the departmental and faculty arrangements that are found in many modern universities across the world. There are in the process two directions of travel: one is the flow of disciplinary understanding that typically consists in the readings and lecture material supplied by subject specialists and the other is in the response by students and facilitators to this material in the discussion sessions that follow its presentation. Meyer and Land’s point concerning “inaccessibility” is important here because this two-way flow of action demands that disciplines make themselves comprehensible to students from across the faculties and that academics develop a language that permits students to

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engage with these disciplines on their own terms. For any student, and in UK universities in particular, to stray into another faculty is to become profoundly lost in a forest of discipline-specific language and methodologies. Indeed, even within faculties, the intellectual habits and expressions of another department can be impenetrable. A structure, therefore, that involves the presence of a “guest” presenter every week requires that both the module leader—who is always present—and the students “translate” disciplines into a comprehensible and communicable language and, in doing so, they open a portal to the world of the transdisciplinary. In this way students may find that concepts, ideas, or notions that academics might have regarded as disciplinarily “convergent” open up to them in detailed and complex ways. Thus was the scene set for the disciplinary interventions of our colleagues in the Forms of Identity module. Importantly, we wanted to open a space for the academics who contributed to the portal sessions to allow that experience with their students to affect their finished contributions to this collection. This means that Lindgren’s piece and those of Pasfield-­ Neofitou, and, to a lesser extent, Watkin, Wilson, Lambert, and McDonald show strong evidence of the process. What was exciting for us about the selection of material for the module is that under the heading of “identity”, and within the pedagogic framework of an hour’s discipline-specific material per week, combined with a further hour’s attempt at synthesis, most disciplines with an interest in identity could be slotted in each annual iteration of the module. The experience of our students would then be truly unique in their understanding of identity, and the knowledge they created in that module would be so also. This fluidity, for us, was welcome, as disciplines slipped in and out of the structure with relative ease, reinforcing our view of identity as a convergent concept. The content of the module, therefore, varied from year to year, and this volume provides a snapshot of a particular moment. The chapters that follow present their engagement with the intellectual (epistemological) and embodied (ontological) experience of identity. The first section explores and challenges biological notions of identity. It begins with Christopher Watkin who uses the work of the French neuro-philosopher Catherine Malabou to probe fundamental questions about who we think we are, and whether our sense of

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identity is immanent to the material brain or embraces a broader notion of identity distributed across relationships, institutions, and shared common narratives. Next, Farhana Omer and Matthew R. Broome consider identity from the perspective of the discipline of psychiatry, specifically the relationship between personal identity and a number of psychiatric disorders. The authors posit that personal identity is a continuously evolving process and the role of family, friends, and clinicians needs to be one of understanding for those suffering from mental health issues. In this way the aspects of the identity of the sufferer that allow them to participate more fully in society can be reinforced. In the final chapter in this section Kevin Moffat explores the complexity of biological identity and asks the question, what gives us identity in a biological context? While our DNA demonstrates our relatedness to each other, by understanding the process by which it operates throughout our lives and is shuffled in our offspring, we can see the biological reason for our own identity. The second section examines the structures of national and personal identity through a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses. Mridula Nath Chakraborty examines the development of a South-East Asian postcolonial feminism or feminisms and the implications of categorizations based on geographic and political location. In this way she illustrates the development of identities in relation to specific territories and terminologies of “color”. Continuing the exploration of gendered identities, Sarah McDonald explores how national and individual identity is shaped through cinema. Examining a range of Brazilian films that take place in the poor urban communities known as favelas, she shows the way recent films have introduced a broader, more inclusive social narrative that challenges the masculinist representations of the favela that have predominated up till now. Next, Cath Lambert explores the work of genderqueer artist Cassils in order to address the question of what it is to be human from a queer perspective. The challenges from queer and postmodern scholarship to “identity politics” so central to earlier activist and academic agendas have been well documented. Yet, notwithstanding these valid critiques, identity remains a powerful organizing concept in contemporary experience. These contradictory stances on identity serve as a prompt for thinking about what queer brings to our understandings of being human now and in the near future. The final chapter in this

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s­ection by Rita Wilson takes as its point of departure the notion that a “translational identity” is fundamental to a body of narratives written by authors who have been variously described as “migrant”, “diasporic”, and, more recently, “transnational” (Seyhan 2001) and “translingual”. Wilson focuses on contemporary literary production in Italy and analyzes the work of writers who, in their attempt to navigate between languages and social contexts associated with these languages, provide an opportunity to reflect on identity construction in border situations. Section 3 explores the ways in which contemporary identities are created and mediated. Mia Lindgren examines the role of personal journalism as part of articulating identity, with a focus on audio storytelling. For journalists, turning their focus on their own lives can be challenging— telling your story puts you and your personal identity in the public eye, open to criticism. Using her own radio documentary as a case study, Lindgren considers the many pitfalls of autobiographical storytelling, examining the benefits and challenges of journalists putting themselves in the frame. Then Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou turns the focus to modern technology and argues that relationships between technology and identity are multi-faceted and complex. Computers have long been used as a metaphor for explaining the human mind and aspects of our identities, and likewise, the mind has been utilized as a metaphor to explain the processes of computers. While we have used the human body as a template for understanding the world around us throughout history, the machine has become a metaphor for just about anything in modern society, with ourselves simultaneously as the most familiar, and the most unknowable, feature of our world. This chapter explores these relationships. Finally, Gabriel García Ochoa and Sarah Lorimer look at identity through the lens of branding, arguing that brand identity stands at the intersection of two important narratives: its own and that of its consumers who, through the brands they select, tell stories about themselves. This intersection of stories has traditionally worked as a dialogue. Lately, however, the balance has shifted toward consumers, whose personal narratives increasingly determine the formation of brand identity. This chapter analyzes the role of narrative in the construction of brand identity. Each of the sections of this book is preceded by a meta-analysis that forms an entry point to the chapters that follow. These reflective

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s­ummaries, or meta-sections, between groups of chapters are present to provide links and connections to offer a degree of summary and analysis, but most of all to suggest ways in which the notions of identity and its status as a transdisciplinary concept are both reinforced and changed as the book progresses. These analyses also serve at a macro level to contextualize the interactions that allowed for the development of the intellectual relationships that permitted this book to exist at all. At a micro level these sections connect with themes of the chapters to sometimes support and sometimes challenge their content and assertions and by doing so reflect the practice of the authors themselves both in the classroom and in their wider academic and community engagement. In the final chapter of the book the authors use autoethnographic methods to provide a transparent reflection on their own experience as teachers and facilitators of the Forms of Identity module. Just as the students were encouraged to engage with issues of identity through their learning so their teachers speak frankly about the impact, both pedagogical and personal, of transcending both their disciplinary and their physical confines to illustrate the power of transdisciplinarity.

References Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bochner, Arthur P. 2013. Introduction: Putting meanings into motion. Autoethnography’s existential calling. In Handbook of autoethnography, ed. Stacy Holman-Jones, Tony E.  Adams, and Carolyn Ellis, 50–56. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Frodeman, Robert. 2014. Sustainable knowledge: A theory of interdisciplinarity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jane, Emma. 2014. “Your an ugly, whorish, slut”  – Understanding e-bile. Feminist Media Studies 14 (4): 531–546. Lyall, Catherine, Laura Meagher, Justyna Bandola, and Ann Kettle. 2015. Interdisciplinary provision in higher education: Current and future challenges. London: Higher Education Academy. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303370206_Interdisciplinary_provision_in_higher_education_ Current_and_future_challenges. Accessed 5 Jan 2017.

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Meyer, Jan H.F., and Ray Land. 2005. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education 49 (3): 373–388. Monk, Nicholas, Sarah McDonald, Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou, and Mia Lindgren. 2015. Portal pedagogy: From interdisciplinarity and internationalization to transdisciplinarity and transnationalization. London Review of Education 13 (3): 62–78. Seyhan, Azade. 2001. Writing outside the nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Section 1 Biological Identity

Meta-analysis I The three chapters contained in this first section are biological and material. Christopher Watkin’s chapter considers damage to the brain and the relationship of this to identity; Farhana Omer and Matthew Broome look at the impact of mental illness or “disorder” on identity; and Kevin Moffat addresses identity in a biological/chemical sense. This first section provides a material foundation for later, more abstract, analyses of identity. All three chapters situate identity firmly in the reality of the embodied. Omer and Broome argue that personal identity can be defined as: “…certain properties to which a person feels a special sense of attachment or ownership, and is a superordinate concept which subsumes, and underpins, the varying, fluctuating identities we all occupy at different points in our lives.” For them and for Watkin, the notion that there is no Cartesian separation of mind and body is apparent both explicitly and implicitly. Omer and Broome quote a sufferer from dissociative fugue who says that “[I]t is as if your mind is not in your body.” The implication is that under “normal” circumstances, the mind is very much embodied. Watkin, meanwhile, shows that his position, and by implication that of his discipline, is so far beyond the Cartesian position that other issues of separation have come to dominate: “Malabou has sought to overcome the Cartesian dualism of subject and object, but has replaced it, despite

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herself, with an equally unwarranted dualism of the intra- and extra-­ neuronal.” Moffat’s analysis of genetics and identity exists without a trace of the notion that something called “mind” might be separated out from something else called “body.” One important aspect of Watkin’s chapter is its insistence that identity is to a significant extent created in the interaction of the individual with others. This is true too of Omer and Broome, who describe the results of schizophrenia as a “transformation of the self known inwardly, and of a person or identity as known outwardly by others.” One of the introductory exercises we adapted for the identity learning space was “two truths and a lie,” in which each participant is required to tell the group three “facts” about themselves, two of which are untrue and one of which is true. The rest of the group then try to decide what is fact and what is fiction. There are a number of ways in which this exercise is useful for participants, but one of the things it does most clearly is to show that the creation of identity is actually partly the result of interactions with others: participants create a version of the self in these moments which may or may not be “real,” or may exist only in the moment, or may be something that is built into their broader sense of identity. Another level is that of narrative. What students choose to reveal and what they choose to invent are significant in the ways we construct the narratives that form us. These ideas of narrative become increasingly prominent as the book progresses, but they have their foundations in the material nature of the way in which our identities are constructed. Omer and Broome’s work offers a narrative of the normative and non-­normative self, while Watkin’s resembles audience/reader reception theory in which meaning is generated in a dialogue between performer/author and audience/reader. The narrative has no meaning without the participation of each. Again, we seek to mirror this idea in the assessment we create for our students, the main component of which is a “reflective journal,” or “commonplace book.” The idea of the journal is that students should trace both changes in their understanding of the concept of identity and changes in their own identities as learners—or, indeed, in any other way. The essential requirements are that entries should be immediate and genuinely reflective—in the sense that it is not enough for students to simply record notes, they must analyze and sift new material against that which has gone before, allowing students

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to reflexively explore their personal experiences and interactions to gain a wider cultural understanding (Pace 2012). Identity is an important example of an idea that exists between disciplines. It exists in an epistemological and ontological “trans-space,” in which both its existence and our ability to conceptualize that existence are not amenable to the apparatus of any one single discipline. Identity constantly re-establishes itself as material for the study of any one of many potential identities. In this sense, it is transdisciplinary. The “trans” prefix is extremely useful to us in these meta-sections, and a number of “trans” words will appear in each. In Moffat’s chapter, for example, “transgender” occurs prominently. His chapter is also to an extent transgressive in its refusal to abandon the idea that it is at least interesting to pursue the idea of a “gay gene.” Ideas like this, and others in his teaching session on the identity module, proved highly controversial with students who had become firmly wedded to the idea that sexuality and gender are social constructs. There is, therefore, a potentially transformative element to the experience for students, who will find that the received wisdom of their disciplines is constantly in question. Naturally, the relationship functions in reverse. Those students from the natural sciences who may not have encountered theories of the kind that are current in the social sciences and humanities—some of those that are so eloquently rehearsed in several chapters in Section II, for example—will find their assumptions challenged. This transactional behavior that the idea of identity promotes, and that the learning space supports, is a live component in both the theory and practice of the transdisciplinary. We should note, however, that each of the chapters in this section sits very much within its own specific discipline. It is only through the choice we have made as editors that these chapters are placed in a relationship with each other. The Biological Identity section might be described, therefore, as multidisciplinary. And each of the authors has produced in their contributions to this volume material that follows closely that which was offered to the students in the learning and teaching sessions. This is reflected in the experience of staff and students, all of whom felt that, at the time the material was delivered, it was hard to create synthesis with other disciplines that might lead to a transdisciplinary experience.

2 If My Brain Is Damaged, Do I Become a Different Person? Catherine Malabou and Neuro-identity Christopher Watkin

Introduction The growing field of neuro-philosophy raises important questions about how we understand the persistence of personal identity over time and how we use the language of personhood and humanity: if my brain is damaged or otherwise altered, do I become a different person? Do I acquire a different self? Furthermore, if I do, who or what is the “I” who can acquire such different selves, different identities, or different personalities over time? In a number of recent engagements with neuroscientific thought,1 the French philosopher Catherine Malabou offers  Malabou’s main engagements with neuroscience are to be found in: What Should We Do With Our Brain? trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), hereafter WSD; La Chambre du milieu: de Hegel aux neurosciences (Paris: Editions Hermann, 2009), ‘Les nouveaux blessées : Psychanalyse, neurologie et plasticité’ (Les conférences d’AGORA, Orange, France, Friday 19 October 2007, available at psychanalyse.com), The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage, trans. Steven Miller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), hereafter: TNW; Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity, trans. Carolyn Shread (Cambridge: 1

C. Watkin (*) Monash University, Melbourne, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_2

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a non-­reductive ­materialist account of self-identity which privileges her notion of “plasticity”2 and seeks to provide a consistent response to the question of identity over time. Though plasticity is a common term in neuroscientific discourse, Malabou nevertheless insists on what she calls a “destructive plasticity” or a “plasticity of transition” which, she claims, is absent from the customary use of the term, and it is through this destructive plasticity that she seeks to provide an understanding of identity over time which is able to account for brain trauma and changes in personality. In this chapter I will examine Malabou’s notion of destructive plasticity and its usefulness for a materialist account of identity over time, before suggesting that Malabou’s position reinvigorates an account of identity stretching back nearly 2000 years in the Western tradition.

Destructive Plasticity The notion of neuroplasticity was popularized in Norman Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself (2007). For Doidge, neuroplasticity was defined as the phenomenon by which “the brain changed its very structure with each different activity it performed, perfecting its circuits so it was better suited to the task at hand” (Doidge 2007, xiv–xv). Plasticity, for Doidge, is an exclusively positive and creative transformation: developing or restoring lost capacities and compensating for damage. This, however, is only one of the three senses Malabou gives to the term in her own thinking. In her first two senses, plasticity is a receiving and giving of form. That which is plastic can receive form from influences outside itself (in the case of the human brain from the environment and varied stimuli with which the individual comes into contact). The second, positive sense of plasticity is Doidge’s meaning, and the meaning Polity Press, 2012), hereafter OA; Catherine Malabou and Adrian Johnston, Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), hereafter: SEL; and Avant demain. Epigenèse et rationalité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2014). 2  The notion of plasticity underpinning Malabou’s inflection of neuro-identity is elaborated principally in The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic (translated by Lisabeth During, 2005) and The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy (translated by Peter Skafish, 2011).

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that predominates in the neurosciences: plasticity is “a sort of natural sculpting that forms our identity, an identity modelled by experience and that makes us subjects of a history, a singular, recognizable, identifiable history, with all its events, gaps, and future” (OA 2). In this second sense, plasticity is the ability to adapt, to give form, and to change. The third3 sense is plasticity as destruction or explosion, and it is the sense that will be central to our discussion for the rest of this chapter. It is upon this third, destructive sense of plasticity that Malabou repeatedly insists, drawing on the meaning of the French noun le plastic (plastic explosive) and the verb plastiquer (to blow up). Plasticity is not only to be understood as receiving, repairing, and creating form, for the destruction of form can also yield plastic transformation. What makes this transformation properly plastic, for Malabou, is that it is irreversible, as opposed to what she calls an “elastic” transformation: In mechanics, a material is called plastic if it cannot return to its initial form after undergoing a deformation. “Plastic” in this sense is opposed to “elastic.” Plastic material retains an imprint and thereby resists endless polymorphism. This is the case, for instance, with sculpted marble. Once the statue is finished, there is no possible return to the indeterminacy of the starting point. So plasticity designates solidity as much as suppleness, designates the definitive character of the imprint, of configuration, or of modification. (WSD 15)

In the process of destructive plasticity, something is transformed by being wholly or partially annihilated. In a lengthy discussion of destructive plasticity in The New Wounded, Malabou frames it as “the dark double of the positive and constructive plasticity that moulds neuronal connections” which can “make form through the annihilation of form” (TNW xv) and “create an identity through loss of past identity” (TNW 60). It is in terms of this destructive plasticity that Malabou offers a materialist account of the persistence of human identity over time.

 In What Should We Do With Our Brain? destructive plasticity is introduced as the fourth, and hitherto unheard of, form of neural plasticity after developmental plasticity, modulational plasticity, and reparative plasticity (WSD, 68–70). 3

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“Gage Was No Longer Gage” Malabou works through the question of human identity over time in relation to two notable examples: the brain trauma of the nineteenth-century railroad worker Phineas Gage and her own observation of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in her late grandmother. The story of Phineas Gage is perhaps the most famous and certainly one of the most oft-cited cases in the history of neurology. Malabou sketches its main details in the following way: A railroad construction foreman in Vermont at the end of the nineteenth century, Phineas Gage was directing a rock-blasting operation when the accident happened. He triggered an explosion as he was compacting a charge in a rock formation with a long iron rod. The force of the blast drove the rod all the way through his skull. Miraculously, he survived the accident, but his frontal lobe was gravely damaged. Gage became both irritable and indifferent to everything. Having lost any feelings for his friends and family, he seemed utterly disaffected. (TNW 15)

The neuroscientific interest in the case is not in Gage’s unlikely survival, but in the indication it provides—or so it is argued—of the causal relation between lesions in specific areas of the brain and particular personality changes. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio sums up the significance of the case by saying that: Phineas Gage will be pronounced cured in less than two months. Yet this astonishing outcome pales in comparison with the extraordinary turn that Gage’s personality is about to undergo. Gage’s disposition, his likes and dislikes, his dreams and aspirations are all to change. Gage’s body may be alive and well, but there is a new spirit animating it. (Damasio 1994, 7)4  Quoted in TNW, 16. There is some controversy about the reconstructions of the Gage case, meticulously chronicled and critiqued in Malcolm Macmillan’s An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage (2002), running to 562 pages. Macmillan concludes that only a few 100 lines by Harlow bear reliable testimony to Gage, leading David Evans to note “the absence of any of the contradictory or wilful behaviour such as that claimed for the post-injury Gage by Damasio, Changeux and Angier” (Evans 2006, 172–3). It is not my purpose in treating the Gage case in this context to establish at each point the veracity of the claims being made; my concern is to highlight 4

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The phrase from the case history that attracts both Malabou’s and Damasio’s attention originally formed part of the medical report of the case written by J. M. Harlow, one of Gage’s physicians, who faithfully cared for his patient over the 12-year period from the injury to Gage’s death. In his account, written some years after the unfortunate event, Harlow states that: Previous to his injury, though untrained in the schools, he [Gage] possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, sharp businessman, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was “no longer Gage”. (Harlow 1974, 302)

The case then provides the inspiration for Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error, and it is Damasio who extrapolates Harlow’s report into the sentence “Gage was no longer Gage” (Damasio 1994, 7–8). Malabou echoes Damasio’s emphasis on the radical change in Gage’s personality attested by Harlow, citing it as an instance of “the discontinuity produced by the traumatizing event and of its destructive power to transform identity” (TNW 153). For Malabou, the irreversibility of the change produced by the trauma, along with the emphatic change in Gage’s personality, effect a radical alteration: “the sort of transformation that occurs in such cases is not a partial modification but a complete metamorphosis of the personality. … The previous personality is totally lost and there is no remainder” (SEL 57). Malabou insists on the radical nature of the transformation brought about by brain lesions. For too long, she argues, we have maintained in the West that however the husk of the outer form may change, the kernel of the internal substance remains the same (OA 7). The myth may have it that Daphne transforms from a woman into a tree, but her substantial identity remains constant throughout the transformation. Daphne-as-­ human-being has become Daphne-as-tree, and there has been no change to the underlying essential identity, merely to its form. The transformation the tensions and problems which attend Malabou’s notion of the self and the person, and these obtain whether or not Damasio’s reconstruction of the case, upon which she relies, is accurate.

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is eminently reversible, even if in fact it is never reversed. For Malabou, the Daphne myth is a microcosm of the West’s broader understanding of identity over time: however much the outer form or the material husk may change, the essential continuity of an individual’s identity is guaranteed, either by the “soul” or the “inner self ”. Rejecting this metaphysical account of identity over time, Malabou insists on plastic transformation as a change in nature, a change deeper than which nothing is. This also entails that the sort of destructive transformation she sets out to conceptualize in the Gage case cannot be a moment in any economy of salvation or redemption: there can be no prospect of Gage being able to return to a previous “normal” state. Rejecting the psychoanalytic elasticity that would seek to understand any present self in relation to an original trauma which no amount of cerebral damage can erase (Malabou 2012b, 226–7), Malabou sets out to present the Gage case in terms of utter and irreversible transformation, in line with her understanding of destructive plasticity. But this radical account of identity over time begs one important question that Malabou does not conclusively answer: transformation of what? What has changed for Gage and what, if anything, remains the same? The problem, in thumbnail sketch, is the following: the notion of change requires both an element of transformation and an element of constancy. If I take a lump of clay and make out of it first the model of a dog and then the model of a human being, there is a sense in which the dog has transformed into the human being because the two forms share a continuous material substrate. If, on the other hand, I take two separate lumps of clay and shape one into the form of a dog and the other into a human being, then no transformation has taken place because there is only difference, no continuity between the two forms. It is not merely difference but the co-presence of continuity and difference which underlay the notion of change. Similarly, in the case of Phineas Gage in order for Malabou to be able to claim that he was no longer the same person, there must be both an element of unbroken continuity and an element of transformation. In order to be able to say that “Gage was no longer Gage”, we have to be able to answer the two questions “Gage was no longer who?” and “who was no longer Gage?” It is in its lack of a response to the second of these

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two questions that Malabou’s account of identity over time runs into difficulties. Malabou presents a spectrum of possible views on the object of change in Gage’s brain lesion. On the least radical end of the spectrum the change is said to take place on the level of personality: “the patient’s personality is transformed to such a degree that it might never regain its lost form” (TNW 47). The personality can undergo a “complete metamorphosis” (SEL 57) or a “lasting modification” (TNW 152) such that, in Gage’s case, “the previous personality is totally lost and there is no remainder” (SEL 57). Elsewhere, however, Malabou evokes not a change of personality but a change of person: “When a psyche is shredded, it corresponds to the birth of a new, unrecognizable person” (TNW 48). The former “person, properly speaking, no longer exists” (TNW 49) and “we witness … the birth of a new person” (Malabou 2007). Closely allied to the language of personhood is that of “one” or “someone”. Everyone who has suffered a cerebral lesion “has become someone else” (ibid., 6). The same insistence upon the radical nature of transformation is evident in Malabou’s poignant description of Alzheimer’s disease in her grandmother: Indeed, this was not a diminished person in front of me, the same woman weaker than she used to be, lessened, spoiled. No, this was a stranger who didn’t recognize me, who didn’t recognize herself because she had undoubtedly never met her before. Behind the familiar halo of hair, the tone of her voice, the blue of her eyes: the absolutely incontestable presence of someone else. (TNW xi)

In a passage distancing herself from Freud’s elastic notion of the psyche, she maintains that “a person with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, is not—or not only—someone who has ‘changed’ or been ‘modified,’ but rather a subject who has become someone else” (TNW 15). In other passages, Malabou chooses different terms, evoking a loss of past “identity” (TNW 60) and a “new identity with loss as its premise” (TNW 48) or a new “individual” (Malabou 2007, 7), new “form of life” (ibid., 12), or new “self ” (SEL 57).

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One notable characteristic of Malabou’s discussion both of brain lesions and of Alzheimer’s is that there is a lack of clarity in the distinction between terms like “person” and “personality” and “psyche” and “identity”, with terms emphasizing an underlying continuity like “change”, “metamorphosis”, and “transformation” sitting alongside terms emphasizing discontinuity and rupture, like “destruction” and “disappearance”. An easy gliding between different concepts can be seen in the following paragraph from Self and Emotional Life, in which Malabou ranges over “you”, “self ”, “subjectivity”, “inner life”, and “psyche”: In The Brain and the Inner World, Mark Solms affirms: “There is a predictable relationship between specific brain events and specific aspects of who we are. If any of us were to suffer a lesion in a specific area, we would be changed and we would no longer be our former selves. This is the basis of our view that anyone with a serious interest in the inner life of the mind should also be interested in the brain, and vice versa.”5

It appears that Malabou draws no significant conceptual differentiation between the notions—self, identity, person, personality, and subjectivity—deployed in this and other similar passages. There are different ways of reading this lexical richness. One way is to assume it to be sloppy, but that smacks itself of a quick and sloppy interpretation and is at odds with Malabou’s very careful terminological exactitude elsewhere, for example in her exegesis of Freud. Another and more satisfactory reading, one that pays more respect to the text, is to see the interweaving of person and personality, of psyche and of self, as a theoretically strategic move in Malabou’s position, an insistence on the absence of any underlying essence to the transformations of personality brought about by brain injury. For Malabou, in fact, the personality is the person, the psyche is the identity. Indeed, Malabou consistently identifies the brain with the entirety of the self or the person: “Brain events” are intimately linked with our identity. We may even say that they constitute them. That is why there is a profound correspondence  SEL, 28; this is author’s emphasis. Quoting Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull, Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective (2002, 52). 5

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between the brain and subjectivity, between the brain and the “inner life.” We have to understand today the way in which the brain “produces” our subjective mental life. This subjective mental life appears to be a new name for the psyche. (SEL 28)

In a case of brain damage, it is “our whole ‘self ’, our subjectivity itself ” which is altered (SEL 28). Identity for Malabou is inscribed in the brain of the individual who has undergone the trauma, and nowhere else. Indeed, Malabou insists that from a neurological point of view, should an individual undergo such a trauma then “the hypothesis of absolute danger designates the risk of brutal and sudden disappearance of the trace resulting in the formation of an identity without origin and without memory” (TNW 152–3). At this point we need to pause and consider Malabou’s position more closely, because its account of the persistence of identity over time contains a tension that it cannot easily resolve. When Malabou evokes “the formation of an identity without origin and without memory”, she stresses the element of rupture and discontinuity necessary for such an account of identity, but she fails to acknowledge that this rupture must be complemented by an equally radical continuity over time in order to be understood as transformation at all. To take her own example of memory, it may well indeed be—as is often argued by neuroscientists discussing the case of Phineas Gage—that the individual who has undergone the brain trauma may retain no conscious memory at all of their former life.6 But a second instance of memory is also fundamental to the notion of transformation in this case: the memory of family members and medical practitioners which attests to the fact that the transformation has taken place in this particular individual and  This is the position taken by Malabou herself when she claims that “The accident appears to be the plastic explosion that erases any trace and every memory, and that destroys any archive” (SEL, 58). This was indeed the testimony of physician Harlow, but it was, it appears, the testimony of Gage himself. Commenting on the extant documents surrounding the Gage case, David Evans notes that: 6

It was never Gage who complained of feeling so thoroughly different that he must be considered as another, stranger kind of person than he had been used to being. It was third parties, work colleagues as reported by a physician, who commented that he could no longer be considered to be Gage. (Evans 2006, 177)

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not another, that it is Gage who is no longer Gage and no one else. Malabou’s explicit focus on neurology is accompanied by an unspoken atomization and isolation of the individual who has undergone the trauma such that if they have no memory of “their” former identity, that identity is said not to exist at all. Identity is intra-cranial, or it is not at all. Malabou does open a possible second source of identity, only to shut it again. In the course of a discussion of the uniqueness of each brain, she alludes to an identity richer than individual memories: the brain of a pianist is not strictly identical to that of a mathematician, a mechanic, or a graphic artist. But it is obviously not just a person's “trade” or “specialty” that matters here. The entire identity of the individual is in play: her past, her surroundings, her encounters, her activities; in a word, the ability that our brain—that every brain—has to adapt itself, to include modifications, to receive shocks, and to create anew on the basis of this very reception. (WSD 7)

Here, environmental factors are only deemed to be significant for identity to the extent that they leave a neurological trace. What the brain encodes is certain of the “surroundings”, “encounters”, and “activities” which form the individual’s identity. And yet, what is significant for identity is not these extra-neuronal factors as such, but the brain that has been structured in a particular way by them. Even in acknowledging the influence of these factors in the process of neuroplasticity, Malabou does not allow that they can be thought directly constitutive of identity. If the brain should lose all memory of such activities, for example, they no longer hold any significance for personhood or identity: my identity and personhood are still wholly contained within my brain, whatever the epigenetic influences upon the brain may or may not have been in the past and whatever other people may or may not remember about me. The limits of Malabou’s position are starkly exposed when, for example, she asserts that, in the case of Gage, “[e]ven if some capacities remain untouched, the patient is unrecognizable” (SEL 57). It may well be that the patient’s personality has changed, but the patient as such is by no

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means unrecognizable: if nothing else, a minimum continuity is required in order that they be identified as “the unrecognizable patient” at all. Malabou is mistaken when she asserts that the event of a lesion “cannot be woven into the thread of an individual’s history” (TNW 53). It is quite possible that it cannot be woven in by the one who suffers the lesion herself (as, for example, in many cases of Alzheimer’s), but it cannot but be woven in by others, as Malabou emphatically demonstrates in the opening chapter of The New Wounded. That is also precisely what we see happening in the case of Phineas Gage, and indeed it is what makes “Gage” into a case. Unless the event of his accident is woven into his story by his family and surgeons, there is (if we follow Harlow’s disputed account) nothing but a new man bearing no relation to any past, and being embedded in no relationships. The thread of the story may be cut for the individual in question but not for the stories of which she is part, the stories that are narrated by Harlow, Damasio, and Malabou herself. There is an irony at the heart of Malabou’s account: the claim being made is that identity and personhood are adequately understood through and in terms of the brain, and yet the very judgment which seeks to ground that position—illustrated in the claim that “Gage was no longer Gage”—is a third-party judgment, an identity conferred within communities of discourse and medical expertise, in a way that at least prima facie invalidates the position that personhood is personality and identity is psyche. It may well be that there is no perduring metaphysical essence behind or below transformations in form such that Daphne is still Daphne, whether as a human being or as a tree, but this in itself does not issue in an atomized, intra-cranial account of identity over time. Such an account always itself inevitably relies upon a third-person perspective which provides the guarantee of constancy that, along with the reality of radical disjunction, is necessary for Malabou’s own notion of plasticity. Put rather bluntly (no doubt too bluntly) to the statement that “Gage was no longer Gage”, we need to offer the double answer “says who?” and “who was no longer Gage?” There is nothing in Malabou’s materialist account of selfhood which necessarily banishes the third-person perspective, and we can only speculate as to the reasons she does not acknowledge the tension within her

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own position, namely that her own inter-cranial account of identity cannot itself give an account of the phrase “Gage was no longer Gage”. An enduring notion of identity over time, albeit in the minds and memories of the friends and carers of an individual with a brain lesion, does reintroduce into the account of identity a non-theological, non-metaphysical tempering of radical transformation in a way that might be thought to undercut the boldness of Malabou’s account. Whatever the case may be, it remains that the coherence of this account itself implicitly relies on a perspective which it explicitly discounts. Malabou’s agenda in her writing on brain lesions is to counter psychoanalytic elasticity by emphasizing the radical and irreversible change undergone by people with brain lesions, but her own language betrays a more complex situation. Take this short passage from The New Wounded as an example: Rehabilitating the event is thus a matter of taking into account the discontinuity produced by the traumatizing event and of [sic] its destructive power to transform identity (“Gage was no longer Gage”). If we ask patients about their experiences of these changes of personality, we observe that this is no metaphor. The patients find themselves really changed; they no longer recognize themselves as they were before. (TNW 153)

Malabou quite correctly emphasizes that the patients do not recognize themselves. What she does not comment on is that at least Malabou, and possibly the patients as well, still recognizes that it is the patients themselves, and not another, whom they do not recognize. In other words, in order for the very transformation and misrecognition on which Malabou insists to obtain, there needs to be continuity of some sort from the person before the transformation to the person after. If psychological continuity of the atomized individual was really the only factor in identity, there would simply be a new person without any relation whatsoever to any previously existing person, but this is not what Malabou claims. At the very heart of neuroscientific discourse on identity over time are notions of identity and personhood that, while it would be incorrect to suggest that they have nothing to do with the neuronal, cannot

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be exhaustively understood and explained in neuronal terms alone.7 Malabou has sought to overcome the Cartesian dualism of subject and object, but has replaced it, despite herself, with an equally unwarranted dualism of the intra- and extra-neuronal. In Ontology of the Accident, The New Wounded, and Self and Emotional Life, Malabou’s understanding of personhood and identity labors under this tension: she can explain why Gage was no longer Gage, but cannot offer an adequate account of why it was Gage who no longer was Gage. The model of selfhood into which Malabou is buying here is bound up with the modernity from which she is elsewhere careful to distance herself. It was John Locke who, in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, introduced the idea that “person” should be defined as a continuity of memory and consciousness, establishing “each individual’s absolutely inalienable self-ownership”.8 Paragraph 9 in chapter 27 of the second book of the Essay describes unerringly, avant la lettre, the notion of personhood that emerges in Malabou’s writing: to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it … since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ’tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all  Adrian Johnston shares this concern in his preface to Self and Emotional Life. However, like Malabou, he understands the brain as the sole and exclusive locus of identity and personhood: 7

It seems implausible to me that myriad conscious and unconscious elements of his complex ontogenetic life history predating the trauma, elements distributed across many more stillfunctioning regions of his brain than just the wounded left Frontal lobe, abruptly ceased to play any explicable role whatsoever in his existence in the aftermath of the event. (SEL, xiv) For Johnston, the issue is that only a part of Gage’s brain has been destroyed and the rest of it, continuing to function, should guarantee the continuity of identity. For the purposes of my argument in this section, Johnston and Malabou are taking the same “host substance” position. 8  Fernando Vidal, “Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity,” (2009, 7). The Essay is frequently evoked in relation to contemporary neurological discourse, and my treatment of Locke in this paragraph is particularly indebted both to this article and to Vidal’s 2002 article “Brains, bodies, selves, and science: anthropologies of identity and the resurrection of the body.”

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other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a Rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the identity of that Person; it is the same self now it was then; and ’tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done. (Locke 1979, ch. XXVII § 9, 335)

Locke’s position atomizes the individual and makes him or her the sole owner and possessor of their personhood and identity such that in his Second Treatise on Government he can say that “every Man has a Property in his own Person” (Locke 1988, ch. V § 27, 287). This reduction of selfhood and identity to a proprietary continuity of consciousness raises the problem already identified, namely that such a notion is always implicitly dependent upon the judgments of third parties in a way which it cannot explain or justify.

The Hidden Plasticity of Apophaticism Thus far, my reading of Malabou’s account of identity has been predominantly negative, suggesting that it strategically excludes a moment of third-person perspective upon which it structurally relies. In this final section, however, I want to highlight an important way in which Malabou’s plastic notion of identity can help us positively to reappropriate and reinvigorate a venerable tradition of reflection on the question of human identity in the West, the tradition of apophaticism. It is notable that Malabou’s plasticity picks up on some important themes from the rich tradition of apophatic thought, and in this concluding section, I will offer a brief Malabouian reading of apophatic passages from two thinkers: the church father Gregory of Nyssa and the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. My contention will be that if we read these passages through Malabou’s understanding of plasticity, we can offer a fuller and more adequate account of them than if we view them through a traditional apathetic lens. The most fundamental trait of human identity in Malabou’s account (not to say its “essence”) is its plastic transformability. The human is not

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to be identified or thought of in terms of any static and enduring capacity (such as, for example, the capacity for rational thought or the capacity for syntactic language use), but rather in terms of its transformability—it can adapt and repair its capacities over time. The idea that the distinctive human trait is the possibility for self-transformation has a long tradition in the West, commonly accepted to begin with Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nyssa’s (c. 335–c. 395) On The Making of Man. Gregory’s On The Making of Man is most frequently read today as a book offering an apophatic anthropology, read indeed as “the classic formulation of a mystical or negative anthropology grounded in a mystical and negative theology” (Carlson 2009, 126). This reading places at the center of Gregory’s anthropology the assertion in On The Making of Man that it is indeterminacy and incomprehensibility that renders humanity, uniquely among all the animals, in imago Dei: God … says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. The image is properly an image so long as it fails in none of those attributes which we perceive in the archetype; but where it falls from its resemblance to the prototype it ceases in that respect to be an image; therefore, since one of the attributes we contemplate in the Divine nature is incomprehensibility of essence, it is clearly necessary that in this point the image should be able to show its imitation of the archetype. (Gregory of Nyssa 2015, 90)

The conventional reading of this passage argues that, liberated from the possession of any determinate nature or substance, the mystical Gregory figures the human being as sculptor of its own self: “the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character, far removed as it is from the lowliness of private station, in that it owns no lord, and is self-governed, swayed autocratically by its own will” (Gregory of Nyssa 2015, 80). This, at least, is the Gregory of the apophatic tradition. But this capacity to give form is only one aspect of Malabou’s account of plasticity. In addition to his insistence upon the soul’s self-government, Gregory also argues that “[n]ature, the all-contriving, takes from its kindred matter the part that comes from the man, and moulds her statue within herself ” (Gregory of Nyssa 2015, 144). Is humanity, then, formed or self-­ forming? The answer is, yes. In On The Making of Man, Gregory argues

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for the distinction in Genesis 1:269 between the “image of God”, which is given to humanity, and the “likeness of God”, which humanity must construct for itself: But it is proper that one part is given you, while the other has been left incomplete: this is so that you might complete it yourself and might be worthy of the reward which comes from God. (Gregory of Nyssa 2015, 33)

This is neither apophatic nor kataphatic, the term which most adequately describes it is “plastic”, according to Malabou’s understanding of this as a simultaneous giving and receiving of form. Furthermore, even the self-­ governing capacity of human beings is still received as part of the image of God. It is impossible, in a close reading of On the Making of Man, to dissociate the giving and receiving of form. What Gregory presents is a picture not of an apophatic, but of a plastic humanity. A similar one-sided interpretation is evident in modern readings of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. In the Oration, Pico insists that humanity has “no archetype” and is a “creature of indeterminate image” (2012, 117): We have given you, Adam, no fixed seat or form of your own, no talent particular to you alone. This we have done so that whatever seat, whatever form, whatever talent you may judge desirable, the same may you have and possess according to your desire and judgment. Once defined, the nature of all other beings is constrained within the laws We have prescribed for them. But you, constrained by no limits, may determine your nature for yourself, according to your own free will, in whose hands We have placed you. (2012, 117)

The Creator addresses humanity as the “shaper of yourself ” (ibid.), having in his possession “every sort of seed and all sprouts of every kind of life” (ibid.,121). Ernst Cassirer is typical of a dominant strain of interpretation which considers Pico as first and foremost a “champion of human  “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26, English Standard Version 2009). 9

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dignity and freedom” for whom “man possesses his perfection only as he achieves it for himself independently and on the basis of a free decision” (Cassirer 1942, 323).10 Giorgio Agamben follows a similar line when he characterizes Pico’s Oration as offering a “definition of man by his lack of a face”, and claims that its “central thesis” is that man “can have neither archetype nor proper place” (2004, 29). What these and similar interpretations tend to occlude is that Pico’s human is a creature as well as a creator. The “seeds pregnant with all possibilities” are bestowed upon him by the Father, and the context of the phrase eulogizing man as the shaper of his own being is: “We have made you neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you may, as the free and extraordinary shaper of yourself, fashion yourself in whatever form you prefer”.11 Pico’s human is the created creator, the shaped shaper, the one who receives his own form from God (he is made a “free and extraordinary shaper”), and gives himself his own form (he freely and proudly fashions himself ). The “lack of face” to which Agamben refers is itself a form which humanity receives; the human has no archetype, to be sure, but it is also true that its lack of an archetype is itself a gift from God, just as much as the horse’s speed or the lion’s strength. The one-sided reading of Pico as the champion of utter and unconditioned freedom must be corrected by a closer reading of his text: Pico’s humanity is not Promethean, but plastic. These sketches of plasticity in Gregory and Pico are no more than indications of the contours that a plastic rereading of the tradition would take. The conclusion toward which they gesture (but that would need a much longer development) is that Malabou’s plastic human is not a new, ex nihilo anthropology that destroys or renders obsolete the tradition that precedes it, but a materialist plastic transformation of that tradition which is both recognizable in its oldest representatives and also faithful to Malabou’s own plastic transformation of Hegelian plasticity.

 I was helped in my reading of Pico by April Capili’s “‘Hidden Keynote’ in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Understanding Of Human Dignity And Freedom”, Philosophia 38 (2): 196–208. 11  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, 117, this author’s emphasis. As Capili points out, this argument is also made by Paul Miller (1998, xv). 10

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Conclusion Having now reached the end of our brief exploration of the question of human identity in Malabou’s thought, I want to fold back Malabou’s plastic correction of the apophatic tradition onto her own problematic reading of the Phineas Gage case. It has emerged over the course of this investigation that there are two problems to be avoided in seeking to elaborate an account of human identity over time, not just one. The first problem, and the one of which Malabou is acutely aware of and which she takes pains to avoid, is the smuggling in of a metaphysical notion of essence into an ostensibly materialist account: Daphne is still Daphne, whatever form she takes. But we have also seen that a second problem emerges when, in the attempt to elaborate a radically non-­essential account of identity over time, which she sums up in her reading of Damasio’s phrase “Gage was no longer Gage”, Malabou defines identity and personhood in a way that precludes the very notion of transformation she is seeking to foreground. One way around this problem is indicated to widen the notion of identity from an intra-cranial account to an inter-personal, narrative approach to identity over time, an approach that Malabou’s own account tacitly adopts. Just as the traditional reading of Nyssa and Pico is one-sided and fails to take adequate account of their insistence upon the receiving, as well as the giving, of form, so also Malabou’s account of human identity over time must be shaken out of its atomistic slumber. If my brain is damaged then I may become a different person, but it is crucial to recognize that it is still I and no other who undergoes the transformation. Without this continuity there could be no transformation at all.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The open: Man and animal. Trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Capili, April. 2009. ‘Hidden keynote’ in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s understanding of human dignity and freedom. Philosophia 38 (2): 196–208.

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Carlson, Thomas A. 2009. The indiscrete image: Infinitude and creation of the human. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cassirer, Ernst. 1942. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: A study in the history of Renaissance ideas. Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (3): 319–346. Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. New York: Avon Books. Doidge, Norman. 2007. The brain that changes itself. New York: Penguin. Evans, David C. L. 2006. Reading neuroscience: Ventriloquism as a metaphor for multiple readings of self. PhD diss., University of Plymouth. Gregory of Nyssa. 2015. On the making of man. In Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetic and moral treatises, philosophical works, apologetic works, oratorical works, letters, Nicene and post-Nicene church fathers: Series 2, ed. Peter Schaff, 72–145. NPNF2-08, vol. 8. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Harlow, John M. 1974. Recovery after severe injury to the head. In Readings in behaviour, ed. William G.  Van der Kloot, Charles Walcott, and Benjamin Dane, 291–309. New York: Ardent Media. Locke, John. 1979. An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1988. In Two treatises of government, ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macmillan, Malcolm. 2002. An odd kind of fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Malabou, Catherine. 2005. The future of Hegel: Plasticity, temporality and dialectic. Trans. Lisabeth During. London: Routledge. ———. 2007. Les nouveaux blessés. Psychanalyse, neurologie et plasticité. Les conférences d’AGORA, October 19. http://www.psychaanalyse.com/ pdf/LES%20NOUVEAUX%20BLESSES%20%20PSYCHANALYSE%20 NEUROLOGIE%20ET%20PLASTICITE%20 (%2015%20Pages%20-%20 176%20Ko).pdf. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. ———. 2008. What should we do with our brain? Trans. Sebastian Rand. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2009. La Chambre du milieu: de Hegel aux neurosciences. Paris: Éditions Hermann. ———. 2011. The Heidegger change: On the fantastic in philosophy. Trans. Peter Skafish. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2012a. Ontology of the accident: An essay on destructive plasticity. Trans. Carolyn Shread. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2012b. Post-trauma: towards a new definition? In Telemorphosis: theory in the era of climate change, ed. Tom Cohen, 226–238. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.

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———. 2012c. The new wounded: From neurosis to brain damage. Trans. Steven Miller. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2014. Avant demain. Epigenèse et rationalité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Malabou, Catherine, and Adrian Johnston. 2013. Self and emotional life: Philosophy, psychoanalysis and neuroscience. New York: Columbia University Press. Miller, Paul. 1998. Pico della Mirandola on the dignity of man; on being and the one. Trans. Charles G.  Wallis, Paul J.W.  Miller, and Douglas Carmichael. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. 2012. In Oration on the dignity of man: A new translation and commentary, eds. Francesco Borghesi, Michael Papio, and Massimo Riva. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solms, Mark, and Oliver Turnbull. 2002. Brain and the inner world: An introduction to the neuroscience of subjective. New York: Other Press. The English standard version Bible: Containing the old and new testaments with apocrypha. 2009. New York: Oxford University Press. Vidal, Fernando. 2002. Brains, bodies, selves, and science: Anthropologies of identity and the resurrection of the body. Critical Inquiry 28 (4): 930–974. ———. 2009. Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity. History of the Human Sciences 22 (1): 5–36.

3 Identity and Psychiatric Disorders Farhana Omer and Matthew R. Broome

Introduction The role of identity is core to thinking about psychiatric disorders and those who suffer from them. The illnesses themselves can impact on issues of personal identity, and moreover, the experience of being a person with mental health problems, and how in turn wider society and mental health services respond to them, has additional impacts on identity that go beyond the impact of the disorder itself. Hence, it is virtually impossible to think about mental illness without thinking about self and identity issues (Thoits 1999), and an element of clinical practice lies in trying to understand the role of identity and how different life experiences modify an individual’s identity (Corradi 2016). In this chapter, we examine identity from several perspectives within psychiatry, looking at the identity of the medical speciality of psychiatry, the identity of the psychiatrist, the personal identity of the patient, and specifically the relationship between personal identity and different psychiatric disorders. The chapter is divided into following sections: F. Omer (*) • M.R. Broome Oxford Deanery, Oxford, UK © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_3

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• Psychiatry and its identity as part of medicine. • The identity of the psychiatrist and of the person who becomes mentally unwell. • What is personal identity? • Personal identity and mental illness.

Psychiatry and Its Identity as Part of Medicine Before the end of the eighteenth century, psychiatry did not exist as a clear discipline to which a group of physicians devoted themselves with a common sense of professional identity. Looking after those with mental illness was a family affair, and those with a mental disorder could often be mistreated. Edward Shorter reports that they were routinely found to have “backs beaten blue, with bloody wound” (Shorter 2014, 2), chained to the wall of their house or possibly fastened to a stake in a workhouse or poorhouse. In 1656, Louis XIV established two great Parisian hospices for the sick, the criminal, and the insane, the Bicêtre Hospital for men and the Salpêtrière Hospital for women, both of which subsequently gained a bad reputation with the inmates being regularly flogged, bound in chains, and subjected to poor hygienic conditions (Shorter 2014, 2–3). In the UK, William Tuke founded the York Retreat in the 1790s. This was the first asylum to reject physical restraint and force (Foucault 1988): This house is situated a mile from York, in the midst of a fertile and smiling countryside; it is not at all the idea of a prison that it suggests, but rather that of a large farm; it is surrounded by a great walled garden. No bars, no grills on the windows. (Foucault 1988, 242)

So what did asylums do? … the asylum no longer punished the madman’s guilt, but it did more, it organized the madman’s guilt, it organized it for the madman as a conscious of himself, and as a non-reciprocal relation to the keeper, it organized it for the man of reason as an awareness of the other, a therapeutic intervention in the madman’s existence. (Foucault 1988, 247)

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Around the same time, Philippe Pinel unchained psychiatric patients in Paris asylums, declaring they were not criminals but sick people (Foucault 1988). However, soon the moral therapy underpinning the newly built asylums became undermined: some were housing over 2000 patients; they were crowded, uncomfortable, and therapeutically stagnant, “they had become, in effect, society’s dustbins” (Rolin 2003, 242). The history of psychiatry began as the history of the custodial asylum. Out of this work in institutions, psychiatry developed as a discipline (Shorter 2014). Professor Johann Christian Reil of Halle, Germany, first introduced the term “psychiatry” in 1808 (see Marneros 2008). Reil’s two essential reasons for establishing a new medical discipline to be named “psychiatry” were, first, the principle of the continuity of psyche (mind) and soma (body) and, second, the principle of the inseparability of psychiatry and medicine. The ending “-iatry” (from the Greek word iatros [physician]) was important for Reil because it demonstrated that psychiatry is a core medical discipline and not a philosophical or theological one. Further, he emphasized that psychosomatics and medical psychology belonged to the comprehensive new discipline of psychiatry. After the publication of Reil’s paper in 1808, the use of the term “psychiatry” spread slowly (Marneros 2008). Hence, in this founding of the term, psychiatry’s identity was formed with key elements persisting to this day, namely it being part of medicine and involving the study of both mind and body. Today, psychiatry is a significant medical specialty. The psychopharmacological revolution in the middle of the twentieth century and the development of elaborated psychotherapeutic methods have changed the lives of millions of people and improved the reputation of psychiatry and of the psychiatrist (Marneros 2008). Psychiatry is unique in medicine in being on the border between science and the humanities, giving birth to the new interdisciplinary field of “philosophy of psychiatry”, which has bridged the gap between these two fields. Philosophy, through a new model linking values with evidence called value-based practice, has given the rest of medicine specific tools to help make science work in a more patient-centred and collaborative way (Fulford et al. 2004).

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 he Identity of the Psychiatrist and the Person T Who Becomes Mentally Unwell In addition to the identity of psychiatry as a discipline, there is also the identity of the psychiatric practitioner. Again, Reil helps us to think about this when he inaugurated the term. Reil identified that the psychiatrist should be amongst the very best medical practitioners (Marneros 2008). They deal with the most common human disorders which cause the greatest morbidity worldwide (Semple and Smyth 2013). Psychiatrists are physicians in psychological medicine, “clinicians”, which means that their business and their professionalism involve the personal care of patients (Hill 1978). As with other doctors, psychiatrists utilize the principles of evidence-­ based medicine, selecting treatments, whether psychological or pharmacological, based upon randomized controlled trials and other techniques of evidence synthesis such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Lieberman et al. 2005). Unlike other specialities, psychiatrists tend not to have precise tests to confirm their diagnoses. Investigations are largely used to rule out physical illnesses that may present psychiatrically, and hence making a psychiatric diagnosis relies on the clinical skills of interviewing, history-taking, and mental state examination. Psychiatry is the ability to recognize symptoms of disease as they manifest in abnormalities of emotion, cognition, and behaviour (Semple and Smyth 2013). The psychiatric interview allows clinicians to elicit the signs and symptoms the patient experiences, and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems-10 (ICD-10, World Health Organization 1993) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association 2013) are used to cluster these into diagnoses. Doctors, in practising these skills of interviewing, diagnosis, and treatment over their careers, will develop their new identity as psychiatrists, broadening beyond a focus of treating illness and saving lives but endeavouring to understand individuals and treat their patients holistically. This training itself causes a shift in identity for doctors: previously, they have typically worked in acute general hospitals, dealing with physical illness and complex biomedical tests and treatments. With entry to psychiatry, they see that their prior identity,

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based upon a certain model of what it is to practise medicine, becomes broadened with a new model of being a doctor in psychiatry. On the other side of the therapeutic encounter, when a person develops mental illness, he or she realizes how different it can be from being a “traditional patient” (Tagore 2014), and some of these differences mirror the changes discussed above for doctors entering psychiatric training. In the psychiatric consultation, a patient’s life history is explored in detail, and this may include sexual interests, criminality, and early development (Semple and Smyth 2013), a depth of detail not experienced when consulting other physicians. Further, the patient may believe there is nothing medically wrong with him/her and is only seeing the psychiatrist at the urging of a close family member, the legal system, or as a consequence of being detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act (Mental Health Act 2007; see also Semple and Smyth 2013). Thus, the patient in the psychiatrist’s interviewing room does not always take on the identity of the traditional “sick role” (Varul 2010): they may deny being ill, refuse to ask for help, or refuse to follow the doctor’s guidance. Hence, the classic “doctor-patient” relationship may not always be present in psychiatry. In the latter part of the chapter, we will further explore, with examples, how particular psychiatric disorders may impact the personal identity of the sufferers, but first we will offer a brief discussion of what personal identity is and why this is of particular relevance in psychiatry.

What Is Personal Identity? Identity is often referred to theoretically in two allied ways, which may be termed “social” and “personal”. Some cultural psychologists focus on “the self ” as an individual object, whereas social psychologists tend to think of multiple “selves/identities” when explaining identity. In this sense, “the self ” is that aspect of the person that has experiences, reflects on experiences, and acts upon self-understandings derived from experiences. However, “the self ” is also aware of, and can behave in terms of, its “social selves”, also called “identities”, “self-concepts”, or “self-conceptions”. These “selves” or identities are essentially parts of the self as a whole (Thoits 1999). All of us have multiple identities—as children, as parents, as spouses, as professionals, as friends, as patients, and so on.

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Hence, personal identity can be defined as certain properties to which a person feels a special sense of attachment or ownership, and is a superordinate concept that subsumes, and underpins, the varying, fluctuating identities we all occupy at different points in our lives. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those features he/she takes to “define him/her as a person” or “make him/her the person he/she is”. Who am I? What is it to be a person? What is the evidence of who is who? Who could I have been? (Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy 2014). Personal identity develops gradually over years and continues to evolve developmentally as we mature, change, have new experiences, and when our roles change. A psychiatrist is interested in both “the self ” and “selves/ identities”, and most importantly in how they are intertwined in an individual’s life and with any distress that they are suffering. There have been a variety of accounts as to how selfhood, identity, and personality develop; however, almost all approaches unite in viewing an individual’s mental health as being at least partly influenced by positive self-conceptions, high self-esteem, and the possession of valued social identities. Philosophers have been concerned about personal identity with respect to the persistence of self-identity, relating to the following question: how we can know whether a person remains the same person over time? Hence, they have attempted to address this question of personal identity traditionally via two accounts: psychological continuity and physiological continuity. We will discuss these briefly in turn.

Psychological Continuity Theory The seventeenth-century English philosopher and physician John Locke singled out memory as the basis of personal identity. The memory theory states that a person at one point in time is the very same person as a person at a later point in time if and only if the person at the later time remembers experiences of the person at the earlier time. Therefore, if I remember at time 2(t2) what I did at time 1(t1), then I am the same person at times t1 and t2. This theory was subjected to criticism from the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, who argued that memory changes over time, so personal

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identity must be something other than memory. The psychological continuity account comes under similar pressure from real cases in psychiatry and neurology: for example, if you suffer from dementia, are you the same person as you were in the past if you are unable to remember certain portions of your life?

Physiological Continuity Theory Rather than memory, the physiological continuity account stresses the persistence of the body or brain as being the marker of personal identity. There are two famous versions of physical continuity theories. The animal theory states that being the same person consists in being the same human animal, in other words the same body, the same organism, because there is physical continuity. The brain theory says that being the same person is a matter of having the same brain because the brain is the only organ that, if transplanted, theoretically would determine who we are, our personality, and how we act. Hence, for philosophers, there have been two broad approaches to the answer of how personal identity is maintained over time—one being physiological continuity, and emphasizing the persistence of the same body or brain, and the other being psychological continuity, emphasizing the persistence of the psychological states and memories.

Personal Identity and Mental Illness We will give some examples from clinical practice as to how certain mental disorders may impact upon personal identity. We have chosen the following major groups of mental illness as described in the ICD-10 (World Health Organization 1993) and the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013). These are: • • • •

Disorders of psychosis and schizophrenia Mood (affective) disorder Personality disorder Disorders of memory

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We will offer a brief clinical and theoretical overview of each of these areas of psychiatric diagnosis, a clinical vignette, and reflections on how they may impact on personal identity.

Disorders of Psychosis and Schizophrenia According to DSM-5, psychotic disorders (including schizophrenia) are defined by abnormalities in one or more of the following five domains: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking (speech), grossly disorganized or abnormal motor behaviour (including catatonia), and negative symptoms (American Psychiatric Association 2013). Psychosis is not a diagnosis, but it is a syndrome that can result from any number of psychiatric conditions, for example, from schizophrenia to mood disorders associated with psychosis, to drug intoxication, and withdrawal. Psychosis can also be defined in simple terms as a breakdown of perceptual, cognitive, or rationalizing functions of the mind to the point that the individual experiences reality very differently than other people within the same culture (Shea 1993). In contrast, schizophrenia is a more precise diagnosis. The term “schizophrenia” stems from the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who acknowledged in his work his indebtedness to Emil Kraepelin for “grouping and description of the separate symptoms” into the disorder of dementia praecox, and Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytical ideas shifted the focus from Kraepelin’s dementia praecox as a disease of the brain to a “splitting of the mind”, hence “schizophrenia” (Semple and Smyth 2013), with a renewed interest in psychological processes underlying the illness. Schizophrenia has been conceived of as an illness that may overtake and redefine the identity of the person (Estroff 1989). Having schizophrenia includes not only the real experience of profound cognitive and emotional turmoil, and of frightening perceptions and beliefs; it may result in a transformation of the self as known inwardly and of how one is perceived by others (Estroff 1989). Unfortunately, the chronicity of illness may also be linked to an absence of positive social roles and the loss of prior identities (e.g. that of being an employee). The identity of being a patient with schizophrenia can include being impacted upon by perceptions of society at large, with others

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thinking of oneself as uncontrolled and violent with the risk of further self-stigmatization. We will give two vignettes of psychotic illness, schizophrenia and delusional disorder, as examples of how such disorders may impact upon personal identity.

Case Vignette1 PH was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia almost thirteen years ago. Now thirty-four, PH was born in a small town near London. He was the eldest son of four children. PH’s father left the family home when he was only four years old and PH did not have any contact with him after that. His mother raised PH and his three younger brothers on her own. As a child, PH enjoyed spending time with his younger brothers. At the age of thirteen, PH began to associate with delinquent pupils. He began to steal, commit burglaries, smoke cannabis, misuse alcohol, and play truant. PH was suspended on at least four occasions for incidents such as fighting at school. Apparently, he did not have any remorse, and the punishments given to him by the school did not make any difference to his behaviour. Despite his chaotic middle childhood, he obtained his General Certificate of Secondary Education in English and Maths. On leaving school, he obtained a part-time cleaning job, which he did for a year. PH did several other jobs, some of which he lost due to his aggressive outbursts, excessive alcohol use, and cannabis smoking. There were a few occasional relationships and no long-term relationship. PH’s mother remarried ten years after the breakup with his father. Unfortunately, PH did not get along well with his stepfather; this was also the time when his relationship with his family changed, especially with his mother where relations between them became volatile. There were increasing numbers of arguments with his mother, not helped by excessive alcohol and substance misuse. He was eventually asked to leave the family home when he was seventeen years old. This was a difficult period of his life: he was evicted from several accommodations. PH’s anti The case of the person with schizophrenia is drawn from one of the author’s (FO) own clinical experience and has been modified to ensure anonymity. 1

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social behaviour (including robbery and violence) ended with a period of long-term imprisonment. At the age of nineteen, PH started experiencing psychotic symptoms characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. He was reported as thought disordered with paranoid delusional beliefs that everyone was against him and that the world was not a safe place. PH was also hearing voices (of people telling him that he was “useless”), including command hallucinations (voices asking him to attack other people). PH was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and admitted to an in-patient mental health unit. He was put on antipsychotic medication. As time passed, PH’s mental health improved, but he continued to experience residual psychotic symptoms such as underlying paranoia and hearing voices. Thirteen years later, PH is still living in a well-supported rehabilitation unit. During this time period, he has received extensive psychological support. Whenever PH’s team tries to reintegrate him gradually back into the community, he becomes extremely anxious, increasingly preoccupied with his past, and smokes cannabis, and this leads to a relapse in his mental state. PH’s illness has slowly become a key part of his identity. When asked how he coped with “voices” and stress he replied, “I read my manual ‘Living with Schizophrenia’”.

Discussion When thinking about personal identity and what “I” means to PH, it is clear that the conditions necessary for PH to be the same person over time were not ideal or normal conditions. Looking first at psychological continuity underpinning his personal identity, he certainly remembered his childhood (t1). As a teenager, he took drugs, came under the influence of negative peer pressure, ­committed antisocial behaviour, was arrested, and then was finally diagnosed with mental illness, believing at that time that everyone was against him and world was not a safe place to live. Today (t2), PH remembers himself as a caring person, a responsible brother, and a loving son. He chooses to talk only about happy memories and blames his mental illness for his

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­ nfortunate past. As for physiological continuity (the theory that holds u that we are same person if our body remains same), PH has been taking clozapine (an antipsychotic medication) for the last eleven years. This has improved his symptoms but clozapine can have side effects including weight gain and poor blood glucose control. These, combined with a sedentary lifestyle, have changed his physical appearance. Today PH is an overweight man waiting for gastric surgery. Whenever PH sees himself in mirror, he does not see any similarity with the thin and lean PH whom he knew eleven years ago. This visual reminder of physical discontinuity has been affecting his self-esteem. PH is under considerable psychological stress because of his poor physical health condition: he tends to isolate himself further, with no motivation to change. Living in a long-term rehabilitation unit and having minimal interaction with family has also limited his “social roles”, the types of social connectivity which form the basis of the “selves” part of personal identity. With both psychological and physical continuity disturbed, as well as suffering from negative self-esteem, it is not difficult to understand how PH sees himself as having changed and his personal identity as being linked to his diagnosis. From a psychiatric point of view, the challenge is that in addition to looking after his mental health, professionals need to help him build a more positive self-identity which he is able to project in the future (t3) and have a better quality of life.

Mood (Affective) Disorder Mood disorders range from recurrent unipolar depression to bipolar affective disorder and on to single episodes of high or low mood. The most important feature of affective disorders is that of a persistent change in mood, typically accompanied by thoughts and changes in body rhythm that align with the change of mood. For example, in mania, the mood can be elated and the person experiences an abundance of energy and libido, a decreased need to sleep, and a feeling that their thinking is faster and that they are cleverer, more humorous, and more attractive than typical. They may have an elevated sense of their own importance or skills and this can tip into frank grandiose delusions. Those with elevated mood can see those around them as slower and less

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clever, and they may become impatient and irritable. To highlight the role mood disorders may play in identity, we will focus on the example of depression. In contrast with mania discussed above, depression presents with low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, decreased energy, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, hopelessness, thoughts of ending one’s life, disturbed sleep or appetite, and poor concentration. It is often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety. When these symptoms are present for at least two weeks, they can lead to substantial impairments in an individual’s ability to take care of his or her everyday responsibilities (World Health Organization 1993). In depression, the negative schema of one’s self can trigger feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt, and apathy. This is illustrated in an adapted published case vignette.

Case Vignette2 At the age of thirty, Janet was feeling low. She was tearful, preoccupied by her recent divorce, experiencing feelings of guilt, was isolating herself socially, and was finding it difficult to do her daily chores. She felt worthless and her financial worries did not help the situation. She was finding it difficult to look after three young children, especially her five-year-old son Adam. Janet and David had divorced the previous year, and since then, her mental health had been deteriorating slowly. In terms of background history, Janet was the only child of her parents. She remembered her parents as being warm and pleasant. Janet’s mother died in a car accident when she was only ten years old. She missed her mother a lot, but with the support of her father, she was able to complete her initial education. When Janet married David, she left her studies and became a full-time mother and looked after her three children. Two years ago, Janet wished to resume her studies and complete her university degree. David agreed to share household and parenting responsibilities, but this resulted in daily arguments, poor communication, and David’s extramarital affair, leading to their divorce. David moved out with his  Adapted from  Oltmanns et  al. (2011), Case studies in  abnormal psychology, Chapter 6: Major depressive disorder. 2

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new girlfriend and soon they got married. Though one year later David resumed contact and the children were spending weekends with him, for Janet, her future looked bleak. At one point, she also complained of fleeting suicidal thoughts. Janet responded well to antidepressant medication and psychotherapy.

Discussion Beck has described the features of depression as the “cognitive triad”: a negative view of the self, the world, and the future. These singly or in combination can generate marked shifts in one’s sense of identity and a pessimistic view about one’s self and others (cited in Rehm 1990, 35). Janet’s feeling of inadequacy, worthlessness, and guilt stemmed from her low self-esteem. Stressful life events play a causal role in the aetiology of depression. It may be that losing her identity as wife severely threatened her self-esteem and she became trapped in a vicious cycle of negative thoughts, with a lack of hope about the future. Her therapy focused on building a positive self-image and positive social roles which improved her mental state (Oltmanns et al. 2011, 96).

Personality Disorder A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment (American Psychiatric Association 2013). The personality disorders are grouped into three clusters based on descriptive similarities: Cluster A includes paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders. Individuals with these disorders often appear odd or eccentric. Cluster B includes antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders. Individuals with these disorders often appear dramatic, emotional, or erratic.

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Cluster C includes avoidant, dependent, and obsessive compulsive personality disorders. Individuals with these disorders often appear anxious or fearful. Identity disturbance is one of the nine criteria for borderline personality disorder in DSM-5, yet the precise nature of this disturbance has received little empirical attention. The major theoretical and clinical descriptions of identity confusion in borderline personality disorder come from the psychoanalytic literature in which theorists have used terms such as fragmentation, boundary confusion, and lack of cohesion to describe the experience of self in borderline personality disorder (Wilkinson-Ryan and Westen 2000, 528). As an example, we have provided an adapted version of a published case vignette of a person with borderline personality disorder.

Case Vignette3 “V” presented with ten years of mood swings, aggressive outbursts, self-­ laceration, and fleeting suicidal ideation, sometimes leading to overdose. Her self-injurious behaviours were a means both to cope and to communicate her distress. Feelings of “emptiness” and loneliness pervaded most of the time. She also found relationships “too overwhelming” and remained distant from others. As a child, “V” was intelligent and energetic, but she was sensitive and sometimes responded to challenges with anger. “V” first experienced intense suicidal thoughts when she was only thirteen years old when her father left with his girlfriend. She felt alone, crying for hours, and thinking about ways to die. At the age of fifteen, she started cutting herself, her aggressive outbursts continued, and her behaviour escalated to truancy and physical altercations with the police. During her late adolescence, she underwent two trials of antidepressant medication and several psychotherapy sessions, without success.  Adapted from  Goodman et  al. (2009), Quieting the  affective storm of borderline personality disorder. 3

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Discussion “V” was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. People coping with borderline personality disorder may struggle to have a sense of psychological continuity over time and across situations. It can therefore be difficult for them to form a concept of self-development which can be projected into the future; instead, they experience only an endless repetition of the changing affective states, creating a peculiar temporal mode of existing (Fuchs 2007). Individuals with borderline traits also exhibit what may be called a fragmentation of the narrative self: a shifting view of oneself, with sharp discontinuities, rapidly changing roles and relationships, and an underlying feeling of inner emptiness and blurred boundaries between how they are in the moment and their real “self ”. They can be sensitive to slights, more prone to recapitulate difficult early relationships in their adult lives, and struggle to maintain friendships and romantic relationships. The sense of identity fluctuates and is contingent upon marked transient shifts in mood, in turn dependent upon relationships. Frequently, counterproductive attempts to regulate mood, such as self-harm, bingeing, and drug or alcohol misuse, are employed to try and create a sense of control and identity over time. The goal of treatment is to help the patient begin to tolerate these rapid shifts and interpersonal challenges.

Disorders of Memory Disorders of memory are clearly linked with the psychological continuity accounts of personal identity discussed above. Our identity is composed of narratives we construct based on our personal history, and memory plays an important role. Autobiographical memories are a key c­ omponent of our identity. They are critical for our sense of who we are. Autobiographical memories contain information about what the self was doing at a specific time and place in the past (t1) and are used by people to describe and define their identity (t2) (Watson 2012, 423). Memories of our own past allow us to “mentally time travel” and provide a basis from which to plan for the future (t3).

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Memory forms the basis of psychological continuity and this is discussed in detail in following scenario, adapted from a previously published vignette.

Case Vignette4 Henry Molaison, known by his initials H.M., was born on February 26, 1926, in Manchester, Connecticut, a town about ten miles east of Hartford. Unfortunately, Henry began having petit mal epileptic seizures at the age of ten, and they progressed to grand mal (tonic-clonic) seizures when he was fifteen years of age. On Tuesday, August 25, 1953, Scoville (a neurosurgeon) operated on Henry’s brain in the hope that it would cure his epilepsy. Henry’s seizures improved dramatically, but soon after the surgery, he developed a severe memory impairment—amnesia. Henry remembered his parents, his friends, his family vacations as a child, and his family home, but he was unable to remember events immediately before and after surgery. He was trapped in a permanent present tense. Henry lived for fifty-five years without acquiring any new declarative memories. Henry remained as good-natured and pleasant as the polite, quiet person his high-school classmates knew.

Discussion In her discussion of this case, Corkin asked: how could such a person ever have a clear sense of who he was? It would be very difficult to understand what personal identity means to him on a daily basis (Corkin 2013). In this chapter, we have discussed the importance of memory in psychological continuity, and in Henry’s scenario, we observe that, sadly, if the chain of memory is broken, present (t2) can never become past (t1) and the sense of “I” does not evolve. In some sense, Henry is always “new” psychologically.  Adapted from  Corkin (2013), Permanent present tense: the  man with  no memory, and  what he taught the world. 4

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Identity is “transitive”, or in other words, for Henry to be the same person in future time (t3) as he was in past time (t1), most of present time (t2) must become connected to his past (t2 = t1), but this is unable to happen for Henry. In her analysis, Corkin does say that Henry did have some sense of self: he was a kind-hearted, polite gentleman with good sense of humour and always willing to participate in medical research. There is some suggestion that despite the marked memory impairments, there was some consistency in Henry’s personality traits, which may offer some features suggestive of psychological continuity of identity.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have presented an overview of the identity of psychiatry as a profession, and of the psychiatrist as medical practitioner, as well as providing an introduction to how mental disorders can impact on the psychological continuity of an individual and hence of his/her identity. We have seen how mental illness can have a wider impact on us, in that it can threaten our social identity and social roles. The concept of self-­ esteem, which is necessary for both “the self ” and “the selves/identities”, is also threatened. Personal identity is continuously evolving, and family, friends, and clinicians need to show understanding for those suffering from mental health issues. In this way, the aspects of the identity of the sufferer that allow them to participate more fully in society can be reinforced.

References American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, (DSM-5). 5th ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association. Corkin, Susan. 2013. Permanent present tense: The man with no memory, and what he taught the world. NewYork: Penguin Books. Corradi, Richard B. 2016. A psychiatrist looks at personal identity, family structure, and identity politics. July 14. http://www.thepublicdiscourse. com/2016/07/17324/. Accessed 28 Dec 2016.

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Estroff, Sue E. 1989. Self, identity, and subjective experiences: In search of the subject. Schizophrenia Bulletin 15 (2): 189–196. http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/2/189.full.pdf+html. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Foucault, Michel. 1988. The birth of the asylum. In Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. Trans. Richard Howard, 242–247. New York: Vintage Books. Fuchs, Thomas. 2007. Fragmented selves: Temporality and identity in b­ orderline personality disorder. Psychopathology 40: 379–387. doi:10.1159/000106468. Fulford, Kenneth W.M., Giovanni Stanghellini, and Matthew Broome. 2004. What can philosophy do for psychiatry? World Psychiatry 3 (3): 130–135. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414692/pdf/wpa030130. pdf. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Goodman, Marianne, Erin A. Hazlett, Antonia S. New, Harold W. Koenigsberg, and Larry Siever. 2009. Quieting the affective storm of borderline personality disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry 166 (5): 522–528. Hill, Dennis. 1978. The qualities of a good psychiatrist. British Journal of Psychiatry 133 (2): 1–2. doi:10.1192/bjp.133.2.97. Lieberman, Jeffery A., T.  Scott Stroup, Joseph P.  McEvoy, Marvin S.  Swartz, Robert A.  Rosenheck, et  al. 2005. Effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in patients. The New England Journal of Medicine 353 (12): 1209–1223. Marneros, Andreas. 2008. Psychiatry’s 200th birthday. British Journal of Psychiatry 193 (1): 1–2. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.108.051367. Mental Health Act. 2007. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/12/contents. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Oltmanns, Thomas F., Michele T.  Martin, John M.  Neale, and Gerald C.  Davison. 2011. Major depressive disorder. In Case studies in abnormal psychology, ed. Thomas F. Oltmanns, Michele T. Martin, John M. Neale, and Gerald C. Davison, 9th ed., 87–102. Hoboken: Wiley. Rehm, Lynn P. 1990. Cognitive and behavioral theories of depression. http:// www.israpsych.org/books/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cognitive_and_ behavioral_54.pdf. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Rolin, Henry R. 2003. Psychiatry in Britain one hundred years ago. British Journal of Psychiatry 183 (4): 292–298. Semple, David, and Roger Smyth. 2013. Thinking about psychiatry, psychiatric assessment. In Oxford handbook of psychiatry, ed. David Semple and Roger Smyth, vol. 34, 2nd ed., 10–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Shea, Shawn C. 1993. Interviewing techniques while exploring psychosis. In Psychiatric interviewing: The art of understanding, ed. Shawn C. Shea, 2nd ed., 225–226, 286, 376–392. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company. Shorter, Edward. 2014. The birth of psychiatry. In A history of psychiatry: From the era of asylum to the age of Prozac, Edward Shorter, 1–8. New York: Wiley. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. 2014. Identity. http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/identity/. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Tagore, Aashish. 2014. When a psychiatrist is a patient—Extra. British Journal of Psychiatry 204 (5): 390. Thoits, Peggy A. 1999. Self, identity, stress, and mental health. In Handbook of the sociology of mental health, ed. Carol S.  Aneshensel and Jo C.  Phelan, 345–368. New York: Springer. Varul, Matthias Z. 2010. Talcott Parsons, the sick role and chronic illness. Body & Society 16 (2): 72–94. Watson, Andrew, Vicky Barker, Jeremy Hall, and Stephen M.  Lawrie. 2012. Remembering the self in schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry 201 (6): 423–424. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.112.110544. Wilkinson-Ryan, Tessa, and Drew Westen. 2000. Identity disturbance in borderline personality disorder: An empirical investigation. American Journal of Psychiatry 157: 528–541. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/ appi.ajp.157.4.528. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. World Health Organization. 1993. 2003. The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders: Diagnostic criteria for research. 10th ed. Geneva: World Health Organization. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/ 37108/1/9241544554.pdf. Accessed 28 Dec 2016.

4 Biological Identity Kevin G. Moffat

Introduction This chapter aims to explain how, from the perspective of biology, your identity is determined. While a three-year degree in life sciences might provide a useful introduction, we will attempt to simplify this in stages. First, we consider human reproduction before looking at how genes are controlled. The involvement of genes in determining your growth, your facial features, and your blood type will be considered. We will consider, when looking at our genes, is it clear what a race is or even our sexual identity is. Finally, we’ll consider how the environment can affect our genes and rather differently how we leave detectable traces of our genes in our environment. The field is inevitably jargon dense. While there is a short glossary at the end of the chapter, a textbook would be beneficial for those interested (Griffiths et al. 2000).

K.G. Moffat (*) School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_4

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My Identity If I had to think of the things that I would see as forming the basis of my own identity, then before I look at my genes I might consider the following statements. I am as I write this middle aged (55 years and counting). I’m considered Caucasian, and I was born in Plymouth, in the UK. Less straightforwardly, I consider myself Cornish because of my upbringing. I had a Scottish father and a Cornish mother: what does that say about my background, and how I view others and myself? As a young boy, I was expected to attend a Methodist church with my parents, but I’ve never believed in a god, and I am a confirmed atheist. I’m married. I’m heterosexual. I am passionate about genetics, fruit flies, and spreading the message of science. I used to play a competitive level of badminton and tennis, and I have always loved and played the guitar. But which of these traits can be considered part of my biological identity? Why was I good at racket sports but not good at athletics? How come I could play the guitar but not the piano? It’s the classic argument of nature versus nurture. Is there a clear causative winner for any one of my biological traits? Do my genes determine my proficiency for sport, my abilities at the guitar, and my inabilities at the piano? I would be of the opinion that for a few traits the answer is yes, and for many, often the answer is no, but most importantly, for nearly everything that I am and I do, both my genes and the effect the environment has on my genes have a part to play. Quantifying this is not trivial.

Reproduction and You There are currently just over seven billion people in existence, mostly on Planet Earth and a handful on a nearby space station. Most count themselves as members of a nationality, a faith, or a race. At least the majority can agree that each of us might be classified by a number of traits1 that we share with some common groups. Nonetheless, I suspect that we all consider ourselves unique. No one is like me and no one is like you.  Terms in bold are defined further in the Glossary at the end of the chapter.

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There never was and there never will be another you, nor me, not even if you have an identical twin, not even if someone achieves the science of human cloning. When considering the issue of your biological identity, the combination of the particular egg and the particular sperm that generated you is the first issue; you are the product of a very particular combination. Your mother, when she was still a fetus in your grandmother’s womb, generated approximately six to seven million eggs. However, in human females, these eggs are continually lost in large numbers during development. Indeed, by the time your mother was born, she was already down to around one to two million eggs. More eggs are lost during the course of her life, and indeed from puberty onward, the human female will typically experience around 400 menstrual cycles during her lifetime (Wallace and Kelsey 2010). So which one of these 400 were you? Moreover, which one of the seven million eggs that your mother originally produced made it through to being you? Now let us consider your father. As a male I’ve often been told of course how useless men are, but if there is one thing we are good at, it’s making sperm. Males make them every day, from puberty onward for the rest of our lives and we do it by the million. While there are effects of aging on male fertility (Harris et al. 2011), nonetheless, estimates are that in a lifetime, we might make in the region of 250 billion! A geneticist refers to this production of eggs and sperm as gametogenesis, the making of gametes. Each of these gametes, the eggs and the sperm from female and male humans, respectively, is unique and therefore it is, although simplistic, reasonable to calculate that you “are” because of a 1 in 100 trillion combinatorial chance, just by considering your two parents. We need to explain why each of these gametes is unique. The reason, of course, is our deoxyribonucleic acid, our DNA: the genes encoded within it, the way they can vary, the means by which they can be shuffled to make new combinations, the way they can be altered by our environment, and the mechanisms by which the DNA is decoded. The processes of genetic variation are complex and won’t be discussed here (but see Griffiths et al. 2000 for information on this topic). I’ll finish this section by simply saying that of the roughly 108 billion people who have ever existed (Haub 2011), I am alone in being me, just like you.

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 Starting Place for Considering Biological A Identity Traits are often said to have a genetic component (nature) as opposed to how the environment affects a trait (nurture). If we accept that genes might encode at least part of our traits, then we need to understand something about the science of genetics. For most genes that provide us with a trait, we inherit two copies, one from our mother and one from our farther. Is a particular trait of yours more like your mother’s or more like your father’s or is it a mix of both? This can be explained with genetics as it is the genes we inherit that determine this. The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel through his experiments with plants famously described the rules of dominant and recessive genes, which explain the inheritance pattern of traits in plants and indeed all organisms (Mendel 1865). Different versions of the same gene are called alleles and can be said to be recessive, dominant, or co-dominant. My favorite example is wet and dry earwax! The allele encoding the “wet” trait, let’s call it “W”, is dominant over the “dry” trait allele, termed “w”. If you inherit “w” from both your mother and father, then a geneticist will say your genotype for the earwax trait is “ww”. You will carry two recessive versions of the gene and have a dry earwax phenotype. If however you have a genotype of “WW” or “Ww”, then your earwax phenotype will be wet. Your identity therefore, if carrying “ww”, will include that of being within a group of people with dry earwax. An example of co-dominance is that of blood groups. The ABO system is a classic piece of genetics. Alleles (the variants) of a single gene, called isoagglutinogen, or “I”, determine your ABO blood group. Blood type “O” is recessive and those of us who are “O’s” carry two recessive alleles “ii”. Blood groups A and B are both dominant over O, and each is represented by an allele, either IA or IB. My wife is group A and her likely alleles are IAi, although the combination could be IAIA. If you carry both dominant alleles, IA and IB, then you are blood group AB as they are co-dominant. If you now understand genetics, you will appreciate that someone with blood group O and wet earwax could be coded as iiWW or iiWw. That’s two just different genes that contribute to your biological identity. But

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unfortunately, there are more than 20,000 others to consider. Genetics is fascinating but can be complicated! Frustratingly, “traits” are frequently determined by more than one gene. Rhesus factor encoded by six genes is a good example of further detailing your blood type. There are another 31 blood groups that could be considered (Griffiths et al. 2000). The most common human genetic trait many are taught at school, to be the result of a single gene, is that of “tongue rolling”. This story emanates from a paper published in 1940 by one of the fathers of genetics, Alfred Sturtevant (1940). He claimed that the ability to roll your tongue was due to a “dominant” version of a gene. However, he was wrong and, despite this work being disproved by Matlock (1952), many genetics textbooks have perpetuated the error, even to this day. It is in fact only partly controlled by your genes, but you can learn how to do it. At least it does demonstrate that we can influence some of our traits and we are not always slaves to our alleles! To summarize this part, genes determine traits or contribute to traits. We have two copies of most genes, and while these can work together, one is often dominant over the other copy in determining a trait. Many famous traits are encoded by multiple genes: eye color, hair color, and so on. To add a final layer of complexity, we will see that the field of epigenetics can begin to explain how the environment can affect our genes also. Complicated for biologists, but it gives us a mechanism to potentially explain how nurture might make a difference at the level of our DNA.

Stripping Back Humans Before we look at the makeup of genes, let us start by taking your average human and do a rather grotesque imaginary experiment. Envisage that you remove all the skin and throw away all the tissues and organs, leaving just the skeleton (Fig. 4.1). Can you now tell if the person was fat or thin, rich or poor, gay or straight, black or white, Caucasian, or Asian? The answer to this for most of us is no. If you were a highly trained anthropologist and had some

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Fig. 4.1  A skeletal problem for biological identity? Can we really tell anything about our identity from looking at our skeletons? You would be able to tell the sex, the age, and obvious deformities. You might even be able to use the skull to try and recreate facial features from knowledge of anatomy. If we dug into the bone marrow, perhaps we could recover more cells and DNA that might tell us more. However, the extent to which the skeleton can reveal all the traits of a human being, including whether they were a “pirate” or not, is a matter of active debate

clinical calipers, then you might be able to detect some differences in the mandible and skull. While it is reported in the scientific literature that these may be indicators as to race, this is still contentious. Perhaps more information can be gained from examining the bone’s microarchitecture: the density and the size of its inner porous structure. This has been used to explain the variation in fracture risks in different populations (Looker 2002). Despite this, the simple answer is that as far as most of us are concerned, the skeleton on its own reveals very little information about ourselves. Let’s put the body back together again. In fact if we were to do the experiment properly, we would need to take representative samples from each “race” and indeed for each trait we wish to consider. As we look at these people, we notice many things—their skin color, hair color, eye color, and so on. We might notice the size of their hands, their relative finger proportions, how tall are they, the shape of their ear lobes, and their facial features. The list could be a long one. Look at yourself in the mirror. How far is it from the corner of your eye to the tip of your nose or what is the length of your philtrum, that little groove from lip to nose? We call these traits anthropometrics, and these are the subjects of intense interest for facial recognition software (Vezzetti and Marcolin 2012). The example of our face tells us that for all these traits we might

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need to consider the genes in our DNA and the cells that they instruct to construct our appearance, our identity. It is worth looking more closely at the face: it is here that perhaps we pick up more information about our own identity and that of others. Given how many of us are so concerned about our appearance and because of our constant use of mirrors, we are familiar with our own facial identity. But have you noticed how diverse human faces are? While the Daily Mail might report “Scientists discover nine face shapes” (Simon 2014), which the opticians Optical Prescription Spectacle Makers (OPSM) have been able to use for their commercial purposes (http://www.opsm.com.au/style/ face-shapes), the reality is more complex and scientifically as yet unverified through peer-­reviewed publication. If you compare humans to other animals, there is far more diversity within humans than in other species (Sheehan and Nachman 2014). Many of us will also hear the phrase “you’re the spitting image of your: father, your mother, your brother, your uncle, your sister, your auntie, your grandfather” and so on. The reasons for both the diversity and the similarity are your genes, our species evolution, and the uses we as humans put our faces to. So let’s look at these amazing genes.

Genes, DNA, and You Defining a gene is more difficult the more you know. I’m going to use the following definition: a gene is a physical and functional unit of heredity, it is made up of DNA, and it acts as a template from which the “code” is deciphered to construct other molecules. Your DNA in its entirety is called your genome and in humans it is made up of around 3 × 109 base pairs (bp) of DNA. Let’s try and explain base pairs. DNA is a large molecule. We call it “double stranded” and many will have seen iconic pictures of the structure represented as some sort of Salvador Dali-esque twisted ladder. It is to my mind a beautiful result of evolution, resulting in a double helical structure. The long struts are made up of a phospho-sugar called ribose, while the rungs are made from chemicals termed purines and pyrimidines. The purines and p ­ yrimidines are the so-called bases. The bases come in four types: A  (Adenine), C  (Cytosine), G  (Guanine), and T  (Thymine).

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Remembering that the molecule is double stranded, for every A on one strand, there is a T on the other, and likewise, for every C on one strand, there is a G on the other. Thus they come in pairs, base pairs. If you sit in a laboratory meeting with molecular biologists, you hear a lot of discussion about AT or GC pairs. In the simplest view, the sequence of the bases determines the code. A gene can vary in length from a few hundred base pairs to several million base pairs. For the most part, every cell in your body, of which you have around 100 trillion, carries a full genome. This is split into two pairs of 23 chromosomes, and hence statements based on some simple calculator-based arithmetic such as “if placed end to end, the DNA inside your body would stretch to 92 million miles” are made. How do you get so much DNA into every cell, how is variation achieved, and how does this lead to differences in our biological identity? In humans, our genome is divided among the 22 pairs of chromosomes and the two sex chromosomes. We carry two copies of our genomes, which means we are diploid in the language of biologists. And we are by no means the most complex organism in terms of genome size and copy number. Many plants and animals have multiple copies of their genomes; commercial wheat carries six copies and has a much larger genome than we do, for example. Back to humans. First, let’s consider getting 3 × 109 bp into a cell. Our DNA, as chromosomes, is held in the cell’s nucleus. Human cells vary in diameter from one-tenth of a millimeter, 0.1 mm, to seven-thousandths of a millimeter, 0.007 mm (better termed 7 microns or 7 micrometers, 7μm). The nucleus generally occupies one-tenth of the cell volume and is on average 6 μm in diameter. The result is that just short of 2 meters of DNA needs to be put inside the nucleus. This is achieved by a method of packing and winding the DNA and is often represented visually in the famous “X” shaped structures we see as presentations of chromosomes. The DNA is wound around proteins called histones, which in turn are grouped together into structures called nucleosomes. There are beautiful videos available to see this online (see, e.g., DNA Learning Center 2010) and much more information to be gained from textbooks (Griffiths et al. 2000). But this is perhaps somewhat simplified. DNA is only this severely condensed during duplication and division of the cells or when producing the gametes (what in biological terms we call mitosis and meiosis,

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respectively). For much of the time, large parts of the DNA in a nucleus is decondensed, some DNA is still bound up tightly, and other parts less so. It is these parts that have a more open structure where genes can be decoded to produce a functional output. It can also explain why cells in, for instance, the brain and liver and skin and stomach are able to be different from one another. This sort of diversity would be impossible if genes were decoded in the same way in every cell. It turns out that genes can be controlled differently in different cells. Our cells then will look and act differently as their protein combinations differ.

Our Cellular Identity: The DNA Code At its simplest level to explain the DNA code, biologists refer to a central dogma: (when decoding) DNA goes to RNA which goes to protein. Proteins can be considered cellular machines—they themselves are made up of 20 different amino acids (Griffiths et al. 2000). Each amino acid within a protein is coded for by a triplet code in the DNA, for example, ATG encodes methionine, while TTT encodes phenylalanine. If we think of the DNA sequence as a language of bases and proteins as a language of amino acids, how does one get from one language to another? This is via two processes: transcription and translation. First, in the nucleus of a cell, the DNA of a gene is copied (transcribed) into a very similar language called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). This is almost identical to DNA except the ACGTs are replaced by ACG and U (Uracil), and mRNA is not double stranded. This process is termed “transcription”. This molecule is processed and moved out of the cell’s nucleus. Next, outside the nucleus, this mRNA is decoded into the amino acid-based language of proteins. This we term “translation”. The protein code is more complicated than DNA. Twenty different amino acid units, many hundreds or thousands in one macromolecule, and specific three-dimensional shapes allow the evolution of complex cellular machines. The ways in which control can be exerted on the genes are manifold. Switching on or off transcription is a major regulatory point. Additionally, the processing of mRNA in the nucleus, the process of translation, and

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the type of protein products made can all be altered. All these controls determine the “when and the where” a gene is “expressed”. Gene expression is a term that is often used and refers to the switching on of the gene, its conversion to mRNA, and indeed the output of a protein product. Taken together, our total number of around 24,000 genes and their many expression products lead us to a cellular identity; in turn, these cells organize into tissues and organs controlling our physical traits and even, at least in part, our behavior.

Our Faces Are Unique to Each of Us I argued above that the degree of variation in the human face is unique among animals. This is because of the way we have evolved as a species: we have come to use facial recognition for a variety of purposes (Sheehan and Nachman 2014). Mice have around 4000 transcriptional control elements (gene expression controllers) for head and face (craniofacial) development (Attanasio et al. 2013), but it’s unlikely that most of us could tell one mouse from another by looking at their faces. The greater complexity of the human face requires an even greater number of genes involved in facial development, impacting on the way they are controlled, the way they function physiologically, the tissues they produce, and the way they respond to aging. Indeed, similar cranio-facial DNA expression controllers are also found in humans, but importantly, they vary dramatically between us. Indeed, some have been linked to cranio-facial disorders and dysmorphias in humans. The reason? The cells that make up our pigments, our bones, and our muscles and facial nervous system are derived from a very special set of cells known as the “neural crest”. Many of our features are decided early in development (at around three weeks of gestation) when these cells migrate from where they originate (Wolpert et al. 2015). With so much shared DNA with our mother and father, it is inevitable that we also inherit the DNA controllers. Just as with the protein coding genes, some of the controllers will be dominant or co-dominant and so similar regulation of these will occur, instructing our cells where to go and what to do, in a similar fashion to our parents.

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 ur Sexual Identity: The Role O of the Chromosomes Having explored our cellular identity, and our facial identity, let’s move on now to a third aspect of biological identity—our sexual identity. In humans, females carry two X chromosomes while males have one X and one Y chromosome. I am a male because my Y chromosome carries a particular gene, the SRY gene. This gene makes a protein that instructs male fetuses to make testes. If you’re genetically male (XY) and lack this protein then you’ll develop a uterus and female genitalia, but you will not have ovaries. Males also exist who have two XX chromosomes but happen to carry a copy of the SRY gene. Although rare, this latter condition results in males who are again sterile as they fail to develop normal gonads. Human sexual phenotypes are hugely complicated. While we understand the basics of sexual development, and indeed what can biologically go wrong, we are far from understanding all the molecular biology, physiological and psychological effects into this area. For some biological researchers, their activity focuses on the search for the so-called gay gene, but intersex and transgender individuals are also of interest. Potentially we could consider humans as three sexes: males, females, and intersexes. Intersex individuals are those who have features of both sexes, but true hermaphrodism (where an individual possesses fully developed testes and ovaries, breasts, and penises) is extremely rare. Clinicians usually advise parents of intersex babies to opt for a gender assignment and even surgery because the developmental psychology of the child is of paramount importance for sexual maturity, even if the individuals affected will actually be sterile. We have gained much biological knowledge from the study of intersex individuals, and it is clear that there is a range of phenotypes, some more female and some more male. It is likely that much is likely to depend on the status of the sex chromosomes, the SRY gene, and indeed variations of the genes that are controlled by the SRY-encoded protein (Blackless et al. 2000). A person who is considered transgender is frequently normal with respect to their biological sex, XX or XY, has an appropriate SRY genotype,

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and has normal sexual anatomy. However, they feel that they are the wrong sex. A number of recent celebrity examples have been sensationalized, such as Kellie Maloney, the former boxing promoter Frank Maloney. There is currently no biological mechanism to explain these psychological changes, but some researchers have considered them to result from an interplay between genes and psychology. Indeed consideration for how to treat transgender patients in hospitals is now beginning to be recognized (Feldman et al. 2016). The search for the gay gene has been under heavy discussion since 2008. In that year, Hare et al. published a paper in which they put forward the idea that the length of the gene encoding the human receptor for testosterone suggested an association of longer genes with transsexual male-to-female persons (Hare et  al. 2008). This androgen receptor is the part of the machinery with which cells respond to testosterone (an androgen). While it would seem biologically possible that variations in the androgen receptor gene (alleles) would lead to subtly different proteins that might send incorrect signals, subsequent follow-up studies have failed to support this proposition. Recently, Sanders et al. (2015) published a study of over 400 pairs of homosexual brothers. They found evidence to suggest that sexual orientation in men might be influenced by certain DNA sequences on chromosome 8 and the X chromosome. Heralded in the New Scientist magazine as “the strongest evidence yet that gay people are born gay” (Coghlan 2014), it has nonetheless been politically sensitive, leading to editorial comments such as those, also in the New Scientist magazine, that “Ultimately, what causes homosexuality doesn’t matter as much as the fact that homosexual people exist, and have always existed, in every society on earth” (New Scientist 2014). While this is easy to accept, it doesn’t stop the phenomena from being scientifically fascinating, and more work will undoubtedly follow. How do we feel about our DNA sequence telling us not only what diseases we may have and what risks we might need to avoid but also both our sex and indeed perhaps even our sexuality? Before we can consider how DNA might perform such functions, let us take a diversion into how we read our DNA.

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Determining Our DNA Code The human genome project, involving the sequencing of a representative human genome, was completed in 2001 (IHGS Consortium 2001) and cost more than $100 million. By 2012, the cost was below $10,000 per genome and has continued to tumble as technologies advance (Wetterstrand 2016). Today we are able to send cheek cell swabs to commercial companies who will recover the DNA from these samples, amplify, and sequence it, all for as little as $99! Of course they will give you back some interesting information. But these companies are data-­ mining also, often asking for an exchange of further medical information and releasing more sensitive sequence information to you. Perhaps the company with the most evocative name, given that we have 23 chromosome pairs, is 23andme.com, but a reported $60-milliondeal with biotech giant Genentech in January 2015 might make you think about your interest in your biological identity against the price you pay in terms of the use of your genomic data for potentially commercial purposes. The result of all these advances is that many human genomes have now been sequenced using a process termed “deep sequencing”. A step change in technology now allows us to sequence genomes many times over. This is important in confirming errors and also in the monitoring of DNA in tissues that are undergoing significant changes, such as during cancer development. Research centers such as the Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Health in the USA, the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Centre in the UK have put enormous effort into providing sequence information to scientists and clinicians. An example from 2008 is the 1000 Genomes Project (http://www.internationalgenome.org), which was launched to explore the variations that we can find in human populations with the main aim of identifying medically useful variations with respect to disease. The data is collected under strict ethical guidelines ensured by the Wellcome Trust (1000 Genomes Project Consortium 2015). Currently over 2500 genomes from 26 distinct human populations have been sequenced. The results are staggering. While we have individual diversity in our facial identities, as a species, we have in common around 99 percent of

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our DNA. Whether we are the tallest or the shortest, whether we consider ourselves African, Asian, or Caucasian, we are far more similar to each other than any of our other simian relatives are to those within their own species. This speaks directly to how recently related we are to one another in an evolutionary sense. Current models based on the small differences in our genomes, and those of archaic fossil humans, suggest we all had a common ancestor originating in Africa some 60,000–100,000 years ago. The sequencing of the genomes allows molecular anthropologists and statisticians to judge ancient migration routes out of Africa and indeed make inferences also about migrations back into Africa. The picture is complicated and constantly being scrutinized (Groucutt 2015), and there have been differing points of view regarding human racial characteristics, such as which groups have most Neanderthal DNA, which has the most Denisovan DNA, and so on. Both of these ancient Homo species sequences are still represented in some populations. However, the sequence analysis of current human populations has confirmed observations made in 2009 by Long and Healy that it is hard to simply classify our DNA sequences into the current perceived racial groups: The actual pattern of DNA diversity creates some unsettling problems for using race as meaningful genetic categories. For example, the pattern of DNA diversity implies that some populations belong to more than one race (e.g., Europeans), whereas other populations do not belong to any race at all (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africans). (Long et al. 2009)

DNA Individuality From popular culture, we can learn that our daily movements could potentially be tracked, not only by CCTV but also through our DNA as we unwittingly leave samples behind us as we move through the ­environment—the DNA in the follicles of our hair, our skin cells that rub off, our blood, semen, saliva, and stools. This penultimate story starts with Alec Jefferies from the University of Leicester. While searching through mammalian genes from seals and humans, he began to analyze

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the gaps found naturally in the middle of our genes. In these gaps, he found patterns and small variations, DNA sequences which we now term microsatellites. Significantly on the morning of September 10, 1984, he saw the pattern of family members and realized that they were inherited exactly as we have described above for W and w. On that same day, his wife, a social worker working on an immigration case, gave him the ability to apply this new analysis technique. Sir Alec was able to show that in a disputed paternity case, the child of an immigrant was indeed the child claimed by the parent. From that point on, the technique of DNA fingerprinting (Jeffreys et al. 1985) was part of molecular biology history, used in criminal cases, paternity cases, and tragedies such as Chernobyl. Preceding the sequencing of entire human genomes, the available human sequences led to the establishment in the 1990s of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the USA. The analysis of microsatellite variations, and other newly discovered repeat sequences, termed “Short Tandem Repeats”, or STRs, is enough to uniquely identify any individual on the planet (https://www.fbi.gov/ about-us/lab/biometric-­analysis/codis/codis_brochure). The technique that has revolutionized this analysis is the ability to detect minute traces of DNA in blood, in semen, from fingerprints left on a glass, and so on. This technique is called the polymerase chain reaction or PCR. It was developed by Kary Mullis (Mullis et al. 1986), for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1993, and its development through the 1990s has been perhaps the biggest revolution within modern-day biology. This technique allows the detection of tiny amounts of DNA; a simple way to think of it is like exponential DNA photocopying, typically from 35 doublings or cycles. After the first cycle, one copy becomes two, after two cycles the two copies become four, and after three cycles the four copies become eight, and so on. After 35 cycles, one copy becomes 34,359,738,368 copies. In theory, the DNA from a single cell can be detected. In the language of the acronyms discussed above, the use of PCR to detect the CODIS STRs from DNA collected from crime scenes effectively means you can identify the presence of one particular individual out of the entire planet’s population. This is contingent of course on the individual’s “profile” being available to the authorities. I will leave you to think about the ethics of such profiling. I would just add that the technique is so powerful that because

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you share molecular alleles with your relatives, if you commit a murder and your relative’s DNA was to be on a database because of, say, a driving offense, then this might be enough to place you at the scene and at the very least to come under investigation.

 wins, Epigenetics, and Our Changing DNA T Landscape If I share completely the DNA with my identical twin, why are we so similar yet at the same time so different? For a long time, twins have been studied in order to understand the inheritance of traits. If twins are identical, biologists refer to them as monozygotic as they arise from the same fertilized egg. If they are not identical, then they are referred to as dizygotic, having arisen from two separate fertilized eggs. By tracking traits in twins, such as height, reading ability, autism, or schizophrenia, we can infer how much of a genetic (nature) component is involved in the trait. An example is that if one twin is diagnosed with autism, then in monozygotic twins the trait will be shared around 60 percent of the time, while in dizygotic twins it will be shared only around 25 percent of the time. The difference (35 percent) is taken as evidence for a large genetic component. However, the fact that autism does not occur in both identical twins 100 percent of the time means there is a large environmental effect. Similarly, in the case of height, the genetic component is around 90 percent, with the remaining 10 percent down to some other factor, possibly diet. There are some great genetics tutorials online.2 What, however, is the mechanism for the environment having an effect on our cells, our DNA? The best current answers come from studies that have looked at so-called epigenetic changes (Fraga et al. 2005). In some cases, the differences between twins can be ascribed to “copy number”; that is, parts of the genome in different cells can become deleted for one copy or duplicated for one copy. As you may remember, earlier on in this chapter, I described how DNA is packed by histones into nucleosomes. Both the DNA and the histones can be chemically altered by  http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/twins/

2

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small molecules (methyl groups in the case of DNA and acetyl groups in the case of histones). These small molecules affect the packing and the way that genes are transcribed into mRNA. The important point is that the environment can affect how DNA is expressed. Because these effects are mediated through cells and therefore tissues and organs, as twins age, they become increasingly more different in their epigenetic landscape and therefore in how their cells work. According to Fraga et al.: We found that, although twins are epigenetically indistinguishable during the early years of life, older monozygous twins exhibited remarkable differences in their overall content and genomic distribution of 5-­methylcytosine DNA and histone acetylation, affecting their gene-expression portrait. (Fraga et al. 2005)

These epigenetic changes happen in all of us, not just twins; indeed, they can occur in the germ line, the cells that make the eggs and sperm for the next generation. Maybe they have a role in determining our sexuality? However, nearly all of these changes are wiped clean during gametogenesis.

Biometrics: Measuring Identity How often do we see social media or the newspaper’s report the case of doppelgangers? A recent case in the UK Daily Mail newspaper relates the story of two 26-year-old women who do look remarkably similar at first sight. Indeed they were so taken with their resemblance to each other that they had a DNA test to make sure they weren’t related. They weren’t. If however you look closely at the available pictures online (London 2016), then you can detect differences in the nose, the position of the cheekbones, the length of the chin, and indeed the shape of the face. In doing so, you are effectively making a simple biometric analysis. This is now of course a science and we are getting used to fingerprint recognition and iris recognition. In the future, we’ll be able to determine individual speech patterns and even smells. Biometrics as a science also studies the size of hands, the distribution of finger length, or earlobe shapes. We

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might think that our genes encode most of these and are shared therefore by monozygotic twins, but often they are unique. Fingerprints are perhaps the best example. The development of the ridges on our fingers, toes, hands, and feet is of course under control of our genes, but the environment of the womb has been shown to have a strong influence on the ridges, the shapes, and the whorls (Babler 1991)—so much so that all of us, even identical twins, are uniquely identifiable through this relatively old-fashioned detection method.

Last Comments Each of us is biologically unique, because of our parents, because of our genes, and because of our environment. Our environment affects us through its interactions with our genes. While DNA is an amazing molecule, an incredible evolutionary achievement, it is also much more. Our DNA is our identifier and is a record of our ancestors and our history. In it, all of us have a story, whether we live for 100 years or just for a few moments.

Glossary ABO blood group: 

gen gene.

Your blood group determined by alleles of the isoagglutino-

A, C, G, and T: Abbreviations

for the building blocks of DNA—Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine. Acetyl:  A chemical group added to other molecules, in this case –CH3CO. Alleles:  A version of a gene. Androgen receptor:  A protein that binds testosterone and then controls target genes expression. Anthropometrics:  The quantification of human traits—mostly physical. Base pairs:  A unit of DNA comprising an “A and T” or “G and C”. Biological sex:  Determined by the sex chromosomes X and Y. Chromosomes:  The physical structures carrying DNA making up our genome.

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A species of archaic humans with European, Asian, and Polynesian distributions. Deoxyribonucleic acid:  The molecule of which genes are made. Diploid:  Two copies of each of our chromosomes (except male X and Y). Dizygotic:  Twins from two different fertilized eggs. DNA:  Abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA fingerprinting:  A pattern of the length of short DNA repeats in our genes. Epigenetics:  The alteration of gene control by modifying the molecular structure of DNA wrapping—sometimes heritable—but does not change the sequence of the DNA. Typically methyl or acetyl groups added to histones. Gametes:  Eggs and sperm. Gametogenesis:  The making of eggs and sperm. Genes:  A stretch of DNA that encodes information that contributes to a trait. It is the unit of hereditary. Most often, we think of them as encoding information to make proteins. Genetic:  An effect of the genes, often through the involvement of regulation. Genome:  The entirety of your DNA, all the genes and all their control elements. Genotype:  A description of the alleles that you have. Histones:  Proteins around which DNA is wound. Meiosis:  A special type of cell division when making sperm and eggs—results in a halving of the DNA content. Menstrual cycle:  The 28-day average cycle of producing eggs and changes to the lining of the uterus in human females. Methyl:  A chemical group added to other molecules, in this case –CH3. Microsatellites:  Small repeating sequences found in the DNA sequences of genes. Mitosis:  The process of cell division associated with cell growth—no reduction in DNA complement. Monozygotic:  Twins from one fertilized egg. Neanderthal:  A species of archaic humans, largely European but also of middle-­ eastern distributions. Nucleosomes:  Groups of histone proteins wound with DNA. Phenotype:  The resulting effect of the alleles of the genes that you have. Purines and pyrimidines:  The chemical groups to which the bases of DNA are assigned to. “A and G” are purines and “C and T” are pyrimidines. Ribose:  A five-carbon sugar that makes up the backbone of DNA. Simian:  Monkeys, apes, and humans. Trait:  A characteristic of a person or persons.

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References 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. 2015. A global reference for human genetic variation. Nature 526 (7571): 68–74. Attanasio, Catia, Alex S. Nord, Yiwen Zhu, Matthew J. Blow, Zirong Li, Denise K. Liberton, Harris Morrison, et al. 2013. Fine tuning of craniofacial morphology by distant-acting enhancers. Science 342 (6157): 1241006. Babler, William J.  1991. Embryologic development of epidermal ridges and their configurations. Birth Defects Original Article Series 27 (2): 95–112. Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-­ Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, and Ellen Lee. 2000. How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis. American Journal of Human Biology 12: 151–166. Coghlan New Scientist. 2014. Gay gene discovery has good and bad implications. Leader. Issue 2996, November 19. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429963.700-gay-gene-discovery-has-good-and-bad-implications/. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. DNA Learning Center. 2010. How DNA is packaged. March 22. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=gbSIBhFwQ4s. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Feldman, Jamie, George R.  Brown, Madeline B.  Deutsch, Wylie Hembree, Walter Meyer, Heino F.  Meyer-Bahlburg, Vin Tangpricha, Guy TʼSjoen, and Joshua D. Safer. 2016. Priorities for transgender medical and h ­ ealthcare research. Current Opinion in Endocrinology Diabetes and Obesity 23 (2): 180–187. Fraga, Mario F., Esteban Ballestar, Maria F.  Paz, Santiago Ropero, Fernando Setien, Maria L.  Ballestar, Damia Heine-Suñer, et  al. 2005. Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 102 (30): 10604–10609. Griffiths, Anthony J.F., Jeffrey H. Miller, David T. Suzuki, Richard C. Lewontin, and William M. Gelbart. 2000. An introduction to genetic analysis. 7th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman. Groucutt, Huw S., Michael D. Petraglia, Geoff Bailey, Eleanor M. Scerri, Ash Parton, Laine Clark-Balzan, Richard P. Jennings, et al. 2015. Rethinking the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa. Evolutionary Anthropology 24 (4): 149–164. Hare, Lauren, Pascal Bernard, Francisco J.  Sánchez, Paul N.  Baird, Eric Vilain, Trudy Kennedy, and Vincent R.  Harley. 2008. Androgen receptor

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repeat length polymorphism associated with male-to-female transsexualism. Biological Psychiatry 65 (1): 93–96. Harris, Isiah D., Carolyn Fronczak, Lauren Roth, and Randall B.  Meacham. 2011. Fertility and the aging male. Reviews in Urology 13: e184–e190. Haub, Carl. 2011. How many people have ever lived on earth? Population Reference Bureau. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowMany PeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. 2001. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. Nature 409 (6822): 860–921. Jeffreys, Alec J., Victoria Wilson, and Swee L. Thein. 1985. Individual-specific “fingerprints” of human DNA. Nature 316 (6023): 76–79. London, Bianca. 2016. So they’re NOT related: Woman who found her doppelganger living just a few miles away takes DNA test to discover the truth about their uncanny likeness. January 21. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ femail/article-3410034/Woman-used-online-experiment-doppelganger-­ living-just-miles-away-takes-DNA-test-discover-NOT-related-all. html#ixzz4U7fYDBkd. Accessed 28 Dec 2016. Long, Jeffrey C., Jie Li, and Meghan E. Healy. 2009. Human DNA sequences: More variation and less race. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139 (1): 23–34. Looker, Anne C. 2002. The skeleton, race and ethnicity. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 87 (7): 3047–3050. Matlock, Philip J. 1952. Identical twins discordant in tongue-rolling. Journal of Heredity 43 (1): 24. Mendel, Gregor J. 1865. Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden [Experiments concerning plant hybrids]. Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn [Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn] 4 (1865): 3–47. Mullis, Kary, F.  Faloona, S.  Scharf, R.  Saiki, G.  Horn, and H.  Erlich. 1986. Specific enzymatic amplification of DNA in  vitro: The polymerase chain reaction. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 51 (1): 263–273. New Scientist. 2014. Gay gene discovery has good and bad implications. Leader. Issue 2996, November 19. https://www.newscientist.com/article/ mg22429963.700-gay-gene-discovery-has-good-and-bad-implications/. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. Sanders, A.R., et al. 2015. Genome-wide scan demonstrates significant linkage for male sexual orientation. Psychological Medicine 47 (7): 1379–1388.

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Sheehan, Michael J., and Michael W. Nachman. 2014. Morphological and population genomic evidence that human faces have evolved to signal individual identity. Nature Communications 5: 4800. Simon, Marielle. 2014. Scientists have now identified NINE distinct face shapes…five new groups on top of the traditional oval, round, heart and square. Daily Mail, October 16. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article­2795014/scientists-identified-nine-distinct-face-shapes-five-new-groups-­ traditional-oval-round-heart-square.html#ixzz4U7ifHZZB. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. Sturtevant, Alfred H. 1940. A new inherited character in man. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 26 (2): 100–102. Vezzetti, Enrico, and Federica Marcolin. 2012. 3D human face description: Landmarks measures and geometrical features. Image and Vision Computing 30 (10): 698–712. Wallace, W.  Hamish, and Thomas W.  Kelsey. 2010. Human ovarian reserve from conception to the menopause. PLoS ONE 5 (1): e8772. Wetterstrand, Kris A. 2016. DNA sequencing costs: Data from the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program (GSP). www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts. Wolpert, Lewis, Cheryll Tickle, and Alfonso Martinez Arias. 2015. Principles of development. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Section 2 Structures of National and Personal Identity

Meta-analysis II The next four chapters focus on national and personal identity, moving away from the strictly disciplinary, and biological, perspectives in the first section of the book. Although each chapter emerges from within each of four separate disciplines, or sub-disciplines—Film Studies, Gender Studies, Translation Studies, and Feminism—there is significant overlap within the chapters themselves from other specialisms within the academy. Cath Lambert’s work, for example, while it emeges from Sociology and Gender Studies in its adoption of queer as a lens through which to examine the concept of identity, its use of an artist as a case study, and the avowed stance of the author as queer, moves beyond a single disciplinary focus (Sociology), through multidisciplinarity (Gender Studies) to an interdisciplinary space (the nexus of Sociology, Gender Studies, and Performance Studies). Indeed, it would be possible to argue that the process of “becoming” in queer theory edges into the area of the transdisciplinary as it offers a path away from what Lambert views as the neoliberal trap of constant reincorporation of “new” identities into the marketable and consumerist world of global capital. In a constant state of “becoming,” might it be possible to open a space that permits discourse that is resistant to the dominant systems of power we live with? The spaces these ideas open are, therefore,

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transitional. Sarah McDonald, also, recognizes neoliberalism at work in the globalizing forces affecting culture in Latin America and sees cultural production internalizing them through their reproduction in film. The very process of transculturation produces material that re-represents the plight of the oppressed to external view and therefore builds this into the reality of national identity permitting “radical reconfiguration.” Mridula Chakraborty positions transnational feminist engagement as a potential antidote to “a hegemonic capitalist regime.” Yet she is deeply aware of the contestations between “color” and “race.” Rita Wilson’s chapter moves from individual identity to a position where nationalities and cultures are transformed by the process of their engagement with the writing of immigrants. In Wilson’s chapter, too, there is the mingling of disciplines as translation studies and cultural analysis work together. There is an intersectional feel to the work of McDonald, Chakraborty, and Wilson, in particular, that recognizes the effects of class on the conditions of everyday life of the individuals and structures their work addresses. This, in turn, becomes represented in the broader cultural and national identities they describe. It is noticeable in this section that the use of theoretical and philosophical material increases dramatically. Lambert uses the work of a number of notoriously dense and abstruse theorists. Deleuze y Guattari’s “figural” may be useful and provides students with a new vocabulary, potentially, but in its complexity, the theory may simply occlude. This should not be regarded, however, as a problem. Understanding these kinds of ideas is transformational for students who frequently remain wedded to absolutes of right and wrong in response to difficult material. McDonald’s chapter considers the favela as an identity within an identity similarly to Wilson’s argument in that it reads the interaction, the metissage of each culture, as informing and altering the other. For McDonald, this is achieved through the medium of film. Interesting here, too, is the notion that the identity “Brazil” is created through both the way in which it identifies itself and perceptions developed by outsiders—much as in the first section where identity was established in individuals through the responses of others. Chakraborty also offers the transnational as a space in which ideas of identity might be interrogated, notwithstanding her criticism of the idea of a universal “transnational” space as “transcending all borders and national peripheries.” The chapter is powerful in the commitment

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of the author to define her own direct relationship to the subject matter of the piece, as an intellectual of South Asian origin. Lambert identifies as “queer,” and this identification, too, adds a dimension to the way in which we read her chapter. Her’s and Chakraborty’s ideas become performative and embodied in this way and thus escape the confines of this book. This is one example of many where authors use their own identities to move in constellation with the ideas with which they engage. Unlike the first section, we are in worlds where identity is socially constructed; Chakraborty quotes Mohanty arguing that even this position has been overtaken, transcended: race is “a political constituency, not a biological or even sociological one.” Three of the four contributors to this section also undertook teaching in the space: McDonald (co-convener), Wilson, and Lambert. This was an experience, in itself, for both tutors and students of a co-created cultural environment. One of the most significant elements of this, noticed by everyone present, was the false assumption that British and Australian cultures were perceived as identical. This was further complicated by the diversity of the student cohorts, with international students from mainland European countries participating in the Warwick space, and the mixed racial and cultural origins of students in Australia. It was at moments like these that the convergence of disciplinary material, the practice of learning and teaching, and the concept of “identity” itself became blended or interwoven in the experience of both tutors and students. Not only was there a process of intellectual “learning” taking place in response to, say, Wilson’s material on translating the self, or McDonald’s work on the favelas, there was a long embodied moment of recognition for all of us as a group that permitted that learning to stick in ways it might not otherwise have done. A recurring theme running through this book is that culture creates identity. Cultural production, be it the work of performance artists, cinematographers, writers of fiction, or the academy, generates narratives of identity from its fictional and/or speculative locus that may result in the realities of national identity. It is instructive that those participating in the Forms of Identity unit found that they had become part of a culture peculiar to that unit. They gave witness to existing in a trans-space between two universities on opposite sides of the world but also in a cultural trans-space in which identity was formed by forces and currents peculiar to that space.

5 Outside in the House of Colour: A Second Look at Postcolonial and Transnational Feminisms Mridula Nath Chakraborty

Introduction This chapter traces the evolution of postcolonial feminism from its situated, located, “third world” avatar to its free-floating reincarnation as transnational feminism in the age of mobility and identity. I focus on the first generation of scholars and feminists of South Asian origin who made their mark on postcolonial theory in the Anglo-North American academy in the 1970s and 1980s. I examine how the terms “woman of colour” and “third world woman” have been taken up by, and circulated among, this group. I argue that this group of extra-national1 third-world  “Extra national” refers to those diasporic bodies and sensibilities that do double duty in how they operate outside the borders of the country of origin, as well as how they function within the nation of adoption. In the first case, they are interpellated by the foundational national myths of blood and belonging, and their reception/acceptance in the country of origin is mediated by their response to this, while at the same time being incorporated into the modern success story of transnationality and globalization; in the second, they are the “strangers within the borders” who are made to stand in for the Other even as they narrate multiple stories of the multicultural nation. In 1

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intellectuals is to be ­ distinguished from their peers, that is, other US-based scholars who answer to and self-identify with the identity and political label “woman of color”. This chapter interrogates the particular kinds of essentialisms that South Asian postcolonial feminists entertain when they inhabit analytic categories like “third world woman” and “woman of colour”. It asks if the paths of inquiry influenced by colonial discourse analysis, national and post/independence narratives, and postcolonial and transnational theories (which depend on epistemologies of imperialism, nationhood, modernity, and the flow of global capital—human, cultural, economic, intellectual) are more conducive to their theorizing than when they occupy historically specific and geographically located categories of coloured and racialized American identity. Mine is a modest proposal: I argue that claiming the territory and terminology of “colour” dilutes the force of postcolonial narration for South Asian scholars, and elides or eclipses their particular projects of knowledgemaking in the Anglo-­North American academy. More to the point, such a claim obfuscates the historical and geographical specificities of both the terms “third world woman” and “woman of colour”, thereby confusing the trajectories of politics and identity for both their constituencies. The broad mandate of postcolonial feminism (which has now moved into transnationalism) is a distinct one that cannot be conflated either with feminisms of colour or critical race theory, despite congruence in their aims. The late-1970s and the early-1980s are marked by the cementing of an essentialist idea of a or the woman as the “sexually differentiated” subject of feminism. Chela Sandoval identifies this as “Feminism’s Great Hegemonic Model”,2 whereby the “constructed typologies” of the gendered Other of universal Man start to dominate “the official stories by both cases, diaspora is not the cause for a celebration of the transcending of nationhood; to the contrary, diaspora proclaims the triumph of the nation-state in many different, complex ways in which it is hailed by the two spheres of influence. 2  Sandoval acknowledges Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s characterization of this women’s history as “hegemonic feminist theory” in “The Rani of Sirmur” in Francis Barker ed. Europe and its others, 1985 (147).

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which the women’s movement has understood itself and its intervention in history” (Sandoval 2000, 46–47). This consolidation of “an essential woman” as the proper subject and object of feminism emerges “out of the matrix of the very discourses denying, permitting and producing difference” in Anglo-North American feminist contexts (Sandoval 2000, 42–43). Instead, the “ubiquitously cited four-phase feminist history of consciousness” of “liberal”, “Marxist”, “radical/cultural”, and “socialist” stages becomes the “cognitive map” of official and received feminism (Sandoval 2000, 50–51). Sexual difference as the determining characteristic of feminism is employed in all these stages: “women are the same as men”, “women are different from men”, “women are superior”, and “woman are a racially divided class” (ibid.). Sandoval, with others,3 offers an alternative version of this history, connecting the “civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and ethnic, race, sex, gender, class, and human liberation movements” in a “differential” or “oppositional consciousness” to the singular map laid out by the hegemonic feminist model (2000, 42–3, 43–4). The “original, eccentric, and queer [in]sight” of Sandoval’s model was enacted in the years “1968–90” by a “particular and eccentric cohort of US feminists of color who were active across diverse social movements” (2000, 43–4). My entry into this history is through a specific section of the cohort: subcontinental and diasporic postcolonial feminists who allied with feminists of colour in their differential consciousnesses. These postcolonial feminists learn from the Black feminist and women of colour feminist models in the US and are also interpellated by the racialized coda of “colour” in their oppositional stance to a hegemonic feminism. Together, they come to constitute a coalition under the aegis of “U.S. third world feminism” (Sandoval 2000, 43–4), the ranks of  See Ranu Samantrai’s wonderful historical survey of the “black British (African Caribbean and South Asian) feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s” as an example of the “practical politics” of dissent by “those who refuse to remain under erasure, in AlterNatives: Black Feminism in the Postimperial Nation (2002, 1). Samantrai offers this as a particularly “instructive” model of “an aesthetic of conflict” because “it was founded on conflict and was consistently troubled by the dissent of its own affiliates” and therefore exemplified “a paradoxical practice of seeking racial and gender equality while interrogating the salience of race and gender as markers of similitude and difference” (ibid.). See also Wini Breines (2002). 3

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which Canadian immigrant feminists join as well. Transformed by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E Anzaldúa’s 1981 foundational definition of “woman of colour” in This Bridge Called My Back, subcontinental Indian feminists try to carve out a differential space in the academy in solidarity and collaboration with racialized scholars. However, notwithstanding their own histories of immigration and encounters with state-sponsored multicultural forms of racial discrimination in white-settler colonies, subcontinental scholars retain a sense of “originary essence” or tentative characteristics defined by their particular pre-immigration national or cultural affiliations. Further, with substantial postcolonial histories of their own,4 diasporic theorists arrive in the US academy as outsiders to its place-specific politics but very much as insiders to its knowledge bureaucracy. They hotfoot around the idea of racialized identity while, at the same time, occupying the “space” of colour in their host-country’s imagination. They also make the case for specificity and particularity within a pluralist, differential frame, in the name of equality and equity, within the universalist feminist imaginary. Here, they perform the paradox of diversity and enact the profound confusion between the public and the private that has characterized our times since the personal became the political. Juxtaposing conceptions of postcolonial national belonging and third-­ world affiliation with racialized identity, I question the primacy of “race” (as defined in American discourses of immigration—both forced and settlement-related—and naturalization) and the deployment of the term “woman of colour” as an appropriate analytical vehicle for the dispensation of South Asian postcolonial feminist concerns in the force-field of US academe. “Woman of colour” is an identity category marked by non-­ normative “visibility” (skin colour, sartorial codes, speech accents, self-­ identification) and a consciousness of oneself as a racialized body in the  Postcolonial histories consist both of the pre-colonization specificities of these geographical locations and an inhabitation of and engagement with the landscape of the colonial metropolis and its administrative, bureaucratic, cultural, epistemological, ideological, and literary imaginaries. It is well known that developments in the margins transformed the culture and relations of ruling in the metropolis too. Postcolonial scholars thus straddle, with some felicity, many pre-colonial, colonial and anti-colonial archives. I am aware here that I am re-inscribing one of the constantly criticized tenets of postcolonial studies: that of making the moment of colonialism the definitive one for histories of colonized regions and peoples, a before and an after, so to speak. 4

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multicultural space of white-settler colonies. “South Asian” is a political and affective affiliation to a geographical territory marked by nineteenth-­ century imperialism and non-alignment with the Cold War division of the globe into the first, second, and third worlds. In this space, ­considerations of race are not absent but are mediated in contradictory and complex ways with older histories and newer divisions of power. While both are discursive categories, the ways in which they are deployed attest to the continuing contestation between identity and epistemology in US academic politics, a contestation in which it becomes hard for “marked” bodies to resist the conflicting calls of ethical affiliations and affective alignments. This contestation may be called the “being” and “belonging” of politics, given the powerful and persuasive promise of solidarity that feminisms of colour offer to South Asian postcolonial feminisms, 25 years after these terms first emerged.5 Rigorous South Asian postcolonial feminist scholarship has consistently argued for an acute self-reflexivity in order to precisely re-engage with that promise of solidarity, while reminding us of the pitfalls of just solidarity on the grounds of identity. Third-world feminists in the US academy cannot claim the same status as those purported to be living “third-world lives” in the first-world American nation. As Vilashini  Anita Sheth and Amita Handa express this very well in “A Jewel in the Frown: Striking Accord Between India/n Feminists”: 5

Our coming to consciousness about our racial oppression has largely been delivered by Black feminist activists. When we read Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, June Jordan, Linda Carty, Peggy Bristow, Dionne Brand, Makeda Silvera, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker—truly the list goes on—we come to understand the pain and injustice of, and resistance to, white supremacist oppression and exploitation, and learn about how this hateful practice of racism, colonialism and imperialism is put together and managed daily. We thus also find in their words an entry point to talk about ourselves, our exclusions, our struggles. We realize that as feminists working towards an anti-racist project, we have not understood our particular experiences as India/ns; we have not drawn on our particular histories of oppression, domination and resistance. Through their work, we have had access to South Asian feminists, like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Punam Khosla, Himani Bannerji, Nirmala Bannerji, Partha Chatterjee, Pratibha Parmar, Lata Mani, Chandra Mohanty, Kum Kum Bhavnani, Swasti Mitter. While we have been exposed to the historical subordination of India/n women by India/n men and to the subordination of all India/s in general by the white British, we have not found points of entry to discuss the particular prejudices and privileges that we as India/s in general and India/ns from a particular class have in relation to the spectrum of non-white people”. (1993, 39–40)

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Cooppan argues, the “internal colonialism” thesis of the 1960s and 1970s and “its attendant cultural nationalism cannot account for divisions of class within minority communities, inter-minority group rivalries, or the interpenetration of minority and dominant cultures” (1994, 10).6 For me, the “third world” is a very particular geo-political imaginary and, as academics from those sites, we cannot not be more cognizant of the privileges that attend our entry into the enormously powerful hegemonic US university system. Existence in academe already presupposes class privilege, even if invisible, a privilege that is not simply connected to one’s bank account, but also carries with it the burden of cultural capital and assumes a historically wrought “right” to knowledge production. The work of South Asian postcolonial feminist scholarship is not the same as the work of feminisms of colour: this statement bears repetition simply because it has been said so many times before and yet continues not to be heard. The first has to do with the academic formulations of informed, theorized, third-world, postcolonial, postnational issues, and the second with American national concerns, even though both come to prominence in the hegemonic US academy.

 erminal Trouble: A Short, Selective History T of Race Consciousness and Racial Categories in the US in the Twentieth Century Postcolonial feminisms from South Asia, in both their third-world and transnational forms, are not to be confused with the project of women of colour in the American nation. The former belong to an economically and educationally privileged, post-1965 migration group from erstwhile third-world and now global South countries, whose history of consciousness and identity formation is derived from its origin in a post-­ Independence, postcolonial Indian subcontinent, and its diasporas, as well as its journey of immigration and settlement in the US.  Broadly  Vilashini Cooppan repeats Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s caution of this thesis, that because colonial paradigms “reason by analogy, they cannot range over the uniqueness and complexity of American racial ideology or politics” (1994, 10). 6

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speaking, its mandate is the analyses of nineteenth-century imperial discourses and Eurocentric assumptions, and also the excavation of projects of national, subaltern, and diasporic identity. Postcolonial scholarship arrives and consolidates its position in the US academy in the 1970s with the arrival of third-world intellectuals in “‘our’ contemporary metropolis” after “the dwarfing of Britain” as the colonial centre (John 1996, 11). It coincides with the ascendancy of “theory” and specifically with those theorizings that have now “acquired a metadisciplinary universal status: poststructuralism, feminism, semiotics, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and continental philosophy” (John 1996, 29). Postcolonial studies, in particular, is interested in the politics of epistemology, institutional privilege, and the narratives of representation of the Other under the sign of the West. Postcolonial South Asian scholars do not have the same status as their African-American or Hispanic peers in the American nation’s history of racial discrimination and segregation, a project of social stratification based on continually shifting colour lines in the West. The former derive a sense of self and identity from their own histories of hierarchy, based on caste and class in their nations of origin (mythical or physical), and any parallel sensibility and sympathy they might profess with histories of racialization in the US is a politicized, not natural or automatic, effect and function of immigration. However “Other” it might be made through the “common sense” logic, the everyday practices, and institutionalized technology of race (see Sheth and Handa 1993) in the US, this group does not have the same “race memory” or “racial history” that older racialized groups like the African-Americans and Hispanics have. In fact, any consciousness of race it may have is defined by its highly suspect relationship to a mythical Aryan-ness, and its indigenous opposite in a Dravidian ancestry, or an equally spurious anthropologically determined Caucasian-­ ness7 distilled in subcontinental Indian imagination. If this argument  The US legal classification of Indians contrasts with the anthropological racial classification system developed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) in which Indians were deemed Caucasian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_classification_of_Indian_Americans). In their own understanding, and through the traditions of Sanskritic scholarship and Indology, northern “Indians” trace their origins to the “Mediterranean type” and the Aryan colonization of circa 1900 B.C. Southern Indians, on the other hand, are deemed a hybrid of proto-Australoids, the predominant inhabitants of the subcontinent after the Negrito settlers c. 3000 B.C. (Hiro 2002). 7

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sounds like the setting up of a stratification of racialization, I contend that indeed such a hierarchy operates in a divisive, elusive, continually transforming, and hydra-headed politics and project of “race” itself in the American nation. Let me expand a bit on this complex and complicated history. In 1965, American President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Immigration and Nationality Act amendments proposed by Emanuel Cellar and supported by Senator Ted Kennedy, who favoured immigration based on “skills”, “contribution”, and “close relationship to those already here” as guarantors of entry, settlement, and naturalization in the US (Johnson 1965). This Act abolished the national origin quotas that had been in place in the US since the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act changed the face of the US, making it a multi-ethnic, multicultural nation with the flourish of a single signature. Pre-1965, the American nation was racially divided into 89 per cent “whites” of European descent, with the only significant minority being the 10 per cent “indigenous” blacks, that is, descendants and bearers of the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as opposed to immigrants from Africa. Today, immigrants from the Asia-Pacific Rim constitute the third most significant and influential minority group (at 5.6 per cent), after Hispanics (who have replaced English-speaking African-Americans as the largest minority in the US). Thus, post-1965 immigration was a watershed moment in the history of foreign presence in the US, a moment that is reflected in the enormous transformations in the institutional culture and social fabric of the nation. The “open doors” concept of immigration in 1965 meant that older modes of racial hierarchization were heightened and muted at the same time. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements had put racial justice, “desegregation and equal opportunity” and “a cultural revolution to affirm a distinctive black culture and a positive black identity” (Brush 2001, 179, 180) on the agenda and at the forefront of the fight for civil liberties and equality in the US, thus making obvious and transparent All this classification testifies not only to the intransient nature and intangibility of “race” as a method of tracing origins but also to the familiarity of subcontinentals with complex forms of identity-making, racialization being only one method.

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the agitation and contention between “black” and “white” racialized groups. The year 1965 marks the moment when older colonial patterns of settlement and naturalization came face to face with migration fuelled by new market forces, making multiculturalism the new governing credo of the American nation. This moment brings into being a social restructuring where, as Sara Wills has argued, “multiculturalism, explicitly as government policy” [in her analysis, in Australia] and “implicitly as ‘ethnic’ imperative elsewhere, seeks to produce the nation in relation to its ‘others’, but also in relation to an even more ‘intimate enemy’ whose loss is internally unspeakable” (2005, 51). This intimate enemy, in the case of the US, is its black citizenry, against whom the Asian immigrant is henceforth to be defined, compared, contained, regulated, assimilated, and finally celebrated (native and aboriginal peoples do not even figure in this equation, unlike in Canada and Australia, where race relations are defined by contestation with the First Peoples of the land). As noted by Frank Chin and reiterated by many Asian American scholars, state injunction is matched by a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby “the function of the Asian American is to be not black” (cited in Schueller 2003, 55). While this argument has its justifications and merits, it is also an oppressive reification of the impossibility of being something outside of the binary of “black” and “white” in the US. South Asians occupy a peculiar space in this imaginary: while in terms of skin colour they are “not white”, they are nevertheless “whiter” than their East-Asian compatriots by virtue of their command over a classical, colonial English education, which is the lingua franca of the new nation of their adoption.8 Notwithstanding the complexity of coloured hierarchies within the subcontinent, there is also the impact of the denial on the part of South Asians of the possibility of being counted as “racially black” in their own self-conception. This quintessentially subcontinental mindset of affective and political rejection of the category “black” has characterized Indian migrations. Today, South Asians are among the most socio-economically “successful” immigrants in the US, even though  Now this equation is further complicated by immigrants from ex-British colonies like Singapore and Hong Kong. 8

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the notion of the “model minority” is a self-fulfilling myth as well as a statistical fantasy in myriad, complicated ways. In fact, the notion of model minority is an index of the particular historical ways in which “race”/racial categorization has, on the one hand, operated as code for old as well as new discriminatory practices in the US, and on the other, elided and glossed over huge differences among immigrants. The permutations, combinations, and transformations in nomenclatural policies are indicative also of mutating US domestic and foreign policy and suggest that though the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Census Bureau have labelled groups racially, the groups themselves have defined and effected change in the ways in which they might be classified. This restructuring of the racial pecking order had tremendous ramifications for the state of “race” in post-civil rights US. In fact, Ruth Frankenberg and Lata Mani have suggested that the smooth transition from “post-civil rights” to the “postcolonial” in the US academy had detrimental effects on the way in which race was represented institutionally and in the public imaginary from now on (Frankenberg and Mani 1996). The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Services Act reinforced the black-white antagonism in the US by pitting its historically suppressed, “unruly” minority against the new “model” minority. Now, racial stratification worked in tandem with a new class hierarchy, dividing the nation into a pre-1965 “general” populace and the post-1965 “highly qualified” entrants who came into an increasingly competitive capitalist market economy state. For South Asians, who were not ascribed any racial category at all until the early twentieth century in the US, this hierarchy worked hand-in-glove with their ancient inherited ones of caste and class privilege in the Indian subcontinent, which historically ensured for them access to English, the global language of “progress” and “prosperity”, that now procured for them an easier assimilation in the American melting pot. In the new multicultural nation, they became, in the span of a mere 50  years, the most educationally and economically “successful” non-­ European immigrant group in the US. Fuelling this new hierarchy was a well-funded, concerted effort by the foreign diplomacy departments during the Cold War years (1947–1989) to drain away the “brains” in newly

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independent Asian and African nations9 from America’s perceived foreign and public enemy number one, the Communist bloc. The brain drain from third-world countries is the most ideologically marked battle between the Eastern and Western blocs in these years, effecting a rearrangement and repositioning of sites of knowledge. The battle for intellectual capital is apparent at the 1955 Bandung conference in Indonesia, culminating in the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, and the Suez Crisis in 1956–57, leading to the creation of the first United Nations peace-keeping forces. In this battle, the left in the US is an important ally for third-world intellectuals (who arrive at the shores of the US academy with an impressive baggage of the intellectual histories of their own consciousness and subject formation) as it contends with the role of the American nation in its proxy wars between North and South Korea (1950–53), the Lebanon Crisis (1958), the Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961), the Dominican Intervention (1965), and, in Vietnam, the prolonged war of containment of communism in South Asia (1957–75). Thus, the spectacular ascent of postcolonial scholarship in the US academy is no mere fluke of history, but a way of addressing and documenting this third-world socio-political ferment and making it intelligible in the first world. Postcolonialism emerges as the dream of a common language, with newly independent nations of the third world establishing their stake in the self-narration of old histories and the creation of new knowledges. This is in addition to their delineation of a non-aligned way of being that falls pawn to neither the first nor the second world, while engaging in multipartite dialogue and official multilateralism with both. It was aided by the broader political strategy of interdependence of nations and the need for the US to demonstrate to the world that “American” ideals of freedom, democracy, and capitalism were superior to those offered by communist states such as the Soviet Union and its Eastern European  Immigrants from newly independent African nation-states get interpellated by pan-Africanism, a development that is now being questioned by many scholars from the continent, who speak of a hierarchy between descendants of slaves in the US and people from the old continent. It is a hierarchy that cuts both ways. On the one hand, routes to power are more open to the established blacks of the US, and on the other, newer people from Africa have a “more authentic” claim on their ancestry and heritage, as well as higher stakes in postcoloniality. 9

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allies, China, Cuba, and other authoritarian states, even as it waged war in many sites. Senator Ted Kennedy sees “enlightened” immigration legislation as a persuasive “psychological tool” against communism, and President Lyndon B. Johnson uses the idea of a “Great Society” to attract skilled professional labour to “the land of opportunity” (Asian.Nation). This is the influential and charged atmosphere in which South Asian academics and intellectuals, under the mantle of postcolonial scholarship, make their presence felt in the US. This is the route through which they participate in the American left’s celebration of third-world self-­assertions and struggles; this is also the political route through which they claim solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement, which made the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Services Act possible in the first place. But the old racial divide in the US between “whites” and “blacks” still has a fundamental hold on its national imaginary. There is a lot of work still to be done to address the deep wound of slavery and segregation in the US, both historically and at the present time. Although colonized peoples from Asia and Africa are subject to related and similar discourses of racial categorization, “race” functions differently, in significant class-inflected ways, for professionally qualified immigrants seeking participation in the new nation, even if they are from postimperial and postcolonial contexts. African intellectuals and scholars, in this scenario, are hailed far more easily, than their Asian counterparts into the dream of pan-Africanism, though recent scholarship has begun to tap the equally complex and complicated reciprocal hierarchy between third-world “authentic blacks” from Africa and first-world American descendants of “black Atlantic” traffic (see Okeke-Ihekerijika 2003, also Feliciano 2007, Hackshaw 2007). Asian immigrants, on the other hand, are harder to incorporate racially within a professionally ascendant immigrant class, which is why the multiple and contradictory discourses of race spring up to try and categorize what is essentially a class group. The equation changes when the progeny of this professionally qualified class gets incorporated into the national racial schema and get naturalized as legitimate American citizens of an “equal” society. Their conscientization into political methods of responding to such categorization is also the important transformative moment when theories of hybridity, diaspora, and “third cultures” really proliferate and make sense. However, the class privilege is ­transferred

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down the generations along with cultural memory and alternative traditional ways of knowing the world, only one of which is “race” in a legacy of proliferating, and often oppositional identity groups.

Race, Postcolonialism, and South Asianness I understand “race” in two ways: (a) as an anthropological and ideological tool of social stratification and ethnocentric control exercised by nineteenth-­century European rulers, imperialists, and colonizers; and (b) as a technology of contemporary governance and continuing hegemonic exploitation of marked peoples within white-settler multicultural nations like the US, Canada, and Australia. There are other phenomenological expressions and theoretical explanations of race (many of which predate nineteenth-century Europe), but for the purposes of this chapter, these somewhat simple and postimperial definitions operate as my guiding principles. “Race” can be grasped as a strategy of imposing European civilizational values upon people simultaneously rendered different and inferior, strange, and Other, in relation to a post-Enlightenment, white, Christian construction of being. This broad generalization applies to the “civilizing” imperative of the “white man’s burden” that made non-whites out of colonized subjects, as well as to the management tactics of multicultural white-settler nation-states that seek to control and assimilate their “constructed-as-Other” citizenry, whether they are Irish, Jewish, or Islamic, through racialized discourses that change chameleon-like to suit the national agendas. In the precolonial Indian subcontinent, a long and continuous history of heterogeneous conquests and settlements ensured that diverse racial narratives were well entrenched and ideologically operational even before the arrival of Europeans. Arguably, British colonization became “an enabling violation” (Spivak 2004, 524) that engendered a creative and dynamic process through which Indian subcontinentals engaged in the dialogue and project of modernity with their European counterparts. In fact, as has been argued by scholars from Bhikhu Parekh (2000) to Leela Gandhi (1998) to Liz Philipose (2007), the project of modernity is not only not the sole prerogative of the West but becomes possible

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solely through interaction and exchange between the so-called and constructed East and West. This is a radical reading of modernity that Francis Hutchins (1967, 2015), Stuart Hall et al. (1992), and Paul Gilroy (1995) argue for most persuasively as well. The history of European colonial presence in the Indian subcontinent is thus a multifaceted and fascinating one, one that, while not within the purview of this chapter, nevertheless has a direct and particular bearing on the emergence of postcolonial scholarship in Anglo-North America. The intellectual and caste/class elite of the Indian subcontinent made their presence felt right from the first moments of contact with the European world, and actually understood themselves as the inheritors of a far superior civilization. They took the opportunity to enhance their own civilizational value by dialogue with the new one along with reforms at the home base, reforms that were inextricably linked with the struggle for the independence, self-governance, and establishment of new nation-­ states in the subcontinent, and sparked transformations in the colonial metropolis too. To quote Mary E. John, “the imperative to Westernize in post-Independence India came coded within the institutions, structures, and terminologies of modernization, progress, and secularism” and enabled the middle class to “take advantage of the mobilities of education” (1996, 10). It is no surprise then that “our transition to first-world institutions, especially in the United States, [is] quite possibly among the smoothest within the third world” (ibid., 11). Here, I would like to introduce the useful distinction between “race” and “racial categories” as socially instituted ideological tools of governance and domination on the one hand, and what Paula Stewart Brush calls “race consciousness” on the other. In an insightful essay, “Problematizing the Race Consciousness of Women of Colour” (2001), Brush defines race consciousness as “a politicized, oppositional consciousness of race and racism” where “race is understood as a central constituent of identity” and “racism becomes a point of resistance” (ibid., 173). Making a generational comparison between older and newer black feminists, Brush argues that the realization of “being Black” is not an inherently racial event, but was made possible through “the discourse and activism of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements [that] raised black women’s race consciousness, enabling them to understand that and how the personal is political”

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(ibid.). She concludes that the consciousness of being “raced” cannot be assumed to be a given or automatic, but is the result of social movements that bring about this conscientization. Brush uses Belinda Robnett’s formulation of this self-realization as a “conversion process” that entails a three-pronged process of (a) developing a sense of “we” consciousness; (b) adopting an oppositional interpretive frame; and (c) mobilizing oppositional accounts and practices (Brush 2001, 180, 178, 179). The “conversion” of black people who “differently confronted, interpreted, and accepted the political discourse” had to take different forms “depending on their positions, especially on their education, class, gender, and geographic location” (ibid., 180, this author’s emphasis).10 Persuaded by Brush’s analysis, I offer that the “race consciousness” of South Asian postcolonial feminists as women of colour is a particularly problematic development in the Anglo-North American academy, given the socio-political and historical contexts of “skilled” post-1965 immigration. Their own histories of caste, class, and educational privilege afford for them “noneconomic forms of capital, such as social and cultural capital” that Cynthia Feliciano traces back to their “pre-immigration class position” in their nations of origin (2007, 316, 317). Wini Breines, in a wonderfully rich comparative historical account of the Bread and Roses and the Combahee River collectives, cites confessions of early black feminists like Audre Lorde on “how forbidden it was for black women to write” (2002, 1114). This assertion is repeated by early women of colour, many of them first-generation university students, who used poetry to convey their politics as a way of opposing the “theoretical-language” hegemony of the academy. Their entrance into the space of the university is not only a racial accomplishment and gendered transgression but one that, equally importantly, crosses the class barrier.11 This is not a journey that would resonate in the same way with­  I am sure there is an interesting study waiting to be done on how the religious language and trope of “conversion” have inflected social movements, the work on Buddhism by Dalit scholars such as B.R. Ambedkar in India being one such example. 11  Speaking about “the underrepresentation of Native women in Bridge” as not being particularly anomalous, Deborah A. Miranda asks of her “sisters of colour”: “I ask, remember the differences between indigenous and diasporic; between indigenous and exile; between still-colonized native and freed slave; between choosing education as a way to speak, and having literacy shoved down your throat in a boarding school far from home, beaten into you” (2002, 193, 200). 10

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third-­world scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Inderpal Grewal, Sara Suleri, Himani Banerjee, and so on, who would have been second-, if not third-generation university attendees, and whose passage to the US is “overdetermined by class aspirations” (John 1996, 7), whether they arrived with competitive international scholarships or accompanied professional husbands. After all, one cannot discount the symbolic weight of the historical event that “two women graduated from Calcutta University in 1883, before women in Britain were granted academic credentials” (John 1996, 9, emphasis in the original). The historical descendants of these women take on “political functions in their new locations” via what John calls the “unintended effects” of “discrepant dislocations” (ibid., 16). Whatever oppositional or revolutionary potential these women might have had before immigrating, the move from “a sheltered Indian middle class environment, where a consciousness of privilege predominates, to a milieu as highly sexualized and with such intensified and refined ‘technologies of gender’ as the North American one does lead to the espousal of a more explicitly feminist politics” (ibid., 16). In fact, this social awareness and politicization is the effect of the dislocation of class and the delocalization of place in the diaspora, and illustrates how the signifiers and markers of the same get read, interpreted and harnessed in the multicultural, capitalist regime of the white-settler nation. Thus, we have the volatile structural contestation in the US academy between English-educated, upper-caste, middle-class, mobile, predominantly heterosexual South Asian scholars and equally positioned white feminists about who can “speak” and who exercise control over knowledge production and representation, a contestation that comes to a head with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988). Meanwhile, the sphere of “black feminisms” is taken up by either “local” African-American stakeholders rather than immigrant intellectuals from Africa, who are predominantly male, or by local Black Panthers activism, whose particular patriarchal concerns are only now being excavated. In fact, there is a peculiarly gendered inflection to women in the Humanities and Social Sciences from the Indian subcontinent who demand a space in the US academy, a gendering that is influenced by the “social demand” to have available an accomplished and attractive English-­educated “bride”

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pool in the highly competitive caste-and-religion-­determined marriage market (witness the continuing phenomenon of the matrimonial column in both subcontinental and diasporic media). For them, neither “race” nor “class” is a central defining principle (they don’t have to think about it); instead, a standing and speaking place in “academic” feminism becomes their “narrative about the discovery of [self and] representation itself ” (John 1996, 19). In contrast, as Breines notes, most of the founding members of black feminist groups like Combahee River Collective were “lesbians or in the process of coming out” (2002, 1112). She quotes Barbara Smith that “it was not an accident that most of them were lesbians or bisexuals since they had less to lose in staking out a radical feminist antihomophobic or prolesbian politics” (ibid., 1113). In this epistemological territory-staking, it is useful to remember, as Breines shows, that the black feminist struggle in the Civil War era was a struggle for racial justice rather than for the ideal of sisterly integration so dear to their white feminist peers (ibid., 1099). Breines marks the significance of the “time gap between the development of the radical white women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and the political articulation of a black feminism more than five years later” which she explains as follows: “At the moment that white early secondwavers were developing an autonomous socialist feminism, black nationalism was at its height” (ibid., 1113). Black nationalism is fought explicitly on the grounds of “being black”, which is different from anti-imperialist nationalisms of the third world. But, in neither the women’s liberation movement nor the nationalist movement could black women assume subject status; their sense of exclusion from the two liberationist discourses of the period is eloquently expressed in the title All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. (Breines 2002, 1121)

Breines shows how the first black feminists’ involvement in lesbian politics had its political fallout in the “heterosexist and homophobic” chauvinism of their black “brothers” who became embroiled in “romantic liaisons with white women” (ibid., 1120). This struggle over white men is not so pronounced in third-world scholars from South Asia, and the

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competition for white men is not staked between black and South Asian women anyway. Breines goes on to elaborate that black feminist struggle was also against a kind of “third worldism” that “characterized the politics of many sixties white radicals” who “supported a position that verged on the sycophantic and/or adulation of third world revolutionaries” (ibid., 1108). She quotes Kobena Mercer who diagnoses this eager embrace of third worldism as a guilty denial by white leftists, as a “dis-affiliation from [their] dominant self-images, a kind of strategic self-othering” (ibid., 1108). And just as the uncritical recognition of the heroism of third-­ world freedom fighters by the US left is linked to a motivated “denial of the legitimacy of their white and middle-class backgrounds” (ibid.), third-world postcolonial intellectuals’ ready inheritance and sanctioned claim to a romantic, nostalgic “third worldism” leaves unexamined their own caste-and-class positionalities.12 Such a strategic occupation of “third world” space can be applied to postcolonial South Asian scholars in the US academy too, notwithstanding their own legitimate cultural memory and historical struggles. One of the important appeals Spivak makes is precisely to the project of “unlearning our privilege as our loss” and not succumbing to the “instant soup syndrome”, whereby you “just add the euphoria of hot water and you have soup, and you don’t have to question yourself as to how the power was produced” (1990, 9). My doubt about the validity of “women of colour” feminisms for South Asian scholars is prompted by such a desire to, if not unlearn, then at least be aware of and understand the processes of production of my own privilege. Postcolonial scholars, with their superb education in the traditions of European epistemologies and their involvement in the  For example, the anonymous writer of “For My Sister: Smashing the Walls of Pretense and Shame” wonders “what it would be like for us all to speak more openly of the most secretive things about our own communities” (Anon. 2002, 295). She/he further elaborates: “There seems to exist a general lack of priority among class-privileged South Asian Americans regarding the building of a sense of solidarity and community with people in the working class and other people of colour. This lack of community hurts us all, sister: we lose contact with a piece of our own humanity in the process of playing the capitalist game. The suicides of our young adults, people who are newcomers to the ‘game,’ testify to this loss” (ibid., 295–96). Of course, she/he is speaking of the second generation of the diaspora, but the culpability and conscientization of the first streams of immigrants cannot be evaded either. 12

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s­ ocio-­political ferment across the third world, arrive more as insiders than outsiders in the project of knowledge-making in the US academy. For example, the Holy Trinity of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak hails from third-world nations (Egypt and India, respectively) that were fully imbricated in the project of modernity via early encounters and exchanges in Enlightenment. The three postcolonial scholars come from the upper echelons of society in Cairo, Bombay, and Calcutta, respectively, metropolitan colonial centres that were the hub of cultural ferment and cosmopolitanism. The topic of “Arab” or “Middle Eastern” scholarship in the US is a fascinating and complicated case study in itself, outside the purview of this chapter, though not unrelated, but here I am not making just a simple or simplistic case for South Asian scholars to be considered amongst the fabled model minorities: I acknowledge the intricacy of “race” as a double-edged sword in the “common sense” social sense that has been used against and by them systematically in the annals of US history. However, given the privileged subcontinental immigration post-1965, the scholars who come to take their places in the US academy in the 1970s and 1980s, are a very different kettle of fish from their “black” peers. Their struggles are for different epistemological rights, though fought in the academic world too. The right to voice, representation, and standing in the university is a matter of class and professional equity, one that upper-caste, middle-­ class, English-educated South Asian intellectuals have already won for themselves before they even arrive on the shores of American academe. They enter the US as scholars. Whether this translates to equal access in terms of hiring, funding, and publishing practices is an important, valid question, but the symbolic weight of their academic history cannot be negated either. Their stake in the US university system, dictated not so much by the right to “speak” as to be “hired”, is at cross purposes with the equally necessary and legitimate struggle for US black feminists and women of colour just to enter and be accepted in the hallowed halls of knowledge. But some South Asian postcolonial feminists soon declare shared concerns with US feminists of colour, on the grounds of colour, most particularly regarding the production of knowledge and subject in Anglo-American feminist theory, even though they do not have the same nor even a parallel relationship to racialization or race consciousness in

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the American nation. The agenda and tag of feminisms of colour (and their contemporary partners in critical race theory) are taken up by some South Asian postcolonial feminists in their interrogation of the workings of the multicultural academy in the US. Some affiliate themselves and self-identify with the label “women of colour”; others vehemently oppose and object to such an imposition of specifically American racial templates of categorization. This alignment of third-world postcolonial scholarship with feminisms of colour, while conducive to conversations and coalitions in the story of feminism, leads to the competitive conflict game of access to institutional power. Instead of offering a broad-based platform of equity and equality across social groups, the institutionalization and disciplining of feminism in the academy on the whole has led to the containment of oppositional, border-crossing, social justice work on the one hand, and to the in-fighting over professional and decidedly middle-class privileges and positions in the university on the other. Thus (skipping a few stages in this struggle), the charge holds water that when affirmative action policies are put into place, “foreign born” postcolonial and transnational feminists are valued over “indigenous” and “pre-national” black and Latina/Chicana scholars of colour and flung in a merry-go-round of adversarial quota fulfilment. All of this happens, of course, against the backdrop of white privilege and the power of whiteness that affirmative action policies seek to redress. Let me elaborate on where I am coming from. In a particularly charged example of American exceptionalism, Malini Johar Schueller suggests in her 2003 essay, “Articulations of African-Americanism in South Asian Postcolonial Theory: Globalism, Localism, and the Question of Race” that “every identity, institution, and social practice in the United States” is “saturated with race” and therefore, “the homogenized ideas of global diaspora and transnationalism, all of which are being increasingly deployed…as emancipatory paradigms (often beyond race), in fact meet their limits when we introduce the question of race” (2003, 53, 36). Schueller contends that race is a blind spot in the work of postcolonial scholars like Homi K.  Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai, and Gayatri Spivak, even as they, she states, “construct themselves in some way in response to blackness” (ibid., 55). Sandra K. Soto echoes this concern more specifically in her 2005 question: “Where in the Transnational

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World Are U.S.  Women of Color?” Soto critiques Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal’s “transnational” position articulated in their book An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational World, and questions the conflation of the terms “third world woman” and “woman of colour”. She expresses doubts that these “critical genealogies” are indeed germane to contemporary “transnational feminist cultural practices of research and teaching” (2005, 113, 115). Schueller and Soto are responding to the divide-and-conquer politics of an institutionalized and racialized feminism that Barbara Christian warned us against decades ago in “The Race for Theory” (1957). There is much merit in these cautions against the homogenizing impulses of current diasporic, postcolonial, and transnational theories. However, a “logical” conclusion of this injunction, that postcolonial theory should make the analysis of race de rigueur in its analyses of power in America, is problematic (and a bit myopic) because it makes a “common sense” and arbitrary (even if consolidated and entrenched) whiteness the ultimate standard bearer and arbiter of justice for the whole world! While the analysis of race, in its imperial and postimperial manifestations, remains foundationally integral to the work of South Asian postcolonial and transnational feminists, it works on a different register that is not confined to the discussion of race only within the borders of the American nation, but takes into consideration the ways in which “race” has been a factor in the international distribution of power. Even as the issue of Asians’ relationship to blackness remains a pertinent one in American life, I am not sure that the American discussion of “race”, understood in reference to whiteness, addresses these issues in the global arena of scholarship. There, the politics of the first versus third worlds and global North versus South relations come into play in hiring, funding, administrative, and publishing hierarchies. Thus, the US-specific struggle does not translate into a global template for racial justice, either in the world arena or even within the American nation, given the different ways in which racial formation is understood and deployed in diverse geographical locales and historically specific sites. I do take seriously, however, the charge that US women of colour come to “disappear” in the trajectories of transnationality in the American academy.

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Conclusion Current theories of transnationalism announce a celebratory and emancipatory narrative that protests (too much) to transcend borders and national peripheries, no matter that in a post-9/11 world, border control and security have become entrenched terms of discourse (attesting to the resurgence of an unexamined patriotism), and that fundamentalist nationalisms are on the rise the world over. In the field of feminism, which, as I have argued (2007), behaves like a nation, this has posed a few problems for postcolonial feminisms, which traditionally straddled the newly independent nations of the third world and the new world in America. When postcolonial theorists take on the racial politics of colour in the US, they make opaque their own caste-and-class-based privileged positionalities vis-à-vis their places of origin while privileging the racial domination schema of America. By taking up a discussion of South Asian feminist postcolonial theorizations around race and racialization at its moment of historical emergence in the late 1970s, I have hoped to offer a reconsideration of the very term “woman of colour” itself in relation to subcontinental Indian scholars (and perhaps others) from the third world. This chapter thus offers itself as an internal self-critique of the way the term “feminisms of colour” has been deployed by, and characterizes the political description and agenda of, some South Asian postcolonial and diasporic intellectuals, who are racialized and marked as “other” in white-­settler colonies. I am careful to say internal, because, in an academy that continues to be marked by the black/white binary, I do not want to argue that “race” does not matter; indeed I cannot: the overwhelming evidence of power differentials would mitigate against me. In this court, it is crucial to remember that the jury is still out as far as issues of representation and voice are concerned. Therefore, my argument is not to be taken as a call for or mandate against feminisms of colour or critical race theory. My plea is for a closer and more nuanced reading of the way the term “women of colour” circulates for South Asian feminists at a specific moment in US history, specifically the 1970s when postcolonial theory is on the ascendant in the AngloAmerican academy. I contend that the broader political goal of

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­ ostcolonial theory (an agenda Schueller objects to vehemently), as a p methodology to unpack the acute historical specificities of different power relations in the global North and South today, is undermined by un-self-reflexive and unreconstructed uses of the identity category of colour in the US. I argue that such uses of the term reinforce the black/ white binary of power relations in Anglo-North America, instead of disarming it, as was intended by the intellectuals who originally used the term within the nation. When second-wave feminisms struggled with the questions of place, belonging, and affiliation as political forms of protest, they were not valorizing just identity; rather they were examining the different ways in which one’s identity impacted upon one’s politics. Postcolonial feminism, with its initial emphasis on the third world vis-à-­vis the first and recent analyses of the global North and South, is a more accurate umbrella term under which to mobilize and argue for the constituencies of South Asian scholars who date their entry into the US academic life from around the mid-1960s. If one has to take the foundational analyses of race seriously, then one would have to address the narrators who tell the stories of differently “marked” and “located” female bodies at the end of the 1970s; stories that cannot be divorced from the socio-political upheavals in the US following the slow and sure squashing and silencing of the Civil Rights Movement and the significant increase in immigration in the US. On the one hand, an ethics of political solidarity is expressed in the coming together of “women of colour” and “third world women”, and on the other there are significant, indeed incommensurable, differences in the “origins” and “affiliations to place” of these groups of women. Women of colour are the nationed and legitimate, therefore unruly and troubled/ troublesome outsiders within the American imaginary, while third-world women are the pliant but ungovernable aliens, foreigners to the dominant “belonging” of the nation, who have to be domesticated using administrative, judicial, and social codes of civilizational superiority. Thus, the valence of terms like “woman of colour”, “third world woman”, postcolonial, and transnational feminism have to be understood not only discursively within the context of a multicultural, and therefore racialized, Western/Northern context but more specifically as separate histories of oppositional theory that explain the transformations in the notion of

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feminist “identity” in the twentieth century. The development of these terms has to be historically linked to the extraordinary movements of professional bodies from the third world to the first, the exigencies of diasporic displacement, and the resurgence of a racially fundamentalist modern nation-state in this century.

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Gilroy, Paul. 1995. The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hackshaw, Alana C. 2007. Black ethnicity and racial community: African-­ Americans and West Indian immigrants in the United States. In Constructing borders/crossing boundaries: Race, ethnicity, and immigration, ed. Caroline B. Brettell, 149–184. Lanham: Lexington Books. Hall, Stuart, David Held, and Anthony McGrew, eds. 1992. Modernity and its futures. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with the Open University. Hiro, Dilip, ed. 2002. The rough guide history of India. London: Rough Guides. Hutchins, Francis. 2015 (1967). The illusion of permanence: British imperialism in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. John, Mary E. 1996. Postcolonial feminists in the western intellectual field: Anthropologists and native informants. In Discrepant dislocations: Feminism, theory, and postcolonialism, ed. Mary E. John, 5–28. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnson, Lyndon B. 1965. LBJ on immigration. President Lyndon B.  Johnson’s remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill. http://www.lbjlibrary.org/ lyndon-baines-johnson/timeline/lbj-on-immigration. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. Kaplan, Caren, and Inderpal Grewal. 2005. An introduction to women’s studies: Gender in a transnational world. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Miranda, Deborah A. 2002. “What’s wrong with a little fantasy?”: Storytelling from the (still) ivory tower. In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation, ed. Gloria E.  Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, 192–202. London/New York: Routledge. Moraga, Cherríe L., and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, eds. c.1981. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. Watertown: Persephone Press. Okeke-Ihejirika, Philomena. 2003. Homeland vs identity: The experiences of first generation African youth in multicultural Canada. Paper presented at the 46th annual meeting of the African Studies Association, 30 October–2 November, Boston. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2000. Rethinking multiculturalism: Cultural diversity and political theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Philipose, Elizabeth. 2007. Decolonising political theory. Radical Pedagogy 9 (1). http://www.radicalpedagogy.org/radicalpedagogy.org/Decolonizing_ Political_Theory.html. Accessed 29 Dec 2016. Samantrai, Ranu. 2002. Introduction. In AlterNatives: Black feminism in the postimperial nation, ed. Ranu Samantrai, 1–28. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sandoval, Chela. 2000. Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Schueller, Malini J. 2003. Articulations of African-Americanism in South Asian postcolonial theory: Globalism, localism, and the question of race. Cultural Critique 55 (Fall): 35–62. Sheth, Anita, and Amita Handa. 1993. A jewel in the frown: Striking accord between India/n feminists. In Returning the gaze: Essays on racism, feminism and politics, ed. Himani Bannerji, 38–82. Toronto: Sister Vision Press. Soto, Sandra K. c.2005. Where in the transnational world Are U.S. women of color? In Women’s studies for the future: Foundations, interrogations, politics, ed. Elizabeth L. Kennedy and Agatha Beins, 111–124. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Spivak, Gayatri C. 1985. The Rani of Sirmur. In Europe and its others: Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the sociology of literature, July, ed. Francis Barker, vol. 1, 128–151. Colchester: University of Essex. ———. 1988. Can the subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation of culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1990. In The postcolonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym. New York/London: Routledge. ———. 2004. Righting wrongs. South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2/3): 523–581. Wills, S. 2005. Passengers of memory: Constructions of British immigrants in post-imperial Australia. Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (1): 94–107.

6 Gendering the Favela: Brazilian National Identities on Screen Sarah McDonald

Introduction This century, the favela has become one of the dominant images of Brazil on screen. The favelas of Brazil are urban communities that often sit on the economic, political, and, at times, geographical fringe of many of Brazil’s large urban centers. These communities are often typed as being violent places marked by what is often portrayed as an inherent criminality. In an international context, and perhaps within Brazil itself, some of the most famous favelas, or those most often depicted in the media, are those in Rio de Janeiro, possibly Brazil’s most famous city. In Rio, favelas can be found not just on the urban fringes of the city but also atop the hills that surround the city and at some of its most iconic locations, such as the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana. These urban communities have served as a backdrop to many films and music videos, and in the

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build-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic games, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro became iconic emblems of the nation.1 The repeated use of Brazil’s urban shantytowns as the location for many films has opened up a range of new ways of approaching the modern nation that significantly differ from the construction of these marginal spaces in Brazil’s cinematic history. However, one aspect of the representation of the favela on screen has remained constant: the films that deal with this space are overwhelmingly male narratives of what is consistently framed as a masculine space. This tendency, inherited from filmmakers such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Carlos Diegues, has been taken to a narrative extreme with the 2002 release of City of God, followed more recently by Elite Squad (2007), Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010), and Alemão: Both Sides of the Operation (2014). While the signs of identity and nationhood associated with the favela have been reformulated in a contemporary context that allows for the expression of a variety of realities for these communities, at the center of these narratives remain the power struggles of male characters on Brazil’s urban fringe. These stories have exoticized a hyper-violent, hyper-masculine environment that both forms and feeds consumer expectations. One filmmaker has reconfigured the space of the favela in recent cinema by inverting the historical gendering of this space and creating a new narrative that centers around the personal stories of young women in these marginal communities. Tata Amaral has been described as one of the most important Brazilian filmmakers of the last two decades (see Marsh 2012, 154–180). She has forged a career in directing for television and directing and producing documentary films. In her 2006 full-length fiction film Antônia, Amaral contests the limited representation of the urban poor in Brazilian cinema, offering an interpretation of these urban spaces that reveals a complex mesh of inhabitants with varying desires and values. Through broadening representations of the urban fringe, Amaral enables a discourse on the nation and its citizens that permits a new narrative of space and allows other conceptions of brasilidade (Brazilianness)  For more information on the construction of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, see “South of the Border: Locating a Cinematic Brazil,” in Sarah McDonald (2011, 23–50), and Bianca Freire Medeiros O Rio de Janeiro que Hollywood inventou (2005). 1

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to be voiced. Her film renegotiates the gendering of national identities and makes the distinction between seeing and being seen in contemporary Brazilian film. In order to understand the radical departure made by Amaral in her depiction of these urban fringe communities, it is important to examine some of the key tropes established in national cinema production that focuses on these urban spaces. These tropes have come to reflect the association of violence and criminality in Brazil with the favela communities. As Derek Pardue states, these locations are seen as cultivating inhabitants who are “criminal, lazy, passive, uneducated, and in short, second-class citizens” (2007, 682). This perception is further exacerbated by the fact that the young, primarily black young men in these communities are subject to profiling in the popular media that both criminalizes and dehumanizes them in a way that indirectly attempts to excuse the fact that the death rate among this group is many times higher than the national average (Wild 2010, 719). These dominant perceptions are sometimes challenged via on-screen constructions of these spaces, but even in doing so these productions tend to fall back on an image of a community dominated by criminal and violent young men. The focus in Brazilian national cinema on the favela and its inhabitants can be seen from as early as the 1950s in the films of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, in particular, Rio Zona Norte and Rio 40 Graus. In these films, the director turns his attention to these spaces and attempts to configure them on screen using a gritty realism that looks at the struggles of the community’s inhabitants. In these two iconic films, the narratives center on masculine stories told from a masculine viewpoint. The confronting reality portrayed on-screen stands in stark contrast to French director Marcel Camus’ 1956 film Orfeu Negro, which is also set against the backdrop of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.2 In Orfeu Negro, life in the favela is presented as idyllic, indeed almost bucolic in nature, establishing strong tropes of identity around the images of samba, carnival, and the “poor-­ but-­happy” creative inhabitants of the favela. This film, which achieved  Orfeu Negro was based on the verse play Orfeu Negro da Conceição: Tragédia Carioca, written by the Modernist poet Vinícius de Moraes, and which was itself based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. 2

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a great deal of success both nationally and internationally,3 established a legacy in the on-screen construction of the favela that Brazilian filmmakers have subsequently sought, directly or indirectly, to challenge. Many have attempted to move away from an exoticized and socio-politically neutral portrayal of these spaces toward successively more confronting portrayals of these communities. Nonetheless, what has remained consistent is the dominance of masculine narratives that define the space and its inhabitants. In fact, in the twenty-first century, these portrayals have, at times, almost completely eliminated the female presence from the favela. One of the films that directly attempted to overturn the idyllic vision of the favela, established in Orfeu Negro, was the 1998 film Orfeu, directed by the renowned Brazilian filmmaker Carlos Diegues.4 In this film, Diegues directly engages with the earlier film, retelling the story in a modern context and attempting to nuance the portrayal of the favela community by introducing elements such as drug trafficking and the violent clashes between traffickers and police which, by the 1990s, had become endemic in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Orfeu, like its predecessor, is based on Vinícius de Moraes’ verse play, and therefore the narrative focus is on the love story between the titular character and Eurydice. However, in Diegues’ reformulation and modernization of the tale, the narrative impetus comes from the conflictual relationship between Orfeu and Lucio, the head of the local drug gang and Orfeu’s childhood friend. It is these two male characters who set up opposing narratives for masculine identity in this film. Both these manifestations of masculinity are primarily one-dimensional. On the one hand, the portrayal of Orfeu falls back into tropes around carnival, samba and music, the key icons of brasilidade and the favela as a sort of utopia of national cultural production. On the other hand, Lucio, as a trafficker, is seen as a threat to this cultural heritage through his conflict with Orfeu, the embodiment of this heritage, and a destructive force in the community more broadly. Female characters are reduced to images of “good” and “bad” women via Eurydice, a newcomer to Rio de Janeiro, and Mira, who is depicted at the  The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes (1959) and Best Foreign Film Oscar (1960), among numerous other international prizes. 4  Carlos Diegues was one of the filmmakers associated with the Cinema Novo or New Cinema movement of the 1960s. He is one of Brazil’s most respected filmmakers of that generation. 3

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beginning of the film as being in a casual sexual relationship with Orfeu. Like Orfeu and Lucio, these two characters are constructed in opposition to each other. This occurs both through their on-screen actions and their way of carrying themselves, overtly sexual and confident in the case of Mira and reserved, naïve, and untainted in the case of Eurydice. Their clothing reinforces this: Mira is always dressed in short black dresses, while Eurydice is more conservatively dressed and always in soft hues with pale pink dominating. These colors reinforce the typing of these characters. Despite the presence of these two female characters, they are in many ways at the mercy of the environment of the favela, and, more specifically, of the actions of the male characters within that geographical space. The death of Eurydice at the hands of Lucio epitomizes this and sets off the chain of events that sees the demise both of Lucio at the hands of Orfeu and, shortly after, of Orfeu by Mira, who has been driven crazy by Orfeu’s rejection of her in favor of Eurydice. Diegues’ treatment of the space of the favela does reveal an attempt to disrupt and diversify past representations of the space, but the depiction falls down in its reliance on essentially reductionist tropes of these urban communities. The elements of the portrayal that remain in the realm of the mythic in the retelling of the story of Orfeu clash with the attempt to introduce realist elements and effectively undermine these elements.5 What isn’t challenged at all in Orfeu is the dominance of a masculine world view in the depiction of the space and its inhabitants. The few female characters present—Eurydice, Mira, and, to a lesser extent, Orfeu’s mother, played by the iconic Afro-Brazilian actress Zeze Motta—do not convincingly inhabit an active subjectivity in the film: they are varyingly passive or reactive in the face of the actions of the male characters. This masculinization of the cinematic portrayal of the favela was taken to an extreme with the release of the 2002 film City of God (directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund). This critically acclaimed film represents a significant shift in the depiction of the favela on screen. A combination of stylized filming and extreme violence made this film very different to previous national films that had garnered success on  See Lucia Nagib (2003) and Sarah McDonald “Girls and Samba: The Production of a Gendered Tropicality” in McDonald (2011, 51–84). 5

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the international stage. In addition, City of God took the depiction of the environment of the favela as masculine much further than any of the productions mentioned above. City of God is based on the novel of the same name written by Paulo Lins, a former resident of the actual City of God, a sprawling favela which was originally established in the 1960s on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The film depicts the development of City of God from a poor community lacking in infrastructure to the sprawling urban slum that developed as the community grew. It depicts the rise of the drug trade and the effect it had on the community over time, introducing increasingly high levels of violence as the drug trade became its central industry. The story is told from the point of view of Rocket, a young man who is navigating growing up in this community. It is presented as a series of vignettes which serve to tell individual stories of different members of the community, tying these together across the narrative of the film to tell a broader story of both favela life and Rocket’s escape from the community. Both the main character and the central protagonist of each of the recounted stories are male. This instantly sets up the viewpoint for the whole narrative of the film as masculine, reinforced by the depiction of the space overall as an exclusively male domain through the effacement of nearly all elements of the feminine in these communities. There are only two female characters that are developed at any length, Berenice and Angélica. Both these characters are present only in their roles as girlfriends of central characters, and, in the case of Angélica, also the object of the narrator’s affections. In a sense, Berenice and Angélica are in fact one character as the roles they play are identical across the two storylines they inhabit. Berenice is the first of these two to be seen on screen: she is the girlfriend of Shaggy, one of the members of the first gang we see in the evolution of the City of God. She has a relatively minor presence on screen, and there is little development of any back story for her character; however, she is the impetus for a critical scene that also sets up a precedent for the role of young females in the favela. It is at Berenice’s insistence that Shaggy seeks to flee the favela when he is on the run after a botched robbery, and it is this decision to try and leave that ultimately leads to Shaggy’s death when he is shot by police. Similarly, the storyline involving Angélica develops in relation to her role as the girlfriend of Bené, a

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key member of Lil Ze’s drug gang. Like Berenice before her, Angélica encourages Bené to leave the gang and the favela and to seek a better life away from the violence of City of God. Again, echoing the earlier story, Bené dies, on this occasion shot during his farewell party. In both instances, the only time a female character is shown to possess an active subjectivity, it leads to the death of a male character, subtly introducing the idea that beyond women not having a place in this construction of the favela, they in fact represent a threat to the masculine community. The space of the favela depicted in City of God is a community of young men ruled by what Michael Eric Dyson terms a juvenocracy.6 The central relationships are all between men, and the understanding of family is reconfigured as traditional notions of what “family” might mean are replaced by a series of non-biological ties that are based around power alliances and the violent domination of some young men and boys over others. The establishment of a juvenocracy and the representation of the favela as a masculine space can be observed in a condensed fashion within the film through the vignette that narrates the establishment of a local drug den or boca. Originally, the boca was run by a middle-aged woman who sold marijuana on the side to help support her family. Eventually, her younger boyfriend takes over and violently expels her from the space. This moment in and of itself is telling. Her boyfriend doesn’t just take over and make her submissive to him. This is not just a simple shift in power; instead, she is expelled completely from the space of the boca, and as the evolution of the drug den continues, there is no other female presence in the space at all, in any form. The vignette then depicts a series of shifts in power among groups of young men until Lil Ze, the most violent and extreme depiction of masculine violence in the narrative, establishes his control. This story is just one in the film; however, it allows us to see a microcosm of the broader development of the community.  A juvenocracy refers to “the domination … of urban life by mostly male figures under the age of twenty-five who wield considerable economic, social and moral influence. A juvenocracy may consist of drug gangs, street crews, loosely organised groups, and individual youths who engage in illicit activity. They operate outside the bounds of traditional homes and neighbourhood” (Dyson 2004, 436). While Michael Eric Dyson is specifically referring to black and Hispanic communities in the US, the term juvenocracy can be comfortably applied to gang groupings, independent of cultural context, where the ruling sector is composed primarily of young men such as the case of the drug gangs located in Brazil’s favela communities. 6

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As mentioned above, relationships between genders are displaced, and what evolves are networks of relationships that exist only between males. These are, almost without exception, based on dominance that is asserted through violence or the threat of violence. One of the most disturbing, and controversial, scenes of the film embodies how this violent domination plays out. In this scene, a gang prospect is tested before gaining acceptance into Lil Ze’s gang. He is picked up from his home by some young men, including Lil Ze. He goes off with them and appears nervous but excited at his potential initiation into the gang. As the young men walk through the streets and alleyways of the community, there is a joking, easy interaction among them. When they come across a group of young boys, ranging in age from about seven to ten, and known in the community as the runts, the threat that the older boys represent becomes immediately apparent. The young boys are seated, and as the older boys approach, they attempt to flee, but two are caught and pushed up against a wall. The camera frames the cowering boys from a high angle emphasizing their smallness and vulnerability as one begins to cry. In contrast, Lil Ze is framed via a low-angle shot which shows him towering over the young boys and emphasizing his menace. The young boys are cornered and are told to choose whether they want to be shot in the hand or the foot; they are crying and near hysterical. The young prospect is handed a gun and told to shoot one of the boys. In a close-up of his face, the prospect’s earlier excitement has clearly turned to fear. He hesitates as the older boys shout at him to shoot; eventually, he turns his head away and shoots in the direction of the boys. This scene not only shows the violent nature of the relationships between the young men but also heightens the predatory nature of these relationships. The younger boys are at the mercy of the older boys, and those who can exert violence most effectively are shown to hold the power and command the relative safety that recourse to violence seems to represent. In this web of masculine connections, it is clearly established that you are either the predator or the prey (see McDonald 2006). The final scenes of the film serve to reinforce this perspective while simultaneously offering a bleak future for these communities. In these scenes, immediately following a sequence in which Lil Ze’s gang is cornered in a gun battle with the police, Lil Ze is found alone and unarmed

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by the runts, the group of young boys that he had earlier attacked. In this scene, it is clear the power has shifted; Lil Ze is alone and on the ground, his menace diminished by his vulnerable state. The young boys now wield the power. They encircle him, standing over him and drawing their guns. They unleash a hail of bullets, killing him, and as they walk off from the scene, they boast about whom they will “take out” from their rivals in the favela. The viewer’s understanding of the space of the favela as shaped in City of God is one of a violent masculine space where the presence of women or girls is effaced. The construction of the masculine community on screen shows unidirectional flows of power. Those at the top are not the eldest necessarily; they are those who have the access to weapons and the disposition to use them. The ability to be violent or threaten violence is what gives you power over the other men/boys in the community. The allegiances between men shift, and there is very little in the way of supportive relationships, or even any reference, to a sort of mythic brotherhood which is sometimes shown in films that depict gang violence on screen. In this case, they continually turn on each other as power shifts and moves. The physical space of the favela degrades over time as the drug-trafficking business becomes more established, until at the conclusion of the film the favela is constructed more as a war zone than as a community. In the majority of the sequences on screen in the latter half of the film, the viewer is inundated with images of young male gang members with guns, along with male police officers who appear equally or even more excessively violent. In a departure from a focus on the favela residents per se, the films Elite Squad, its sequel Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, and the more recent depiction of the favela, Alemão: Both Sides of the Operation all focus on the role of the police in the favelas. As such, there is a departure here in terms of point of view, and certainly Elite Squad was highly controversial for its depiction of the violent Special Operations Police Battalion (BOPE),7 specifically the portrayal of its tactics against citizens in the  The BOPE itself is a highly controversial entity. Established during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, it is closely associated with a militarized mentality and operational model that is renowned for its violence against its own citizens. Its insignia consisting of a skull pierced by a dagger embodies this stance. After the release of Elite Squad the BOPE found itself facing a surge in 7

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favelas.8 While the perspective of these films and their approach to the favela differ from the films mentioned above, what is important to note is that they continue the construction of the favela as a violent space that is overwhelmingly and inherently masculine. All these films contribute to the typing of the favela as being a location in which a war is taking place. Both Elite Squad films look at the conflict within the favela in militarized terms and the relationships between men are framed in these terms. Like City of God, the films establish a series of real and pseudo-familial relationships that are exclusively between men. In Elite Squad, this manifests itself in the relationship between Captain Nascimento, the head of the BOPE unit, and two new recruits he has brought into his team, and in the sequel, the importance of the unit/ gang/team is once again foregrounded and is seen as pivotal to keeping Captain Nascimento alive. In the first film, there are repeated scenes based around the violent initiation of the recruits into the squad where they are run through harsh military training and are pushed to breaking point. Once through their training, they are then part of the squad, and this relationship supersedes all others, including personal familial relationships, a feature which is emphasized through the breakdown of Captain Nascimento’s relationship with his pregnant wife. Although Elite Squad moves the viewpoint of the narrative to the police, what you see on screen in terms of gender identities is very much the same as what you see in City of God, but in this case, the drug gang has been replaced by the police squad. The violence and the imposition of authority remain in evidence, although the sense of the squad as a brotherhood is developed in a way that the treatment of the gangs doesn’t really achieve. In both the 2007 and the 2011 Elite Squad films, the favela is the backdrop against which these male relationships play out; the difference for the members popularity from many quarters that felt their violent, militarized response to the situation in the favelas of Rio was an effective strategy. For an extensive look at the BOPE, see Ângela Cristina Salgueiro Marques and Simone Maria Rocha (2010) and Odirléia Lima Arnal (2010) on the legacy of the military dictatorship. 8  Throughout the production of Elite Squad, various police and government bodies attempted to block the film because of its depiction of police corruption and violence in the favela communities. In addition, a version of the film was leaked before its official release, ensuring that an estimated 11 million people saw the film before it was available in the national cinemas.

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of the squad is that they do not need to inhabit the space, while for the characters in City of God there is no way out. In Alemão, these relationships are between undercover police officers living in the favela Complexo do Alemão and the gang that dominates that favela. Again, like City of God and to a degree Orfeu before that, the female characters in Alemão are subject to the actions of the male characters. This is taken to an extreme when a lover of one of the undercover police is paraded around the favela as one of the drug gang threatens to execute her in order to draw the police out from where they have been hiding. As with City of God and the Elite Squad films, the identities of the male characters are strengthened and given value through their relationships with other men and their ability to impose their will, most often violently, on others. The relationships with female characters are constructed as a weakness in the armor of these men, which can be exploited and will lead to their downfall. In contrast to this body of cinematic work is the film Antônia. This film shifts the focus of the narrative from the networks and power shifts that unite and divide men, and instead focuses on the lives of four female friends who live in the favela Vila Brasilandia on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil’s sprawling megalopolis. Antônia is the name of the singing group made up of childhood friends Preta, Bárbarah, Mayah, and Lena, played by real-life hip-hop and R&B artists Negra Li, Leilah Moreno, Quelynah (Jacqueline Simão), and Cindy Mendes. The film follows the young women’s attempts to establish a career for themselves in the male-­dominated rap music scene and follows them as they deal with pressures of families, relationships, and children, all set against the precarious life they live in their community. Focusing on female friendships, the recounting of the group’s history is narrated through Bárbarah’s letters to Preta. The letters highlight the ways in which relationships between the women differ from those between young men in the films mentioned above. Unlike these films, however, where the favela is constructed as masculine and the female presence is marginalized, Antônia foregrounds the personal struggles of young women. Like young men, they too strive to construct their own identities in a nation in which they are geographically, socially, and economically displaced.

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This film marks a radical departure from the dominant cinematic narratives that have come to define the space of the favela on screen in the twenty-first century. While the space the women inhabit is undeniably violent, the way this is constructed is very different. Violence impacts on, and is part of, the lives of the young women, but it is not the sole driver around their interactions with others, and it doesn’t serve to define them in their communities. Rather, it is the relationships they have with the other female characters that allow them to navigate their world. While each of the characters experiences violence at some level, it is Bárbarah who is most overtly affected by violence against those near to her and is in turn violent herself. Bárbarah’s family consists of her friends and her brother Duda, who happens to be gay. One evening when she is walking home with Preta after a performance, she sees two young men lying on the ground in the street in front of her. As she nears the two bodies, the realization dawns that it is her brother and his boyfriend and she races toward them. The two young men have been attacked and seriously wounded. Both are taken to hospital, where Duda’s boyfriend dies. After being released from the hospital, Bárbarah’s brother becomes depressed, the cumulative effect of his loss, the assault, and the fact that he is now shunned by his previous friends, who, upon realizing he is gay, reject him, not wanting to have their masculinity tainted through an association with him. Bárbarah is desperate to help him but feels powerless knowing that there will be no justice for him or his boyfriend. Duda, out of fear, won’t identify his attacker, and given their socio-economic position coupled with her brother’s sexual identity, Bárbarah feels isolated from institutions that should theoretically afford them protection. It is in this context that Bárbarah’s actions shift her destiny and that of the other young women. Again, walking home from a performance with Preta, the two young women are followed by a young boy making lewd comments and generally harassing them. He becomes increasingly aggressive toward them and the tension on screen grows as his verbal aggression continues. Bárbarah dismisses him, talking to him like a child, at which point he begins to make comments about her brother. Very quickly it becomes clear that he is responsible for the attack, and indeed he details his violence against Duda. Upon hearing his words, the tension and frustration Bárbarah has felt since the attack overcome her and

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she launches herself at him and the two begin to fight. She pushes him against a wall and he falls to the ground, motionless. Bárbarah’s immediate reaction is to call for help, and she is instantly overcome with remorse for what she has done. Unlike Duda’s attacker, for whom the police do not even bother to search, Bárbarah is immediately taken into police ­custody and charged. Her plea of self-defense, corroborated by Preta, is dismissed, and she is jailed. The violence of the favela portrayed here is shown to be one aspect of the community rather than a defining characteristic. In addition, by introducing the element of homophobia which prompts both the violence and the response to it, there is a link to broader social themes beyond the drug trafficking specific to the favela communities. The way in which the violence is portrayed is also very different. Rather than the heavily stylized hyper-violent environments constructed in City of God and Elite Squad, the violence in the scene with Bárbarah is constructed more simply. There are no guns or war-like rhetoric. There is no planned attack; it is rather a moment of violence that is given context through the broader narrative. Antônia also goes beyond the limits of drug or gang violence also in exploring types of domestic violence. This is developed concretely in relation to the character of Lena. Early on in the narrative, just as the young women secure a manager for their group, Lena discovers she is pregnant. When she tells her boyfriend, he is extremely angry and aggressive toward her and insists she has an abortion. When he relents and he decides he will let her keep the baby and support her, he adds a number of conditions that serve to silence her, both literally and figuratively. While this is not the type of hyper-violence that the viewer has come to expect in films like this, it is unquestionably a violation of Lena’s identity and therefore an act of violence against her. The first of these conditions is that she will not perform again. He does not like her being on display, he sees her performance not in terms of the creative substance of what she is doing, but as an act of displaying herself as an object of desire for the men that see her. In taking this stance, he diminishes the importance of Lena’s self-expression and subjectivity. He limits her interaction with her friends and tries to dominate her. By cutting off her access to the musical performances she relishes he literally silences her, and, given that the

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group write their own music from their lived experience, this curtails her emergent voice and its link to the voices of the other women in her community. Lena’s position shifts only when she is able to reconnect with the group, giving her the strength to reassert her identity both privately and publicly. Despite her incarceration, Bárbarah also rediscovers her voice through her continued connection with her friends via the letters she sends from jail. These letters become the basis for both the narration of the film, the stories of the young women’s lives, and the potential lyrics for their collective creative endeavor. Through Antônia, the young women recapture the voices, individual and collective, that had been progressively lost throughout the narrative of the film. They take back the power of language and the mastery of the word, and in doing so, they transform themselves and their world through their access to expression.9 The favela again becomes a creative space, not one that is reduced to a cultural production rooted in the past, but rather one that nurtures a dynamic creativity intimately tied to the present and the lived experience of the women that inhabit these spaces. In this sense, the young women’s musical production represents “both an outlet for Brazilian culture and mode of resistance” (Marsh 2012, 176). As Leslie Marsh has pointed out, Amaral’s representation of these young women has avoided the pitfalls of placing them in the role of victims; instead, the “female protagonists defy the odds set against them and embrace a contemporary womanhood where social expectations do not supersede personal goals” (ibid., 176–77) and in which the relationships between women are shown to be meaningful social networks in both the private and public spheres. The portrayal of female relationships in this film has the potential to be read in two ways. Reading across the surface of the friendships shown  Frantz Fanon discusses the “mastery of the word” in relation to access to power in a colonial context in Black Skin, White Masks (1967, 18). Morgan and Bennett discuss how global hip-hop culture has gone beyond the mastery of the word to create a new language: 9

[t]hey have used that new language to redefine, name, and create their many worlds and worldviews. Through their unprecedented global movement of art and culture, the citizens of the hip-hop nation have used their unique and collective aesthetic voices both to ‘possess’ and transform the world, a process that has not merely afforded them power, but has also enabled them to produce new forms of power, beauty and knowledge. (2011, 11)

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on screen, they can perhaps be seen as a kind of nostalgic representation of a mythic sisterhood, which is interesting, given the gendering of the favela space, but limited in its applicability in the transformation of identity in that space. However, if the intricacies of the female relationships foregrounded in the film are approached and understood through an understanding of la practica della relazione (the practice of relations), then we are presented with a far more challenging understanding of the community of women portrayed in Antônia. La practica della relazione is a way of conceptualizing and enacting relationships that value female interaction, giving greater importance to these networks as effective support systems for navigating individual and collective challenges. It reconfigures an understanding of relations of authority, creating an alternative model to that which we see played out in the other films mentioned here in which authority is linked to power relations through a unidirectional flow. Instead, this is replaced with a model in which a relational authority is created: “this type of authority does not belong to one person as such, but exists within the relationship between two people. It is also reversible, dynamic and linked to specific contexts and moments in time” (Scarparo 2005, 45). This framing of female relationships stands in direct contrast to the construction of male relationships and identities in the cinematic representation of favela communities. Where the male relationships are defined by domination and the violent imposition of one’s will on others, the relationships of the female characters are valued through a shared authority that is given rather than imposed. In the case of Antônia, the positive portrayal of female relationships and the creative power of these networks has had an impact beyond the big screen. The film was released in 2006 and was preceded by the release by the Globo media company of the telenovela Antônia based on the (then still in production) film.10 Tata Amaral had previously made a documentary about female hip-hop artists when she decided to explore the potential of developing a feature film project based on the same material. During the production process, the project ran into funding difficulties  The Globo Group is the largest mass media conglomerate in Latin America. The television network Rede Globo is the dominant television network on Brazilian free-to-air television and is the dominant telenovela producer. For more information on the Globo and the media in Brazil, see Mauro P. Porto (2012). 10

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that were preventing the film from being completed. In this context, the rights were sold to Globo to create a telenovela based on the film. Some have noted the contradiction in this move, but it was a pragmatic solution to the challenges of funding, and while the overlap between film and the telenovela was marked, this was not unusual for Brazil. The same actresses played the lead roles in the telenovela, providing a clear overlap in the mediums, and the production as a telenovela also ensured that the stories portrayed in the film were seen immediately in the communities they reference. Amaral’s treatment of her subject matter, coupled with her involvement with a large media conglomerate like Globo, allows an active and ultimately successful rejection of the idea that “only a mix of poverty, violence, and action-adventure would sell” (Pablo Goldbarg, cited in in Marsh 2012, 178). In Antônia, the female protagonists create among themselves a network of support that shifts and adapts to the changing circumstances and context of the women’s lives. This web of relations and its inherent adaptability enable the female characters to create a space of expression that is both communal and artistic while simultaneously being individual and personal. Under these conditions, the representation of the favela in Antônia becomes infinitely more nuanced and complex than that derived through the other films examined here. It allows for the simultaneous existence of a multiplicity of identities. The elements of the favela communities foregrounded in the other films are not done away with in their entirety, but they are relegated to being just one part of a community that defines itself in multiple ways. In this sense, Antônia opens a space in which both the community and its inhabitants can be understood in a myriad of ways, and in this way, it challenges the monolithic categories set up in the masculinist cinema that otherwise dominates the representations of the favela communities on screen. Filmography Alemão: Both Sides of the Operation (2014). Directed by José Eduardo Belmonte. Antônia (2006). Directed by Tata Amaral. City of God (2002). Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund.

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Elite Squad (2007). Directed by José Padilha. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2011). Directed by José Padilha. Orfeu (1998). Directed by Carlos Diegues. Orfeu Negro (1959). Directed by Marcel Camus. Rio 40 Graus (1959). Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Rio Zona Norte (1957). Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

References Arnal, Odirléia Lima. 2010. Tropa de elite: As differentes imagens do BOPE nos textos de imprensa na época do episódio com o ônibus 174 e após o filme de Padilha “Tropa de Elite.” In Proceedings from the Colóquio Internacional de Estudos Linguísticos y Literários Universidade Estadual de Maringá, UEM Maringá-PR, 9–11 de junho de 2010. Dyson, Michael Eric. 2004. We never were what we used to be: Black youth, pop culture and the politics of nostalgia. In The Michael Eric Dyson reader, ed. Michael Eric Dyson, 418–440. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Fanon, Franz. 1967. Black skin, white mask. New York: Grove Press. Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. 2005. O Rio de Janeiro que Hollywood inventou. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Marsh, Leslie L. 2012. Brazilian women’s filmmaking: From dictatorship to democracy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. McDonald, Sarah. 2006. Performing masculinity: From City of God to City of Men. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 12 (2): 19–32. ———. 2011. How Brazilian films developed multiple national identities 1930–2000. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Morgan, Marcyliena, and Dionne Bennett. 2011. Hip-hop & the global imprint of a black cultural form. Daedalus 140 (2): 176–196. Nagib, Lucia. 2003. Black Orpheus in colour. Framework 44 (1): 93–103. Pardue, Derek. 2007. Hip hop as pedagogy: A look into “heaven” and “soul” in São Paulo, Brazil. Anthropological Quarterly 80 (3): 673–709. Porto, Mauro, and P. 2012. Media power and democratization in Brazil: TV Gloco and the dilemmas of political accountability. New York: Routledge. Salgueiro Marques, Ângela Cristina, and Simone Maria Rocha. 2010. Representações fílmicas de uma instituição policial violenta: resquicios da ditadura military em Tropa de Elite. Revista FAMECOS 17 (2): 49–58.

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Scarparo, Susanna. 2005. In the name of the mother: Sexual difference and the practice of “entrustment”. Cultural Studies Review 11 (2): 36–49. Wild, Polly. 2010. “New violence”: Silencing womens’ experiences in the favelas of Brazil. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 42 (4): 719–747.

7 Queering Identity: Becoming Queer in the Work of Cassils Cath Lambert

Introduction Queer approaches to gender and sexual identity have provided a generative, provocative set of theoretical tools for both thinking about and doing identity work in the twenty-first century. The usefulness of queer hinges on its ability to keep challenging and disturbing fixed categorizations and subject positions. However, it is neither possible nor desirable to simply do away with or move beyond identity: it remains an important mode of organization, recognition, and mobilization. There are political and subjective motivations, and indeed social and material rewards, for holding on to notions of identity that might be fluid but are (at least temporarily) liveable. As Heather Love (2007, 44) notes: Queer critics have generally understood the concept of identity to be both politically and philosophically bankrupt...Identity is…a deeply problematic and contradictory concept: nonetheless, it remains a powerful

C. Lambert (*) University of Warwick, Coventry, UK © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_7

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o­ rganizing concept in contemporary experience. We need an account of identity that allows us to think through its contradictions and to trace its effects.

This chapter explores what such an account might look and feel like. In seeking to find a way of utilizing queer that enables disruption and alliance, movement and stability, I present and analyse some of the work of the genderqueer artist Cassils. Art, particularly live and performance art, has the potential to disrupt accepted ways of being and knowing and create opportunities for the production of new knowledges and subjectivities (see Lambert 2013; O’Sullivan 2006). There is a rich tradition of queer performance art that takes the body as a locus of violence and resistance to normalcy (Heathfield 2004; Johnson 2013). Cassils’ work can be located within this oeuvre, as well as that of feminist art seeking to disrupt and challenge norms, representations, and injustices relating to gender and sexuality (Isaak 1996; Jones 2003). Cassils is a Canadian performance artist and personal trainer, based in Los Angeles. I first experienced their1 work at Fierce Festival (see www.wearefierce.org) in Birmingham in 2013, where they performed Becoming an Image (about which more later) and gave a talk on their work at the Live Art Development Agency conference. Their art practice, and indeed Cassils’ own expressions of their identity, offers a generative example of queer becoming that resists fixity in terms of gender, but at the same time demonstrates a commitment to the politics of identification. This tension, between gender/sex fluidity and stable categories from which we can articulate a political stance, is at the heart of queer thinking about, and troubling of, identity. In keeping with arguments at the heart of feminist and queer critical literature, Cassils’ work also foregrounds the body and, I would suggest, extends the argument that bodies are sites of radical identity de- and (re)construction to its limits. The chapter begins by establishing what is understood by the term “queer”, and mapping the political and intellectual terrain on which the relationship between identity and queer theory and practice has been,  Cassils uses plural non-binary pronouns (they, them, their).

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and continues to be, plays out. The discussion attends to bodies and embodied performance as being central to both producing and contesting identities. A distinction is drawn between “being” and “becoming”, drawing attention to the temporalities of queer identities. I then consider the work of Cassils and the ways in which such queer art practices can provide a generative set of possibilities for thinking anew about identity through a queer lens. To begin, what is queer, or more usefully, what work does it do?

Disrupting the “Normal”: A Queer Project Queer theory is inherently trans- and interdisciplinary, bringing a critical, disruptive perspective to debates around identity, and in the process, unsettling knowledges that may be seen, from certain disciplinary stances, as certainties. The term “queer” itself is contentious: it is used as an identity category in its own right, an activist politics, a methodology, and a theoretical stance (see Giffney 2009). Queer emerged into public consciousness “around 1990”, as David L. Eng et al. explain: It was a term that challenged the normalizing mechanisms of state power to name its sexual subjects: male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, natural or perverse. Given its commitment to interrogating the social processes that not only produced and recognized but also normalized and sustained identity, the political promise of the term resided specifically in its broad critique of multiple social antagonisms, including race, gender, class, nationality, and religion, in addition to sexuality. (2005, 1)

This highlights the role of queer as a fundamentally critical and disruptive term: queer challenges, interrogates, and critiques the “normal” naming and organizing of subjects and the normalizing processes that both create and sustain the idea that they are “normal”. Queer theory began with a critical concern to understand and transform sexual identifications and the discursive and material consequences of being labelled according to non-heterosexual identity categories. However, as the description above suggests, queer as a political force has a much wider application.

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David Halperin (1997, 62) asserts that “[q]ueer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers” (original emphasis). This gives queer enormous potential as a conceptual resource, enabling more complex analyses not only of gender/sex identifications but also of the ways in which multiple forms of social difference intersect or assemble in the production of contemporary social subjects.

From Identity Politics to a Politics of Identity Instead of secure identity categories, queer can be used to denote the fluidity and messiness of people’s desires, feelings, memories, and actions, opening up political possibilities by demonstrating that identities are subject to change and, to some degree, up for grabs. In this way, the work of queer theorists has steered identity debates away from “identity politics”. Identity politics can be seen as shorthand for the ways in which unified, secure identity categories such as “gay”, “lesbian”, or “woman” generate new hegemonies that in turn erase difference and sustain unequal binaries. These identity categories emerged as a necessary means by which to mobilize groups of people so that their rights could be defended. For example, the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s sought to secure political, social, and economic rights for women, in particular for marginalized groups such as working class, black and minority ethnicity, and lesbian women. Queer and postmodern challenges to the sectional and rigid form of these identities, “quick on the anti-­essentialism trigger”, as James Clifford (2000, 94) puts it, were issued just as some of these groups were beginning to feel the benefits of claiming a unified subjectivity (Alcoff 1995). Recognizing this, and indeed acknowledging the necessity of having (at least contingently) unified identity categories around which to mobilize, some feminists have called for a “strategic” recognition of identities (see Spivak 1988). Queer theory has also provided a welcome narrative (or anti-narrative) for the activist agendas and everyday lives of non-gender-conforming people, whose experiences placed them at the margins of, in-between, or in excess of, normative identity categories. Reclaiming queer from an insult to a positive identification became possible, and the queer critique

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of identity thus served, for some, as an identity category. As Love (2007) reminds us, identity is a tenacious concept. I recognize these ambivalences in my own personal and intellectual stance: I wish to critique identity, but I do so from a position of identifying as queer. Queer has offered many people such a place to stand, even if the sand shifts beneath our feet as we do (see Ahmed 2016). A further critical imperative for contemporary queer theorists is to negotiate queer’s potential complicities with the “progressive” sexual and gendered politics of neoliberalism, in its many localized guises. As Clifford suggests, rather than simply presenting a radical or counter-­ hegemonic impulse, a propagation and reinvention of identities can be seen as being in keeping with the interests of dominant political and economic regimes: As the twenty-first century begins, we confront a spectacular…proliferation of claims to culture and identity. Can these be accounted for in a systematic way?…the prolific invention and reinvention of identities is integral to a late-capitalist, or “postmodern” world system of cultures. In this view, globalisation, at a cultural level at least, permits and even encourages ethnic, racial, gender and sexual differences—so long as they do not fundamentally threaten the dominant political-economic order. Traditions are thus constantly salvaged, created, and marketed in a productive game of identities. (Clifford 2000, 100)

On this reading, queer becomes complicit with a version of consumer identity which often snubs the politics of hard-won battles in the past. Genderqueer identities and embodiments can be (re)packaged in acceptable ways as “trendy” and “cutting edge”. Judith Halberstam (2005, 19–21) cautions against treating transgendered lives as an idealized realization of postmodern gender politics, where bodies are mutable and identities fluid. Whilst appearing on the surface as a mechanism for social change, such apparently flexible bodies and identities risk being subsumed into the logics of neoliberal consumerism: Transgenderism, with its promise of gender liberation and its patina of transgression, its promise of flexibility and its reality of a committed rigidity, could be the successful outcome of years of gender activism; or,

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just as easily, it could be the sign of the reincorporation of a radical subculture back into the flexible economy of postmodern culture. (Halberstam 2005, 21)

This recuperation is perhaps most felt in the notion of “queer liberalism” (see Eng 2010), which attempts to reconcile queer theory’s radical political aspirations with the emergence of liberal demands for legal and domestic rights and privileges from the state. For example, political and legal gains in relation to gay and lesbian marriage and parental rights, which have been celebrated in a number of national contexts, simultaneously signal a queer compliance with “normal” regulatory frameworks and thereby could be considered to contribute to the re/ production rather than the disruption of state power (Duggan 2012). I return to consider this later in the chapter in relation to Cassils’ queer artistic interventions. In the following section, I consider what the apparent intransience of the gendered body brings to the project of queering identity.

 he Gendered/Sexed Body: New Ways T for Bodies to Matter? Bodies are, of course, crucial to identity, and contestations about bodies have been (and continue to be) central to feminist and queer accounts of subjectivity. The reconceptualization of “biological” bodies as historically and socially constructed can be credited to the many feminist writers who have developed “embodied theory” through a consideration of the effects of disciplinary regimes on sexed and gendered bodies (Bordo 1993; Davies 1997). That power produces “docile bodies”2 has been well documented, but so has a growing theorization of bodies as a site of agency and resistance. A tension between the apparent fixity of bodily “matter” and the embodied performance of sexed and gendered identity is an important one. It represents a site of conflict for  Mary Wollstonecraft first coined the term “docile bodies” in 1792 (see Bordo 1993), although it is more well known as utilized by Foucault (1977) in his account of disciplinary power. 2

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feminist theorists who wish to emphasize the materiality and specificity of women’s experiences, as well as to retain the identity category of woman as a rallying point for collective political action, without retreating into essentialized notions of sexual differentiation. Judith Butler’s (1990, 1993) work on gender performativity has been key to these debates and a touchstone for feminist and queer theorizing about (embodied) identity. Butler’s (1993) book Bodies That Matter was written in part, as she explains in its preface, to address accusations following the publication of Gender Trouble (1990) that her account of gender performativity did away with the materiality of bodies. She argues not only that bodies do matter but that the “epistemological uncertainty” of her account of the materiality of bodies indicates “a significant and promising shift in political thinking. This unsettling of ‘matter’ can be understood as initiating new possibilities, new ways for bodies to matter” (Butler 1993, 30). Butler’s work builds on Michel Foucault’s (1976) analysis of discourse in the production of identity to provide a radical account of the simultaneous sexing and gendering of the subject through discursive norms. Butler (1993) explains how the performative function of language produces meaning through discourse that constructs and regulates embodied sexuality and gender. All language is performative; that is, discourse has the power to enact what it names, and as such there is no “subject” prior to language who actively “takes up” the identity, but rather the subject is instituted through specific scenes of linguistic subjectification. Butler’s (1993, 7–8) powerful example is the moment of birth (or increasingly in some contexts, the moment of the ultrasound scan), when an infant is interpellated: “It’s a boy!” or “She’s a girl!” This interpellation will be reiterated throughout their lives in order to maintain the effect that it is natural, and the “girl” or “boy” has no choice but to respond to the interpellation, as her/his existence as a subject with cultural intelligibility is dependent on the position she/he is able to take up and perform within the gender binary. This binary is assigned and maintained through what Butler (1993) calls the heterosexual matrix of desire, an organizing framework of compulsory heterosexuality that seeks to maintain the gender order by assigning and limiting gender possibilities and relations (put simply, that men are men, and women are women, they are dif-

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ferent from each other, and this is because they need to fall in love and reproduce). Gender therefore is not a one-off assignation but rather a durational performance: Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. (Butler 1990, 33)

Normative heterosexuality, thus, “contours the materiality of bodies” (Butler 1993, 17) setting limits on the body’s intelligibility, so that ungendered bodies, or inappropriately gendered bodies, cannot be rendered intelligible, often with material implications (such as social and economic exclusion, harassment, and violence). However, whilst gender is produced through these acts of re/iteration, it can also be challenged and destabilized, and the fact that such a subject is never fully constituted but must be constantly resignified offers up scope for agency and a reworking of relations of power. Butler (1991) considers the same problematic through the case of performing a “lesbian identity” where “coming out”, spoken of as a single identity-affirming event, in fact, entails a never-ending process whereby to be “out” produces new closets, constantly deferring the “being” of “gayness”. In this deferral, she sees a potential “rallying point” (1991, 16) for resistance to identity categories as regulatory imperatives and norms. In this way, Butler argues that subjects, though produced by discourses, are not determined by them. Identity interpellations are not always successful and the subject’s resistance to categorization is located in the failure of discourse to entirely control that which it names. Instead, there is scope for subversion and play in the performing of gender identities (such as through “drag”) and the re-signification of discourses and names of oppression (such as “queer”). The work of artist Cassils provides an example of resistance, subversion, and (re)signification of gender identity through embodied performance. It also, I suggest, demonstrates the possibilities of gender as a becoming, and it is in this movement and orientation that possibilities for queer theory and practice become manifest.

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Queer Temporalities “Becoming” draws attention to the temporality of identity. As many queer theorists have asserted, queer becoming operates in “queer time and space”. Halberstam suggests that: [q]ueer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience—namely, birth, marriage, reproduction and death. (2005, 2)

Whilst the “wounds” of the past “haunt” queer accounts, whether we remember, or attempt to forget, histories of homophobic violence (Freeman 2010; Love 2007), the queer project is very much about the future, and such a projection has important implications for our understanding of identity as processual.3 The most beautiful and hopeful account of queer futurity comes from José Esteban Muñoz, who argues that “[t]he future is queerness’ domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present” (2009, 1). But how do we “see and feel” into the future whilst also “feeling backwards” (Love 2007). As Love (2007, 45) notes, “Identity not only accounts for the shape of the past but also for the feelings that we continue to have about that past”. Clifford also attends to the discomfort of managing “identity” in such a way that we hold onto, indeed may be “constrained” by, the stories and material affects of our (individual and collective) pasts as well as being able and willing to create anew: This hooking-up and unhooking, remembering and forgetting, gathering and excluding of cultural elements—processes crucial to the maintenance of an “identity”—must be seen as both materially constrained and inventive. Of course it is difficult, analytically and politically, to sustain this double vision, just as it is hard to work with the ambivalence inherent in  Even Lee Edelman’s (2004) provocative account of queer’s embrace of the death drive in No Future betrays queer’s obsession with temporality and led to a series of critically hopeful accounts of queer futurity. 3

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processes of identification…yet it is precisely in this uncomfortable site of cultural processes and politics that we begin, and begin again. (2000, 97)

“Beginning again” indicates a hopeful, generative trajectory. It emphasizes becoming over being; as such our identities, “lie ahead of us” (Hall 2005, 556). Recent work on “becoming” has been animated by insights from Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri whose individual and collective writing is seen as an experiment in thinking …“beyond” representation…[their work] offer[s] us a “new image of thought”, one in which process and becoming, invention and creativity, are privileged over stasis, identity and recognition. (O’Sullivan 2006, 2)

The Deleuzian concept of “the figural” (see Deleuze 2003), developed through his work on the paintings of Francis Bacon, is relevant to the analysis here. The figural provides a critique or interruption of representation. Representation fixes identities rather than allowing a fluid becoming. While figurative images (in art or the media) provide us with reassuring representations, the figural disrupts these and moves us beyond representation into a less secure but more hopeful zone of indiscernibility (Deleuze 2003, 21). I return to consider the figural at work in relation to the art practice of Cassils. Cassils’ work, and their reflexive commentary on the body work (see Wolkowitz 2006) of becoming queer, provides us with empirical insight into identity as a processual act of becoming. The second half of this chapter now attends to Cassils’ work and embodied identity in more detail.

 assils and the (Queer) Body: Representation C and Becoming I use my physical body as sculptural mass to rupture societal norms…It is with sweat, blood and sinew that I construct a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories. (Cassils, in Frank 2014)

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For Cassils, it is not only their visceral performances that enact an embodied form of resistance, but they regard, and work on, their own body as a project of (ongoing) gender transformation. In Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture (2011–2013), Cassils laboured intensively on their body for three months, working to a strict regime of bodybuilding, diet, and the use of mild steroids, in order to build their body to “maximum capacity” (see http://heathercassils.com/portfolio/cuts-a-traditional-sculpture/). This piece references Eleanor Antin’s feminist art intervention Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972) in which she was photographed daily over a month of crash dieting to produce a series of 148 still black-and-white images documenting the impact of the weight loss on her body. Cassils also documented their changing form via photographs taken, four times a day, from four different angles. These were time-lapsed into a two-channel video entitled Fast Twitch Slow Twitch showing their changing physique and slow-motion scenes of Cassils’ body-defying gender expectations through fetishized performances of dressing and posing (Fig. 7.1).4 At the peak of their transformation, they created a pin-up photo homage to the artist Lynda Benglis (in 1974, Benglis produced a nude self-­ portrait called Advertisement and paid for advertising space in Artforum magazine to exhibit it). Cassils’ photograph was distributed for free in gay fashion and art publications. The image appears to provide a rather classic example of positive queer representation, offering the viewer an arguably fixed depiction of a queer subject. On one reading, this image could be located in the genre of representational queer art that aims to provide positive identifications of queer bodies and people, such as the work of Del LaGrace Volcano (Volcano and Halberstam 1999) and Catherine Opie (see Halberstam 1998). However, some features of Cassils’ work prevent the image from just “being” and keep it in the realm of “becoming”. Deleuze’s (2003) concept of the figural can help us tease this distinction out. The photograph of Cassils’ body, unlike Benglis’ original Advertisement and the work of the artists noted above, is not located spatially or textually in such a way that the context helps to explain its meaning. Other than a link to the blog detailing the project, the image was reproduced  See http://heathercassils.com/portfolio/cuts-a-traditional-sculpture/ to view stills from the film.

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Fig. 7.1  Heather Cassils, Time Lapse, 2011. Archival pigment print, 60 × 40 inches (Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York)

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without narration, and as “isolated” from both the subject it is supposed to represent and other images that might contextualize it (see Deleuze 2003, 3). This “isolation” enabled viewers to experience multiple possibilities of signification and (mis)recognition in their response to the image. Following the publication of the photograph in the Gay Voices section of the Huffington Post, there was some transphobic commentary. Cassils’ response to this was to create a number of defaced images entitled Disfigured Pin Ups, declaring: “The defaced pin-up reflects the artist’s desire to push representation forward, as well as the hostility with which such acts are met”.5 The hostility attempted to fix the image as abject in the context of the heterosexual order. However, Cassils harnessed the hostility and thwarted the attack by using it as an opportunity to keep the signification of the image in flux, in a state of becoming. Both the gendered body-work of Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture and the circulation and consumption of the images articulate some of the conceptual problematics and possibilities around queer raised earlier in this chapter. In some ways, Cuts enacts a literal and extreme version of the theory of gender performativity, pushing the idea that bodies can be sites for a radical de- and (re)construction of gender to the limits. Whilst Butler’s (1990) ideas of gender performativity include the everyday, “stylised repetition of acts” necessary to enact gender successfully, Cassils takes the argument that such body work is the source of gender identity and illustrates it with queer excess: I aim to make images that bash through binaries and the notion that in order to be officially transgender, you have to have surgery or take hormones. I perform trans not as something about a crossing from one sex to another but as a continual becoming, a process-oriented way of being that works in a space of indeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness. (Cassils 2013)

This idea of the body, and by extension identity, as indeterminate, is what prevents the image becoming a knowable, fixed commodity (although arguably any image has already become a commodity in some sense), so  See http://heathercassils.com/portfolio/cuts-a-traditional-sculpture/ for these words and to view the Disfigured Pin Ups. 5

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that whilst the work clearly presents positive and affirming representations of queer and trans identity, it does what Cassils refers to as “anti-­ representational” work in the process: I have become interested in anti-representational tactics. As trans politics become more mainstream we run the risk of becoming a target market subject to the same slotting and governing as the dominant culture. I’m invested in transness as a political position that offers the possibility of resistance. I want to play with formal possibilities which embrace the obtuse and the unrecognizable. I am curious as to what ideas and questions can come from continual transformation. (Cassils, in Grey 2015)

Here, Cassils addresses the concern, raised earlier, about queer complicity with neoliberal politics. Acknowledging the dangers of their own body becoming a commodity, a fetishized market product, it is necessary to keep moving, to stay in a state of “continual transformation”. Cassils’ aspiration is “confusion”, to be in some sense beyond recognition as a gendered body, in order to draw attention to the specific injustices that occur to other bodies, other identities, which do not fit in the dualistic gender order. Reflecting on the success of Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, Cassils notes that “I had achieved a confusing body that ruptured expectation” (Artsy 2013). However, such an achievement can never be final or sustained. Confusion is a transitory, itinerant state, often adhering to a time and place that will pass. It is a state of becoming. The Cuts project illustrates a useful shift in both gender politics and the role of art in re/presenting gender and sexuality. It is notable that Cassils takes inspiration from the classic feminist works of Antin and Benglis. Cassils’ homages and departures from their work helps illustrate queer developments in identity politics. As Amelia Jones says: In the Cuts project Cassils…produces a performative body that never fully congeals into a singular artwork…Antin and Benglis laid the groundwork, as Cassils acknowledges, and Cassils uses various new media to take the gendered body to a space of radical indeterminacy. (2015, 91)

There is also a politics, I would suggest, to Cassils’ “acknowledgement” of the earlier feminist work. While queer theory can be subjected to cri-

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tique for its endless focus on reinvention and the new, Cassils’ work both honours the vital work of second-wave feminism in imbuing (women’s) bodies with agency and using art to disrupt gendered (re)presentations, whilst queering the projects in ways possible and congruent with the political, media, and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves. This double gesture of acknowledging the past, whilst generating and (re)newing queer subjective and somatic possibilities, provides the necessarily ambivalent or contradictory account of identity that I outlined at the beginning of the chapter. Cassils’ Advertisement: Homage to Benglis was first created in 2011. It found new modes of currency and circulation in 2015, when it was used as the poster advertising the Homosexuality_ies exhibition at the Schwules Gallery in Berlin (see http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/en/exhibitions/ view/homosexuality-ies/), in which some of Cassils’ work was being shown. The questions of representation and co-option by regimes of marketization are tantalizingly raised again as Cassils’ “confusing body” was posted prominently on advertising billboards as publicity for the exhibition (Fig. 7.2).6 Once again, we see that the image itself offers a representation of “homosexuality(ies)” provided by Cassils’ buff body and risks being thereby subsumed into the desiring gaze of commodity fetishism. However, the location on mainstream billboards provides a disjuncture, a shock: on initial glance, the image can be normalized, aping as it does a familiar pose and aura of glamour associated with fashion advertising. Any initial reading cannot be sustained for long, though. Incongruities quickly emerge—the androgynous hair-cut and shock of red lipstick, the bulging pants, the hard muscles and soft pecs/breasts, the “ho/mo” of the word “homosexuality_ies” gripping Cassils’ shoulders. Even after a good look, the image defies a clear reading. Its signification slips. Gender/sexual identification remains illusive, and it defies intelligibility as a correctly gendered body within the heterosexual matrix. However, it is doubtless perfectly intelligible to many individuals who experience a momentary frisson of recognition: in this way the image enacts what Jacques Rancière  This exhibition has also been subject to critique for addressing trans representation inadequately, posing further complex questions around the use of Cassils as the publicity image. 6

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Fig. 7.2  Advertisement: Homage to Benglis on poster advertising for the Homosexuality_ies exhibition, Schwules Gallery, Berlin

(2004) refers to as a “redistribution of the sensory”, shifting aesthetic norms in such a way that alternative knowledge, and possible new subjectivities, have been made thinkable. This is the political work of queer in action. Like the antagonisms directed at the original image of Advertisement: Homage to Benglis, the poster attracted hostility and was initially banned from German train stations by the railway company Deutsche Bahn AG (they later reversed their decision following criticism). Cassils (2016) declared in response:

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The phobic response to Cassils’s image here calls to mind broader instances of transphobia which seek to prohibit the presence of trans and gender-­ nonconforming bodies from public spaces.

What interests me here is the tension that Cassils maintains between work that is “anti-representational”, in its defiant queer confusion, yet simultaneously doing the crucial political work of representing trans and queer bodies in the face of transphobia: Artwork such as that presented by Cassils is vital to the project of working against transphobia, and the recent attempt to ban these images from the public sphere only underlines their necessity. (Cassils 2016)

Rather than suggesting that this representational identity work weakens the disruptive queer potential of the piece, I suggest that Cassils enacts the kinds of critical paradoxes raised at the beginning of this chapter and captured in Love’s (2007, 44) declaration that “we need an account of identity that allows us to think through its contradictions and to trace its effects”. I now turn to examine two of Cassils’ interconnected works that deploy much clearer “anti-representational tactics” in order to critique stable identifications whilst enabling an explicitly political intervention. The works are Becoming an Image and The Resilience of the 20%: The Monument Project.

Becoming an Image: The Politics of Queer Witness In Becoming an Image, a durational live performance, Cassils seeks to move beyond their specific body as the focus of attention and instead offers their body and abstracts from it, using the media of still photography, to create a queer and unsettling experience for the audience. Becoming an Image takes place in the room in which there is a huge block of modelling clay, 2000 pounds in weight, human in height. A spotlight lights the clay. There is Cassils, and there is a photographer, though neither can be clearly seen. There is an audience. The spotlight goes off, plunging the room into total darkness, and blindly, violently, Cassils leaps onto and attacks the lump of clay (Fig. 7.3).

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Fig. 7.3  Heather Cassils’ Becoming An Image. Performance Still No. 3 (National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London). 2013. C-print 22 × 30 inches (Photo: Heather Cassils with Manuel Vason. Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York)

The photographer shoots into the darkness, his intermittent flash providing the audience with the only light with which to see what is happening. The flash burns the images of Cassils assaulting the clay, often leaping above it, onto the viewers’ retinas: images that fade slowly leaving “ghost” mirages that overlay the live image at the next flash. Between the flashes of visibility, the audience can hear the laboured breathing and grunts of the artist and the sounds of the clay being pummelled. The performance lasts as long as Cassils can go on. By the end, when the spotlight returns to the clay, it is transformed by its beating. It bears the marks of the violence. At the end of the performance, the artist is exhausted, sweating, panting, hurting, and the clay lump has been transformed into a sculpture (Fig. 7.4).7 Cassils suggests that the bashed up body of clay   See a short film of Becoming watch?v=TzM8GTL2WGo#t=47. 7

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Image

here:

https://www.youtube.com/

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Fig. 7.4  Heather Cassils, After, 2013. Modelling clay (Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York)

speaks to the unrepresentability of trauma and asks what that means for not just my body but many bodies. In this way I aim to make a humanist work that does not only exist within the confines of the identity politics specific to my own subjectivity. (Cassils in Grey 2015)

We are reminded of Halperin’s (1997, 62) assertion that “[t]here is nothing in particular to which [queer] necessarily refers”. Such expansive definitions of queer, as highlighted earlier in this chapter, provide political traction in dealing with the complexities and contradictions of contemporary forms of identity. The queer subject here—whether re/presented in Cassils’ body during the live performance or the resulting damaged clay—is not the conforming, “good gay” (Casey 2007) of queer ­liberalism, but the abject, marginalized, and unintelligible body, in a state of confusion and becoming. Live performance as an art form offers rich material for thinking through the possibilities for bodies and identities to become rather than be. The temporality of performance is the present moment, and it is “nonreproductive”: Performance uses the performer’s body to pose a question about the inability to secure the relation between subjectivity and the body per se; perfor-

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mance uses the body to frame the lack of Being promised by and through the body. (Phelan 1993, 150–151)

In a follow-on piece of work, The Resilience of the 20%: The Monument Project, the beaten-up clay sculptures produced during Becoming an Image are cast in bronze and concrete to create permanent sculptures. These sculptures are then located as monuments on public sites where violent crimes against trans- or genderqueer people have occurred, bearing witness to the acts of violence; in Cassils’ words: I wanted to draw attention to the fact that our genderqueer and trans brothers and sisters are so much more likely to experience physical violence: worldwide, transgender murders increased by 20% in 2012. (Cassils in Frizzell 2013)

These enduring monuments provide a memorialization to victims of violence but also frame the gender-nonconforming body as resilient and something that “matters”, to echo Butler’s (1993) refrain. In Becoming an Image and The Resilience of the 20%, we have the performing, mutable body as well as the monument it has become: fixed in immutable material and located in a specific time and place. We are presented with the fluidity and construction of the trans body, as well as the symbolic testament to the harsh realities of genderqueer violence. Taken together, these pieces demonstrate a radical resistance to gender certainty in the act of queer becoming, whilst remaining committed to the politics of recognition. They also address the temporal questions that haunt queer theorizing, about the role of memory and witness in n ­ arrating queer histories and futures (Love 2007). In Becoming an Image, the audience is witness to the violence, but in such partial, glimpsing ways, overlaid by the confusion of ghostly images from the flash, that they can barely trust what they have or have not seen and heard and sensed. They are dependent on the camera for any vision at all. The monuments, however, mark a permanent witness for the future of past events. They do not allow atrocities against queer bodies to be forgotten or overlaid with liberal arguments (we have legal rights: we are tolerated: we have equality). The body of clay (becoming bronze, concrete, or resin) stands in for genderqueer bodies to make a political intervention.

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Conclusion: “For the Hope of Liveable Worlds” Queering specific normalised categories is not for the easy frisson of transgression, but for the hope of liveable worlds. (Haraway 1994, 60)

In this chapter, I have outlined a queer approach to conceptualizing and performing identity. Queer remains contested. Numerous conferences, debates, books, and papers have been produced addressing its contradictions; what it is should be, whether the fact that it has become an object of study in its own right renders its political utility redundant, and so on. Michael O’Rourke (2011, 104) notes sardonically that “[w]ith each new book, conference, seminar series, each new master’s program, we hear (yet again) that Queer Theory is over” (for a taste of these debates, see Butler 1993; Jagose 1997). However, if we take the view (as I do) that theory is a tool for a job, a “necessary…detour on the way to something more important” (Hall 1991, 42), and is valuable in as much as it contributes to the task of challenging social and political injustices, then queer theory remains a vital part of the kit. Queer theory’s commitment to troubling and disrupting identity has, without doubt, provided a provocative and generative theoretical framework, shifting the terms of debates across disciplinary fields, not least within feminist and gender studies. One of the criticisms targeted at queer theory is that it can be abstract and removed from the material realities of people’s lived experiences. Whilst it can be pleasurable to deconstruct identity with scholarly disputes and postmodern panache, when it comes to making affective sense of our pasts and futures, or when we need to speak up for, or act on behalf of, people experiencing injustice, then identity matters. However, rather than generating binaries between texts and bodies, theory and practice, this chapter has argued for a commitment to contradiction and ambivalence, enabling and celebrating flux and confusion across text and embodiments. In particular, it has illustrated the important political work that can be done by understanding identity not as a state of being but as a state of becoming. In a recent interview, Judith Butler poses the question, “How do we still value becoming without losing track of what grounds and defines us?” (Ahmed 2016, 10). In this chapter, I suggest

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that this question is animated—and the struggle to address it exemplified—by the work of genderqueer artist Cassils. Cassils’ work, together with their critical reflections on their practice, contributes to, and helps us think through, the potential of queer as a concept, specifically relating to identity. Such queer performance art provides a way of keeping queer vital and future-oriented whilst recognizing the gendered struggles and wounds sustained in other times and places. The performative nature of Cassils’ work provides a rich and provocative resource for a critical interrogation of queer theory in action. Most notably, the artist’s body becomes a locus for resistance, nonconformism, and gendered (re)articulations. Exploiting the constant need for (gender) re-signification as highlighted in Butler’s (1990, 1993) account, Cassils’ work demonstrates, in different ways, the opportunities for interrupting normative processes of signification. Whilst the complex task of assessing the impact of such re/signification on audiences is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Lambert, 2016), we can nonetheless assert that the performances themselves enact a queer politics of hope, making new and alternative subjectivities possible. In addition to the politics of re/signification, Cassils’ work, often simultaneously, enacts the task of naming and re/presenting violence and oppression against specific groups of people, specifically genderqueer victims of intolerance and persecution. Cassils’ commitment to challenging material and structural inequalities, injustices, and oppressions addresses the critique that queer becomes a privileged site of conceptual luxury. At the same time, their work enacts an enduring refusal of stable identity categories and the lived embodiments of these. The identity work of these artistic practices illustrates the potential of queer to move beyond fixed (embodied) identifications. This serves as a critical reminder that queer critiques of identity are not just destructive but necessary if we are to find ways of articulating both the slippery, multiple, and fluid ways in which people experience their identities, as well as the (in)visibility and marginalization of some people’s bodies and lives. This contradictory undertaking is not an intellectual indulgence, but an urgent political project. Acknowledgements  Thanks to Cassils for their generous and helpful correspondence and Lisa Metherell for her feedback on drafts of the chapter.

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References Ahmed, Sara. 2016. Interview with Judith Butler. Sexualities 19 (4): 482–492. Alcoff, Linda. 1995. Cultural feminism versus post-structuralism: The identity crisis in feminist theory. In Feminism and philosophy: Essential readings in theory, reinterpretation and application, ed. Nancy Tuana and Rosemarie Tong, 434–457. Boulder: Westview Press. Artsy. 2013. Body builder artist Heather Cassils channels Lynda Benglis and Eleanor Antin. October 14. https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-­ bodybuilder-­artist-heather-cassils-channels-lynda-benglis. Accessed 30 Dec 2016. Bordo, Susan. 1993. Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body. In Up against Foucault, ed. Caroline Ramazanoglu, 181–199. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge. ———. 1991. Imitation and gender insubordination. In Inside/out: Lesbian theories, gay theories, ed. Diana Fuss, 13–31. London: Routledge. ———. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. London: Routledge. Casey, Mark. 2007. Spatial (in)visibilities and the good gay/bad gay binary. In Geographies of sexualities: Theory, practice and politics, ed. Kath Brown, Jason Kim, and Gavin Brown, 125–126. London: Ashgate. Cassils, Heather. 2013. Bashing binaries along with 2000 pounds of clay. Huffington Post, September 9. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather/ bashing-­b inaries-along-with-2000-pounds-of-clay_b_3861322.html. Accessed 30 Dec 2016. ———. 2016. The real issue. Press Release, May 12. http://heathercassils.com/ news/press-release/. Accessed 30 Dec 2016. Clifford, J. 2000. Taking identity politics seriously: “The contradictory, stony ground…”. In Without guarantees: In honour of Stuart Hall, ed. Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg, and Angela McRobbie, 94–112. New York: Verso. Davies, Kathy. 1997. Embody-ing theory: Beyond modernist and postmodernist reading of the body. In Embodied practices: Feminist perspectives on the body, ed. Kathy Davies, 1–27. London: Sage. Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation. London: Continuum. Duggan, Lisa. 2012. The twilight equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics and the attack on democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Edelman, Lee. 2004. No future: Queer theory and the death drive. London: Duke University Press.

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Eng, David L. 2010. The feeling of kinship: Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. London: Duke University Press. Eng, David L. with Judith Halberstam and José E. Muñoz. 2005. What’s queer about queer studies now? Social Text 84–85 23 (3–4): 1–17. Foucault, Michel. 1976. The history of sexuality, Volume 1: The will to knowledge. London: Penguin. ———. 1977. Discipline and punish, the birth of the prison. London: Penguin. Frank, Priscilla. 2014. 10 transgender artists who are changing the landscape of contemporary art. Huffington Post, March 27. http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2014/03/26/trans-artists_n_5023294.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. Freeman, Elizabeth. 2010. Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories. London: Duke University Press. Frizzell, Nell. 2013. Heather Cassils: The transgender bodybuilder who attacks heaps of clay. The Guardian, October 3. http://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2013/oct/03/heather-cassils-transgender-bodybuilder-artist. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. Giffney, Noreen. 2009. Introduction: The “Q” word. In The Ashgate research companion to queer theory, ed. Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke, 1–13. Farnham: Ashgate. Grey, Kris.2015. Fire in the belly: Trans artist Cassils immolates for art. Huffington Post, June 4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/cassils-­ inextinguishable-­fire_n_7505500.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female masculinity. London: Duke University Press. ———. 2005. In a queer time and place: Transgender bodies, subcultural lives. London: New York University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1991. Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. In Culture, globalization and the world system, ed. Anthony D.  King, 41–68. London: Macmillan. ———. 2005. Thinking diaspora: Home thoughts from abroad. In Postcolonialisms: An anthology of cultural theory and criticism, ed. Guarav Desai and Supriya Nair, 543–560. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Halperin, David. 1997. Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haraway, Donna. 1994. A game of cat’s cradle: Science studies, feminist theory, cultural studies. Configurations 2 (1): 59–71. Heathfield, Adrian, ed. 2004. Live art and performance. London: LADA/Tate Publishing. Isaak, Jo Anna. 1996. Feminism and contemporary art: The revolutionary power of women’s laughter. London: Routledge.

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Jagose, Annamarie. 1997. Queer theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, Dominic, ed. 2013. Pleading in the blood: The art and performances of Ron Athey. London: LADA/Intellect. Jones, Amelia, ed. 2003. The feminism and visual culture reader. London: Routledge. ———. 2015. Heather Cassils’ indeterminate body. In Reading contemporary performance: Theatricality across genres, ed. Meiling Cheng and Gabrielle Cody, 90–92. London: Routledge. Lambert, Cath. 2013. Live art as urban praxis: The political aesthetic of the city. Sociological Research Online 18 (3): 12. http://www.socresonline.org. uk/18/3/12.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2016. The affective work of art: An ethnographic study of Brian Lobel’s fun with cancer patients. The Sociological Review 64: 929–950. Love, Heather. 2007. Feeling backward: Loss and the politics of queer history. London: Harvard University Press. Muñoz, José E. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. London: New York University Press. O’Rourke, Michael. 2011. The afterlives of Queer Theory. Continent 1 (2): 102–116. http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/view/32. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. O’Sullivan, Simon. 2006. Art encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought beyond representation. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Phelan, Peggy. 1993. Unmarked: The politics of performance. London: Routledge. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The politics of aesthetics. London: Continuum. Spivak, Gayatri C. 1988. Subaltern studies: Deconstructing historiography. In In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics, ed. Gayatri C.  Spivak, 197–221. London: Routledge. Volcano, Del Lagrace, and Judith Halberstam. 1999. The drag king book. London: Serpent’s Tale. Wolkowitz, Carol. 2006. Bodies at work. London: Sage.

8 Forms of Self-Translation Rita Wilson

Their words, despite their desire to appear so coolly collected and focused, are the priceless buoys with which they try to stay afloat both as professional thinkers and human beings. (Aciman 1997, 14)

Introduction Drawing on work done within translation studies that uses fiction “as a source for theorizing about translation”, and on work in literary studies where “translation is used as a metaphor in order to reflect on social processes, such as migration, and states of being, such as in-betweenness” (Kaindl and Spitzl 2014, 11), this chapter explores how practices of self-­ translation afford insights into questions of subjectivity and identity, and how this brings new material to the discussion of national and cultural identities. A growing body of research has expanded the ­twentieth-­century

R. Wilson (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_8

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dictionary definition of self-translation, given as “the translation of an original work into another language by the author himself ” (Popovič 1976, 19).1 There is now widespread recognition that self-translation is not limited to a sequential process (Bassnett 2013; Grutman 2009; Wilson 2009) and that self-translators include “idiomatic bilingual writers who have two literary languages, [who] compose texts in both languages, and[…]translate their texts between those languages” (Hokenson and Munson 2007, 14, emphasis in original). In other words, the term “self-translation” alerts us to the subjectivities involved in this process and to the fact that when we discuss implications of “translation” in literary texts, it is not simply a case of language transfer; rather it is often a pointer to the problematization of identities. This is particularly evident in the widespread metaphorical use of the term to describe, for instance, “a renegotiation of the self ” (Saidero 2011, 33) or to depict “transnational migrants living as ‘translated beings’ between multiple cultures, languages, and national identities” (Shread 2009, 52), and to consider the extent to which the narration of a writer’s lived experience could be viewed as translating the self (Wilson 2009). Thus, self-­translating awakens both a revision of the self and a renewed awareness of the limits of stable linguistic and national identities. As Steven Kellman argues: Authors invest their identities in texts, to which they sign their names, and when they not only vary the languages in which those texts are written but transmute the language of a particular one, they are denying the existence of a stable self ”. (2000, 33)

It is important to recognize that, in the case of translingual authors,2 the plurality and combination of languages represent constitutive elements in their modes of writing, acting as markers of the composite nature of both individual and cultural identities, as well as their tendency to go beyond national boundaries. Thus, translingual writing viewed as self-­ translation underlines the question of agency, how the subject can sustain  Michaël Oustinoff (2001, 17) argues that “self-translation” disrupts what he calls “la dichotomie primitive” (the primitive dichotomy) between the two poles of the writing of an original and its translation. It follows that self-translators are original figures who embody activities normally thought of as polar opposites. 2  Following Kellman (2000), I consider a translingual writer to be someone who writes in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one. 1

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complex, fluid, and heterogeneous notions of identity by working with the intricacy of languages. For the sake of specific illustration, in this chapter I will focus on the relationship between narrative form and the construction of cultural identity as it appears in narratives written in Italian by contemporary translingual authors, whose writing constitutes an instance of the practice that Naoki Sakai (1997), referring to a type of speech act that imagines a diverse readership, has termed “heterolingual address”. In particular, the works of Amara Lakhous are used as exemplars through which to examine the broader implications of identity construction in intercultural environments, especially those created by the migratory flows of current globalized societies.

Migration, Translation, Identity Migration is by no means a new phenomenon: it has simply fluctuated through the ages on the basis of historical contingencies. Yet what has changed perceptively since the mid-1980s is the way in which conflict, economic turmoil, and changes in legislation have increased the volume and altered the nature of migration, turning it into one of the most significant factors of social transformation around the globe. Traditionally a country of emigration, with the 1981 census, Italy suddenly discovered that it had become a country of immigration, significantly later than most of the other European Union member states (see Pugliese 2006, 61–75). This discovery led to an increased focus on the reasons for and the processes of migration, and on the individual agency and identities of migrants. Migration is directly and inevitably a process of cross-cultural translation, a passage of movement between different languages, cultures, and worlds. This is especially evident in the migrant landscapes of contemporary cities where cultures are always trajectories of movement and translation as much as they are modes of being in place (Wilson 2007). Central to understanding the specificities of transcultural identity formation— predicated on a process by means of which one or both of the cultures in touch may be modified and lead to new creations that emerge from that encounter—is the notion of “contact zones” (Pratt 1992). Mary

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Louise Pratt’s articulation of the “contact zones”, created by early voyages of exploration between explorers and natives, is still the most powerful metaphorical illustration of the “border country” of cultural translation, in which “native” and host cultures are not dichotomous entities, but enter a relationship of suspense in a spatially organized, dynamic model of semantic change based on negotiation. Expanding on Pratt’s original formulation, Giuliana Benvenuti (2009) theorizes contact zones as locations where cultural exchanges are enacted and which “consentono di riarticolare la segregazione e di costruire nuove identità ibride e nuovi spazi trasgressivi” (allow for a re-articulation of segregation and the construction of new hybrid identities and new transgressive spaces).3 Over time, “the contact zone has become more jagged” (Papastergiadis 2000, 129), and the experience of increased global migration suggests that translation occurs not simply between one culture and another but between fragments. Not least because migrants are by definition fragmented beings, who, to use Salman Rushdie’s words, have experienced a “triple disruption”: loss of place, entering into an “alien language”, and being “surrounded by beings whose social behaviour and codes are very unlike, and sometimes even offensive to, his own” (1991, 277–278).. It seems obvious that “self-translation” would be a central concept for those translingual writers who fashion narratives that try to encompass both the “original” and the re-located cultural-linguistic self. Their narratives seek to highlight the ways that translation has been or can be used to (re)negotiate identity and articulate strategies of cultural self-definition, which require new ways of thinking about language and identity in new transnational contact zones, premised upon the loss of stable rootedness and the subsequent acceptance of multiple connections. Many of these narratives exploit the discourses of transnational identity, focusing on how cultural heterogeneity is produced by the dialectic between the local and the global (Appadurai 1996) and through the spatial displacement of people. While migrants may occupy an in-between space, their presence in a given context has a dramatic effect on their surroundings: the notion of difference becomes fluid by subverting the norm through the sheer multiplicity of newcomers. Public discourse about immigration in Italy  All translations from Italian are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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continues to focus largely on new arrivals and the security and cultural threats that they allegedly pose (Geddes 2008). In both political campaigning and the media, the discussion is generally centered around notions of criminalization and racialization reinforced by an exclusionary discourse in which migrants are categorized as “outsiders” though the use of terms such extracomunitari (non-EU citizens) and clandestini (illegal immigrants). The focus on recent migrants and the construction of their otherness within Italian society serves to perpetuate the myth of a clear split between a unified national culture and identity (“us”), and the foreigners (“them”), while ignoring the fact that many of the country’s immigrants are long-term residents, some of whom have made Italy their home for over 30 years. Despite Italy’s history and present reality of localized, fragmented, and hybrid identities, Italianness is still widely constructed as something culturally and socially homogeneous. Underlying these discourses is the tenacious assumption that being Italian is synonymous with being white and Catholic. Literary fiction, however, follows a different pattern of representation. Since the 1990s, with the rise of the so-called migration literature (Parati 1999), questions of ethnicity and citizenship have gained major visibility in the Italian literary context. In particular, literary narratives have become instrumental in shaping contemporary notions of “national” identity according to which the adjective “national” is a concept that should never be taken for granted, but should be constantly renegotiated. The last two decades have seen the emergence of a large group of foreign-born writers who have introduced new subject positions that are responsible for what is arguably the most significant reinvention of Italian literary and cultural geography in recent years. Italianness is represented as a plural concept which involves the voices of its new inhabitants in literary products that appropriate the “national” language and turn it into “a new system of signification” (Parati 2005, 13) that describes the ­transformation of Italian society as it incorporates people with diverse cultural heritages, who are uprooted and “thrown together” in diverse ways. Typical “issues” of migrant literature, for example, entail the dialectic relationship between the past and present culture and the ways this may be expressed in a culturally and linguistically layered style. In Italy, there has been a shift in recent literary production from testimony and autobiography to more imaginative forms that address the formation of

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new hybrid subjectivities. The very act of allowing migrant characters to “breathe” in a story means putting oneself in the position of a cultural or social “other” and problematizing identity. Experimenting with both the dispersion of different stories and their translation into new forms, the works published in the first decade of the twenty-first century reflect the momentous change that has occurred in Italian society. Contemporary translingual/transcultural writers who have chosen to write in Italian include those born in Italy from either non-Italian parents or mixed couples (Gabriella Kuruvilla, Cristina Ali Farah, Gabriella Ghermandi, Igiaba Scego), or those who have been living in the country for several decades (Amara Lakhous, Tahar Lamri, Laila Wadia). This group stresses the interconnectedness of mobility, (urban) space, and language choice in the construction of their complex identities. Although they opt for genres as diverse as crime fiction (Lakhous) and family sagas (Ghermandi, Scego), what they have in common, in addition to personal biographies inscribed with mobility and multiple cultures, is the deployment of polylingual practices to construct polyphonic narratives. Such texts contribute to what sociologist Melita Richter refers to as the emergence of “translated identities”, a process that is “ancora più visibile per coloro che attraversano i diversi contesti geografici e culturali” (even more visible to those passing through different geographical and cultural contexts) (Richter and Dugulin 2005, 20). The literary commitment to polyphony in turn displays a political commitment to giving agency to the multiple voices that constitute contemporary Italian society—including those marginal voices that had previously been excluded—thus drawing attention to the “diversified space with a plurality of identities around us [which] becomes more and more the normal context of our existence” (Richter 2006, 38–39).

“ Language Acts Are Acts of Identity” (Gustavo Pérez Firmat) A translingual writer’s choice of language often, if not always, represents an ideological statement about their identity. By writing in a preferred language, the author may be declaring political dissension or affiliation, cultural affinity, or a creative predilection: for “the language that we speak

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is a fundamental component of our nationality, and hence of our sense of who we are” (Firmat 2002, 433). Writers are compelled to write in a second or additional language for a variety of reasons. Some may be victims of political upheavals, and writing in the additional language seems to offer them a form of protection: mastering the additional language may be the only access to the symbolic resources in the society in which they have to live. Others find comfort and freedom by expressing themselves in the new language: to them writing in an additional language is like disclosing another “badge of identity” (Buruma 2003, 19). In any event, the process of translating oneself into another language requires of the speaking subject not only a good knowledge of that language but also, and possibly above all, a self-consciousness, an awareness of what is to be expressed in order to open up new kinds of conversations and permit new speaking positions. Michael Cronin asserts that there are two basic strategies adopted by immigrants in response to their new linguistic situation: “translational assimilation, where they seek to translate themselves into the dominant language of the community, and[…]translational accommodation, where translation is used as a means of maintaining their languages of origin” (2006, 52, emphasis in original). The right to exercise autonomous forms of translation (the migrant is in control of the translation situation) as opposed to heteronymous forms (others control the translation exchange) is seen as a crucial element in the emancipation of immigrants. Laila Wadia, for example, chooses to foreground the process of translational assimilation in explaining her choice to write in Italian: Ero stufa di dover delegare i miei pensieri agli altri, che spesso li interpretavano male nel caos della meta-lingua della traduzione. Volevo dire io quello che sentivo di comunicare. (in D’Andrea 2008, 127) (I was tired of having to delegate my thoughts to others, who often mis-­ interpreted them in the chaotic meta-language of translation. I wanted to be the one to communicate what I meant)

Mastery of the dominant language is also related to power and privilege, in the sense that it provides access to all aspects of civil society.

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On the one hand, there are postcolonial writers whose narratives self-­ consciously engage with their own linguistic métissage and/or cultural hybridity by explicitly thematizing the power relationships between different linguistic strands. On the other hand, the narratives of translingual writers explore new identities by constructing new dialogic spaces in which language choice is located outside the oppositional model set up by the traditional binaries of postcolonial theorizing: center/margin, self/other, colonizer/colonized. The latter position is encapsulated in the works of a contemporary Italian writer who was born and raised in Algiers, Amara Lakhous. To use his words: There is a whole discourse on the politicization of French by Algerian writers themselves and there is a certain use of nationalism that bothers me— so I extricate myself from this. For me, French is not even a “spoil of war” as Kateb Yacine said, that is still the colonial context; it belongs to that generation. I belong to another generation. For me, French is a language like any other. Thanks to French, I discovered Flaubert, who is, for me, one of the most important writers. It is a language like other languages. In my case, I prefer Italian to French, for aesthetic and creative reasons, and also to extricate myself from this postcolonial discourse. (in Esposito 2012, 4)

Hence, language furnishes the necessary underlying ingredient for the politics of identity, which, in a polyethnic setting, constitutes the ground for language groups to make demands for the right of recognition. Marginalized individuals and groups have historically been denied self-expression, only continuing to exist as subjects through translation. By arguing that symbolic citizenship offers opportunities for new minoritarian affiliations or solidarities that transcend and disregard national borders, Homi Bhabha (1994, xvii) has drawn attention to the power of transcultural (minoritation) connections to instigate a politics of group rights and recognition. Self-translation as practiced by Lakhous can be read as a counter-narrative that highlights the power of transcultural and ethno-linguistic solidarities by bringing subjugated voices to the forefront to disrupt dominant forms of discourse and to critique ethnic inequalities in contemporary Italian society.

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An Exemplary Case The work of Amara Lakhous exemplifies how writers who navigate between two languages and their associated social contexts bring both linguistic and cultural translation into play to convey notions of cultural identity. Born and raised in Algeria to a Berber-speaking family, he learned both Arabic and French while growing up. In 1995, at the age of 25, he moved to Italy as a political refugee. He wrote his first novel in Arabic while still living in Algiers, but it remained unpublished until 1999, four years after his arrival in Italy, when it was translated into Italian by Francesco Leggio and published at the author’s expense in a bilingual edition al-baqq wa-l-qursan/Le cimici e il pirata (The Bedbugs and the Pirate) (Lakhous 1999). The publication of Cimici marked the launch of what Lakhous describes as an ambitious intercultural project that aims to promote knowledge of the Arabic language in Italy and the Italian language in the Arab countries (Lakhous 2000, 2006a, 2008b, 2014a). His next step in the realization of this ambition was the publication, in 2003, of an Arabic-language novel about his early years in Italy. Released in Algeria with the title Kayfa tarḍa‘u min al-dhi’ba dūna an ta‘aḍḍaka (How to Be Suckled by the She-wolf without Getting Bitten) (Lakhous 2003), it explores the relationship between memory, language, and cultural belonging. By the time this second novel came out, Lakhous had been living in Italy for over a decade and had worked hard to acquire Italian as his personal adoptive language, to the point where Italian had become “una seconda madrelingua” (a second mother tongue) (Lakhous 2000, n.p.). Soon after his arrival in Rome, Lakhous had taken an Italian language course at the Casa dei Diritti Sociali, a secular voluntary association advocating for human and social rights for disadvantaged groups. He was later offered a job by the association as a cultural mediator in a migrant center. This latter experience motivated his decision to rewrite his second novel in Italian. Lakhous emphasizes the fact that the Italian version is not “simply a case of self-translation” (non si tratta di una semplice auto-­ traduzione) (Lakhous 2005, n.p.). The Italian version, published in 2006 with the title Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of

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Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio), won him the prestigious Italian literary prizes Flaiano and Racalmare-Leonardo Sciascia. It also made the bestseller list in the widely distributed national daily newspaper, Corriere della sera. For an author like Amara Lakhous, for whom themes of linguistic and cultural identity are central, self-translation becomes a tool of narrative construction, of understanding and making sense of a world made up of static sovereign borders, but of mobile populations and unstable identities. His multilingual creative ability is a way for him to break from restrictive linguistic and geographical boundaries. In a recent interview, he describes the complex relationship between language, migration, and identity: La scrittura e forse la mia stessa esistenza, sono il risultato del plurilinguismo. Ogni lingua è una patria priva di confini artificiali e permessi di soggiorno da rinnovare. Mi affascinano i mestieri del traduttore e del mediatore. Definirei la traduzione il viaggio da una riva all’altra, durante il quale ti arricchisci di idee, immagini e metafore. … Benedico l’emigrazione, perché simboleggia l’alternativa al mare chiuso. Ti spinge a riflettere sulla tua identità. La mia è un mosaico di tessere assemblate in contesti diversi. (Lakhous 2014b, n.p., emphasis added) (Writing and perhaps my very existence, are the result of multilingualism. Each language is a homeland free of artificial borders and temporary ­residence permits. I am fascinated by the tasks done by translators and mediators. I would define translation as a journey from one shore to the other, during which you are enriched by ideas, images and metaphors....I bless emigration, because it symbolizes the alternative to the closed sea. It drives you to think about your identity. Mine is a mosaic of tiles assembled in different contexts.)

In short, for Lakhous writing across languages constitutes a liberating, empowering force potentiating the formation of transcultural identities.

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Names, Place, and Identity The choice of Piazza Vittorio—one of the most popular and multiethnic squares in today’s Rome—as the setting for Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio allows Lakhous to explore and challenge exclusivist constructions of national identities. This particular square is paradigmatic in its contemporary role as a showcase of the ongoing social hybridization of Italian society and is “as emblematic of the new Rome as the she-wolf is of the ancient city” (Mazzoni 2010, 163). The plot of Scontro is shaped around a single apartment building on Piazza Vittorio and revolves around the murder of one of the building’s residents. The inhabitants of the building—five immigrant characters and five Italian characters—all give their views on the facts, especially on the prime suspect, whose real name is Ahmed but who is universally known as Amedeo, who is thought to be Italian although he is actually Algerian, and who mysteriously disappeared after the murder. The structure of the novel is rather complex. The novel consists of 22 chapters: 11 chapters consisting of first-person monologues recited in turn by the different characters and alternating with a second set of 11 chapters formulated as diary entries written by Amedeo/Ahmed. The diary entries comment and expand on the first-person “witness statements” given by the various characters. All the chapters in the latter group are entitled “The truth according to…” followed by the name of the individual character. Even if the range of topics discussed in addition to that of Amedeo/Ahmed’s disappearance and innocence is very broad and varies from one “truth-telling” chapter to another, in almost all of them the themes that emerge are directly connected to the exploration of Italianness. Whether the characters express their bewilderment at Italian linguistic heterogeneity, or incredulity at the discovery that a foreigner has been able to master the language “meglio di tanti italiani” (better than many Italians) (Lakhous 2006b, 103), these reactions serve the same textual purpose: the investigation of the nexus between language and nationality. By making the culturally hybrid Amedeo/Ahmed the protagonist, Scontro mocks the superficiality of the dominant notion of citizenship/nationality. This dominant notion, in fact, accommodates only those who can be thought of as Italian on the

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surface, where surface is represented by linguistic knowledge and skin color. At the same time, Scontro also highlights the strong exclusionary potential of such a notion of belonging. By drawing attention to persistent regional fragmentation, and to internal divisions of the social and linguistic kind between the North and the South of Italy, the author draws the reader’s attention to the problematic assumption of a one-to-­ one correlation between language and national identity. Thus, Lakhous seeks a way to safeguard both cultural difference and localized identity without falling into the exclusionary tendencies of ethnic and national identity. His method is to attempt to transcend these categories in a dialectical movement that is signaled on the stylistic level through his ongoing hybridization of language and on the structural level by adopting strategies of genre hybridization and intertextuality. The latter is exemplified in his third novel, Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi (2010, Divorce Islamic Style in viale Marconi), which is a rewriting of Pietro Germi’s film Divorzio all’ italiana (1961, Divorce Italian Style), a milestone in the genre of Italian film known as “commedia all’italiana” (comedy Italian style). The difference between Lakhous’ and Germi’s titles is significant: while Divorzio all’italiana suggests homogeneity, Lakhous’ choice of title immediately signifies difference and heterogeneity, by both associating an Islamic element to the Italian context and localizing it to viale Marconi in Rome. The two main characters in the story are Christian—a young Sicilian who speaks perfect Tunisian Arabic and is contacted by the Italian secret services to infiltrate a potential terrorist cell—and Safia, a woman of Egyptian origin who has come to Rome to follow her husband, Said. Once more, the setting is crucial, the crowded and diverse viale Marconi neighborhood in the 15th District of Rome where the largest Muslim community in the capital resides—known as “Little Cairo” because its inhabitants are mainly from northern Africa. Lakhous explicitly speculates on the nature, or, to use Henri Lefebvre’s term, the production of social space (Lefebvre 1991). It is through this investigation of the connections between the production of social space and the formation of cultural identity that the stories of Safia and Christian meet. Set in the alarmist climate that followed the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings, the novel follows Christian in his role as Issa, a Muslim Tunisian migrant,

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on his mission to uncover the allegedly imminent Rome bombing being plotted in viale Marconi. The ironic use of spy novel conventions counters the dominant view of a monolithic and homogeneous Italian identity. Lakhous’ character Christian “exits” his Italian identity to inhabit that of a migrant. He adopts the name Issa, shares a flat in Little Cairo with other migrants, and changes his way of speaking: L’ideale è parlare un italiano con una doppia cadenza, araba, perchè sono tunisino, e siciliana perchè sono un immigrato che ha vissuto in Sicilia. (Lakhous 2010, 45) (The ideal is to speak Italian with a dual cadence, Arab, because I’m Tunisian, and Sicilian, because I’m an immigrant who has lived in Sicily. (Lakhous 2012, 47))

The change of names from Arabic to Italian and from Italian to Arabic underscores the role of the characters as intercultural mediators. Personal names have been frequently used in literary narratives as dense signifiers, in the sense that they may contain in themselves indications about the function of a character or about the way the storyline might develop. The protagonists in Scontro and Divorzio all have double names that reflect their mixed affiliations. From a semiotic perspective, the names act as signs, generating cultural associations, which, in the case of both male protagonists, indicate religious identity. In Scontro Amedeo/Ahmed’s name in Italian means “love of God” and in Arabic is a variant of Muhammad and means “praiseworthy”. In Divorzio, Christian’s mission requires him to take on an Arab name and he, significantly, chooses Issa, which is “the equivalent of Jesus for Muslims” (Lakhous 2012, 34). In Safia’s case, the change of name is part of a series of empowerment strategies developed by the character. She happily embraces the Italian version of her name (Sofia), not so much because people fail to grasp her name correctly (Lakhous 2010, 25), but more because of the fortuitous coincidence that she resembles the celebrated Italian actress Sophia Loren. The duality of Christian/Issa and Safia/Sofia allows each to provide both insider and outsider perspectives on various identities. Because they can acknowledge differing points of view, these characters are not ideologically

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bound. Christian is Italian, but he also experiences Rome as an outsider, commenting on his experiences in a Sicilian-inflected Italian. Along with his Italian nationality, he has a familial and cultural link to Tunisia through his grandfather. Safia/Sofia’s covert political ideas make her an outsider in the Muslim community insofar as she reflects critical opinions on the role of women in Islam. At the same time, she is an outsider in Italy as a foreign woman who wears the veil. The ambiguity imbricated in the re-naming and the slippage of one identity into the other is reflected in the novel’s narrative strategies, in which both Christian/Issa and Safia/Sofia articulate a dialogue between center and margin, between Catholic Italy and Muslim northern Africa. Similarly, the fact that both Amedeo/Ahmed in Scontro and Christian/Issa in Divorzio are fluent in Italian and Arabic, as well as being well-versed in the discourses of both Mediterranean cultures, makes them ideally suited to the role of translingual cultural mediators (Wilson 2011) who could actively contribute to effecting change in both “home” and “host” societies.

Identity Unbound The problems of racism and oppression that emerge in Lakhous’ narratives as part of his reflections on migration cannot be thought through in personal, individualistic terms, but rather in terms of collective practices that link disparate individual stories. In the very doubleness of their names, Amedeo/Ahmed and Safia/Sofia are paradigmatic of the new hybrid forms of “national” identity emerging in contemporary Italy. These multilingual subjects enact multiple forms of self-translation, which, through the constant fragmenting and recombination of linguistic elements, compel us to rethink the relationship between language, culture, and identity in terms of “diversalism” (Glissant 1997) rather than “otherness”. Like Edouard Glissant’s attempt to think identity via the “poetics of relation” (1997, 141–157), which he defines, in Deleuzian terms, as a rhizomatic form of thought, one that reaches out to the other while accepting the “opacity” of that other, Lakhous is concerned above all with language as a strategic area of cultural self-definition. A striking example of the strategic construction of a plural identity that overcomes

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linguistic and national boundaries is provided in Scontro through the intertextual reference to Amin Maalouf ’s novel Leo Africanus. Malouf ’s novel is based on the life of that archetypal sixteenth-century transnational figure, Al Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fassi, later known as Leo Africanus.4 In Amedeo/Ahmed’s reading, Hassan/Leo is hailed as an example of a man who is free “from the chains of identity” (Lakhous 2008a, 110). Like Hassan/Leo, Amedeo/Ahmed has an identity built of different elements and belongs to two different cultures. While one is a historical figure and the other a fictional character, both can be considered examples of paradigmatic creolization, and their juxtaposition is a way of drawing attention to the significant historical encounters and their interconnectedness with the present that are typical of the centuries-­ long interactions in the Mediterranean region: Vivere due culture significa disporre come di chiavi diverse per porte diverse … arabizzare l’italiano e viceversa significa anche portare l’immaginario da una riva all’altra del Mediterraneo non soltanto nel senso dell’incontro tra le culture, ma pure nel senso della riscoperta di una memoria comune … come autore arabo che scrive in italiano non vengo ma torno in Italia, che è un luogo abitato dalla cultura araba da secoli e secoli (Lakhous 2011, 3) (Living two cultures means having different keys for different doors… Arabizing Italian and vice versa also means bringing the imagery from one shore of the Mediterranean to another, not only in the sense of the meeting between cultures, but also in the sense of rediscovering a common memory…as an Arab author who writes in Italian I did not arrive in Italy, I just returned to a place inhabited by Arab culture for many centuries)

Both Hassan/Leo and Amedeo/Ahmed occupy a central role in connecting two worlds, in trying to build a dialogue to create an equal  Later known as Leo Africanus, Al Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fassi was born in Granada in the sixteenth century. His family fled to Morocco when the Spanish army forced Muslims and Jews out of Andalusia, and Hassan-Leo grew up in Fez. As a trader and diplomat, he followed the caravans through North Africa and later travelled extensively in the Islamic Mediterranean. He was captured by Spanish pirates and brought to Rome in 1518, where he was kept a prisoner until he professed to have converted to Christianity. Pope Leo X then gave him the name “Leone” as a patronly favor and Hassan-Leo was baptized and became a member of the papal court (Zemon Davis 2007). 4

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i­nterchange between cultures: a role that is compared to that of a smuggler, crossing “le frontiere della lingua con un bottino di parole, idee, immagini e metafore” (Lakhous 2006b, 155) (the frontiers of language with a booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors (Lakhous 2008a, 109)). By “smuggling” one language into another and writing so that a dialect or an accent can be “heard”, Lakhous not only performs a cultural self-­translation that “manifests itself in the language of the story” (Klinger 2013, 119), he also gives us lessons about how to imagine other cultures and what constitutes an efficient transcultural process.

Conclusion Coming from outside and living at the point of intersection of different stories allow translingual authors to experiment with both their dispersion and their translation into new forms. Lakhous’ stories about multicultural co-existence in contemporary Italian society invest simultaneously in political and social criticism, and transform language into an empowering motif: One acquires freedom through language. It is power. It means to arm oneself with a powerful tool of survival, to live well, and to matter as a person.…The ability to communicate offers status.…Thinking about language,…you receive the soul of a people; you conquer part of the culture’s identity. Then the relationship with your native language changes, as does your way of speaking and thinking. And the beautiful thing is that you also change the language you acquire. (Lakhous 2008b)

From this perspective, it emerges that the process of linguistic hybridization destabilizes conceptions of fixed national, linguistic, and personal identities. Working between languages enables Lakhous to provide new insights into shifting constructions of citizenship in a period characterized by the transition from national to transcultural communities. In other words, Lakhous reproduces ideological linkages as rhetorical ones, and by so doing provides a way of capturing “the labile quality of self and intercommunal identity construction” (Cronin 2013, 348).

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A notable insight emerging from literary works by translingual writers such as Lakhous is that the second language emerges as a new mode of comprehending the environment. Whichever way this mode is acquired, it is usually not through one’s parents. As such, it usually accrues psychological connotations other than those associated with the first language. The adopted language functions as new pliable material waiting to be used, free from conventions, rigid connotations, and emotional barriers. Eva Hoffman reflects on this process in her autobiography Lost in Translation. A Life in a New Language (1989), in which she locates her newly constructed sense of self in her ability to move between languages and cultures without losing her sense of identity. Looking back on her process of self-translation, she realizes that “each language makes the other relative” (273) and concludes that, because “I have learned the relativity of cultural meaning on my skin, I can never take any one set of meanings as final” (275). The discussion about language and its materiality—evidenced, for example, by the emphasis on accents and pronunciation—is also intrinsic to Lakhous’ personal experience of migration to a foreign country; an everyday experience of asking himself about his own individual identity, created and expressed through language. The questions he considers in his works concern such issues as the inequality of cultural encounters, which are, in turn, usually related to power relations, and also related to the manner of communication, that is, the way we manipulate languages. In particular, his translative writing processes accentuate the value of “heterolingual address” (Sakai 1997) as an inclusive practice that, unlike the ideology of monolingualism, does not treat language practices—and the identity constructions associated with such practices—as discrete, uniform, and stable. Ultimately, acculturated and socialized in two environments, Algerian and Italian, Lakhous plays the part of a public intellectual through his artistic and academic activity, helping to shape public discourse and influence perceptions of those phenomena—language, translation, transcultural encounters—which are constantly occurring around us. Above all, he plays with received notions of “national” and “cultural” in transnational contact zones, and in so doing helps reveal the artifice, the contextually specific nature of all identity labels, and the ways in which all labels can be reread, rewritten, and/or be perceived as prejudice. As a

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translingual writer who composes in more than one language, Lakhous is an artist who aspires to both experience his own maternal linguistic reality and transcend it by simultaneously taking on that of the Other. The act of multilingual creation reflects a desire to enter, know, and become the Other, and then share two spheres of cultural and linguistic formation through the process of transculturation. Writers like Lakhous are proud of their linguistic heritage and almost invariably want to maintain their ability to write in their mother tongue: thus there is no desire for “vertical” translation here, of giving enhanced prestige to the “new” language, but rather of establishing a linguistic relationship of horizontality, reaching out to explore the possibilities of expression in another language and, importantly, to understand what it is like to achieve linguistic identification with another reality.

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Esposito, Claudia. 2012. Literature is language: An interview with Amara Lakhous. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48 (4): 1–13. doi:10.1080/1744985 5.2011.559126. Firmat, Gustavo P. 2002. Bilingual blues, bilingual bliss: el caso Casey. Modern Language Notes 117 (2): 432–448. Geddes, Andrew. 2008. Il rombo dei cannoni? Immigration and the Centre-­ Right in Italy. Journal of European Public Policy 15 (3): 349–366. Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Grutman, Rainier. 2009. Self-translation. In Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies, ed. Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 2nd ed., 257–260. London/ New York: Routledge. Hoffman, Eva. 1989. Lost in translation: A life in a new language. New  York: E. P. Dutton. Hokenson, Jan W., and Marcella Munson. 2007. The bilingual text: History and theory of literary self-translation. Manchester: St. Jerome. Kaindl, Klaus, and Karlheinz Spitzl. 2014. Transfiction: Research into the realities of translation fiction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Kellman, Steven G. 2000. The translingual imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Klinger, Susanne. 2013. Translated otherness, self-translated in-betweenness: Hybridity as medium versus hybridity as object in anglophone african writing. In Self-translation: Brokering originality in hybrid culture, ed. Anthony Cordingley, 113–126. London/New York: Bloomsbury. Lakhous, Amara. 1999. al-baqq wa-l-qursan/Le cimici e il pirata. Trans. F. Leggio. Rome: Arlem. ———. 2000. Elegia dell’esilio compiuto. Sagarana, August 8. http://www. sagarana.it/rivista/numero2/elegia.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2003. kayfa tarḍa’u min al-dhi’ba dūna an ta’aḍḍaka. Algiers: Editions Al-ikhtilaf. ———. 2005. Intervista con Ubax Cristina Ali Farah. El-ghibli 1 (7), March. http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=01_07§ion=6& index_pos=1.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2006a. Amara Lakhous: “Come farsi allattare dalla lupa senza farsi mordere.” Interviewed by Nicola Villa. Scuola di scrittura Omero, April 23. http://www.omero.it/omero-magazine/interviste/amara-lakhous-come-farsiallattare-­dalla-lupa-senza-farsi-mordere/. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2006b. Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio. Rome: Edizioni e/o.

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———. 2008a. Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. Trans. Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions. ———. 2008b. Clash of civilizations over an elevator in Piazza Vittorio. Interview with Amara Lakhous. Interviewed by Letizia Airos Soria. Trans. G.  Prestia. IADP i-Italy, December 2. http://www.iitaly.org/5486/clash-­ civilizations-­over-elevator-piazza-vittorio-interview-amara-lakhous. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2010. Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi. Rome: Edizioni e/o. ———. 2011. Le catene dell’identità. Conversazione con Amara Lakhous. Interviewed by Daniela Brogi. Between, May 30. http://ojs.unica.it/index. php/between/article/viewFile/152/128. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2012. Divorce Islamic Style. Trans. Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions. ———. 2014a. Amara Lakhous. Interviewed by Meredith K Ray. Full Stop, April 9. http://www.full-stop.net/2014/04/09/interviews/meredith-k-ray/ amara-lakhous/. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. ———. 2014b. L’Italia che nega se stessa. Intervista ad Amara Lakhous. Interviewed by Gabriele Santoro. Minima et Moralia, November 28. http:// www.minimaetmoralia.it/wp/intervista-ad-amara-lakhous/. Accessed 31 Dec 2016. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-­ Smith. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. Mazzoni, Cristina. 2010. She-wolf: The story of a Roman icon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oustinoff, Michaël. 2001. Bilinguisme d’écriture et auto-traduction, Julien Green, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov. Paris: L’Harmattan. Papastergiadis, Nikos. 2000. The turbulence of migration: Globalization, deterritorialization and hybridity. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Parati, Graziella. 1999. Mediterranean crossroads: Migration literature in Italy. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ———. 2005. Migration Italy: The art of talking back in a destination culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Popovič, Anton. 1976. Dictionary for the analysis of literary translation. Edmonton: Department of Comparative Literature, University of Alberta. Pratt, Mary L. 1992. Imperial eyes: Studies in travel writing. London/New York: Routledge. Pugliese, Enrico. 2006. L’Italia tra migrazioni internazionali e migrazioni interne. Bologna: Il Mulino.

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Richter, Melita. 2006. Women experiencing citizenship. In Common passion, different voices: Reflections on citizenship and intersubjectivity, ed. Eva Skaerbæk, Daša Duhaček, Elena Pulcini, and Melita Richter, 36–48. York: Raw Nerve Books Ltd. Richter, Melia, and Lorenzo Dugulin. 2005. Sguardi e parole migranti. Trieste: Coordinamento delle associazioni e delle comunità di immigrati della provincia di Trieste. Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary homelands: Essays and criticism 1981–1991. London: Granta Books. Saidero, Deborah. 2011. Self-translation as transcultural re-inscription of identity in Dôre Michelut and Gianna Patriarca. Oltreoceano 05: 33–41. Sakai, Naoki. 1997. Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism. Trans. Meaghan Morris. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shread, Carolyn. 2009. Redefining translation through self-translation: The case of Nancy Huston. French Literature Series 36 (1): 51–66. Wilson, Rita. 2007. Cultural (re)locations: Narratives by contemporary Italian-­ Australian women. In Literary and social diasporas: An Italian Australian perspective, ed. Gaetano Rando and Gerry Turcotte, 147–164. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ———. 2009. The writer’s double: Translation, writing and autobiography. Romance Studies 27 (3): 186–198. ———. 2011. Cultural mediation through translingual narrative. Target 23 (2): 235–250. Zemon Davis, Natalie. 2007. Trickster travels: In search of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-­century Muslim between worlds. New York: Hill and Wang.

Section 3 Creating and Mediating Identity

Meta-analysis III In this third and final section of Reconstructing Identity, Mia Lindgren’s chapter introduces autoethnography, and together with the final chapter, it bookends writing in which identity escapes the bounds of personality and human embodiment. This could be characterized as a trans-human space of identity. Lindgren’s chapter is the apotheosis of the personal narrative, at the same time as it stretches beyond the personal into realms of professional identity and conventions of journalism in an era of digital disruption. Once more, the private and the public form a trans-space in which the fabric of identity is exposed to scrutiny. The chapter links to ideas of national cultures that were so prominent in the last section as the author’s Swedishness comes into conflict with the idea of Australian national identity. Together with what is lost and what is gained in these interactions, these factors generate a transdisciplinary narrative. The learning exercise the Forms of Identity students undertook for Lindgren’s session was to record a “confessional” piece about themselves that simulated the kind of podcast described in the chapter. Not all the students took this opportunity, but those who did were forced to encounter identity as a public phenomenon, something that breaks down the boundaries between exterior and interior and which dissolved subject-object dichotomies—as so much of the work in this collection has done.

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Pasfield-Neofitou’s chapter examines what happens when “people begin to think they are machines”: a clear step toward a trans-human world in which human identity is mediated and changed in an intimate relationship with technology. Both transgressive and transcendent, these relationships permit a fluidity in identity as individuals adopt, often multiple, Internet personae. This proliferation of identities is a step beyond that which has come before, and the teaching exercise that accompanied the session, in which Pasfield-Neofitou required students to create an online identity of their own, demonstrated how multi-layered these identities can become. Each student and each tutor were required to design and submit an avatar from a choice of programs or games. In the session, the tutor showed each avatar and the rest of the group had to guess which identity belonged to which participant. There was significant variation, with particular individuals selecting something close to their own ­perceptions of their identity, and others choosing characteristics and an appearance very different from their own. What we are becomes multiple, fragmented, exploded. Identity, it seems, has never been further away from a settled collection of characteristics that is stable in time. The question, for example, to return to Watkin’s chapter, of whether a broom which has had its handle replaced, then its head, is still the same broom, has traction in this case. What are created are narratives of identity and identities that are amenable to radical change over relatively short spaces of time. The focus on narrative is developed by Ochoa and Lorimer, as they drive constructions of identity still further away from a person-centric understanding. Key, again, in this chapter is the idea that identity is formed in interactions. In this case, it is the brand with the consumer; in Lindgren, the individual with national bureaucracy and nationalism; and in PasfieldNeofitou, in human and machine. Ochoa and Lorimer suggest that identity is “always in flow,” a notion that supports the idea that identity is constantly shaped and re-shaped by interactions with the social. The idea of flow also supports the notion that a narrative is the construction of unfolding events in the context of their environment. Ochoa and Lorimer argue that autobiographical writing provides a platform and a process where “individuals are able to organize their memories and impressions into a coherent, causal sequence of events.” Confusion and

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becoming are posited as appropriate responses to a world that seeks to commodify and monetize identity through co-option into product and the inevitable accompaniment of appropriation through advertising. Ochoa and Lorimer show that in the realm of the transdisciplinary, two conditions of mind are necessary to engage at this level: a willingness to hold contradictory concepts in constellation and the ability to accept the failure to fully grasp an idea.

9 Autoethnographic Journalism: Subjectivity and  Emotionality in Audio Storytelling Mia Lindgren

Introduction Editors increasingly expect journalists to weave self-narratives into their stories and promote themselves and their identities on social media and news columns (Coward 2013). With blogs and other forms of self-­ expression, journalists have entered the world of “selfie journalism”.1 The blurred lines between personalized experience and objective fact raise questions about how journalistic professional identity changes as journalists juggle the dual roles of observer and subject. This chapter uses autoethnography to expose, examine, and critique the challenges and dilemmas journalists face when they come out from behind the (perceived) veil of objectivity. It expands on previous work by the author on  While the term “selfie journalism” is most commonly used to describe the use of smartphones by journalists to report and share, the term could also be used to refer to journalists figuratively turning the lens on themselves to include self-narratives in their stories. See Koliska (2015), Maniou and Veglis (2016), Omar (2015). 1

M. Lindgren (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_9

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personal and confessional storytelling, applying it to a case study focused on the making of a radio documentary. This process provides a context for exploring the impact on the journalist as she negotiates the fluid boundaries between professional and personal identity, interrogating how emotions can be managed—and utilized—in subjective and confessional audio journalism. It looks at how self-narration can help articulate an emotional and challenging experience, eventually leading to an acceptance of a new identity. Losing My Identity (Lindgren 2012), commissioned and broadcast on ABC Radio National (ABC RN) in Australia in 2012, tells the story of the reporter losing her Swedish citizenship, and in her mind her Swedish identity, using interviews with the author’s family members interwoven with autobiographical confessional commentaries. The chapter begins with a brief overview of autoethnography as methodology. It then examines the growth of personal and confessional audio storytelling, driven in large part by the rise in popularity of podcasts. The chapter goes on to examine the notion of objectivity in journalism in the context of emotions and how these are managed in stories of self. Emotions played a dominant role in this autoethnographic documentary about loss of identity, and managing them was an essential aspect of the production process. Finally, the chapter explores the Losing My Identity case study. Focusing on the development of this story, the chapter examines the benefits and challenges of journalists putting themselves in the frame. It also considers potential pitfalls of self-focused storytelling and the need for carefully considered production practices.

Autoethnography as a Method for Sense-Making Autoethnography, a technique combining “characteristics of ethnography and autobiography” (Pace 2012, 2), is often used in studies exploring the processes of human creativity. It allows researchers and producers to reflexively explore their personal experiences and interactions with others “as a way of achieving wider cultural, political or social understanding” (ibid.). The outcome of that research is often a first-person narrative, written in an evocative way, where the researcher is the object of the research,

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disclosing personal details about their private life and highlighting emotional experiences (Ellis 2004, 30). That makes it a suitable methodology for exploring questions of identity and perception of belonging, in this case, using the format of a radio documentary. Autoethnography opens up a window into the creative process by making it possible to observe and critique the documentary maker at work. It allows the reader to be part of a process as the challenges of personal journalistic storytelling are revealed from the inside. This chapter contains a two-tiered autoethnography, informed by the producer/researcher’s belief that both the experience of the production and its reflective critiques can provide relevant creative and scholarly insights to others. First, it is an autoethnography of practice, where the case study provides an opportunity to analyze autoethnographic radio/ audio as a production technique addressing questions of objectivity. Second, it is a reflexive critique of the documentary, where the journalist’s own practices, insights, and beliefs become a form of “core data” (Arnold 2008, 39), thereby contributing to our understanding of the links between personal identity and national citizenship, and ultimately the emotional impact of telling your own story of the loss of identity.

The Power of Storytelling The word “storytelling” is used across myriad industries and disciplines. In health settings, storytelling denotes the use of personal narratives to alleviate distress, improve decision-making, and promote healing, acceptance, and understanding among ill patients (Kokanovic and Hill 2012). In law, the communicative power of storytelling is seen as a powerful tool of persuasion and “a potential transformative device for the disempowered” (Winter 1989, 2228). In psychology, life stories are seen as crucial to the construction of identity formation (Dunlop and Walker 2013; Fivush et  al. 2011), and self-narration is considered “a critical developmental skill”, since “narrating our personal past connects us to our selves, our families, our communities, and our cultures” (Fivush et al. 2011, 1). In sociology, storytelling is used to explain cultural phenomena and preserve cultural heritage (Brady 1997; Sobol 2010; Tossa 2012); to impart politics,

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religion, history, and values (Benedict 1934; Egan 1989; Skeiker 2010); and to explain structural social and political inequalities (Poletti 2011). In educational settings across schools, universities, and ­vocational institutions, storytelling is used to convey information, teach key principles, and build analytical skills (Andrews et al. 2009; Egan 1989; Hmelo-Silver 2004). Storytelling has also been harnessed for professional development purposes, to “deepen emotional awareness of practice” to explain actions and events, and to promote future learning (Edwards 2014, 46). In Acts of Meaning, Jerome Bruner argues that every culture has a “folk psychology”, a “system by which people organize their experience in, knowledge about, and transactions with the social world” (Bruner 1990, 35). A culture’s organizing principle is not conceptual, but narrative, shaped by beliefs and desires, so “we believe that the world is organized in certain ways, that we want certain things, that some things matter more than others” (ibid., 39, emphasis in original). People hold beliefs “not only about the present but about the past and future” (ibid., 39), and the idea of “personhood” derives from these beliefs. Narratives help us understand complex events and generate meaning from turmoil (Schaeffer 2009). Narrating our own experiences can be integral to the construction of our self-identities (Bruner 1990, 1991; Eakin 1992, 1999). This sense-­ making occurs both when we listen to others’ stories and also when we articulate our own. Storytelling thus helps us make sense of what is going on in the world around us and also within ourselves.

Journalism and the Personal Journalism relies on storytelling and emotions to stimulate emotional reactions in the audience and secure their involvement (Wahl-Jorgensen 2013, 132; see also Peters 2011). The journalistic values of honesty, independence, objectivity, accuracy, and respect for others have placed the journalist into the role of the observer, recording and reporting the world at arm’s length from the subject (many scholars have written about this, see for example Maras 2013; Wahl-Jorgensen 2013; Ward 2010). Journalists have long narrated society to itself without being part of the story; however, this detached approach has also been challenged. In fact, entire genres of journalism

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f­ eature the journalist as an active participant or witness, building on the New Journalism movement popularized by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Hunter S.  Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, and Truman Capote, among others (see Wolfe 1973, where Wolfe coined the modern usage of the term New Journalism). In New Journalism, authors physically immersed themselves in stories and events, and inserted themselves into their narratives (Boynton 2005; Pauly 2014; Talese and Lounsberry 1996; Weingarten 2006; Wolfe 1973). The movement was controversial because it was seen as favoring subjective truth over objective facts (Eason 1982); however, modern journalism has seen a return to more personal and confessional forms of reporting (Coward 2013). Stories about human emotions and lived experiences, where the lens can be turned on journalists and they become characters in the story, are now celebrated (Beckett and Deuze 2016). With the rise of personal and confessional storytelling, journalists not only have to manage their own emotions, which form part of the story, but they must also remain detached so they can reflect on their own experiences in ways that resonate with others, without being perceived as self-indulgent or sad. Rosalind Coward (2010, 2013) wrote a column in the family section of the Saturday Guardian newspaper about looking after her mother who was suffering from dementia. Although many readers of the column confirmed the value of sharing stories about carers and their unrecognized work, others commented that the author’s exposition of her mother in public was exploitative. One reader accused Coward of “abusing her [mum’s] privacy” (2010, 225), raising questions about the potentially exploitative aspect of “revealing details of one’s own family’s lives” and “invading one’s own privacy” (ibid., 232).

Storytelling in the Audio Media First-person approaches in storytelling are particularly well suited to audio2 journalism, because it is a medium that favors the human voice. In radio journalism, the human experience is essential. Stories are mostly  The terms “radio” and “audio” are used interchangeably in this chapter in recognition that journalism is now commonly produced to be platform agnostic. Some podcast content is broadcast on radio, and vice versa. 2

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told using the voices of the people involved, opening up access to authentic lived experience and emotions. This aligns with broader societal trends toward an “emotional public sphere” (Richards and Rees 2011, 853) and what is often called the “affective turn” in social science research (Clarke et al. 2006, cited in Richards and Rees 2011, 854). As I have written elsewhere (Lindgren 2016, see also Lindgren 2014, 2015; Lindgren and McHugh 2013; McHugh 2016), the first-person narrative and personal approach is especially noticeable in recent podcast developments, illustrated by the phenomenal success of the first season of the 2014 podcast Serial, presented by Sarah Koenig and a team of producers with links to National Public Radio (NPR) in the US. The success of this personal approach to audio storytelling was repeated in the 2017 podcast S-Town by Serial and This American Life, produced by reporter Brian Reed. In Serial, Koenig’s journalistic quest to unpick an old murder case developed into a distinct narrative within the podcast series. However, the main focus of the production was a real-life crime case rather than a story from Koenig’s personal life. Her ongoing confessional meta-conversation with the listeners about the challenges of reporting the case personalized her professional practice. Her recorded reporter’s “voice links” supplied information relevant to the murder case and outlined the journalistic process of producing the episodes. This meta-narration of the production process allowed listeners to witness her journalistic work and gain insights into the practice of recording and producing in-depth audio journalism, creating a sense of authentic reporting. The story was told in an intimate, conversational, and personal way, blurring the boundaries between professional and personal storytelling. Focusing on personal stories and experiences “humanizes journalism” (Coward 2014, 39) and validates listeners’ everyday lives. It also humanizes journalists, who under a more objective approach would be hidden outside of the frame. Unlike in written text where an author is a relatively distant presence, radio requires sound, and in radio journalism, it requires recorded voices. Audio stories can be developed so the voice of the journalist is completely excluded, in a montage-style story. More commonly, the journalist’s voice can be heard in interviews, or in voice recordings that link the various components of the story, such as interview segments, music, sound effects, and so on.

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The level of journalists’ involvement and the “visibility” of their voice in audio journalism differ depending on genre. In news reporting, ­listeners are used to hearing the disembodied voices of radio reporters around the world telling them stories, commonly on a phone line. In radio news, the voice style is often formal, correct, and impersonal, reflecting expectations of an impartial, accurate, and objective reporter. The reporter’s voice is heard, but little of the person behind the voice is revealed. For long-form journalism, the scope is broader. Feature and documentary productions usually have space in the narrative arc for the journalist/producer to be heard in the storytelling. Ira Glass, the presenter of popular US radio show and podcast This American Life, has been a vocal advocate for a more personalized reporting style in broadcast journalism (Glass 2011). Glass has actively encouraged reporters not to stand outside the frame with the microphone at arms’ length (ibid.). Using your own life as material in your storytelling can be a powerful way to connect in ways that resonate with listeners. However, as the next section shows, there are potential risks and challenges journalists must navigate when employing an autoethnographic approach to storytelling.

 bjectivity and Managing Journalistic O Emotions Objectivity, which encompasses fairness and credibility, is identified as one of the five universal traits or values of journalism (Deuze 2005; Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014; Schudson and Anderson 2009). While journalists’ professional bodies around the world espouse values such as independence, accuracy, honesty, and fairness in their ethical codes, the term “objectivity” is seldom explicitly defined. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has overseen the UK and Irish journalism since 1938, for example, and its code of conduct highlights the importance of “differentiating between fact and opinion” (NUJ 2011). Similarly, in Australia, members of the professional body and union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), commit to the four pillars of the Australian Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which are honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others (MEAA n.d.)

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Embedded in the understanding of the profession of journalism is also the expectation that journalists must manage their emotions. Indeed, managing emotions can be seen as a central aspect of the job. The concept of “emotion” in journalism is often dismissed and treated as “a marker of unprincipled and flawed journalism” (Peters 2011, 298) stemming back to the “Cartesian dualism of emotion and rationality” (ibid., 299). Peters points to the problem of emotions being traditionally associated with “sensational” or poor-quality journalism, such as tabloidization (ibid., 299). Peters argues that, in fact, journalism hasn’t become more emotional, and that the rise of subjective and personal journalism can instead be explained through the growing acceptance of journalists being involved as actors themselves in stories, in addition to more explicit attempts to engage directly with audiences (ibid.). Karin Wahl-Jorgensen’s (2013) analysis of 101 Pulitzer prize-winning articles demonstrates that the articles relied heavily on emotional storytelling. Her analysis showcases the “overwhelming use of anecdotal leads, personalized story-telling and expressions of affect” (ibid., 129). WahlJorgensen argues that emotionality is just as embedded in journalism practice as objectivity; however, it is not as commonly understood by journalists “because it is at odds with journalistic self-­understanding” (ibid., 130). Wahl-Jorgensen (2013) refers to the seminal work of Tuchman (1972), where she writes that the ritual of objectivity, where journalists collected and reported facts in a detached and impersonal manner, was a way to safeguard journalists so that “deadlines will be met and libel suits avoided” (ibid. 1972, 660). Understood in this light, Tuchman (1972) argues that objectivity can be seen as a kind of survival mechanism (ibid.). The tension between objectivity and emotional engagement among the journalists was highlighted in the research by Richards and Rees (2011) on the role of emotions in British journalism. Their interview study revealed an ambivalence and confusion between “empathy and sympathy, and detachment and disassociation”, informed by a belief that “emotions inevitably contaminate ‘objectivity’” (2011, 863). The concept of objectivity requires further examination during a period when journalistic practices are continually changing to accommodate digital disruptions. For journalists, stepping out of the ritual of objectivity and actively involving themselves in the story can be a risky

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approach, not just because of the increased risk of libel as noted by Tuchman (1972), but because of the risk they will be accused of exploitation, as we shall see in the analysis below of the making of the Losing My Identity documentary.

Losing My Identity, Context for the Case Study Losing My Identity was produced while I was on secondment with ABC RN at Melbourne in 2012. The secondment program provided an opportunity for academics to return to industry to be immersed in the professional media environment and in my case, to spend five months producing radio documentaries for broadcast on the Australian national network. ABC RN employs a stringent commissioning process for its content, where proposals are assessed and ranked by a group of senior producers and editors. The proposal for Losing My Identity was commissioned for production, with Claudia Taranto, then Executive Producer for the now defunct program 360Documentaries, as supporting producer. The presenter’s introduction set up Losing My Identity for the listeners: Questions of identity and belonging concern many Australians. Negotiating numerous homes, languages, and cultures are commonplace for the 4.4 million Australians who were born overseas. But what makes a person identify with a specific culture or a country? What does it mean to be Swedish for example? Do you have to give up “the old country” to become part of your new home? In this personal story about migration, identity, and loss we spend time with Mia Lindgren and her family, who migrated from Sweden to Australia in the late 1990s. Mia lives in Melbourne and she proudly calls herself Swedish and Australian. Being a citizen of two worlds worked well for her until a recent revelation made her question where she really belongs. (ABC 2012)

The documentary narrates the story of how my family and I lost our Swedish citizenship. I had migrated to Australia in my early 30s. All my relatives and closest friends lived in Sweden, and my national identity was firmly embedded in Swedish soil. Although I had a very

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strong connection, with and love for Australia, at that early stage of the migrant experience, I defined myself as a Swedish person living in Australia. My son was born in Sweden and my daughter in Australia. Both children were bilingual. We became Australian citizens in 2000 in time for the 2001 federal election. Sweden was bringing in a new law allowing dual citizenship and, after conversations with the Swedish Migration Agency, we understood our position to be that we could apply for Australian citizenship while still retaining our Swedish passports. In the years that followed, we frequently traveled back to Sweden, conveniently entering and exiting countries on two passports. We renewed the children’s Swedish passports a couple of times in Sweden. There were no warning signs of things to come. It was not until I traveled to Canberra in 2011 to renew my Swedish passport that I found out that I, along with the rest of the family, had lost my Swedish citizenship in 2000. We hadn’t realized ten years previously that through the act of becoming Australians we had inadvertently canceled our Swedish citizenships. This administrative error could easily have been rectified had we petitioned the embassy within a two-year window, but that ship had long ago sailed. Standing at the passport counter at the Swedish Embassy in Canberra, I struggled to comprehend how my identity could change from one minute to the next. In my mind, I was Swedish. The woman behind the embassy counter was clearly distressed at having to break the news to me. She tried to comfort me: “You can still feel Swedish”. For generations, my family had been Swedish. My first language was Swedish, my childhood memories were Swedish, my husband was Swedish, and my answer to the frequently asked question “What are you?” was always: “I’m Swedish”. The past and present shared one identity. Then they were forcibly split. Looking at my story from the outside, I could see that the shock experience of losing my citizenship was the kind of material that could make for a compelling radio documentary. It was fundamentally a story about human existence and how people define the relationship between national identity, personal identity, and belonging. While the rest of my family—my husband and two children—were less upset by this news, the experience of being told I was no longer Swedish threw me into a state of existential crisis.

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Telling the Story: Autoethnography as Practice Losing My Identity uses storytelling to share the lived experience in a similar fashion to self-narrative in memoirs and autobiographies. The documentary is produced with an audience in mind and therefore “transcends mere narration of self to engage in cultural analysis and interpretation” (Chang 2008, 43). The fact that it is carefully researched, scripted, recorded, and edited reflects the meticulous nature of autoethnographic research, a method that according to Chang should be “ethnographic in its methodological orientation, cultural in its interpretive orientation, and autobiographical in its content orientation” (ibid., 48). In consultation with the executive producer, we decided the story would be told through my personal experience—that of my immediate family in Australia and that of my parents in Sweden. The aim was to inspire listeners to reflect on their own understanding of identity and citizenship through my experience. Interviews with my husband, my two children, and my parents via phone in Sweden would provide additional perspectives on the loss of my citizenship. I felt uncomfortable simply telling my own confessional story and decided to interview three “experts” to contextualize the issue and give it more relevance outside of my personal experience. They were academic Tim Soutphommasane (then Race Discrimination Commissioner in Australia) on multiculturalism and citizenship; psychotherapist and filmmaker Shireen Narayanan on identity-building; and Anna Berghamre, teacher at the Swedish Community School in Melbourne, on national belonging and “Swedishness”. I believed introducing expert voices would validate my experience. Dr. Soutphommasane could draw on his extensive work on national identity, including his own family story of migration, to illustrate the bonds people have with their country of birth. Shireen Narayanan could discuss personal identity from her professional work as psychotherapist, while Anna Berghamre could reflect on the role of cultural identity as part of a migrant experience. Journalism storytelling often mixes personal stories that exemplify issues and share emotions with the voices of experts to provide a broader context (Richards and Rees 2011). My decision to include experts was an attempt to alleviate my concerns and hesitations about focusing on

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my own story by providing objective evidence to give some journalistic balance to the documentary. On reflection, I realize this meant I resorted to journalistic conventions familiar to me, while simultaneously experimenting with personal narrative storytelling, a genre heretofore unfamiliar to me. An alternative approach might have been to omit the traditional journalistic “experts” and instead concentrate exclusively on the personal experience. The focus of the story was my own struggle with understanding what had happened and how to negotiate the consequences of no longer being Swedish. The impact of the loss on me was profound, in contrast to the response from my husband and children. My children had grown up in Australia and, as second-generation immigrants, their connection with the old country was more remote. My husband reacted with disbelief and frustration to what he saw as an unreasonable and bureaucratic response from a country’s administration. I decided to include interviews with the “experts” as I looked for explanations to help explain my strong emotional reactions. The Swedish teacher Anna Berghamre said she found it “impossible” to imagine not being Swedish. Her disbelief mirrored mine. I had known Shireen Narayanan a long time, and in the interview, she recalled observing how important my cultural background had been in defining—and explaining—my approach to everything from child rearing to attitudes to equality and professional identity. Dr. Soutphommasane explained in his interview the links between identity and citizenship. He described a framework where some migrants retain a strong past, current, and future connection with the country of origin. This helped explain why I felt so strongly about being cut off from Sweden, which I had always seen as an integral part of my life through memories of my childhood, as well as my ongoing involvement with family in my current and future life. My children didn’t have the same link with Sweden, from past to future. My mother shared my distress in her recorded phone conversation. She struggled to comprehend how we had lost our citizenships by error, and how her daughter could no longer be described as “Swedish”. In her mind, I was clearly part of her past, present, and future life. In contrast, my father challenged my cemented link between citizenship

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and my identity as Swedish, arguing that my identity could remain intact regardless of passports. His was a voice of reason: his arguments were developed carefully and logically, offering me a break from my emotions of loss. The Australian journalism code of ethics (MEAA n.d.) states journalists must respect the rights of others and warns against the exploitation of those featured in stories. For personal forms of journalism, this includes risks of exploitation of yourself, your friends, and your family. Autoethnographic journalism poses the risk that friends and family members may be hurt or in some way harmed through personal exposure, as highlighted by Coward’s (2013) study of newspaper columns. The public sharing of intimacies can invite moral judgment from audiences and generate vitriolic commentary online. Kitch (1999) reminds us that objective journalists are expected to be “un-biased, neutral, impartial, detached, balanced, invisible” (114). In producing Losing My Identity, I broke most of those rules: I was partial, subjective, involved, and highly present. However, in breaking the rules, I was acutely aware that my documentary needed to be a balanced account of the story, told in a way that was authentic, truthful for listeners, and with care paid to the risk of self-exploitation and abuse of my family members. Most importantly, I was mindful of the impact that their participation in the story would have on my children. Their answers would be available for download online for as long as the ABC posted the documentary on their website. In asking them to reflect on belonging and citizenship, my questions focused on how they had understood what had happened. Once the interviews were edited, I played the edited segments to colleagues as critical listeners, asking them for feedback before also gaining approval from my children to use their edited voices. I also explained to them in detail the process of recording, editing, and how the documentary would be publicly available. The recollections from my husband and my two children about what had happened in Canberra corroborated my own experience included in the documentary. Bringing multiple ­perspectives and voices together in the story was one way for me to address the ethical requirements of my profession.

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 anaging My Own Emotions as Journalist: M Autoethnographic Reflexive Critique Prior to producing Losing My Identity, I had avoided turning the microphone onto myself. I had been brought up professionally to believe that journalists should stay outside the frame to provide trustworthy, fair, and objective accounts of reality (see discussion about objectivity in Maras 2013; Schudson 1978; Wahl-Jorgensen 2013; Ward 2010). My journalism had frequently explored subjects involving strong expressions of emotions, human hardship, and trauma. However, in my previous work, I had outsourced emotions to others, as Wahl-Jorgensen writes: Journalists rely on the outsourcing of emotional labor to non-journalists – the story protagonists and other sources, who are (a) authorized to express emotions in public, and (b) whose emotions journalists can authoritatively describe without implicating themselves. (2013, 130)

In Losing My Identity, I expressed my own feelings, including my despair at losing my Swedish citizenship, and my bewilderment about the implications this would have on my sense of identity and belonging. Using Swedish punk music, confessional scripts, and a personal presenter’s voice, I openly shared with the listeners my sense of loss, confusion, and vulnerability. It was a tactic far removed from my previous journalistic work. Telling my story was therapeutic. It provided me with an opportunity to process what had happened. I did this by including excerpts from my recorded diary, as well as excerpts from the interviews where I explored questions about the links between my citizenship and my sense of self. I asked my children how they defined their sense of belonging being second-generation Swedish migrants, and I asked my parents how they would negotiate no longer having a Swedish daughter. In the radio documentary, I kept returning to the question: “Who am I if I am no longer Swedish?” I wanted to know why losing my Swedish passport left me so empty. In my mind, the loss had far-reaching consequences for how I defined myself as a person. I felt I would have to redefine myself as someone “non-Swedish”.

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Interviewing my husband and my children made it clear that my emotional response was far stronger than theirs. My children, 8 and 16 years old at the time, were empathetic, and they recalled seeing my shock upon being told I was no longer Swedish. However, what happened was less relevant to them. Whereas I felt as if I had lost my past, present, and future identity as a Swede, to them Sweden was part of their family history rather than a central point of their identities. In the interview, my husband also described my reaction, saying I turned white as the embassy public servant took my citizenship away. His own emotions were expressed as frustration with the bureaucratic process that led to us losing our citizenships. I was aware of my privileged position as a migrant who had chosen to leave my country of birth and move to Australia. In addition, I was white, middle class, and with a good job. As such, my experience was one of choice and class. The executive producer and I discussed this issue at length, and I referenced this point in the documentary script. With a large immigrant population in Australia, we decided the experience of a white, middle class migrant would still be relevant and of interest to listeners. However, as I discuss below, there were some voices of disapproval that raised the issues of class and choice in their criticisms.

Personal Storytelling and the Audience As previously mentioned, autoethnographic journalism can be risky. By putting yourself and your story into the public sphere, you open yourself up to personal criticism. As the producer of your own life story and the narrator of your exploration of identity, it can be challenging and hurtful to be on the receiving end of negative comments from the audience. Critics are no longer commenting on the way you do your job. Instead, they are commenting on you as a person, on your lifestyle, and on your choices, which can provoke certain groups to criticism (Coward 2014, 39). In personal and confessional journalism, the lines between professional and personal are thus blurred. By putting myself inside the frame, I

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made myself vulnerable to attacks directed at me personally rather than at my profession role as journalist; these were attacks I had not experienced as a so-called objective journalist. I had hoped that an authentic and confessional personal voice would open up the experience to be shared with the audience, but the documentary met with mixed feedback from listeners. For some, it resonated with their own reflections and feelings about their identity as a migrant, an example of how intimacy can create identification, as these online comments illustrate: All migrants would be able to relate to some degree or other to the conflicting feelings of loyalty to the country in which they were born but no longer live. This program articulates these feelings and emotions very well. —Phil (ABC RN 2012) I do feel for Mia very strongly, and can only agree with her in her understanding of being a Swede, remaining a Swede now and in the future. I have been living in Australia for more than 40 years, but I do not have an Australian citizenship…yet… —Eva (ABC RN 2012)

One of the particularly personal issues I discussed openly in the documentary related to a realization I had had that I did not want to die in Australia. This prompted another listener to share in the online commentary how the radio documentary had made her reflect on her emotions for Australia: I listened with interest to this discussion. I moved from Australia to Japan in 2008. Initially I thought I’d stay here forever but I know that, as I age, my desire is to complete my life and die in a country where I was born and where generations of my family have lived since 1850s[…]My heart, mind and soul is Australian. The question of identity as presented in this programme was very thought provoking. Thank you. —Rebecca (ABC RN 2012)

Seeing listeners respond with their emotions to meet mine was reassuring. The question of where you want to die as a migrant seemed to resonate with some in the audience:

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As a child of Irish migrants to England and as an adult migrant to Australia, I have spent much of my life in an emotionally “polygamous” state. This program highlighted a whole number of issues around migration that I live with. Most recently as I am now in my mid-fifties with an aging mother in Ireland. Where do I want to die? Thanks Mia. —Suzanne (ABC RN 2012).

Other listeners were less positive, seeing the program as self-indulgent: my lived experience bore no relation to theirs. The toughest listener critic of Losing My Identity wrote a scathing online commentary of the way I used my own story as material to explore the issue of identity: According to Google translator “Smorja” is the Swedish word for tripe.[…] Questions about one’s identity and where one belongs in the world are very important. Yet I doubt I have ever heard such a load of nauseating, middle-­ class, navel-gazing, twaddle emanate from my radio in a long time. —Michael (ABC RN 2012)

Michael made only passing reference to production values (how the documentary was scripted, who was interviewed, what music and sounds were included—whether the story “worked”). The main butt of his critique was directed at me personally and my emotions in feeling upset at the loss of my Swedish citizenship. He continued: So with respect, when Mia Lindgren and her family chose to leave Sweden, they freely exercised something that many other migrants to this country don’t have the same opportunity to do. Choice. (ibid.)

Another listener, Gabrielle, objected to the confessional approach focusing on my own story and my understanding of what identity means: “What lack of insight and self-indulgence! Losing your Swedish citizenship does not mean you [sic] no longer Swedish. Identity has little to do with citizenship” (ABC RN 2012). Telling your own story as a journalist means making yourself vulnerable. I had to lay my emotions bare and work in journalistic ways that were foreign and challenging to me. Using the “I” in scripting felt revealing and manifestly was confronting to some listeners.

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Discussion Losing My Identity is a story about identity on two levels. First, it is a radio story produced in ways that challenged the journalist’s professional identity and its guiding conventions of objectivity and detachment. Second, the story questions the links between citizenship, identity, and belonging through one migrant journalist’s experience of losing her passport of birth. On reflection, the first component concerning the challenging of the journalist’s professional identity was not made clear to the audience. It was implicit in the production without making this objective obvious to the listeners, thereby constraining their opportunity to engage with the form and reflect on its success. As a result, while the listeners could hear the journalist trying to conceal her feelings of discomfort at sharing vulnerabilities and personal loss, the documentary failed to open up a conversation with them about the making of the story, and thereby encouraging a discussion about the question, “How do you tell stories about yourself without becoming self-indulgent?” Instead, it used a traditional journalistic approach, mixing personal experiences with “expert” commentary. A transparent and authentic approach, such as that so skillfully employed by Sarah Koenig in the production of the blockbuster Serial, might have been more successful. Koenig ruminated on the production challenges, her concerns about her fascination with the convicted murderer, and her reservations about whether the story was actually working out, inviting in the listeners into her internal debate. By making her self-doubt explicit, Koenig transformed her vulnerabilities and created a shared space for reflection with her listeners. It allowed the listeners to get to know the journalist as a real person. The second component relates to the documentary topic—identity—and the journalistic skill-set and audio production techniques used to develop a compelling and interesting story. Criticisms in the online commentary on ABC RN’s website were not just directed at my professionalism. During my career as a journalist, I have received my fair share of criticism from listeners. Some of it I agreed with, other points of view I disregarded. Working in a public arena, you expect to be critiqued by the public. Experienced journalists develop thick

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skins, and I believed my professional covering to be reasonably dense. However, when it came to the commentary on Losing My Identity, I read the criticism as extending beyond my professional competencies and into my personal capacity to understand my own identity and my ability to articulate what was happening to me. The criticism became personal and it hurt. I could accept having produced a radio documentary that was deemed average or even bad: as a professional, you sometimes produce mediocre work. That obviously was not my intention, but I could accept that outcome. It was more difficult, however, to deal with listeners questioning my core belief that my Swedish identity was intrinsically linked to my Swedish citizenship, or suggesting that my feelings of loss were un-warranted. Central to the narrative arc of Losing My Identity was my bewilderment at what had happened and my strong emotional response to the loss incurred. The story relied on my being able to identify and articulate these emotions. Richards and Brown (2002) refer to emotional literacy, where reporters need to develop the ability to observe emotions in themselves and others. The importance of reflexivity is further supported by Richards and Rees (2011): Subjective feelings can be registered and owned without compromising the reporter’s judgement. This capacity could be deployed at those numerous points in journalistic practice and training when ambivalence, uncertainty or confusion exist around how to be both “objective” and “human”, or around how to present unsanitized reality in a responsible way. (865)

Perhaps it is indeed self-indulgent to use airtime on national radio in Australia to narrate your own life experience while someone else is listening. The story could have been handed over to another journalist with me as the subject. Alternatively, other storytelling techniques could have been used embracing first-person narrative methods, rather than ­accommodating traditional journalistic storytelling methods where “experts” provide objective commentary. Reflecting, as part of writing this chapter, on both the experience of losing my citizenship and the documentary production process, I can see that the reason the experience was so fraught for me was that very little

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time had passed since the visit to the embassy and my feelings were still raw. Perhaps things might have been different if I had given myself more time to process the events.

Conclusion This critical reflection of the production of Losing My Identity has highlighted some of the challenges associated with using personal and confessional storytelling approaches where journalists use their own voices—and emotions—to narrate their own lives. Coward (2014) argues there are a number of reasons for the cultural change toward greater subjectivity in journalism. One of them is an eagerness for a “visible human journalistic presence as a counterweight to what is perceived as the disguised viewpoint of journalistic objectivity” (2014, 616). Another is a “regard for stories about real life experience and autobiographical first person writing” (2014, 617). Coward argues that confessional journalism opens up a window to domestic life, but notes that it is “controversial”. Many readers, she notes, “hate it, criticising it for being not about real life events but about introspection and narcissism” (2014, 625). For journalists traditionally immersed in conventions of objectivity, these changing expectations of journalism practice require exploration of, as well as training in, new forms of storytelling. Losing My Identity was produced and broadcast in 2012, prior to the podcast boom starting in 2014, and, as has already been noted, much has now changed in the way long-form and sound-based journalism is produced. Audio journalists wanting to explore their own identities as story material now have models that they can look to for inspiration, spearheaded by successful US programs and podcasts. These changes present opportunities for further critical analysis of the content and aesthetics of confessional journalism, as well as of the changing landscape for ­journalist/producers. However, it is clear that mediating your own story requires the storyteller to separate self and professional identity. It also necessitates an ability to tolerate personalized online criticism, which is commonplace in today’s media environment.

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10 Technologically Mediated Identity: Personal Computers, Online Aliases, and Japanese Robots Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou

IDENTITY: “a person’s conception and expression of their own (self-­ identity) and others’ individuality or group affiliations”1

Technology influences how we experience and reflect on identity. This shaping is evident in our language; we call people bots and speak of ourselves as having RAM or multitasking. In the 1970s–1980s, Sherry Turkle noticed computer metaphors in the speech of her MIT colleagues (1984, 8), and “people in their everyday conversations began to describe human mental activity in computational terms” (2004, 2). Such terms, Turkle later contended, “were starting to be used to think about politics, education, and social life, and… about the self” (2011, x). Nakamura notes terms like online and downloading “are now part of the Internet user’s everyday vocabulary  On Wikipedia, identity has over 50 entries. Aside from the music, film, and television episodes, most entries are listed under computer science. Crowdsourced resources like Wikipedia (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity) and Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define. php?term=Identity) constitute important online sites for (re)construction where users contribute, collaboratively edit, or even vote on definitions. 1

S. Pasfield-Neofitou (*) Adjunct Research Fellow, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_10

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since they describe practices or virtual objects which lack analogues in either offline life or other media” (2006, 317). However, these terms appear in our descriptions of “offline life” as well: in Crystal’s Glossary of Netspeak and Textspeak (2004), online is listed as having a “new use” applied to people, meaning “ready for anything, living life to the full, always around” (82). Over 20 percent of the dictionary’s entries include such “new”/expanded uses which apply computing terms to human cognition, interaction, and identity. Technology has long enabled us to reconsider how we view our selves, from the microscope to the telescope, and from brain scans to DNA sequencing.2 This chapter examines how we communicate with, via, and about computers, demonstrating how the boundaries appear even more blurred as our identities are mediated by the technologies we use, while simultaneously our experiences of technology are mediated via ourselves.

Metaphor: Identity, Language, and Technology The computer is an “evocative object to think with” (Turkle 1995, 260), one Johnson-Laird has described as “the last metaphor; it need never be supplanted” (1983, 10). Turkle documents how the computer, like psychoanalysis and other theoretical innovations, called into question our assumed knowledge of ourselves, with parallels between theories of mind and computer science evident in the borrowing of terminology (2004, 2). This is true in other sciences, entangling our notions of computers and life (Keller 2000). As Turkle notes, it was common to speak of “a computer’s ‘memory’ when behaviourism was insisting that all one could study in people was the behaviour of remembering” (2004, 2).3 Computer-based teaching  The 1950s discovery of DNA was believed to have revealed the “ultimate truth” of the body in the form of information (Black 2014, 117). Kay describes the informatic account of genetics, which introduced communication science terms such as “information”, “code”, “text”, and “program” to molecular biology, as “a metaphor of a metaphor” (1997, 28, cited in Black 2014, 117). 3  Crowther-Heyck (1999) gives three reasons the computer metaphor was interpreted as antibehaviorist: first, it was connected to a Chomskyan approach to linguistics that saw mind as necessary to explain human language; second, it was associated with an interdisciplinary approach; and finally, it entailed the adoption of a new research paradigm, replacing the laboratory rat with the human-computer system. 2

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methods and psychology-based learning theories developed hand-in-­ hand, with Finger et al. (2007) identifying three “eras” of computer use in education: the pre-microcomputer era (1940s–1970s), with the invention of the computer;4 the 1970s–1980s microcomputer/PC era; and the expansion of networks and eventually the Internet in the 1990s. Most 1960s–70s educational applications of computers aligned with behaviorist theories (Warschauer and Healey 1998). In the early decades of cognitive psychology, human perceptual/motor systems were considered mere peripherals—input/output devices, when artificial intelligence was dominated by abstract symbol processing (Wilson 2002). Following behaviorism, cognitivism was accompanied by the development of the personal computer (PC), and learners were encouraged to interact with the PC or use computer-based tasks in learner-learner interaction (Guth 2009). Chakowa observes that the Internet made more socio-­ constructivist approaches possible, leading to a shift from “learner’s interaction with computers to interaction with other humans via computer” (Warschauer and Kern 2000, 11, cited in Chakowa, 2016). The mind-as-­ computer/computer-as-mind metaphor is used both ways, and we have tried to teach computers as if they are children,5 and to teach children with methods that proved successful for computers (McCorduck 1979, cited in Gigerenzer and Goldstein 1996, 135). In Black’s view (2014), if we answer the question “How does the mind work?” with “Like a computer” our conception of the mind is unlikely to include functions that cannot be reduced to computation literalizing the metaphor. Some such as Dennet see such ideas as “profoundly threatening and unsettling. As Professor Turkle has noted, many people exhibit quite strong emotional reactions when confronted by such suggestions” (Dennet 1984, 270). For Dennet, popular uses of “computer jargon” represent “diverting … anxiety with hackneyed—and implausible—bogey Citing Turner (2006), Pegrum maintains that today’s personal, networked computing is not a revival of countercultural dreams of “empowered individualism, collaborative community, and spiritual communion” but evidence of the computer’s 1960s roots (2009, 14). 5  Fei Fei Li’s TED talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40riCqvRoMs) is just one example. Many such projects have been concerned with language learning. SimSimi (derived from the Korean for “bored”) http://www.simsimi.com/ is a conversation program available as an iPhone/Android app that allows users to teach it new phrases when it does not know how to respond. A search for “chat bot” will yield many other examples. 4

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men. Would you like to marry a robot? Are you a (mere) Turing machine clanking away on a paper tape?” (ibid., 271). Today, we continue not only to draw upon such metaphors, but to ask such questions in earnest.6 The Oxford English Dictionary defines robot as “1a An intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal” (which Black describes as referring to a “human-like machine”), and “1b A person who acts mechanically or without emotion” (a “machine-like human”) (cited in Black 2014, 75). Bot (derived from robot) is defined in Crystal’s dictionary as “A program designed to carry out a particular task” (2004, 20). Urban Dictionary (see footnote 1 above) lists a similar definition as most popular, while others mirror the duality Black identifies above: a bot may be a program designed to emulate human users on social media (1a), or a person who engages with others mainly online (1b). It may be a program designed to play games in lieu of or in collaboration with a human (1a), or it may refer to someone lacking personality who moves robotically (1b). Our desire to imbue machines with human characteristics and vice-­versa has long been evident. Colebrook described Babbage’s Difference Engine as “an engine in place of the computer” (1825, 510), seemingly strange praise for the man now considered to have invented the computer.7 At the time, as Gigerenzer and Goldstein (1996) explain, “computer” referred to a human hired to perform calculations. Robertson’s (2010, 19) research in Japan, a place famous for robotics (Black 2014, 89), describes a desire to imbue robots with gender. Prior to the “cognitive revolution”,8 Gigerenzer and Goldstein (1996) note that two groups drew parallels between humans and computers, although neither used the computer as theory of mind: one, represented by von Neumann, saw parallels at the hardware level, and the other, mathematician/  Television shows such as Humans and the Japanese drama Zettai Kareshi are examples of this.  As Black (2014, citing Babbage 1994) describes, visitors found another of Babbage’s machines, a mechanical Silver Lady dancer, more appealing than his Difference Engine, a disembodied mathematical “brain”. 8  The 1950s Cognitive Revolution involved interchange between linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and artificial intelligence (AI), computer science, and neuroscience, prioritizing information, computation, and feedback, positing programs in the mind, mental mechanisms, and viewing the mind as a complex system rather than deriving from a blank state (Pinker 2002). 6 7

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logician Turing, asked instead whether machines could think9: “I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that we will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted” (Turing 1950, 442, cited in Black 2014, 125). Gigerenzer and Goldstein document how such modes of thinking gain acceptance via a “tools-to-theories” heuristic, arguing that acceptance of theory follows familiarity with the tool. After computers became entrenched in everyday psychological laboratory use (and then homes), acceptance of the mind-as-computer metaphor occurred (1996, 143). For Crowther-Heyck, what stands out about computer-as-­mind metaphors in comparison to, for example, the brain-as-telephone-­switchboard (cf. Hull) was “the use of these analogies as an explicit basis for theorizing” (1999, 47). In addition to the creation of metaphors, computers can aid us in experiencing existing theories in a new light. Turkle described meeting with the ideas of Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, once more on the screen: “In my computer-mediated worlds, the self is multiple, fluid, and constituted in interaction with machine connections; it is made and transformed by language…” (1995, 15).10 Such interactions offer an experience of abstract postmodern ideas, bringing philosophy “down-­ to-­earth” using “relationships with technology to reflect on the human” (ibid., 24). For Turkle, it is not the truth of the mind-as-program/brain-­ as-­computer metaphors that is of interest, but “What happens when  See for example the Turing Test (Turing 1950), generally understood as requiring that a computer be able to imitate a human. In 1966, Weizenbaum created the program ELIZA which appeared to pass this test, although the measure is highly dependent on attitudes and expertise of the human user (see below in the section “The Robot as Other” for a discussion of complicity). Searle’s (1980) similarly controversial “Chinese Room” thought experiment, in which it is shown how someone (or a computer) could translate Chinese without understanding the language, posits that Turing’s test could not prove whether a machine could think. A recent TEDxYouth talk by Oscar Schwartz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Possj5cXEnM) explored this question in relation to computer-written poetry. The term “Reverse Turing Test” is often used in relation to tasks like CAPTCHA, designed to distinguish real human users from bots on websites. 10  Turkle points out that a model of mind as multiprocessor leaves one with a “decentralized” self, with no “I” or “me”. “But theories that deny and decentre the ‘I’ challenge most people’s day-to-day experience of having one. The assumption that there is an ‘I’ is solidly built into ordinary language” (1984, 302). This is particularly true of a language such as English, in which it is practically impossible to construct subjectless sentences, but in languages like Japanese, avoidance of pronouns is common, and verbs are not inflected for gender/number, for example konpyūtā o tsukau could equally mean “(I) use (a) computer(s)”, “((s)he) uses (a) computer(s)”, “(they) use (a) computer(s)” or “(we) use (a) computer(s)”, depending on context. 9

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people consider the computer as a model of the human mind? What happens when people begin to think that they are machines?” (1984, 12). In moving from a psychoanalytic to a computational metaphor, Turkle (2004) states, an explanation in terms of meaning shifted to an explanation in terms of mechanism. Alongside this came the question, “If mind is program, where is free will?” (ibid., 2). Or to paraphrase, if mind is program, are we bots?

 volving Relationships with and via “the E Computer” In 1983, Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”11 was temporarily renamed “Machine of the Year”, with the headline “The computer moves in”. The cover depicted a sitting man, “alienated in front of his new roommate. What he plans to do with the computer or what the machine might do to him is not quite clear” (Schäfer 2011, 9). The following year, Turkle’s first book in a trilogy on computers and people, The Second Self, was released, just as PCs became common in large markets, and explored the computer as “a new mirror, the first psychological machine” (1984, 319). Turkle (2011, xi) later recollected that in the decade following its publication, relationships with computers changed from person-machine, to computer as portal to virtual worlds, which had a profound effect on how we view our identities. Following this change, Turkle introduced Life on the Screen, published at the birth of the public Internet, with the line “We come to see ourselves differently as we catch sight of our images in the mirror of the machine” (1995, 9). In 2007, the computer reappeared on the cover of Time, this time, depicting “you”—the computer user—via a mirror to reflect the readers’ face, framed by YouTube’s12 iconic play button and progress bar, ­effectively  Formerly “Man of the Year”, four women received the honor before the change in name to “Person”, and none, aside from joint awards, have since. 12  Launched in 2005 under the slogan “Broadcast Yourself ” and sold to Google a year later, YouTube has attracted considerable academic attention, including research on identity construction (see Lange 2007), as a space for individuals to “represent their identities and perspectives, engage with the self-representations of others, and encounter cultural difference” (Bou-Franch et al. 2012, 81). 11

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placing the reader into a (print-based) “video”. To Schäfer, this represented “the emancipation of the computer user from the alienated user of 1983 to the ‘hero of the Information Age’” (2011, 9), a true member of the “participatory culture” enabled by Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2005). Despite this symbolism, Schäfer warns that such enthusiasm “often neglects the fact that underlying power structures are not necessarily reconfigured” (2011, 10–11). In Alone Together, the final book in Turkle’s trilogy released as “digital natives”13 entered their teens, Turkle (2011) picks up on a theme she identified back in 1984: we are “[t]errified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy” (320). The two issues of Time, published almost a quarter of a century apart, and Turkle’s body of work which provides a framework for this chapter, encapsulate the trajectory of discussions about and via computers. Schäfer (2011) identifies several trends during this timespan, including increased computer use, the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) as a mass medium by 1995, and the development of broadband enabling mass sharing. With these developments, we began to think and talk about ourselves in different ways, in relation to our computers, our online identities, and others. This chapter examines the language used in these conversations, and used in “writing ourselves into being on the net” to paraphrase Sundén (2003).

Our Relationship with “the Computer” When you program a computer, there is a little piece of your mind and now it’s a little piece of the computer’s mind.14 The name YouTube itself is just one of a slew of names that foreground the user, including MySpace. The Nintendo Wii, for example, sounds like “we”, and graphically, the two ii’s represent two people standing together. “i” has been used as in prefix for a variety of Internet-related names, including iVillage (an online community for women as early as 1994, see Benton 2010), and the BBC’s iPlayer, and is especially well-known in iPod, iPad, and other Apple products. Although standing for “Internet”, jokes at teenagerposts.tumblr.com show that the prefix can be conceived of as standing for the individual: “It’s an iPod NOT an usPod” (#918). 13  “Digital Natives” are those who grew up with the Internet (Prensky 2001). Although the term is widely used, the generation it refers to varies (generally cited as those born after 1980, see Palfrey and Gasser 2008), and distinctions are blurred. Prensky now appears to favor “digital wisdom”. 14  Quote from elementary student Deborah that inspired the title of The Second Self (cited in Turkle 2004, 1).

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When The Second Self was re-released, Turkle commented that “the computer would seem secure in its role as an evocative object for thinking about human identity” (2004, 3), describing the original volume as documenting a time when people from all walks of life … were first confronted with machines whose behaviour and mode of operation invited psychological interpretation and that, at the same time, incited them to think differently about human thought, memory, and understanding. (ibid., 1)

Turkle notes that when The Second Self was first published, computers were described as “just tools”, and to speak of mind-as-program was “controversial”, while two decades later, computational metaphors for mind had become banal. Turkle argues against the “just a tool” view, encouraging consideration of what computers do to us, as well as for us (2004, 3). Like Turkle, my first encounter with a “program that offered companionship” (2011, 23) was with ELIZA.15 Now, AI bots present themselves as companions to the millions who play online games (Turkle 2011, 24). Communicating with bots has become commonplace, with Apple’s Siri a prominent example. If you ask Siri where to hide a body or when the world will end,16 she will give a fairly humorous, canned response, which can make us think “she” “understands”. Turkle refers to our “tendency to treat responsive computer programs as more intelligent than they really are” (1995, 101) as an “ELIZA effect”. In addition, she explains a “Julia effect” (also named after a program) resulting from the tediousness of placing quotes around words like “thinks”, “knows”, or “believes”, and the ease with which we use the language of psychology and intention to talk about programs.  Albeit a later port of the “computer psychologist” program to Amiga. A version of the program is available online at http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm 16  Examples from http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/things-to-ask-siri-when-yourebored?utm_term=.yf6JaDKZE#.em7NWwjg2Z. Siri & Me: A modern love story by Milgrim (2012), which tells the tale of a love triangle between a man, a woman, and Siri, also contains many such exchanges. The protagonist writes on his blog, “with some luck, it won’t be long now before we’ll be able to digitize the contents of our own brains and then upload our very selves into cyberspace” (n.p.) comparable to the brain-porting concept mentioned in f.n. 25 below, and at the peak of the narrative, declares “I was overloaded. My chips were fried. My hard drive was crashing.” Clearly, such notions remain part of the popular conscious. 15

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Saying that Julia wants to do something (instead of saying that the program that has been named Julia exhibits behaviour that is designed to make it seem as though it wanted to do something) comes easily to Julia’s inventor and to the humans who encounter “her.” (Turkle 1995, 101)

And, as Newitz (2015) notes in a Gizmodo article that sparked debate,17 from Siri to Cortana to Alexa, it’s almost always a “her” (the 2013 film about a writer who develops a relationship with his operating system (OS), voiced by Scarlett Johansson, is even titled Her).

The “Personal” Computer The “personal” computer was revolutionary because, as the name implies, it was intended for individual ownership and use at home, in contrast to the expensive mainframe systems designed for multiple operators, usually at work. Users described their “communion” with the computer, and interaction via computers, as “personal” too. One of Turkle’s informants repeated the term “personal” in describing the sense of a “telepathic” connection or “mind meld” he had with his computer while typing, and, importantly, stated that this sense “generalizes so that I feel telepathic with the people I am sending mail to. I am glad I don’t have to see them face to face. I wouldn’t be as personal about myself ” (cited in Turkle 1984, 217). Video game players describe a similar connection, stating that to master a video game, you have to “think with your fingers” (Turkle 1984, 81), and compare their gaming to transcendental meditation or playing a musical instrument.  A follow-up article by Zhang (2015) explores some of the technical and social hypotheses for this trend. The protagonist of Siri & Me mentioned above comments: 17

I want to take a moment to step back and reflect on the general experience of living with ‘her’ these last months. I know that ‘she’ is nothing more than clever programming, but there’s a part of me that can’t help being fooled … She seems real. When it comes down to it, who’s to say she isn’t? After all, if texting, e-mailing, and surfing the Web aren’t the telltale signs of life, what are?” (Milgrim 2012, n.p.) Note how quickly the protagonist moves from enclosing “she” and “her” in quotation marks to using these terms unmarked.

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Building “Your Computer”, Buying Your Identity In the past, computers were generally purchased, assembled, and programmed by hobbyists. Today, we find stickers warning: “Do not open”, “Not user serviceable”, “Warranty void if seal broken”, and media subject to regional encoding and digital rights management (DRM). Our purchases are influenced by manufacturers long after sale, restrictions Stallman (cited in Healy 2012) calls “digital handcuffs”.18 iPhone users may purchase another iPhone, not solely because of brand loyalty, interface familiarity, or satisfaction with the previous model, but also to avoid losing access to purchased apps/music, popularly described as “velvet handcuffs”. Turkle noted in 2004 that the “socially shared activity of computer programming and hardware tinkering has been largely displaced by playing games, participation in online chat and blogs, and using applications software out of the box” (5). The “transparency” Turkle encountered early on, described by one enthusiast as “the pleasure of understanding a complex system down to its simplest level” (2004, 8) took on new meaning: “when Macintosh users spoke about transparency, they were referring to an ability to make things work without going below a screen surface filled with attractive icons” (ibid., 9). In the mid-1980s, in order to make computing “transparent”, children were taught logic and programming languages, while 20 years on, Turkle (2004) lamented that programming was no longer taught much in standard classrooms,19 and computer literacy had been largely reconceptualized as the ability to use word processors, access content online, and use presentation ­software. In her 1995 book, Turkle argued that people had become accus It is worth noting that not only digital products are treated in this way—drawing inspiration from digital rights management (DRM) a DRM Chair was constructed at the University of Art and Design in Lausanne intentionally designed to self-destruct after eight uses (see http://hackaday. com/2013/03/04/drm-chair-only-works-8-times/). In another example of producers seeking to control products after purchase, The Times reported on a reading ban on copies of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince accidentally sold early: an injunction was granted “prohibiting the buyers from even reading their copies before the publication date”, the author’s legal advisors saying “that the author was entitled to prevent buyers from reading their own books even though they had not broken the law” (See Malvern 2005). 19  Although initiatives such as https://www.codecademy.com/, founded in 2011, are now partnering with schools to teach programming. 18

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tomed to opaque technology and taking things at “interface value”. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Apple ran advertisements in which a casually dressed man introduced himself with “Hello, I’m a Mac” and a suited man would respond, “And I’m a PC”. Their capabilities were illustrated via a series of vignettes in which actors John Hodgman and Justin Long in the US, Mitchell and Webb in the UK, and comedy duo the Rahmens in Japan, embodied the PC and Mac.20 Microsoft responded with an “I’m a PC” campaign, starring employee Sean Siler (of similar appearance to Hodgman), and featuring ordinary people identifying themselves as “PCs”. We hear similar proclamations today of Apple/Android users, and Turkle (1984) discusses how computer languages/architectures can suggest different ways of thinking.21 The Macintosh/Microsoft wars, according to Turkle (2004, 9), represent more than industry loyalties or personal style (as the ads might suggest), but a conflict in intellectual values. Advertising provides resources for identity construction and self-presentation (Herring 2008). In the 1980s, Schäfer (2011) records, the computer was viewed as an office machine or gadget for “nerds”, shaping current perceptions of computers. Vintage advertisements, many featuring men using and women posing with computers, reveal interesting glimpses into whom these machines were originally aimed at.22 A Penril ad23 describes a modem as ­“dependable, compatible (maybe even sexy)”. “What kind of man owns his own computer?” asks a 1980 Apple advertisement. A Radio Shack ad touts the computer as “Man’s  Some of the commercials compared specific versions of Microsoft Windows to Mac’s iOS; however, it is important to note that while the two are often conflated, not all PCs run Windows. It is also interesting to note how pronoun usage in, for example, Microsoft Office dialog boxes, has changed over time, encouraging greater identification with the computer. When using the find and replace function in the preparation of this chapter, Word reported “All done. We made 2 replacements” while previous versions would report “Word has completed its search of the document and has made 2 replacements” (this is author’s emphasis), encouraging a more colloquial, collaborative, and personal relationship with the computer. 21  McPherson (2012) has also noted parallels between cultural and computational OSs, and Nakamura (2008) too, notes that the key years in the development of the Internet coincided with a pivotal moment in American political “nineties neoliberalism”, sparking debate over whether the Internet might be the revolution in communication and human consciousness it was trumpeted as. 22  Technology advertisements for a mainstream market appear to have changed somewhat; however, components such as graphics cards still frequently depict highly sexualized, computer-generated images of women or “female” cyborgs. 23  Examples taken from images archived at: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/vintage-tech-ads/ and www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/85-funny-andor-ridiculous-vintage-computer-ads. 20

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new best friend”. An NCR advertisement claims its computer “is compatible with people too”: “It gets along with bosses, secretaries, accountants, engineers, lawyers, everybody”, and a number of advertisements depict the computer as tutor, accountant, librarian, file clerk, entertainer, travel agent, stock analyst, or even “business partner”—“a management genius, easy to talk to, and doesn’t cost me much”.24 Despite the computer’s many roles and markets, most of us assume we know what is meant by a “computer”: “Most people think of a computer as one thing for all people, and so, when they become aware … of differentiation, it surprises them” (Turkle 1984, 196). In the workplace, standard operating environments are often established to reduce differentiation in an attempt to provide more streamlined support and updates. Similar trends may be observed on “locked down” devices such as mobile phones and net-ready televisions, where the OS and programs are not easily modified outside of the manufacturer’s specifications. Superficial enhancements are, however, common. While the first PCs, in beige cases, were uninspiring at best, “case modders” would create unique cases, or build computers inside other objects such as barbeques, microwaves, or wooden boxes. An array of products has become available for customizing devices, including laptop skins and cute Japanese mobile phone accessories, reinforcing a sense of personality and attachment.

 obile Computing and the Extension M of the Self Mobile phones appear as a “mobile extension of the body and mind” (Stald 2008). Teens Turkle (2011) spoke to reported feeling they knew when their phone was vibrating even when it was not on their person,  Two ads neatly bookend the human experience: an Atari ad labeled “Planned Parenthood” states “Bringing an ATARI Home Computer into your life can provide its own special rewards. For example … you can quickly calculate the impact of any newcomer on your financial future … over the years, you’ll be amazed at how much an ATARI Home Computer will become a part of your family’s life. And, how much your family will grow with it”. “Now one of your mechanic’s tools is another man’s mind” claims a GM advertisement, “we have begun to program human knowledge—and logic—into a computer. It’s called artificial intelligence. So, even when an engine expert retires from GM, his mind can still work for you. His lifetime of experience can go into a computer”, similar to the notion of brain-porting that Kurzweil (1999, 128) refers to. 24

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almost as though it were a phantom limb. We feel something is missing when we leave our phones at home, a sense perhaps amplified by “wearable technology” as we use phones to “capture” our lives: “I glance at my watch to sense the time; I glance at my BlackBerry to get a sense of my life” (cited in Turkle 2011, 163). According to Turkle (2011), the projection of self onto computer devices has been consistent and dramatic. “It is no accident that corporate America has chosen to name cell phones after candies and ice cream flavours” (152). Likewise, Android’s OS names include desserts such as lollipop and gingerbread, reflecting and inspiring affinity. The language we employ in reference to the technology we use can be telling. “I’ll pull up my friend … uh, my phone” says Julia (cited in Turkle 2011, 175). We have long conflated our interlocutors and technology even in relation to the landline: “It’s your mum” omitting “[on the phone]”.25 Opening a chapter on mobile identity, Stald quotes a teenager: “Parents usually don’t know how important a tool the mobile has become in young people’s lives. They only think about the communicative function, not the social meaning” (2008, 143). Stald points out the dual meaning of “mobile identity”, in that it includes both the notion that identity is influenced by media use (especially personal communication media) and also a view of adolescent identity as mobile and changing over time and in relation to others, partially experienced and mediated via the mobile phone. While technology has changed rapidly since the 1970s–1980s, Turkle finds profound analogies between Deborah’s comment regarding the piece of your mind in a program quoted above, and a woman who around two decades later said “When my Palm26 crashed, it was like a death. It had my life on it … I thought I had lost my mind” (2004, 5). In 1984, Turkle responded to such projections by calling computers a “second self ”. In 2004, she stated “Today, it does not go far enough. To be provocative, one is tempted to speak not merely of a second self but of a new generation of self, itself ” (5).  A 2011 song Threw it on the Ground by The Lonely Island satirises our use of such conflationary language. 26  It is interesting to note that a number of devices in addition to the Palm have names that make specific reference to the part of the body or function of the self they extend: thumb drives, laptops, hand phones, and ThinkPad are other examples. 25

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Our Relationship with Our Online Identity “The persona thing intrigues me … It’s a chance for all of us who aren’t actors to play [with] masks. And think about the masks we wear everyday.”27

A central theme of accounts of online interaction has been that the Internet “somehow nullifies our physical bodies and allows us to exist as digital avatars… living a ‘second life’ unencumbered by flesh” says Black (2014, 109), citing Turkle’s work,28 which states “When we step through the screen into virtual communities, we reconstruct our identities on the other side of the looking glass” (1995, 177). For Turkle, this culture of simulation affects our ideas about mind, body, self, and machine (ibid., 10). Ever since the iconic New Yorker cartoon declared “On the Internet Nobody Knows You’re a Dog”29 (Steiner 1993, 61), say Nakamura and Chow-White, “the Internet has been envisioned as a technology with a radical form of agency”, with the capacity to educate (or make us less literate), make social life more fluid (or more deceitful), and create an “information society” characterized by equality (2012, 7). To Turkle, Steiner’s cartoon represents the potential for online interactions to be “laboratories for experimenting with one’s identity” (1995, 12). Nakamura describes a constellation of events in relation to the Internet and identity aligning in the 1990s: 1995 was a turning point in the history of the Internet. In 1995 Netscape Navigator, the first widely popular graphical Web browser, had its first public stock offering and initiated popular use of the Internet, and most importantly, heralded its transformation from a primarily textual form to an increasingly and irreversibly graphical one. (2008, 1)

She states that the days in which magazines like Wired set the agenda for a largely elite, male digerati have passed, as Internet use transformed from niche hobby into everyday practice. Works such as Life on the Screen  Discussion group participant cited in Turkle (1995, 256).  Black also points out that “Turkle’s claims were based on the discussion of practices like cybersex or gender performance” stating “it is hard to understand what either sexual pleasure or desire, or the attribution of gender, could mean without recourse to a physical body” (2014, 109–110). 29  White (2004) inverted this phrase in her essay On the Internet, Everybody Worries That You’re a Dog: The Gender Expectations and Beauty Ideals of Online Personals and Text-Based Chat. 27 28

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(1995), Nakamura claims, “imply not only that the nature of identity has shifted definitively because of the Internet but that that age is still upon us; at this point it is safe to say that we live in a post-Internet age” (2008, 1–2), one which, according to Nakamura and Chow-White’s introduction to Race After the Internet, has been defined by some as “postracial” and “postfeminist” (2012, 1). The Internet has long been credited with improving opportunities for self-expression. As Herring et al. (2005, 2007) note, blogs, as just one example, have allowed easy, inexpensive self-publication to a potentially vast audience. Writing on youth identity and digital media, Buckingham (2008) points out that several disciplines have laid claim to identity, with work in anthropology, social psychology, and sociology concerned with individual and group identities. While social scientists, Witte argues, were relatively slow to consider the impact of the Internet, once its significance attracted academic attention, “scrutiny has been intense and the debate has been loud (and at times) bitter” (2004, xv).

“The Internet” as Global Village/Identity Utopia There are two possible outcomes of the increased contact facilitated by the Internet, according to Herring (2001, vii–viii): an electronic “global village”, or accelerated cultural homogenization due to the Internet’s US origin and English-language dominance. According to statistics cited in Herring, in 1996 only 10 percent of WWW traffic was in a language other than English (LOTE), while by the time of her writing, the figure had risen to 46 percent, and was projected to reach 67 percent by 2005 (Global Reach 2000). While the source Herring utilized no longer appears available, W3Techs (2015) reports most websites are still in English (55 percent), even though, according to Internet World Stats (2013) estimates, English native speakers only make up around 28 percent of the total online population.30 As Herring indicates, access alone does not guarantee equal power to shape technology or content. 30  http://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2015/may/28/language-barrier-internetexperience provides a visualization of how the language(s) you understand can change how you experience the Internet.

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Nakamura and Chow-White likewise warn that “digital natives are not an equally privileged bunch; like ‘natives’ everywhere they are subject to easy generalisations about their nature that collapses their differences” (2012, 1). Pointing out that “[t]he discourse of many commercials for the Internet includes gender as only one of a series of outmoded ‘body categories’ like race and age”, promising “‘ungendered, deracinated’ identities” (2006, 323), Nakamura asks “where’s the multi(culturalism) in multimedia?” (ibid., 324). According to Nakamura, it is not only commercials making “post-identitarian claims”. Citing Turkle’s comment: When identity was defined as a unitary and solid it was relatively easy to recognize and censure deviation from a norm. A more fluid sense of self allows for a greater capacity for acknowledging diversity. It makes it easier to accept the array of our (and others’) inconsistent personae—perhaps with humour, perhaps with irony. We do not feel compelled to rank or judge the elements of our multiplicity. We do not feel compelled to exclude what does not fit. (1995, 51)

Nakamura responds: According to this way of thinking, regulatory and oppressive social norms such as racism and sexism are linked to user’s “unitary and solid” identities off-screen. Supposedly, leaving the body behind in the service of gaining more “fluid identities” means acquiring the ability to carve out new, less oppressive norms, and gaining the capacity to “acknowledge diversity” in ever more effective ways …. (2006, 323)

something Nakamura doubts actually occurs online. According to Nakamura, rather than focusing on the idea that women and minorities need to get online, we might ask: How do they use their digital visual capital? In what ways are their gendered and racialized bodies a form of this new type of capital? (2008, 16)

Key to Nakamura’s view of the Internet is that unlike television or film, the interface is more than simply a framing device (2008, 29).

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Menu-Driven Identity: Profiles and Avatars “Thirteen to eighteen are the years of profile writing”, says a high school student quoted by Turkle (2011, 182). In this way, describes Turkle, the years of identity construction are recast as years of profile production: profiles for middle school and high school applications, and another for Facebook. According to another student, Stan, the trick is in “weaving profiles together … so that people can see you are not too crazy. What I learned in high school was profiles, profiles, profiles, how to make a me” (ibid., 183). Terzis explores these themes in her writing: Online, the self has ceased to be a fleshy, bodily identity and instead has become quantifiable: a set of data, or a string of adjectives and search terms that will show up that same day in a sponsored post. (Terzis, 2015)

Constructing profiles plays an important role in how we perform and understand our identities: “There is nothing more deliberate than the painstaking work of constructing a profile or having a conversation on instant messenger in which one composes and recomposes one’s thoughts” (Turkle 2011, 276). Online, Nakamura argues, users “do” as well as “are” their race (2008, 207). Nakamura has drawn attention to “cybertyping”, which she describes as “more than just racial stereotypes ‘ported’ to a new medium”, but “the images of race that arise when the fears, anxieties, and desires of privileged Western users (the majority of Internet users and content producers are still from the Western nations) are scripted into a textual/graphical environment that is in constant flux and revision” (2006, 319).31 In a chapter on race and/as technology, Chun also probes the intertwining of race and technology, arguing that for a reformulation of race “we need also to reframe nature and culture, privacy and publicity, self and collective, media and society” (2012, 57). Galloway problematizes the use of  Although, as mentioned above, it no longer appears to be the case that the majority of Internet users are “western”. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm reports that more than 45 percent of Internet users are located in Asia, as of December 2014, with Europe and North America accounting for only 29 percent. The next largest groups of users are Latin America/Caribbean with approximately 10 percent each, and the Middle East and Oceania/Australia account for just 3.7 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.

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the term “race” in online games such as World of Warcraft, in which race is represented by “ethnic” intangibles like voice and visage, and Starcraft, where one speaks of a race’s “way of doing things” (2012, 117).32 In the case of Starcraft, the problem appears nominal: “race” an “unfortunate word choice for what is ultimately a pragmatic design requirement… If the game designers had used a different word [‘archetype,’ ‘species,’ ‘family’] would we be having this conversation?” (ibid., 119). For Galloway, the answer lies in Nakamura’s (2002) concept of “menu driven identities”, stating that ethnic/racial coding appears synonymous with mediation itself.

The Selfie as Identity Performance In 2013, selfie, a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-­ held digital camera/camera phone, sometimes using a “selfie stick” was pronounced the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year.33 The following year, selfie appeared on a BBC list of overused words, prompting a call to “banish” its use (Barford 2014), with it subsequently ranking third in a Time Magazine “word banishment” poll, which asked users what word they would most like to see disappear (Steinmetz 2013).34 At the 86th Academy Awards, Ellen DeGeneres orchestrated a group selfie with 12  World of Warcraft (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/), where players join a “race” from one of the warring factions of Azeroth, the Alliance or the Horde, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and Starcraft (http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/), where players choose between human, psychic, and insectoid “races” to battle, is a real-time strategy game. Both, to some extent, draw upon a preexisting tradition of games (including tabletop and role-playing games) and science-fiction and fantasy tropes. The use of terms such as “race” may be a legacy of these traditions. 33  Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie) states that photos in the selfie genre existed long before the term gained popularity, and displays the “first known selfie” taken by photography pioneer Robert Cornelius in 1839, as well as a photo of a woman taking her picture in the mirror c. 1900. 34  http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/11/word-of-the-year-2013-winner/ Selfie also made Barret’s list of words of the year in 2013  in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes. com/2013/12/22/opinion/sunday/a-wordnado-of-words-in-2013.html?_r=0), and was shortlisted by the American Dialect Society. The earliest recorded usage of selfie has been identified on an Australian ABC Online forum positing in 2002. (Perhaps unsurprising, given Australians’ predilection for hypocorisms involving reduction and addition of -y or -ie as in footy or Aussie). Popular coinages include helfie (hair selfie), legsie (leg selfie), and shelfie (shelf photo), and Bloomberg reports groufie (a portmanteau of group + selfie) has been trademarked by phone manufacturer, 32

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other celebrities which went on to become  one of the most retweeted images, with 2.4 million retweets in less than 24 hours, and well over 3 million at the time of writing.35 The selfie was parodied by the Simpsons and Lego (Nessif 2014), demonstrating the continuing power of television, celebrity, and corporate manufacturers in the “participatory culture”. In 2015, Tourism Australia launched the “GIGA Selfie” supersized selfie campaign in a bid to attract more Japanese tourists to a physical location through a digital lure.36

“ Digital Divide”: “Real Life”/“Second Life” Identities Just as Neo struggles to distinguish between the real and the illusory in The Matrix, theorists too, according to Gandy, have “struggled to define the differences between our representations and our true identities” (2012, 128). “You are the character and you are not the character, both at the same time” (player cited in Turkle 1995, 12). Turkle contends that our online selves (sometimes seen as our “better selves”) develop distinct personalities, as one of her informants, Katherine, described The Sims as “practice at being a different kind of person” (2011, 180). In recent years, Turkle reports receiving business cards which include “real-life” (RL) names, Facebook handles, and Second Life avatar names. Rather than a splintering of the self, the uniting of these online and offline identities to me represents a convergence. Huawei (Bershidsky 2014). Samsung, meanwhile, is using wefie for wide-angle group selfies (Swamy 2014). The winner and runner up were dance-move twerk, and interestingly, hashtag, which the magazine clarifies as “a vote for the word, not the symbol, particularly when used to faux-label live, face-toface conversation” (Steinmetz 2013). Unfortunately for those plumping for the demise of selfie, in 2014, not only was the word officially accepted for use in Scrabble, but ABC in the US began airing a series named Selfie, largely patterned on Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, concerned with protagonist Eliza Dooley’s narcissistic use of social media, and The Chainsmokers released a song titled #SELFIE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdemFfbS5H0). A year later, Selfie Le Le Re was released as part of the soundtrack to the 2015 Indian film Bajrangi Bhaijaan (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TITGBTGJZS8). 35  https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/statuses/440322224407314432. 36  http://www.australia.com/ja-jp/campaigns/gigaselfie.html.

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Pegrum points out that we don’t consider radio or TV as representing alternative realities (except metaphorically), asking “Why, then, do we insist on seeing the internet as a ‘virtual’ space separated from the ‘real’ world? Perhaps it’s partly a matter of degree. Perhaps it’s a lack of familiarity” (2009, 21). Either way, Pegrum argues, such distinctions fail to acknowledge the growing number of (often young) people for whom life online is an extension of life. As Lessig points out, remarking that the Internet has enabled lives previously “impossible, inconvenient or uncommon”, “At least some of those virtual lives will have effects on non-­virtual lives” (2006, 20). In a chapter titled “Many Selves”, Pegrum (2009) writes about the “unitary self ”, and the digital data trails we create. According to Pegrum, while we may intentionally curate online profiles or add ePortfolios to our CVs, the unplanned data trails we leave online constitute a shadow side, waiting to be discovered. A fundamental paradox is inherent in the word identity: “From the Latin root idem, meaning ‘the same,’ the term nevertheless implies both similarity and difference” (Buckingham, 2008, 1). While we generally assume that identity is more or less consistent (“same”) over time, and we talk of “identity theft” as the stealing of something we uniquely possess, identity also implies relationships and broader connections (Buckingham 2008). Once we lose control of our data on Facebook, Twitter, or other web services, “we lose control over the terms of our privacy and our identity online” (Nakamura and Chow-White 2012, 11).37 Studies have often dealt with a similar paradox by treating identity online as a “second life” which bears little or no relation to what is thought of as one’s “RL”. Miller and Slater argue terms like “cyberspace”38 and “virtuality” “focused on the way in which the new media seemed able to constitute spaces or places apart from the rest of social life (‘real life’ or ‘offline life’)” (2000, 4), noting that “even if these approaches are valuable in certain instances” (e.g. Turkle 1995; Slater 1998, also 2000, 5), they are not always the most appropriate concepts. Gandy (2012) notes that some convergence  At the time of writing, the unauthorized use of “selfies” by those wanting to pose as pregnant women in order to deceive other women and obtain photos from them provides one example of this loss of control (see http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/pregnancy/stages-of-pregnancy/preggophile-groups-stealing-womens-bump-photos-20150818-gj1jil.html). 38  Turkle (1995) notes that the term “cyberspace” grew out of science fiction. 37

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of opinion has emerged with regard to the distinctions between online and offline behavior, citing Raab (2009, 233) as stating that many believe it important to “establish the ‘truth’ of someone’s identity”—often in relation to commercial transactions, the type of context in which “identity theft” is perhaps most often of concern. One of the participants in a text-based game reported “This is more real than my real life” (Turkle 1995, 10). Turkle argues that players become not only authors of text but of themselves, and some experience their lives as a “cycling through” between the real world and a series of virtual worlds, made possible by separate windows. For one participant, “I split my mind… I can see myself as being two or three or more. And I just turn on one part of my mind and then another when I go from window to window. RL is just one more window” (1995, 13). My previous work similarly found that participants in Japanese-English conversations online maintained multiple email addresses and used different windows and languages to split their communication (Pasfield-Neofitou 2012). According to Nakamura, the discourse which posited virtual reality (VR) as an alternative to RL: was replaced by one that cannily envisions identity online as a set of profiles, preferences, settings, and other protocols rather than a bona fide and understandably creepy “second self.” Cautions of Internet addition have gone by the wayside since Web 2.0, for there is relatively little affective investment in online life posited here. (2008, 205)

However, although Internet Addiction appears to have first been proposed as a satirical hoax (Beato 2010, reporting on Goldberg 1995), a number of camps and residential treatment centers have opened in recent years, in Korea, China, the US, and India. While according to Google Trends39 interest in the terms “second life” and “cyberspace” to describe virtual worlds has decreased since 2007,  The term “virtual” is far more popular than any of the above terms, particularly used now in relation to hardware equipment such as helmets or goggles, suits, and gloves, such as the Oculus Rift. “IRL” (in real life) is another popular acronym online. It is noteworthy that the protagonist in Milgrim’s (2012) graphic novel ends up choosing the human, Iris (a palindrome for “Siri”), concluding “There is something about real people in love. There is something, well, real about it … It’s not perfect, but, at least for now, it beats the electronic alternatives”. 39

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there has, paradoxically, been an increase in use of “real life” over the same period, generally in conjunction with fiction: the 2007 film Dan in Real Life, RL Barbie, and RL versions of games such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Minecraft. Nakamura claims that Users no longer speak of VR and RL because they no longer feel as closely connected to their overtly fictional identities online. They just don’t identify with, or care about, their avatars as much as they once did. (2008, 205)

But perhaps, rather than not identifying with or caring about their online representations, users and their avatars have converged, and we simply see them as a part of ourselves—as exemplified in the business cards Turkle reports on.40 In my (2012) research, I identified email addresses as a type of “passport” to the use of other online tools. Now, perhaps, it is the Facebook account which has largely taken up this role, and not only are users encouraged to utilize the same profile across a variety of online spaces, rather than establishing different “second selves” on each site, but employers routinely check Facebook profiles in hiring (cf. Schawbel 2012).

Identity and Privacy In The Positive and Negative Implications of Anonymity in Internet Social Interactions: “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog”, Christopherson (2007) uses two categories of anonymity: technical, which involves removal of identifying information, and social which refers to the perception of anonymity due to a lack of cues (Hayne and Rice 1997). According to Christopherson, “it may not be the case that one is truly anonymous in a social context, but the individual perceives him or herself to be anonymous to others” (2007, 3040). Turkle describes the paradox thus: You stare at a screen on your desk or in your hand. It is passive, and you own the frame; these promise safety and acceptance. In the cocoon of electronic messaging, we imagine the people we write to as we wish them to be;  In another example of online and offline convergence, it appears ESPN announced a move into eSports (LeJacq 2015). 40

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we write to the part of them that makes us feel safe. You feel in a place that is private and ephemeral. But your communications are public and forever. (2011, 258)

The alignment of social perceptions and technical realities of anonymity has profound effects for experimentation with identity online. Seventeen-­ year-­old Elaine, cited in Turkle (2011), feels free only to say things that will be “remembered forever”. “Common sense prevails: ‘free’ combined with ‘forever’ doesn’t seem workable”, concludes Turkle (2011, 259). “[P] erhaps we all need to begin with the assumption that everyone has something to hide, a zone of private action and reflection, one that must be protected no matter what our techno-enthusiasms” (ibid., 264). In 2014, Stallman and Antonomakia released a cartoon of a dog in front of a computer screen reminiscent of the New Yorker cartoon of over 20 years before. This time, however, the screen was covered with pop-up advertisements for dog toys, bones and pet beds. “How did they find out I’m a dog?” wonders the dog in the cartoon. Closer inspection of the screen reveals the text of Stallman’s (2016) article on surveillance: “Information, once collected, will be misused” stands out. Information collected to personalize our online experiences, including that collected from our communication with others, can also be used to manipulate (see also Pegrum 2009; Pariser 2011).

 ur Relationships and Communication O with Others [I]ncreasingly, when we step through the looking glass, other people are there as well. (Turkle 1995, 9)

The importance of language in communicating and shaping our identities in relation to others has long been acknowledged, and increasingly, communication takes place via technology. Our choices in respect to online identities are in part influenced by how those choices are perceived by others. By the mid-1990s the notion that computers may extend not only human intellect but human presence began to be embraced (Turkle 1995, 20).

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Although media outlets have attacked “declining” literacy among particularly young Internet users, Herring (2008) notes that some youth police their language more rigorously than parents or teachers would, with “netspeak” heavily criticized in some youth spaces online, demonstrating how deliberate users can be about their language in regard to self-presentation. Early descriptions of (text-based) computer-mediated communication (CMC) described it as lacking expressivity in comparison to voice (tone, volume, facial expressions, gesture) or handwriting. However, the communicative possibilities of CMC—font, size, color, animation, and of course, emoji (Japanese for “picture-character”)—are increasingly recognized. Typing “LOL”41 or using emoticons, like their precursor emotes (textual descriptions of expressions, gestures, and emotions), can be viewed as a layer of simulation. Turkle observed that while it was easy to have her character display “ST feels a complicated mixture of desire and expectation”, answering the question “what exactly do I feel” or “what exactly do I feel” is more challenging (1995, 254), and asks whether being able to observe the effects our personas’ emotes have on others allows us a better understanding of our “real emotions”, or represents the flattening of affect.

The Robot as Other/The Other as Robot A “novel method of neutralising the dangers of aging, scandals and tantrums” (Black 2006, n.p.), computer-rendered celebrities demonstrate another reversal of the computer-as-mind/mind-as-computer or bot-as-­ person/person-as-bot metaphor. Computers were designed to complete simple, repetitive tasks not because humans were unable to, but because such tasks could be completed faster and with fewer errors by machine. It appears that, in the example of virtual celebrities, the notion of “error” has been extended to refer not only to computational errors in logic, but  Laugh Out Loud, originally used to denote laughter in written communication, is now used as a phatic device and even verbalized in spoken communication (similar to “hashtag” as noted above) to express mild entertainment where laughter is deemed unwarranted. 41

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scandals (or errors in judgment), and even aging (which may be conceived of as errors in DNA replication). While networking shifted focus from human-computer to human-­ human mediated by computer relationships, once again we turn to the computer as “other”. Turkle quotes a graduate student who stated that she would trade in her boyfriend “for a sophisticated Japanese robot” if it exhibited “caring behaviour” (2011, 8). Our willingness to potentially accept robot partners, says Turkle, “is not so much because the robots are ready but because we are” (ibid., 25). How we got here may be found “in the rough-and-tumble of the playroom, in children’s reactions to robot toys” (ibid., 26). Turkle (2011) describes the “complicity” children exhibit interacting with robots. Even when shown its workings in an attempt to make the technology “transparent”, children continue to imbue the robot with life, which Turkle views as akin to telling someone their friend’s mind is made up of electrical impulses and chemical reactions: “Such an explanation is treated as perhaps accurate but certainly irrelevant to an ongoing ­relationship” (ibid., 90). Dennet made a similar observation in response to Turkle’s earlier research: Turkle has mentioned that when children look inside a computer toy, they find something utterly inscrutable: a little chip with no moving parts. They cannot make any sense of it at all. The same thing is true, of course, if you take off the top of somebody’s skull and look at his brain. (1984, 266)

Facing a robot with audio problems, some children suggested it was speaking a foreign language: “A five-year-old decides that this language is Korean, his own language. A twelve-year-old argues for French, then changes her mind and decides on Spanish” (Turkle 2011, 87). Children “cover” for the robot, taking its part in conversation, or interpreting its sounds as words. One child offered explanations such as boredom, distraction, or, when shown the monitor that displays audio input, “bad hearing” for robot Kismet’s silence, before concluding that Kismet simply preferred his brothers. According to Turkle, he was more willing to accept rejection than to cast Kismet as an inadequate interlocutor. Yet for Neela, a child recently arrived from India teased about her accent,

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“Cog [another robot] could be a better friend than a person because it is easier to forgive … because it doesn’t really understand” (cited in Turkle 2011, 94). Despite the children’s willingness to “cover” for their robotic interlocutors, Turkle reports that “the most vulnerable children take disappointments with a robot very personally” (ibid., 95). It is not only children who exhibit complicity in their interactions with robots: in a chapter on communion with machines, Turkle describes 26-year-old Rich as directing the conversation in order to present Kismet in its best light, demonstrating some of the ELIZA effect. Turkle concludes the chapter by stating that At their robotic moment, a Japanese national publicity campaign portrays a future in which robots will babysit and do housework and women will be freed up to have more babies—preserving the traditional values of the Japanese home, but also restoring sociability to a population increasingly isolated through the networked life. (2011, 146)

Two of the robot toys Turkle (2011) singles out for analysis that are part of my own childhood are the Tamagotchi and Furby. The 1996 Tamagotchi (portmanteau of “tamago” and “watch”42) refers to a digital pet which “lives” inside an egg-shaped gadget. Turkle points out that when Tamagotchi “die”, they can be “buried” in an online “graveyard”. Online memorials exist too, for actual pets (Wikipedia lists a pet memorial site founded in 1993 among the earliest websites (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/List_of_websites_founded_before_1995)) and today, we too are encouraged to instruct our next of kin regarding our Facebook memorialization preferences (see for example The Checkout, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubkv7_tEuqE). Turkle describes Furbies as similar to Tamagotchis in that they are “always on”, but that they “manifest this with an often annoying, constant chatter” (2011, 35). First marketed in 1998 under the slogan “a mind of its own” with the promise that “the more you play, the more they do—and say!” much of 42  http://web.archive.org/web/20071119125318/http://www.bandai.co.jp/kids/tm/tamago/ tamago_01.html. “Tamago” (たまご) is Japanese for egg. In Japanese orthography, all words end with either vowel or an ‘n’, hence the transliteration of ‘watch’ as ‘wotchi’. Tamagotchi (たまごっ ち) is occasionally written ‘Tamagotch’.

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Furby’s appeal was derived from its apparent ability to acquire language.43 In 1999, Furby Babies were introduced which, like human babies, were able to become bilingual even more quickly, moving from Furbish to English faster than their grown-up counterparts. In reality, however, all Furbies were programmed to use a pre-determined vocabulary and increase their use of English over time. The belief that Furbies acquired language through their interactions with humans was a result of our complicity, as the case of Furbies in non-English-speaking settings illustrates. I purchased my “English version”-labeled Furby in Japan, where most of the population speaks Japanese as a first language, and the average Furby would be exposed to far more Japanese than English input. However, English-­ version Furbies invariably “learned” English, never Japanese. Rather than the Furby learning English from the child, the child could learn English from the Furby (although a Japanese version was later released). The 2012 re-release similarly involved the sale of an English-language Furby first, followed by the “Japanese version”. Rather than promoting Furby’s enlarged vocabulary, the Takara-Tomy website emphasized its “simple English” (kantan na eigo), and the FAQ reported that a survey of elementary school girls demonstrated their ability to distinguish between phrases such as “I’m sleepy” or “I’m hungry”, concluding that the linguistic hurdle is relatively low for children. Online public FAQs highlight the possibility of improving one’s English using a Furby (http://detail. chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11144863376). But the idea of learning from Furby is not restricted to speakers of LOTEs. The eBay buyer’s guide for Furby Baby asks “If parents want their children to learn a second language, why not start with Furbish?” (http://www.ebay. com.au/gds/How-to-Choose-a-Furby-Baby-/10000000177743609/g. html?clk_rvr_id=883308146253&rmvSB=true). In order to “reliably quiet” a Furby, says Turkle, a screwdriver to remove its batteries is required, “an operation that causes it to lose all memory of its life and experiences—what it has learned and how it has been treated” (2011, 35). When I reinserted batteries in my Furby after over a decade  On Takara-Tomy’s website “a mind of its own” is translated into Japanese as “kokoro wo motta kawaii tomodachi” [a cute friend with a mind/heart/spirit [of its own]]. In a 1999 tongue-in-cheek Guardian article, Borger reported that Furbies had been banned from the National Security Agency owing to inflated claims of their ability to “learn”/“record” language. 43

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of silence, I was temporarily surprised to hear it remember its own name and all of the English it had “learned”. Later, I discovered that this was due to the use of EEPROM: “this is where all Furby’s ‘memory’ is—not memory in the computer architecture sense, but Furby’s actual ‘memory’ which includes his name, which words he’s learned, and the voice the voice synthesis chip should be using” explains a “Furby Brain Surgery” page on Instructables.44 Paradoxically, its technological simplicity made Furby seem more “real”. Concluding Alone Together, Turkle posits that child-­ robot relationships differ from child-doll relationships in that while a child may project human expression onto dolls, a robot babysitter “might seem close enough to human that a child might use it as a model” (2011, 292).

Multilayered, Mediated Identity From the sharing of “bump selfies” to the memorialization of Facebook accounts, from planning a family on your PC to porting workers’ brains at retirement, technology has come to play an important role in shaping and reflecting human experience. How fast we can type and with what sense of “mind meld”, our peripherals (microphone, webcam with which to take selfies, etc.), the intellectual views underpinning the OS we use, and the software and the menu-driven identities made available to us, as well as our Internet connection, and many other personal, social, and technical factors, all influence our relationships with computers, and in turn, our avatars or profiles, and the relationships we form with others through their avatars. Identity, mediated by technology, appears multilayered, as illustrated in Fig. 10.1, with one’s self communicated to one’s interlocutor via input/output peripherals, the computer, avatar (where applicable), one’s connection to the internet or other protocol, and then experienced through one’s interlocutor’s avatar (where applicable) displayed on their computer, interacted with via their peripherals.  Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) is used to store small amounts of data when power is removed. Quote from http://www.instructables.com/id/FurbyBrain-Surgery/step7/Furby-Board-Anatomy/ Interestingly, “Furby Hacking” has become a niche hobby. 44

Input/Output Peripherals Computer

Fig. 10.1  Layers of technological mediation

Self Identity Skills Avatar

Connection

Interlocutor’s Avatar

Interlocutor’s Computer

Input/Output Peripherals

Interlocutor Identity Skills

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The term “Computer” itself refers to a monolithic concept, which may resonate more or less with a user’s experience of their own computer. My experience of my device(s) may overlap with your experience to the extent that we can both relate them to the notion of “Computer” or “Mobile Phone”, but they remain distinct, just as Miller and Slater (2000) argue that the Internet as a monolithic construct differs from the individual’s experience of their own internet. In order to clarify this distinction, I propose the use of lowercase to refer not only to the individual’s concept of their own “internet” (cf. Pasfield-Neofitou 2012), but also their own computer, reserving capitalization for reference to the Computer or Internet as a monolithic construct. By analyzing language, identity, and technology, this chapter shows how we engage with material culture through versions of ourselves articulated and transformed by our encounters (Miller and Slater 2000, 10). Online, Miller and Slater contend, identity is best understood not as novel or unprecedented, but “as helping people to deliver on pledges they have already made to themselves about themselves” (2000, 10). As this chapter has demonstrated, the ways in which we deliver on these pledges online is mediated via multiple layers, each with their own affordances and constraints. As humans, language, and technology combine, a transdisciplinary approach to the concept of identity online is vital.

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11 The Role of Narrative in the Creation of Brand Identity Gabriel García Ochoa and Sarah Lorimer

Introduction In his best-selling book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that we humans have positioned ourselves at the top of the global food chain, thanks primarily to our imagination (2014). According to Harari, having the most powerful imaginations on Earth allows us to inhabit two realities at once, “on the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees, and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations” (Harari 2014, 36). These two realities are engaged in a perpetual dialogue. They are equally valid, equally “real”, one merely happens to be tangible while the other is abstract. For a very long time, these two realities were also equally strong in the way they shaped our views of the world, but according to Harari we have reached a point where the abstract, imagined reality has become more powerful than the tangible, “so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the

G.G. Ochoa (*) • S. Lorimer Monash University and The Lab Strategy, Melbourne, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_11

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United States and Google” (ibid., 36). When these powerful products of our imagination, to which the world has now fallen subject, are shared by a number of people, they are referred to as “social constructs”, “imagined realities”, or “fictions” (ibid., 35). How we tell these fictions, both to ourselves and to others, is what narrative is all about. One such fiction is constructed around the idea of identity. In the social sciences, identity is regarded as either a singular or a collective construction. The former relates to self-identity, the way a person constructs his or her individual idea of Self, while the latter relates to group identity, how cultures, nations, and subcultures define themselves. Nowadays, another form of identity that we come across on an almost daily basis is brand identity, which is the subject of this chapter. We suggest that a peculiar quality of brand identity is that it stands at the intersection of two important narratives: its own and that of its consumers who, through the brands they select, tell stories about themselves. This intersection of stories has traditionally worked as a “dialogue” of sorts, where consumers’ views affect brands and vice versa. Recently, however, the balance has shifted toward consumers, whose personal narratives are increasingly impacting on and influencing the formation of brand identity. It is fair to say that in the modern world a determining factor for the brand’s success is how strongly a brand’s narrative is able to connect with its consumers’ narrative. In this chapter, we discuss the role of narrative in the construction of brand identity. A field of research often used by brands to bring their narratives closer to those of their consumers is semiotics, and this chapter also explores the use of one particular semiotic device in narratives of brand identity: archetypes. Based on Richard Dawkins’ notion of the “meme” (1976), the chapter argues that due to their strength and resilience as cultural memes, archetypes are used as anchor points, nexus to bring together brand and consumer narratives, creating a strong sense of brand identity, allowing brands to extend multinationally, telling stories that resonate in culturally diverse pockets of the world. As a consequence of this, the use of semiotics is becoming increasingly important to brand identity, helping brands to remain relevant in a postmodern consumer world.

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The Importance of Narrative Our memories, our general understanding of the world, and even our sense of identity can best be articulated and made sense of through narratives (see for example Bruner 1990; Eakin 1992, 1999; Haven 2007; Löschnigg 2010; Mildorf 2010; Schafer 1981; Spence 1984; Wolf 2011). This is why brands and businesses make constant use of stories. In fact, a brand is in itself a series of stories, constructed to sell a product or service. Gerald Zaltman argues that “storytelling is central to memory” (2003, 211) and it is this mnemonic quality of narratives, their ability to prompt memories and associations, that has led brands to make use of them. Cognitive scientist Jean Mandler has done extensive research that has shown how information that is not structured in a narrative way has a tendency to be forgotten more easily than information embedded in a narrative (see Mandler 1984, also Mandler and Johnson 1977). Kendal Haven’s work draws many insights from Mandler’s research. Like Mandler, Haven argues that “information is remembered better and longer, and recalled more readily and accurately when it is remembered within the context of a story” (2007, 67). He relates memory to emotional significance, explaining that narratives are able to prompt emotional responses and cause-and-effect mechanisms of understanding that enhance our ability to remember facts. Likewise, cognitive psychologists Roger Schank and Robert Abelson, in Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story, argue that “we remember by telling stories”, and they further suggest that “storytelling is not something we just happen to do. It is something we virtually have to do if we want to remember anything at all. The stories we create are the memories we have” (1995, 33). We see examples of this in different instances of branding, for example, through the use of “taglines” that cue the narrative of a particular brand, such as Apple’s “Think Different”. The use of this tagline connects multiple elements of a brand’s story; its creator, ethos, purpose, and these elements come together to enable a particular mode of understanding for consumers once they encounter the product. Moreover, the individual consumer can self-reflect into the narrative as someone who indeed does “think different” as a result of “buying into” this brand.

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Like the perennial allegory of the fish in water, if we are as “marinated” in narrative as the authors above suggest, can we truly conceive of a world without stories? A considerable number of linguists, cognitive psychologists, historians, and literary theorists maintain that, in fact, we can’t. They argue that, in a very instinctive way, narratives are excellent pedagogical devices for understanding the world. Narratives allow us to contextualize events, to make them sequential, causal, and even symbolic. Haven (2007) has conducted extensive research on the relationship between narrative, education, and brain development in both children and adults. In Story Proof, he argues that from a very young age narratives help us to structure our perceptions of the world. He goes as far as to suggest that stories are the “primary way” in which we interpret reality (2007, 25–26). In a sense, this is similar to the law of Prägnanz that underlies Gestalt psychology, according to which we have a predisposition to organize disparate elements into “stable and coherent” patterns (Sternberg 2006, 127). The patterns Haven refers to are those associated with narrative: relations of cause and effect, structures with a beginning, middle, and end. Literary theorist Paul Eakin presents a cognitive approach to narrative similar to Haven’s. Eakin suggests that the world we experience is directly, “organically” connected to us through narrative structures. He argues that the narrative act becomes the very matrix through which our understanding of the world is articulated (1992, 193). In the context of human history, Louis Mink argues that narrative works as a “primary cognitive instrument” that helps us to understand and write about the events of the past, to comprehend and make sense of what are overwhelmingly complex situations (Mink 1978, 131). Steph Lawler presents a comparable argument in relation to qualitative analysis. She suggests that “people make and use stories to interpret the world” (2002, 242). According to her, narratives are social products produced by people within the context of specific social, historical and cultural locations. They are related to the experience that people have of their lives, but they are not transparent carriers of that experience. Rather, they are interpretive devices, through which people represent themselves, both to themselves and to others. (2002, 242)

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In The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, the prominent linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (2007) argues that narrative helps people experience the world through a prism of causal relations, and that without such logical concatenations, life would appear to be merely “one damn thing after another” (154). Literary critic Martin Löschnigg too argues in favor of “the capacity of narrative to impose order and coherence on what is otherwise a jumble of disconnected fragments of experiences and memories” (2010, 261). So does psychologist Jerome Bruner, who suggests that we appear to have a certain “readiness or predisposition to organize experience into a narrative form, into plot structures and the rest” (1990, 45). Bruner calls this “framing” (1990, 56). In his lecture “Folk Psychology as an Instrument of Culture”, Bruner analyzes what he calls “narrativised folk psychology” and discusses framing in relation to the mental organization of experience. He argues that narrative framing “provides a means of constructing a world, of characterizing its flow” (ibid.). Like Pinker and Löschnigg, he says that without the help of this narrative frame, “we would be lost in a murk of chaotic experience” (ibid.). In a subsequent article, Bruner elaborates further on this idea of identity: We organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative–stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and not doing, and so on. Narrative is a conventional form, transmitted culturally and constrained by each individual’s level of mastery and by his conglomerate of prosthetic devices, colleagues and mentors. (Bruner 1991, 4)

Thus, these narrativizations of the world allow us to structure what we would otherwise experience as the anarchic turmoil of reality. They help us to generate meaning out of that turmoil, and they can also invite us to imagine new worlds, or circumstances in our world different to our own (Schaeffer 2009, 112). This is part of the timeless appeal of stories: their ability to engage with an audience, to allow viewers, readers, or listeners to immerse themselves in the narratives offered. As Wolf states, “the fact that narratives are world-building representations that permit the recipient to (re-) experience possible worlds has become a received notion” (2011, 159). Pinker suggests that the immersive power of ­narrative is one

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of the reasons we are constantly drawn to fiction (1997, 100). Narratives are able to do this because they represent the point of view of an experiencing mind. As Herman suggests, “stories emulate through their temporal and perspectival configuration the what-it’s-like dimension of conscious awareness itself ” (2009, 157). In this sense, narratives can help us understand not only how we make sense of the world but how others do so too. And evidently, if narratives can help us draw meaning from the world around us, they can do the same with the world within us, where the construction of identity is paramount. Brands and businesses make constant use of stories in order to capture and maintain their target audience. In creating a brand, companies seek to understand the turbulent balance between reality and perceptions of Self for a given group or person, and to provide a product or service that will help to resolve this tension. For example, consumers may have a nine-to-five office job, but they may also view themselves as “free spirits”, “rebels”, individuals who, if given a chance, would be living life to the fullest. In scenarios such as these, brands like Harley Davidson have an important role to play. Harley Davidson’s brand story is constructed strongly around the ideas of freedom and rebellion that leverage the cultural codes of the wide-open road and Americana. As a result, it has created a cult following of people yearning to relieve a classic tension between the humdrum reality experienced by their daily Self and the ideal reality to which they aspire. A portion of these riders will indeed be living the ideal, but for many more the brand is mechanism to recognize their idealized Self, creating their sense of personal identity. This creation of a narrative of freedom and rebellion is part of how this brand has visually and socially represented itself across time, assisted by the appropriation of the brand by certain subcultures (notably The Hell’s Angels) which helped to create the ideas of rebellion associated with it. This is despite the fact that, in an historical sense, its “true” story of creation was that Harley Davidson started as one of many turn-of-the-­ century motorcycle companies in the USA.  Indeed, much of the early use of their motorcycles was during both the First and the Second World Wars, to support the American Military. By modern cultural standards, this feels a world away from the myth of rebellion and freedom that Harley Davidson espouses. The idea of a Harley Davidson as a piece of

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military equipment operating in a world that values structure, order, and conformity, feels foreign to the idea of the machine as a symbol of freedom and rebellion. Moreover, there is a brand truism that the majority of Harley Davidson riders are actually in their 40s and 50s and cite the comfort of the wide seats and the focus on slow cruising over speed as key reasons for choosing this motorcycle over others. These practical and functional reasons for engaging with the product are at odds with the ideology and the myth that the brand purveys, allowing those who own a Harley Davidson to instead connect symbolically, fulfilling an emotional and autobiographical narrative of their own, where they see themselves as “rebellious and free”. This is closely linked to the way in which identity formation works as a process, in particular its role in the creation of our autobiographical narratives.

Autobiography Research on identity formation has for many years supported the view that identity, rather than being a static, permanent manifestation of our beings, is in fact a construction, a constant edification of self-perception that is always in flow (Mildorf 2010; de Fina et al. 2006). An approach to identity formation through narrative supports this view because it emphasizes the importance of change through experience, rather than presupposing an immobile sense of Self based on a particular characteristic or group of characteristics. Many scholars have noted the crucial role narrative plays in this process of self-identity construction (see Bruner 1990, 2003; Eakin 1992, 1999; Löschnigg 2010; Mildorf 2010; Ricœur 1984; Schafer 1981; Spence 1984; Wolf 2011). For example, in the context of Freudian analysis, Paul Ricœur (1984) argues that to the extent that patients can express repressed stories, they are able to forge a sense of identity (vol. 1: 74). Like Ricœur, Bruner (1990, 1991) and Eakin (1992, 1999) underline the importance of narrative in the formation of identity. Eakin suggests that “narrative and identity are so intimately linked that each constantly and properly gravitates into the conceptual field of the other”. He argues

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that “narrative is not merely a literary form but a mode of phenomenological and cognitive self-experience” (1999, 100). In an approach not unlike David Hume’s skeptic empiricism of the Self, Bruner argues that our narrative constructions of reality accumulate over time. According to him, through this process of gradual gathering of stories, we build a sense of identity. Bruner argues that narratives “provide the structural lines in terms of which ‘real lives’ are organized” (1990, 53). He adds: Narrative accrual is not foundational in the scientist’s sense. Yet narratives do accrue, and, as anthropologists insist, the accruals eventually create something … even our own homely accounts of happenings in our own lives are eventually converted into more or less coherent autobiographies centred around a Self acting more or less purposefully in a social world. (1991, 18)

If it is possible to articulate identities through narrative, it is important to consider how, precisely, this can be done. For this purpose, we will focus on autobiography as an instance of construction of the Self through narrative, arguing that this is a process shared by both brands and consumers. In this chapter, we approach the idea of autobiography in a wide sense, not only in its traditional form as a printed, or at least a written text that tells the story of someone’s life, but also as the inner, ongoing narrative through which individuals string together the sum of their many experiences. Echoing some of the aforementioned ideas on the power of narrative to bring a sense of structure to an otherwise chaotic world, both Löschnigg (2010) and Eakin (1999) suggest that in relation to identity construction, autobiography plays a creative, organizing role rather than a descriptive one. Eakin regards autobiography as an interpretative, creative process. According to him, the traditional notion of autobiography as a merely mimetic description of facts is inaccurate, because it is only through the telling and articulation of his or her story that the autobiographer structures, in the same way that we can structure through narrative an understanding of the world, a true sense of identity (1999, 123). In this regard, Eakin argues that autobiography is not only “the passive, transparent record of an already completed Self ” but rather “an integral and often decisive phase of the drama of self-definition” (1988, 226).

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Löschnigg has conducted considerable research on the topic. According to him, autobiography theory sees narrative as a process through which individuals are able to organize their memories and impressions into a coherent, causal sequence of events. The specific ways in which those experiences are put together by the autobiographer are precisely what leads to a sense of both meaning and identity. Löschnigg defines autobiography as the “manifestation of a continuous process of identity-­construction” (2010, 269). To a certain degree, this narrative construction of identity must fuse memory and the imagination. Indeed, because of its creative nature, autobiography finds itself in a liminal space between the factual and the fictional. Löschnigg adds that “one should distinguish not so much between fiction and reality, as between different kinds of reality: the lived and the narrated” (2010, 268). Here again we must go back to Harari’s understanding of the idea of fiction, which inherently questions the validity of the distinction between fact and fiction and sees the former as instances of the latter, in the sense that facts are only personal interpretations of reality. Eakin’s and Löschnigg’s ideas on the dynamic and ongoing process of identity creation of the Self can also be applied to identity creation in the context of the brand. A good example of this is creation myths. In a broad sense, a creation myth is a story that explains the origin of a particular situation. Some of the most salient examples can be found in religious narratives, like the Book of Genesis of the Christian Old Testament, which seeks to explain the origin of the universe. On a much smaller scale, in the context of brands, creation myths provide a story of “how things started”, and they are an important element of a brand’s autobiography. They are referred to alternatively as “origin stories” (Mathews and Wacker 2008), “genesis stories” (Sachs 2012), or “creation stories” (Hanlon 2006). In the same way that individuals structure a sense of Self by narrativizing their lives, one of the ways in which brands construct a sense of identity is through their own creation myths. Mathews and Wacker (2008) argue that creation myths address basic existential questions of brand identity. These stories become the “foundation stones” of a brand and, through the values they espouse, of the ­business culture that operates within that brand (28–29). Sachs echoes this view, arguing that creation myths are basic in terms of identity for-

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mation for brands (2012, 201). According to Hanlon, creation myths explain the belief system in which a brand’s identity is grounded (2006, 12). They are important because they provide context and meaning. He describes them as a “crucial first step in providing answers to why people should care” about a brand (ibid., 19–20). In this regard, he states: “Where are you from?” is one of the first questions we ask when we meet someone new. Whether the story is about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their parents’ garage creating the first personal computers, Jeff Bezos sitting in the back seat of his car writing the business plan for amazon.com, or pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton concocting a carbonated soft drink called Coca-Cola, the ur-legends of successful companies are important to us. The story of the two college kids who created Google in their dorm room. An undaunted MBA student who, scoffed at by his marketing professor, went off to create FedEx anyway. A kid named Andy Warhola who moved from Pennsylvania to New  York City and changed his name to Andy Warhol. All of these tales tell the backstory and set the stage for companies and brands that we have come to trust. (ibid., 11)

Like most origin myths, the creation myths of brands often involve a quest-like scenario that tells of a company’s efforts to “create the right product or service” in the face of resistance or incredulity (Hanlon 2006, 16). Creation myths are an important element in the construction of brand identity, but they are not the only component that constructs a brand’s autobiography and sense of Self. Rather, a creation myth is something that allows people to identify with a human being behind an idea or brand. The Dyson vacuum cleaner company is a good example of this. If consumers were not aware of the story of James Dyson, which follows the archetypal narrative of the “mad scientist who pushes boundaries”, they would be far less likely to believe in, and engage with, the science of “bagless” vacuum cleaners. The inventor’s personal story adds gravitas and encourages an engagement with the product that permits an otherwise merely functional item to become a part of the consumer’s own identity-creation process and autobiographical narrative. The product tells us something about the consumer’s identity as well as that of the inventor. As time goes by and there is a need to attract and retain more customers, particularly as “copy-cats” enter the market, the brand auto-

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biography needs to shift, blend, and build upon this creation myth. By consistently reminding people of its creation myth, and the benefits of it, the brand starts to own meaning around “doing things differently” and “scientific improvement”, allowing consumers to continue to construct their self-identities based on this choice of brand.

Archetypes Having a “human” creation myth is a powerful way to build authenticity into a brand ideology. However not all powerful brands use creation myths as the central tenet of their identity. Take Nike, for example. The fact that, prior to becoming Nike, the brand was “Blue Ribbon Sports”, a sporting goods company founded in 1964 by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, is not an overt part of the brand’s story today. The rebranding of the company as “Nike”, the Greek name for the Goddess of Victory, was a conscious choice. The stories that are told as a result of this narrative of victory are what people associate with the company today. This is an example of how a brand can deliberately mold its autobiography around an archetype; a powerful story or image that is capable of transcending cultures. In this case, Nike chose the archetype of the Victorious Hero. In this section, we use semiotic theory to show the way companies harness the power of archetypes in the formation of brand identity. Semiotics, the field of research that studies signs and symbols, allows us to track historical and cultural shifts. As such, it can help companies make sense of the alternative narratives they can create for themselves and is an important tool in the formation of brand identity (Batey 2008; Oswald 2012; Rossolatos 2015). An element of semiotics that is often used in brand research is archetype theory. According to Hirschman, all narratives depend on archetypes to articulate their messages. She argues that archetypes work as “symbolic vessels” that are able to “carry culturally specific meanings” (2002, 316). The most widespread u ­ nderstanding of archetypes comes from the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, whose ideas on the subject are based on the works of Plato, Cicero, Pliny, and St. Augustine. In his seminal work on the topic, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung defines the collective unconscious

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as the part of the psyche that “is not individual, but universal” (1990, 3–4). Jung argues that, differently from the personal psyche, the collective unconscious has “contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals” (1990, 3–4). According to Jung, the collective unconscious is composed of “primordial types, that is, universal images that have existed since the remotest times”, which he refers to as archetypes (1990, 5). Famous examples of Jungian archetypes are the Hero, the Trickster, the Mother, the Child, to mention only a few. In the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and literary theory, ideas similar to Jung’s, of models or standards that can transcend epochs and cultural barriers, have been proposed independently by Julien Greimas (1966), Vladimir Propp (1968), Claude Lévi-Strauss (1979), and Christopher Booker (2004), among others. The Jungian approach to archetypes is prescriptive. It argues that archetypes are fixed elements of our psyche, “biologically based knowledge that has been with us since our species first gained consciousness approximately thirty to sixty thousand years ago” (Hirschman 2002, 315). The American mythologist Joseph Campbell, perhaps Jung’s most famous student, based his theory of the “monomyth” and the Hero’s Quest on Jung’s ideas, arguing that mythology is the expression of the archetypal elements of the human mind that Jung refers to, present across time and through different cultures as an inherent component of our species (1975, 3–4). Our approach to archetypes in this chapter strays from Campbell’s and Jung’s views in that we see archetypes as cultural constructs that change, evolve, and adapt over time. There may be a core idea we all connect with, but the meaning of that story will only be reached, and indeed generate a reaction, if it is told in a culturally relevant way. Our approach is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and it aligns itself with Richard Dawkins’ notion of the “cultural meme”. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins (1976) famously argued that the transmission of ideas underwent a similar process to that of genetic evolution, fashions in dress and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolve in historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, though the change may be progressive. (1976, 204)

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According to Dawkins, culture is a replicating entity, analogous to genes in its capacity to spread and evolve (ibid., 206). To refer to these cultural replicators, he coins the term “meme”: Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. (1976, 206)

The survival of certain memes over others depends on their psychological appeal. According to Dawkins, in order for a cultural meme to survive it must have the same characteristics that ensure the evolution of a gene: “longevity, fecundity, and copying fidelity” (ibid., 208). Following Dawkins’ rationale, in Darwinian terms, archetypes are some of the “fittest” ideas in a culture, able to survive thanks to their ability to replicate themselves, adapt, and endure; a good reason why over the last two decades brands have been using them increasingly. The literature on this topic is extensive. Mark and Pearson’s (2001) book The Hero and the Outlaw is one of the most respected texts in the field. It describes 12 archetypes of clear Jungian provenance. In Creating Brand Meaning, Steidl (2012) suggests that there are 28 archetypes, many of them variations on Mark and Pearson’s blueprint. Wertime’s (2002) Building Brands and Believers also argues in favor of 12 archetypes, while Hartwell and Chen’s (2012) Archetypes in Branding, one of the most thorough texts on the subject, suggests 60 archetypes, where each of Jung’s original 12 archetypes is divided into a gamut of 5 (also see Batey 2008; Sachs 2012; Signorelli 2014; Zaltman 2003). One of the most important qualities of archetypes in the construction of brand identity is their capacity to bring together brand and consumer narratives. Archetypes are ideas that, in spite of their adaptability, have an immutable “core” that is able to transcend contextual borders, particularly in terms of narrative. The story may change, but the archetype remains the same. A good example of this is the Hero archetype, shown in the Nike example above. From one story to the next, the Hero will wear

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different costumes, face different villains, conquer different manifestations of “the impossible”, but the idea of the Hero, its core, is immutable. Without this idea of changing face, brands become obsolete. The ability to “recast” the core archetype is essential to the idea of brand relevance. Coca-Cola, for example, has gone through many time periods and operates transnationally. Its communications and products have changed and evolved over time, but its simple core premise of joy and innocence in the world, the Innocent Archetype, resonates everywhere, and across time. One of the goals of brands is to act as symbols of their consumers’ identities, but in the currently evolving and fragmenting world of brands relatively few achieve this status. As mentioned before, those identities will be inevitably linked to an evolving narrative that is continually constructing itself, defined by different, intertwined aspects of the Self. However, depending on the role/character that consumers happen to be playing in their lives (self-narratives) at a certain time, or during a particular situation (Mother, Lover, Rebel, Mentor, Villain, etc.), or indeed that they feel they need at a certain time/situation, there will often be a stronger identification with one archetype over the others. The essential goals, fears, aspirations, and trials of an archetype, its weaknesses and strengths, will mirror the core identity tension of the consumer in a specific moment or situation. Therefore, if a consumer identifies with say, the archetype of the Hero at a certain point in her/his personal narrative, and a brand has embraced the Hero archetype as part of its story, then there may be an intersection between consumer and brand narratives. In a commercial setting, it is the role of the market researcher to identify the potential for these intersections through cultural insight. Research into the lives of potential consumers elucidates the tensions in the autobiographical construction of identities that are held in common across a target group. This is often how market researchers define an “attitudinal target”, as a group of people who are in need of a specific archetypal story to help them feel like their ideal Self. By identifying the underlying turmoil and shifts in potential consumers’ autobiographical narratives, we can construct archetypes and brand stories that speak to them. Moreover, an overlay of context and situation is necessary. Brands that can build this connection between their own archetypal identity and a consumer’s identity construction beyond a single situation often tend to create a deeper

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connection with the consumer, and thereby achieve greater influence on their sense of identity. John West and Sirena are good examples of how cultural contexts can reveal a need for a brand’s archetypal expression to evolve. John West makes canned tuna and has enjoyed success in Australia for years as a leading household brand. The brand’s creation story focuses not on any “real” person but on the mythical “John West” hero, a man who sails the seven seas to find the best fish. Over time, the repetition and creation of a story around “the best fish” has led this concept to become so ingrained in Australia that there is now an automatic response to what John West represents as a brand. By consistently embodying the “Hero” archetype, John West satisfies a consumer need of achievement, of being the winner. As a food product that is often seen as healthy, nutritious, and easy, this contrast between adventure and ease, the effortlessness of opening a can for lunch as opposed to braving the wild seas, suits the context of the category. A competitor to John West is Sirena, a brand of tuna that has articulated a different identity through its narrative and archetype use. Sirena is an Italian import, with a narrative that evokes a world of Mediterranean food values, a belief in quality and love for food. As such, the archetypal role it plays is that of the “Lover”, a brand that believes in and delivers passion and enjoyment. It espouses time, care, craftsmanship through a cultural narrative of Italianness and delicatessen eating. Having two different brands representing two different archetypal stories traditionally works well for a category, as this diversity gives different groups of consumers different stories to connect to that feel closer to their own identities. The brand asks of its consumer, “are you someone who likes to achieve, who values the best in life” (John West consumers) or “are you someone who believes in taking time to love and appreciate the moment?” (Sirena costumers). It is also important to consider that archetypal stories sit within a cultural context where meaning and consumers’ identities are always in flux. In this particular case, the evolution of cultural food values in Australia toward a gourmet “foodie” culture, one that appreciates, savors, creates, and focuses on the “essence” of the food, has a role to play in the relevance of brand narratives. As cultural values shift, so too do ideas around successful living and aspiration, and this in turn influences identity con-

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struction; it changes and shapes the values that consumers wish to show about themselves, and therefore the brands and artifacts they choose to demonstrate these values. In theory, a shift away from a focus on “achievement through activity” to “achievement through appreciation” at a cultural level would work in Sirena’s favor and pose a challenge to John West by creating a consumer inclination to connect to the idea of a “Lover” over a “Hero”. Therefore, as consumers construct their identities around a new set of food values, the way in which a brand is a “Hero” must also change. The cause it champions needs to realign itself with the new set of values imposed by consumers’ evolving self-narratives, which collectively build to a cultural narrative. The brand can still be the Hero, but its cause must resonate. If this is about achievement, it is about finding the new culturally relevant meaning of achievement.

The Ongoing Process of Brand Identity This leads to our final point on how cultural narratives shape brand identities and the shift in directionality between consumer and brand. Brand identities are created through a dialogue with their consumers. In this sense, brand identities stand at the intersection of their own stories— their creation myths—and the personal narratives of their consumers. A brand’s ability to connect with potential consumers depends on the extent to which these two narratives overlap. Over the last 20 years, however, the interplay between consumers and brands has morphed. Traditionally, market research has focused on archetypes and the role that these play in building an overlap between a consumer’s autobiographical narrative and a brand’s own narrative. But more and more, it is the consumer’s autobiographical narrative that shapes the story of the brand through an ongoing “dialogue” of sorts. Brands are increasingly used and discarded as symbols of meaning, and as identities are constructed and reconstructed, brands experience greater flux in terms of who identifies with them and how these consumers, in turn, use the brand. As Venkatesh and Meamber argue, “the consumer is part of an ongoing process of symbol construction/consumption and meaning generation” (2006, 26). This creates new meaning for brands, but this is

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an instance of meaning that falls entirely outside of their control. Some brands use this to their advantage, harnessing the creativity and identity-­ creation process of their “fans” to inform what they stand for, while others are sidelined, having no control over how this identity is shaped as a cultural artifact. A good example of this new wave of “reflexive” brand identity creation is that of Aldi in the UK. Aldi is a chain of low-cost supermarkets that originated in Germany. It does not offer “known-brands”, instead it offers foodstuffs that closely replicate existing brands but at much lower prices. Before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in the UK, shopping at Aldi was largely regarded as indicative of a lower socioeconomic status of a demographic that “could not afford” brands that served as markers of quality. However, as cynicism and distrust of supermarkets has grown in that country in recent years, Aldi has enjoyed a change in cultural meaning. Through necessity, a wider range of people tried it. In doing so, they subsequently constructed narratives of product quality being no different to that of named brands. From here, stories emerged to justify this choice, namely a dominant narrative that consumers were “just paying for a name” if they purchased branded food goods. This story has subsequently been woven more deeply into personal autobiographies and identities. By refusing to “pay for a name”, consumers are perceived as savvy, clever, and advocates of honest trading. The idea of “why pay more?” takes on a meaning that is equally about price efficiency, in this case recasting “cheapskate” as “responsibly frugal”, and standing as a measure of a moral belief in honest, real food. The result for the brand narrative is that Aldi finds itself redefined as a smart choice, made by educated people, not a choice of necessity based on cost. As a consequence, the brand has readjusted its own autobiography and meaning to reflect a playful sense of rebellion, of being a brand that does things differently, that challenges the status quo of the regular supermarkets. It has reflected back consumer narratives about not being able to taste the difference, in turn symbiotically supporting the consumer’s self-identity as morally and culturally “clever”. This process of shared identity creation has led to the brand taking its place as a cultural artifact with a deeper shared meaning, moving away from its association with a traditionally working-class “bargain” philoso-

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phy to be appropriated instead as a middle-class icon of savviness and to some degree of anti-corporate sentiment. This evolution of brand and personal identity has been symbiotic, with the consumer and the brand each exerting an influence on the other. Aldi provides an example of a model in which a cultural shift leads to an adaptation in individual autobiographical selves which in turn reshapes a brand’s identity. In this way, brand stories are created to reassure and reaffirm the stories of their consumers.

Conclusion Many factors contribute toward the creation of a brand’s identity. Important among these is the conglomeration of narratives that encompass both consumer and brand stories. There are parallels between the ways in which brands and individuals construct a sense of identity through narrative. We have seen that narrative, far from being the traditionally descriptive, mimetic approach to experience that some consider it to be, is a dual process for brands and consumers alike, at once interpretative and creative. Neither brand stories nor consumer stories are static. They communicate and interact with each other, engaging in a dynamic dialogue that must lead to fluctuations in brand identity. In the past, brands tended to have more control over these dialogues than they do nowadays, dictating at least the flow of the conversation, if not the entirety of the dialogue with their consumers. Archetypes and creation myths were two crucial semiotic devices brands employed to bring about the intersection of brand and consumer narratives that encouraged a greater identification between the consumer with the brand. However, in recent years, there has been a clear shift in the brand/consumer relationship. Consumer narratives are now influencing how brands tell their own narratives in a way that has not been seen before, and this is affecting the way in which brands construct their own identities. At present, the brands that create a deeper sense of connection with their consumers are those that transcend their own creation myths and archetypal associations to engage in a dialogue that requires listening to their consumers’ stories and respond-

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ing to them, rather than telling consumers what those stories ought to be. Creation myths and archetypes are still essential tools, and they will become increasingly important for brand identity construction into the future. If brands are to remain relevant in a postmodern consumer world, they will need to be flexible enough to adapt to ever-evolving consumer narratives and identities.

References Batey, Mark. 2008. Brand meaning. New York: Routledge. Booker, Christopher. 2004. The seven basic plots: Why we tell stories. New York: Continuum. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of meaning, Jerusalem-Harvard lectures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1991. The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry 18: 1–21. ———. 2003. Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Campbell, Joseph. 1975. The hero with a thousand faces. London: Sphere. Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael G.W. Bamberg. 2006. Discourse and identity, Studies in interactional sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eakin, Paul. 1988. Fictions in autobiography: Studies in the art of self-invention. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1992. Touching the world: Reference in autobiography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1999. How our lives become stories: Making selves. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Greimas, Julien. 1966. Sémantique structurale: recherche de méthode. Paris: Larousse. Hanlon, Patrick. 2006. Primal branding. New York: Free Press. Harari, Yuval N. 2014. Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. London: Vintage Books. Hartwell, Margaret P., and Joshua C.  Chen. 2012. Archetypes in branding: A toolkit for creatives and strategists. Cincinnati: How Books. Haven, Kendall. 2007. Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

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Herman, David. 2009. Basic elements of narrative. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Hirschman, Elizabeth C. 2002. Metaphors, archetypes, and the biological origins of semiotics. Semiotica 142–1/4: 315–349. Jung, Carl G. 1990. The archetypes and the collective unconscious. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Bollingen Series, vol. 9. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lawler, Steph. 2002. Narrative in social research. In Qualitative research in action, ed. Tim May, 242–258. London: Sage. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1979. Myth and meaning. New York: Schocken Books. Löschnigg, Martin. 2010. Postclassical narratology and the theory of autobiography. In Postclassical narratology, ed. Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik, 255–274. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Mandler, Jean. 1984. Stories, scripts, and senses: Aspects of schema theory. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mandler, Jean, and Nancy Johnson. 1977. Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology 9: 111–151. Mark, Margaret, and Carol Pearson. 2001. The hero and the outlaw: Building extraordinary brands through the power of archetypes. New York: McGraw-Hill. Mathews, Ryan, and Watts Wacker. 2008. What’s your story? Storytelling to move markets, audiences, people and brands. Upper Saddle River: FT Press. Mildorf, Jarmila. 2010. Narratology and the social sciences. In Postclassical narratology, ed. Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik, 234–254. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Mink, Louis. 1978. Narrative form as a cognitive instrument. In The writing of history: Literary form and historical understanding, ed. Robert H. Canary and Henry Kosicki, 129–149. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Oswald, Laura. 2012. Marketing semiotics: Signs, strategies, and brand value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pinker, Steven. 1997. How the mind works. New York: W.W. Norton. ———. 2007. The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. New York: Viking. Propp, Vladimir. 1968. Morphology of the folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1984. Time and narrative. Trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rossolatos, George. 2015. Handbook of brand semiotics. Kassel: Hess Kassel University Press. Sachs, Jonah. 2012. Winning the story wars: Why those who tell—And live—The best stories will rule the future. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

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Schaeffer, Jean-Marie. 2009. Fictional vs. factual narration. In Handbook of narratology, ed. Peter Hühn, John P.W.  Schmid, and Jörg Schönert, 98–114. Berlin: De Gruyter. Schafer, Roy. 1981. Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue. In On narrative, ed. William J.T. Mitchell, 29–53. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schank, Roger C., and Robert P. Abelson. 1995. Knowledge and memory: The real story. In Knowledge and memory: The real story, Advances in social cognition, ed. Robert S. Wyer, vol. 8, 33. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Signorelli, Jim. 2014. Storybranding 2.0. Austin: Greenleaf Book Group. Spence, Donald. 1984. Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Steidl, Peter. 2012. Creating brand meaning. Charleston: Createspace. Sternberg, Robert. 2006. Cognitive psychology. Belmont: Thomson/Wadsworth. Venkatesh, Alladi, and Laurie A. Meamber. 2006. Arts and aesthetics: Marketing and cultural production. Marketing Theory 6: 11–39. Wertime, Kent. 2002. Building brands & believers: How to connect with consumers using archetypes. Chichester: Wiley. Wolf, Werner. 2011. Narratology and media(lity): The transmedial expansion of a literary discipline and possible consequences. In Current trends in narratology, ed. Greta Olson, 145–180. Berlin: De Gruyter. Zaltman, Gerald. 2003. How customers think. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

12 Conclusion Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, and Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou

Autoethnography and Identity Our goal in this book has been to examine identity and disciplinarity in the crucible of an international and collaborative teaching module using the catalyst of a learning and teaching experience involving both us and our students. It has also been an attempt to re-define, or define to ourselves, what we mean by the transdisciplinary. We conclude this book with a chapter that takes an autoethnographic approach to draw out our own experience and understandings: we offer the reader an insight into how we feel about our own identities as academics and educators, and how we feel about interdisciplinarity and collaboration in two modern international universities. The chapter builds on a conversation between N. Monk (*) IATL, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK M. Lindgren Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S. McDonald • S. Pasfield-Neofitou Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_12

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the co-editors of this book that took place in a conference room in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2015. We have included the transcripts as Appendix I more or less verbatim as an exercise in autoethnography. The reasons that we include the material are threefold. First, we want to “perform” the ideas of the book, in the sense that if this is a book about identity, it is interesting for those responsible for its production to engage with their own identities as academics as part of the process. Second, it is an opportunity for us to consider the key themes that arise in a discussion of academic identity, and, third, it is about teasing out particular moments that we might regard as transdisciplinary. A simple word analysis of the transcript shows the most commonly occurring words during the conversation: “student” or “students” are used 96 times; variations of “disciplinarity” are used 80 times; “identity” 61 times; and “space” 43 times. More broadly, the conversation ranges through what constitutes our identity as academics, how our identities as professionals have changed from solitary to more collaborative modes, and how engagement with students is central to all our activities in the modern university, including research. The conversation considers reflection as part of academic identity, and how that reflection becomes public, how it requires a degree of bravery to “hear” oneself in a public forum, and how that production of a “voice” translates us into embodied intelligences. At the same time, our professional and personal identities become merged when we offer ourselves as the raw material for scrutiny in the learning and teaching space, as Lindgren did in particular, but we all did to some extent. There is a sense in this of destabilization as we work through our ideas of disciplinarity and, indeed, how learning and teaching works in universities. This is true for us as faculty as well as for students. So we ask our students to be brave, with us. This returns us to the collaborative nature of the process. Not only do we collaborate as academics, but we invite students to participate with us in the creation of meaning in an arena where there is no “right” or “wrong” in terms of ideas. In this context, we de-centre ourselves and cast off the mantle of expert. There is an important focus in the discussion on the space in which the learning and teaching activities that form a significant element of these discussions take place. The fact that the Forms of Identity module was taught in an international portal, existing in a third space between the

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universities, suggests that both academics and students are required to negotiate their identities in relation to this unusual arrangement. Cultural differences become initially magnified, but their effects are reduced in the space as students and academics begin to own the environment. The transdisciplinary is framed in a number of different ways in this conversation, explicitly and implicitly. Early on, Lindgren (section 21) refers to “sharing knowledge through a mediatized environment” and remarks that unless academics are willing to participate, they will be left behind. This is the first example in the conversation of a recognition that the means by which information is shared and understood contributes to an environment which disciplines no longer determine. The longer conversation concerning the conventions of particular disciplines refers to precisely this process: Pasfield-Neofitou’s point about the way in which disciplines demarcate territory using reference systems (18–22) is germane here. Once the systems and frameworks that bolster the constructs that are the ideas of separate disciplines are challenged, the boundaries of those constructs begin to dissolve. Sarah McDonald makes a telling remark when she says that if one is not already acculturated to a discipline, one does not know what an “out-of-bounds” question is, meaning the assumptions that lie at the heart of disciplinary knowledge are opened for scrutiny in a transdisciplinary space. Later in the section, McDonald talks about the way the world and what we know about it is shifting so rapidly that it’s impossible for disciplines as they are defined by self-generated and rigid lines of demarcation to be adequate to the needs of students to engage with this changing world (61). “Shared challenges” sit across a “broader environment,” that requires a less “safe” and “braver” approach in response. Some of these are issues of form rather than content. Where they intersect in the conversation is the point at which Lindgren suggests that “identity” as content is also a question of form—individuals are already, to an extent, extradisciplinary experts on identity, because they have intimate first-hand knowledge of it, possessing an identity themselves (85). This is the “form” of identity, its ontological condition, or its state of being. What students learn about identity as a result of their studies with us is the content of identity—in this example, its epistemological condition, what can be known about it. These, it might be argued, are the prerequisites for a

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transdisciplinary experience: disciplinary epistemological material (things that can be “known” about identity) are encountered by the extradisciplinary subject (whose identity is necessarily in a state of “being”).1 The “trans” component of the transdisciplinary emerges in the way in which being and knowing, operating together, facilitate movement beyond thresholds of understanding available to individual disciplines: in order to translate, transform, or transpose. A simpler way of explaining this is to state that the combination of extradisciplinary expertise and disciplinary knowledge is one route towards the transdisciplinary. In our introduction, we refer to “convergent concepts”: ideas that “seem to have a power of their own to escape the disciplinary silos that contain them under the departmental and faculty arrangements that are typical in … universities across the world.” Identity fulfils the criterion for a convergent concept as it exists beyond the categorical definitions of any one discipline—as we hope this volume of chapters has shown. There is another key criterion which is that convergent concepts must have resonance or meaning in the lived experience of all humans. So other examples, taken at random, might be climate change, food security, globalization, entrepreneurship, cultural literacy, money, and emotion. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of others, and what they have in  These are phenomenological ideas. The work of Heidegger and Husserl on phenomenology arose from a desire to resolve the dichotomy between those who believe that there is no material world existing independently from thought and those who believe that knowledge is produced only by what is external: there can be nothing innate. There is, however, common ground—if only in a negative sense: as Robert Magliola suggests, “Though opting for opposite horns of the subject— object dilemma, both idealist and empiricist agree there is no bridge between thought and world” (Magliola 1977), 4). Phenomenology has made a number of serious attempts to build this bridge. The work of Husserl, for example: 1

Consciousness for Husserl … is not a Cartesian knowing of knowledge but a real intercourse with the outside. Consciousness is an act wherein the subject intends (or directs himself towards the object), and the object is intended (or functions as a target for the intending act, though the object transcends this act). The subject intending and the object intended are reciprocally implicated (and, it should be added, the subject is real and the object is real, that is, truly emanating from the outside). (4) Or more succinctly: “[F]or the phenomenologist, knowledge is the grasp of an object that is simultaneously gripping us” (17). The relevance to identity is clear. When students engage with identity, they are “gripped” by an internalized notion of their own identity that they simultaneously “grasp” as ideas, images, and arguments.

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common is that they exist at the juncture of being and knowing. Convergent concepts are, therefore, definitively, transdisciplinary. Their other significant feature is that if the first two criteria of ­extradisciplinarity, and existing as part of lived reality, are met, the concepts are always what might be referred to as “problem-based.”2 This notion of a problem-based approach is particularly relevant in the learning and teaching environment. An affirmation of this is in the way this book might be offered to a group of students as part of an assessment that required them to produce an analysis of one aspect of “identity.” While it would be possible, and legitimate, for such a group to take a disciplinary view and expand on one of the subject-specific approaches around which we have organized the chapters in the book, it would be equally possible to adopt the kind of problem-based approach we allude to. Take, for example, the relationship between form and content that has been inescapable in this collection of material, and to which we refer in the previous paragraph as a larger concept. Students could frame a research question along the lines of “Analyze the relationship between form and content, or interior and exterior, and identity, in a selection of essays in this volume.” To re-articulate what we have outlined above, identity exists as something every one of us experiences in one way or another. To be human, it seems, is to have an identity. The “to be” element of identity is its form. Identity exists, also, as a subject for intellectual examination. The material generated in the analyses in our chapters is its “content.” A variety of responses to this relationship is generated across the range of chapters. In Watkin’s piece in this volume, the idea of “form” and “content” begin to break down under the close philosophical scrutiny of the behaviour of identity over time. Lambert’s work also troubles the “form” and “content” boundary, describing the body as a site of identity, thus challenging pervasive views concerning the interior location of identity. These tensions between the internal and the external  There is an extensive body of literature in this area. This literature review, from the University of Indianapolis, begins with the following remarks: “There have been concentrated reform initiatives across many content areas that have integrated authentic and student-driven instructional approaches. Although these initiatives have different names, such as inquiry learning, problembased learning, and project-based learning, they share the common goal of engaging students through exploring real-world issues and solving practical problems.” http://cell.uindy.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/PBL-Lit-Review_Jan14.2014.pdf 2

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occur throughout, from Chakraborty’s discussions of the epistemologies and ontologies of “colour” and “third world women,” to Ochoa’s and Lorimer’s essay in which they discuss the “objective” realities of the ­environment and the “subjective” realities of the imagination. Another version exists in McDonald’s analysis of the negotiation that takes place between exoticized versions of Brazilian identity and those that emerge from within a polyglot, multivocal Brazil itself. Moffat strips back our flesh to our skeletons and penetrates to the very chemicals that create us. And what is implicit, here, is the notion that each atom of us is indivisible from the every other: form and content are not separable at this layer of scrutiny. Omer and Broome examine the relationship between personal identity and a range of psychiatric disorders, and Wilson’s focus on the translingual offers perspectives from both “inside” and “outside” native language. Meanwhile, in Pasfield-Neofitou’s piece, the relationship between computing and human cognition acknowledges a tension between structure and content: at what point do the computing metaphors we use to describe the way we think cease to “stand for” something else and actually become “the way we think” itself? Finally, we return to Lindgren, whose remark in her piece that “the blurred lines between personalized experience and objective fact” instantiates the relationship between form and content, at the centre of the conversation, in another form to the one the four editors discuss in the autoethnography in Appendix I. In terms of “form and content, or interior and exterior,” all the chapters in the volume have something different to contribute. By placing these chapters in dialogue with one another in this way, students may find that concepts, ideas, or notions that we, as tutors, have identified as disciplinarily “convergent,” open up to them in detailed and complex ways without our further intervention. As Ochoa and Lorimer argue, we are who we are, and things are the way they are, via a process of dialogue. And there are any number of different research questions that could be developed: identity and security, identity and technology, identity and politics (broadly or narrowly defined), identity and history. The list is potentially endless. This is significant pedagogically, but it is not the only way the identification and development of convergent concepts and transdisciplinarity is important in higher education. It is just one way to extrapolate a real-world application from an

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analysis of the incredibly rich and complex notion of identity. Identity escapes the bounds of the academy as students carry with them into their lives beyond education a link between self and world. It really does ­matter, therefore, whether or not a concept is interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, extradisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, as the transdisciplinary is a mode of learning and teaching that connects academe to the realities of the world beyond the university. The experience of writing and editing this book, of reflecting on our identities (as working academics, in our lives outside the academy, and in the blurred areas between work and life), and of sharing our experiences with our students, has allowed us to engage with the idea of identity in a deeper and more complex fashion. It has allowed us to embody some of the thinking we have encountered and to participate in the flow of a concept as it moves between the academy and its disciplines and, sometimes, beyond them altogether. The book has been an experiment in joining research, teaching, and the world outside the academy. Elements of the experiment have been more successful than others: the notion that there are no right answers in certain areas of academic endeavour has been demonstrated to be more than a cliché for us and our students. And experiencing identity in the way we have has permitted a richer and more personally meaningful engagement with some of the ideas and concepts we have encountered. Conversely, while we are certain the book provides a sample of the breadth of academic interest in identity, we do not have the depth that a collection founded in a single disciplinary perspective might provide. Convergent concepts such as identity do, however, offer an opportunity to think about intellectual endeavour in a different way. Given that universities are often seen as distant, the province of elites and the privileged, should we consider building into our systems and structures an assumption that research and learning must connect to each other and to the world outside the academy in some meaningful way? And in order to do that, should we open a space for learning and research that is based upon concepts, ideas, and problems that are live and current in an increasingly interconnected world? For us, it is a confrontation with the paradox that lies at the heart of the experience of researching, teaching, learning, and experiencing “identity.” Let us end with two quotes that encapsulate the passions that drove this experiment in learning: “[I]

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t’s all about wanting, really wanting to share knowledge and understanding, and a passion that we clearly all have” (McDonald 61). But also, “we’re challenging … ideas that [students] hold about their discipline [and] their identity … we’re … destabilising what they understand education to mean” (Pasfield-Neofitou 114).

References Magliola, Robert. 1977. Phenomenology and literature: An introduction. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

Appendices

Appendix 1 Transcript from recorded conversations with co-editors, Nick Monk (NM), Sarah McDonald (SM), Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou (SPN) and Mia Lindgren (ML), 12–13 December, 2015, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

© The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0

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So one of the first things we wanted to talk about was professional identities Yes, and what brought us to where we are now as people who are engaged in higher education in various dimensions I was just going to say, I can start, I have something to say about this. I don’t know. I never really wanted—I mean, I never had a plan to be an academic, but I always thought that conversing with people or sharing via communication was always going to be a part of what I did. I just didn’t recognize—I mean, being from, you know, let’s say a lower middle-class family in New Zealand, I just assumed that I’d be, and I’m sure everyone who met me at high school did, that I’d be a teacher at a high school, and then university took me behind that, beyond that, and I just ended up being in these positions at a university, in which the emphasis has always been on your research, but for me, it was always really about connecting, these things that I’m really interested and passionate about, with other people. So essentially, teaching, but I guess we don’t really like to use the word teaching, because that has a sort of, for me it’s always been about being in a conversation with people and sharing, and that’s what I mean—what eventually we’ve done now, is a kind of really stretching that. Because as much as you want to be in a conversation when teaching first-year students, it’s not always a conversation—there’s just the necessity that there can’t always be that kind of free flowing Do you feel like an academic? No So—so that’s … Well, I do, I do—I guess it depends what it means to feel like—I feel like a twenty-first-century academic, I don’t feel like I would have been a good academic at any other point in time. I like collaboration, I like working together, I like sharing. And I’m not saying people—that makes me sound terrible. I don’t mean that that’s never happened before, but if you look at your colleagues and what they miss and what they regret about academia, it’s this idea of just being able to sit in their room and do their research and, you know, teaching isn’t often at the forefront of what people do, but I think in academia today, we are being asked to do so many different things beyond the discipline or research areas we started out with, and I love that. While many lament that, I love it. I think—I feel that that’s why I have a place at the institution, where it is now, where it is going I agree, I feel that

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I don’t think it would have been great, oh, who knows, maybe it would have been good. But also it’s the factor of what I know, the university as it is today, the university which I work in. And I enjoy what I do with the students, I enjoy being in that space, I enjoy collaborating with other colleagues, I find that to be the most stimulating, wonderful of experiences, and I don’t feel—I don’t feel afraid of being in a space and a learning environment where I don’t know everything Do you think being an academic gives you an identity? I think…ah, certainly at a professional level. At a personal level, I think for many academics, being an academic is their personal identity. For me, I think it’s a part of who I am, but it’s more a part of what I do than who I am, if that makes sense. Because I think the way I do it is much more personal. Like, the type of person I am, and that I enjoy this, I enjoy working with people, I enjoy being collaborative, I think I’m far more successful as an academic and far better at my job when I’m working in situations like we have. I’ll work for us, our group, for our team because we’re doing something collaborative, but I won’t—not I won’t, but I don’t feel the same connection to just sitting there doing something of my own, for my own sake, just you know. Not that I don’t think education and what we do is important, just, I—I want to—I like to think that I’m part of something that’s more collective How did you get to where you are? Well, can I pick up—I’ll get to there, but what I’m talking—thinking about, I don’t in my mind, separate research from teaching, and I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it that way until now No Because for me, the research process is about collecting information, collecting data, in whatever way I do that, it’s about processing that information, that it’s about sharing that information, and you can’t actually do any of those steps—you can’t do research without having all three steps, and the sharing could be in a written, or, you know, whatever form it happens to be I completely agree with you, I completely 100 percent agree with everything, but what I don’t think is that historically, academia has been about that, because the research has been, not necessarily a shared endeavor, and the communication of that research has been—the primary focus of that communication has been to a small community, or the students you already teach, but that communication has been, I would suggest, not so much now, but has been, historically, in the past, a one-way thing in which the lecturer would walk in and pronounce forth on this topic that they know everything about, and then whisk their way out. I know it hasn’t been like that for some time, but there still are pockets of that

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I think it still is like that Yeah. And research and teaching aren’t separate for me. But many people, now, say it is. They view—for me, my role as an academic is the embodiment of all of those things. You know, is the actual, is not the beast where I’m a researcher or an educator or whatever, my academic role takes into account all of those things, but I would say that some people still view themselves as an academic researcher who—I mean, I think all people who do research to whatever level, however brilliant they are, if they’re in a university should have some role in the classroom, because that is what they’re doing, that’s what a university is for But that’s what research is about for me. Without the sharing part, there is no point, you’re doing research that is personal indulgence So that last step, could not agree more So being an educator ends up being an academic. So maybe what you’re saying—well, you’re using the words contemporary environment, and I’m wondering if that’s really about the way that we are less experts now, we are sharing knowledge much more through a mediatized environment, where anyone really, anyone with a lot of information or knowledge or a good brain could do the work that we do, it’s a kind of moving away from the expert, and I think for academics, unless you’re willing to participate in sharing that knowledge through whatever channel it is, you’re stuffed. I know that’s a pretty harsh word to describe it, but you can’t—you can’t not do that last step which is sharing I think that’s really interesting. There’s a lot of talk about research-­ led teaching in the academy, but for me, it’s almost the other way around in a way to what it is for you. I didn’t research identity before we began to teach this module in an academic or disciplinary way, what I’ve learned about identity has come from teaching that module with you and all the other colleagues that did it, and the research is going to emerge in this book and these conversations actually, so it’s teaching-led research. For me that’s actually quite an exciting notion And it underlines the role of students, I think, in asking us questions, and then us reflecting on them and saying, ah yes, that is a really interesting point that I hadn’t considered before Yes, so it certainly turns on its head, downward, what you’re referring to as the old-fashioned way of disseminating research, so what we’re (creating) in teaching-led research is actually a collaborative environment, where what Sarah is saying takes place, where students become real collaborators. I just wonder if that’s acknowledged sufficiently. And it bridges that artificial division

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And I think we’re still in a phase where it (isn’t) fully acknowledged, because there is that fear from colleagues, because it is very destabilizing, because your position of authority is fundamentally challenged, because we’re saying that authority is actually, you know… Which brings it back to your identity as an academic. Because if you’re not a subject specialist who is able to talk eloquently about your subject and give information to students, then what on earth are you? And this is something that I personally have thought a little bit about, in my particular subject area, looking at a language and a culture that I am not 100 percent immersed in all of the time, obviously, because I’m not teaching in Japan, but I have students who have been to Japan occasionally longer or more recently than me, so they are more expert in the day-to-day life aspect than I am, and also the fact that I’m looking at new media, which they’re often far more prolific users of than what I am, I use my students as a sort of sounding board at times to ask them whether the kinds of conclusions that I’m drawing ring true for them. So I view my role in that context as being much more about somebody who teaches critical thinking, who helps to give students the tools for analyzing their own lives. So I don’t view myself as a subject area specialist in that regard, I don’t think that’s my role, to say “these are the facts about Japan”, I think that would be a short-sighted view to take But there’s something very exciting about the kind of enlightened human beings, the good educators that you hear through public broadcast for example. I mean I would say some of the people who work for the BBC or work for Radio National are as close to academics as many of our colleagues. They’ve been working in fields for many years, they’re very good researchers, and they’re also very… so there is something about (?), how you want to perceive yourself. I mean, I don’t know whether definitions about introvert/extrovert, I don’t know whether they are necessary here, but it is interesting—there was a study looking at the use of those Myers-Briggs testings, that of Australians, there’s about three-­ quarters of Australians are defined as extroverts. In academia, it’s the other way around. It’s overly represented by introverts Have you done that test? Yes I’m an extrovert I’d be interested to know where we all fall We’re extroverts Are you also… There you go. I’m an emotional extrovert Have you done it? No, I haven’t

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I—can you guess what I am? I don’t know that you’d be an extrovert No, you’re an introvert I’m an INTJ Yeah Yeah. That’s not a bad thing So the reason I bring that up is, yes, it does say something about what you want to do. If you want to do research for your own interest, and it might get shared through written or traditional forms of sharing knowledge, that to me isn’t the same as being in the classroom. The classroom is having all people accessing your knowledge, and often in a slightly symbiotic way, often through your teaching, not (?) So you’re scaffolding You’re scaffolding. But I think for me, that’s what’s so exciting. It’s taking people on that journey rather than just sharing your ideas But I think that’s the thing, like, that’s come up—I found that particularly in this unit, and I think even more we were open to it, because we’re dealing with all these subjects that we don’t know anything about, psychiatrists, scientists, and all the rest of it, which is so far outside my deep knowledge, but in those situations, and I think this is what you were saying, Sarah, students or non-experts in the field, they ask the, you know, the supposedly naïve questions that your peers do not dare ask, because they know that one does not do that, but those can be the things that really spark what you’re doing in a fundamentally different way, because it’s—it’s you’re being challenged in a different way, because it’s that naïvety or that lack of knowledge that enables students to ask the question And that comes back to what we were saying about adisciplinarity. So if you’re not already acculturated to that discipline, you don’t know what is an out-of-bounds question I think that’s right So in terms of professional identity, coming back to the question, I resisted for a very long time, because everyone in my family pretty much had come from a teaching background. Both of my parents were teachers, my grandfather was a teacher, it was the obvious thing to do, and I became a journalist (?) but of course, that’s very similar. Actually, journalism is incredibly similar in that way that you’re research-processing the content, and then sharing it. And you might say that it’s driven by some sense of purpose, so, you know, bringing it to another level is a part of having a real purpose in life. So this is I guess more of a personal endeavor, a personal identity, and one of those purposes is that I want to do something that is good, for, ah, the world, I want to feel like I have contributed, and one of the ways I can do that is by helping, sharing, enabling, learning and teaching

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Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s really interesting. That, actually, gives me real insight into why you talk about research and teaching in the way that you do. It’s a very—it’s a very professional, sort of disciplinary view of your other activities that exist beyond journalism, and I can see the sort of seamlessness. That’s very interesting. For me, it’s not actually (knowing) things, I mean, I had two careers before I became an academic, well, more than that actually, and I struggled to make my life work. But I knew that what I wanted to do was literature, because I loved reading, I loved the worlds that reading gave me access to, so I wanted to do a degree, and eventually I got—I got to do that, at the age of about 35, but I just discovered that I was quite good at academic work, and so all I thought was I’m going to ride this train to see where it takes me. And so, this is where it’s taken me, to a room in Kuala Lumpur with wonderful colleagues, talking about teaching and learning, so for me, academic life has actually created a new me in the world, you know, education has given me a new life, and for that reason, I am eternally grateful to it, and I want to— my motivation for teaching and working in the way that I do is about offering other people that possibility, giving them access to the worlds that are available beyond your kind of ordinary day self Yes, exactly I think—like, I feel very similar in that same way that the kind of the level—the opportunities that are afforded by education, and being able to be a part of a kind of community of people who love to learn and think about things and really value that, really opens up all sorts of opportunities in the world. And even, it’s not so that you can become—I have no great desire to convert all students to become academics as well, but I just think it opens up so many possibilities in your life, and I think I’ve had really good people, educators, teachers, at different points of my life who’ve completely changed, you know, had such a huge impact on me, and my life, and where I’ve come from, and where I am now, that it—and it’s not by doing anything radical that you would make a great film script out of, it’s not that kind of, but it’s just having people who just opening a door or a window, and I just think, for me, it’s quite selfish, I guess in a sense, because the thought for me that I can maybe be a part of that for somebody else is very, very compelling and rewarding, and I also, going back to what I said originally, these kind of questions and curious conversations that we have with our colleagues, like we’re having now, or with our students, I mean, what else could I do that I would be able to keep body and soul together and do that, other than what I do? (indecipherable overlap with ML)

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It’s interesting that you would use the word selfish when I would describe it as a public service. We’re actually talking about— I guess that I get so much enjoyment out of it that I think that it’s really more about—you know, I’m not doing something that I really don’t like to do for the benefit of others, I’m doing something I really love to do And this is a beautiful place to get to, I think, in terms of motivation, and—and—the—the examples in ourselves, in a way, of what it can mean to have access to this growth, to the learning, to the opportunities, and then to see other people having the same or similar opportunities, and I’m wondering whether we should really then stretch that into thinking about why we’re wanting to do the book, because in a way, I think that’s the motivation that we’ve talked about a lot. Trying to make something that can be quite complex available in a way that people can access. So it’s all about wanting, really wanting to share knowledge and understanding, and a passion that we clearly all have I agree, and for me, it’s the astonishing insights that students have that I don’t have sometimes. You know, if you produce the subject of identity, on which you’re not—we’re all partially experts but we can’t fully encompass this idea, and you pass this on to students, they come up in their writing and conversation with unimaginable stuff, for me, that’s almost the most rewarding, as well as the selfish elements of simply enjoying it in that way. And also, this feeling that I might be doing good in the world too, I suspect I may be, but I don’t know. It’s fascinating But you would make a great journalist for that reason, because I think that’s exactly what doing journalism and I guess, communication really is about. It’s about enabling, it’s about helping people understand complex issues so that they themselves can use that to whatever benefit it’s going to be for them Yes, if I was going to put that in academic language, I would say it was enabling the rise of subjugated voices, or something like that, which feels appropriate to me. But when people don’t—I mean, I couldn’t, I had no voice in the world before I became an academic. I was just a bloke who drilled holes in concrete, and we’re millions lonely, and then suddenly, suddenly I get this opportunity to do something else with my life

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I think, like I identify quite strongly with that, not that sense really of feeling like I never had a voice, but I think I can see, like when you go back to your original environment that you came from, and you see your own ability to engage with the world and advocate for yourself and whatever you feel you need to advocate for, in a way that has a level of effectiveness that otherwise I would probably never have had the confidence to have, because, you know, you give over quite a lot of power to people you assume know a lot more than you, whatever that means. So I think, you know, in a sense, what you do in that space, when you’re with students or learners or whatever, is you think their—the extension of their ability to question themselves, to question you, to question the discipline, is really like a sort of rising level of confidence, and ability to push the boundaries about how the world is conceived and thought of, and you need to be quite brave to do that, and I feel that the world in which we currently live, we kind of have an almost obligation to prepare our students, the people we come into contact with in our learning and teaching environments, to question and to probe, and to not just accept the worlds of the disciplines they’re involved in as they are—not in terms of completely overturning the world, not in a kind of anarchic way, but a just—um, the environment we live in is shifting in so many ways, and our ability to negotiate and engage with that, and deal with the issues, like Nick, you were talking about, these problems that aren’t the problems of one person in one place at one moment in time, but are sort of shared challenges that sit across a kind of broader environment require a way of thinking that is much—that is risky, to that kind of very traditional, discipline-­ oriented thinking I completely agree… I have a lot of issues with how the media presents some issues that exist in the world, and how they use research, and I think it’s really good to be able to instill in students that you can go back and look at the original research that has been done and even if it’s not in your discipline area, you can still apply some kinds of assumptions about what makes good research and how to go about things in a methodical fashion, it empowers them in some way to not just accept what is told to them

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Yeah. And in many ways, I think, in so many ways, that’s where what we have attempted to do in that Portal space comes into play. Because the Portal itself, yeah, it’s a great bit of technology or whatever, but that’s not what it—the Portal was never about the Portal, ever. What we wanted to do there was never about the technology. The technology just lets us do it with greater ease, in terms of we don’t have to fly people all around the world and that, but it was about this concept or this idea of probing and questioning the notion of identity and getting students in that space where your fundamental assumptions are questioned or destabilized, not in a way that breaks you down so you can’t move forward, but in a way that allows you to kind of figure out how you negotiate these spaces between disciplines, and through disciplines, rather than just rejecting what you don’t know or just missing something because it is not what you do. I mean, I think you can see that—and it’s a struggle, it’s hard, it’s hard for academics. So these students who are forming their kind of identity, and their thoughts and that, it’s hard for them too. But, you can see what happens in the classroom, the shifts, the questions, the probing, the challenging, you know, that’s what we need people to be doing And of course, the question there is how it links to reflection, because what you’re talking about is not only a reflection on ourselves as academics, as professionals, you know, Nick, you were saying that before you were an academic, you didn’t actually really have a voice to express yourself and necessarily understand the world, and obviously not reflect on your own experience, and the students doing the course were really probed to reflect on their own (?) and development of identity. But it’s interesting though, to think about the role of reflection, because it’s not something that’s necessarily accepted across the board in academia, I would say, we’ve very open—we’re very kind of prone to all engage with reflection, perhaps because of our disciplinary backgrounds, or who we are as people, or whatever it might be, but this is not a conversation that I would have with many of my colleagues, necessarily, around a table

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And I think you’re absolutely right, the role of reflection is actually critical to what we do, what I think is really interesting, and the students brought that up themselves, is it’s not—what we require them to do in the unit, in the module, is to reflect quite deeply on that transition, and what the changes and the effects that these exposures to different ideas and having to negotiate those ideas, the effect that has on them, and what they get out of that. But the students themselves asked us to bring the lecturers together, to force the same kind of reflection on these discipline areas. And some of our colleagues do reflect, I mean, depending on the topics and that, spend a great deal of time reflecting personally on how they interact with the material and their research, but others are doing it much more within the bounds of the discipline. And what I think is—I don’t know if it’s unique to the kind of thing that we’re trying to do in the Portal—I’ll say that if it’s not unique, it’s certainly rare, is we’re asking academics, or the facilitators in that space to question their own assumptions that underpin the validity of their own discipline, and actually be open to that questioning And to do it in public, in front of students. It’s an incredibly vulnerable thing, I suppose, for a lot of people to do In what way? Why is it vulnerable do you think? Well, I think most people are used to being in an area of comfort where you’ve got certain assumptions that you don’t need to defend, and when those things are challenged by people from outside of your field, especially in front of students, I think that can potentially be confronting. It’s not something I’ve personally encountered, just thinking about it I think people like Kevin did, where he came from a scientific background, and presented this material on genetics in this very, you know, this very scientific way, which was a massive challenge for both him and the students, with the students found it deeply unacceptable that he felt that identity was not a socially constructed notion Except for one of the students who was on the Australian side, one of the guys, and he was from a science background, and he was like, thank god! He could actually pin something down in concrete ways, because he’d been struggling with, you know, cultural studies and philosophy…

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But there’s a bit of conflation of issues here, I think. When we’re talking about identity, it’s sort of like talking about religion or whatever, or purpose. You talked about your purpose for being, and that’s something I wish I knew and could pin down and say, oh, my purpose is this, or part of my purpose is that, but it’s not. I have no idea what my “purpose” is, and I increasingly think that there is no such thing, and that deeply unsettles me. And I think that’s another reason why students find that so unacceptable. They’re not finding it unacceptable because this is outside of my discipline, they’re finding that unacceptable because you’re saying that I’m just a collection of—you know, that I have no free will. Most people find that offensive! But I think what we’re asking them to do is more than just their reaction to that moment, is then asking them to negotiate that, and try and work with it in their theory—their theory-building exercises around identity, and what that is, and what that means, and the ways in which it can be defined. So yes, totally not what I would consider—but I guess there would be other people who wouldn’t consider it to be this radical thing to say, no free will, you’re just a bunch of biological material and we can predetermine everything. For some people, that might be like a perfectly reasonable statement. Obviously, not me, or you, but… No, I was listening to a talk recently by someone whose name I forget, but someone whose ideas very closely align with my own, and at one point, he said as a kind of throwaway line, that he seriously doubts the existence of free will, and that shocked me, because I thought, “But I agree with you on everything else, and now, not this?” But I think it’s what we’re asking students to do with that is the key thing in the space Exactly, an intellectual defense We’re asking them to reflect, is what we’re doing, and that’s what’s so interesting about putting identity into the Portal, with all these different (opinions), because it’s performative in itself, it’s an extraordinary process that allows us all to begin thinking about how we are and what we are in these ways, and we do it at the same time the students do. To me, that’s just a joy to be able to share that experience and see them change before your very eyes, from one level of knowledge here, to a more sophisticated one here. Or not necessarily more sophisticated, but more complex

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And their sort of acknowledgment of the fact, and their ability to become more comfortable with the fact that it is complex and nuanced, and there are no definitive really, or it is very hard to pin down a definitive answer. But also, what I think, what I find is very rich about that moment is their ability to negotiate their oppositions to each other, and to the content of the specialists, which is critical. I mean, that’s real, that is how we exist in the world, attempting to negotiate what can often be quite oppositional positions in relation to a concept or understanding or a challenge, but I think that is sophisticated, it might not be sophisticated in the traditional academic sense of how they articulate this, but to be able to reach that point of understanding is incredibly sophisticated The ability that they develop, some of them at least, to be able to hold contradictory ideas in constellation is another kind of level of thinking that they need in the world, given the way the world is at the moment. But I do think one of the failures of that module is that we didn’t get the academics together enough to confront one another in front of the students (from) their disciplinary positions, I think that would be a massively useful addition Or something we can build on in the future. That’s something that a part of this learning is actually bringing those you know, specialist opinions into the same space at the same time. Not just for the students to be reflecting on it, but also for them physically to be in that room, or physically to be inhabiting that learning space Because what you’re saying in a way is that students were the only ones that— And the facilitators And the facilitators, I know, but if we talk about it from the point of view—the students were the ones getting access to all the experts, all the information, and they had to engage with that, process, and then articulate it, but it would have been really interesting to have all the academics sit and actually do that was well, for the benefit of the academics and for the benefit of the students. But I just think it was such a clever idea to focus on identity, because it’s something that, it’s the most—obviously, it’s the most—it’s at the center of who we are as human beings, and every single person in that room, or the two rooms, the two worlds, the two time zones, you know, all these different aspects of it, are all individuals, and all have, obviously, they’re the kind of experts on their own identities. That gives them the power right from the outset of being the experts in the field, and being informed by the learning, the (?) I’m really glad you said that, because for me, it’s about the—it’s not something you can stand outside, the notion of identity, which means you’re collapsing for them the business of objectivity and subjectivity Yes, you are

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And that’s the most interdisciplinary thing you can probably do, and it challenges entrenched positions in the academy, without having to articulate to students that that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s implicit in the activities that we ask them to engage in. For me, that was a powerful thing And I think it allows us to really link the fact that we were engaging across two different cultures, well, multiple cultures really because we had students from all over the place, it wasn’t just Australia— And academic cultures too And that’s really powerful, it’s like having the actual core is the human being, and for me, who is someone who is very interested in the human condition and the expression of that, I think it was such validation of what is often not seen as something you’d like to focus on necessarily in an academic setting when autoethnography, for example, hasn’t really been all that accepted as a methodology, it’s been contested for a long time, oral history as a method has been contested, I mean, it’s accepted now, but I still think you’ll find pockets where it’s not seen as real research It’s a poor relation A poor relation, because it’s subjective, it’s through, it’s filtered through personal— It’s unapologetically subjective, I mean, that’s the issue. They’re all subjective but nobody wants to recognize that So I think that’s for me, what made the unit so exciting to be part of is exactly that. It is filtered through the individual human experiences The other thing about that is that you cannot divorce form from content if you are a human being, and therefore, what you teach needs to express that in every aspect of it, otherwise you’re not giving somebody a fully embodied human experience, we are these physical forms That’s a very good point, because we do not separate the experience of learning with what you’ve actually learned. Which is why, if you have a really bad teacher, you might have had good content, but the teacher is really bad, you’re going to walk away from that classroom feeling like it hasn’t been a very positive experience. So the excitement, in my mind, of having this environment where you were sharing it with people from all over the world, through the technology, and I felt that very strongly as someone who taught in the unit, but I thought it was such—I was actually surprised by how exciting I found being able to just look to the side, we talked about it as a membrane, look to the side, and there are people sitting there, and I knew they were on the other side of the world, and they were in a different time zone, and it was almost magic. It was a magic space. And I just feel that if you’re part of that learning in a magic space, it’s gonna change you. It’s fundamentally shifting things, your understanding, or your experience. You can’t walk away unaffected

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What should be our next start-off point? We did—I think we did—I was quite impressed by how that went Yes, you know what you were talking about while we were walking out, having the nerve to actually do this type of thing, in an environment where all the pressures are in other directions, so perhaps we should talk about that. From my perspective, that’s more about desperation at some times. I’ve had to get to points where I’ve got nothing to lose. There’s nothing—I don’t know. I think there’s always (risk-taking and professional risks in whatever) you do Yeah So we’re starting again, this is the second part of—I hate this software, I’m really sorry. It does it in a random way that seems to—okay, so we’re starting again, so this is part two of our interview on the 2nd of December, 2015, in KL, and I wanted to pick up on what—something that Nick said, and something that I think we’ve all discussed, and it is around the—what I think requires some bravery to put yourself in front of other people, to be—to need to articulate yourself, and your own identity, as part of the learning that you do. And it’s something that I find a lot in my discipline, where people have to hear their voice, and record their voice, and students find that incredibly challenging, and it’s always at the very outset, we say, how many people— you know, have you heard your own voice recorded, and they go, I hate my voice, I hate hearing my voice, because it sounds different to how you hear it yourself. And I think what the identity unit forced them to do, and I use the word force, was to really articulate the way that they saw themselves, and it brings back, you know, it takes me back to the point where you had to be really brave to put something like this up, because it kind of leaves you open for criticism, and it’s not then just criticism of your professional identity, it actually is—it potentially is a criticism of you as a person, so it becomes much more personal, and that’s where it’s a little bit, I think, fraught potentially, and why people stay away from autoethnography or reflection or other forms where you have to insert yourself. I’m kind of going around and circling, but I think this is a very, for me, an interesting, fertile space to talk about because it requires bravery

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Yes, I mean, I do think it does require a bit of nerve to do something like this because, you’re absolutely right, that it isn’t just your academic work that you’re putting out there for (review and) potentially criticism, but it’s your whole being, but if you don’t do that, there’s only a fraction of the experience, for you and the others, if you don’t put your whole self out there, there’s almost no point doing it, or it’s a lesser kind of experience, so again, for me, that’s back to the business of embodying an idea, in a kind of material space, and getting students to kind of understand engagement in the materiality of that experience, so you ask them to do something that’s intellectually not just in this space that we think of as the mind, but also in this other intellectual space, which is our bodies, where we come to understand each other at the same time, so for me, to get that notion of identity communicated in that way was as important as anything else, and it does require, and of (your comment about) the voices are clearly (given), because that’s probably the way you most often hear people worry about the way they sort of look, and again that’s another facet of identity that we all possess as students, it’s this fear of how we might look, and I guess even too, round here we might feel the same, here we are doing what’s basically, as a group of four, an autoethnography, and again for me, that’s performing identity in a way that’s wholly consonant with the rest of the work that we do, so we should be unafraid And we want students to have a voice, it’s one of the things that we as academics write as feedback on their essays, and it’s one of the things that students really struggle with Write in first person! Yes, what’s your voice, you know, use the experts, use the source material, reference it properly, but we want your voice, and yet, that’s the bit that’s so hard. When you’re there talking about putting your actual physical voice on tape, or in a classroom, then it is about “I don’t want to sound stupid”. And this, it’s from a radio perspective, it’s one of those things that’s quite tricky to get past, because it’s only by hearing your voice many, many times that you start to—er, you stop being so self-conscious about it, you start to accept it, and I’m thinking that’s a good analogy of getting students to articulate themselves, their own learning, their own identity. The more they do it, the easier it’s going to become, the more tolerance for self they will develop

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For me, I think there’s two levels of braveness in what you’re talking about, one is that very personal exposure of yourself and your identity at the service of an experiment of what we’re trying to do in the space, and then there’s the bravery of asserting yourself in an environment to choose to do something that might not be well viewed or fully understood by your colleagues in a given amount of time, and I look and I think of, Mia, your contributions to the unit in terms of your sharing your storytelling, your—I see braveness, I see that as being an act of bravery, but I have to say for myself, in terms of choosing to do something that people might not think is a good idea, or might not understand, or might not get, I don’t feel brave in doing that, like I don’t—because I didn’t feel scared of doing it, I didn’t think, oh, I didn’t weight it up. You know, I had the opportunity with Nick, and I thought this is great, I want to do it, and again, this is why I feel sometimes this is an entirely selfish endeavor, because I get so much out of it, and if—you know, if I get criticized because I should have, you know, in the time it took us to get the bloody Portal up and going, and then working in that space with the students, I should have been doing something else, I should have written eight papers or published a book or whatever, whatever the particular requirement was at that point in time, which we know will shift and there will be a different requirement, I don’t care, because I’ve had this really rich experience that’s completely informed and transforms what I do, and will hopefully have an impact on my ability to do my job better, and it’s also given the opportunities that have arisen out of this collaboration, for me, have transcended all sorts of—I don’t want to—I completely identify with what you’re saying, but I don’t think, and I think you, in both senses, you both are brave, but I don’t want to put my hand up as well, because I didn’t feel brave, because I didn’t fear that anything bad would come of this, I didn’t care, because it was such a great opportunity I’ve got some sympathy for that view…

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I would agree that it’s something that requires bravery, and for me, I have a lot of anxiety around that kind of stuff, performance and what people will think of me, but I personally don’t really separate my experience in this unit from my general academic life in the sense that I constantly feel like I’m being evaluated, and actually, I am. It’s just a reality of what we do, and I think that perhaps the difference here is that we’re more conscious of that fact. I mean, whether we are talking about—I think the majority of good teachers, if I can say that, would use some elements of their own personal experiences and reflections and things like that in empathizing with their students and engaging with them, and we always run that risk of will the students get my joke, will they think that this personal anecdote is relevant, or just lame or whatever. We’re always taking risks in the classroom. Every time you walk out into the—I mean, I have an issue every semester I suppose when I start, and especially, well, not so much now, but a few years ago when I looked younger than what I do now, I was always conscious of what I would wear to the first class, and what could I do to appear taller so that I could actually be visible over the lectern and things like that, all of these things that kind of undermine my presence. It’s not that I’m trying to be an authority, but I wanted to signal in some way that yes, I am the teacher, at that sort of basic level, and even though, yes, we’re formally being evaluated on our teaching and on our research all the time, we’re also being evaluated as people by our students at every turn, and it may not be in such a concentrated way as it is in this particular unit, but in every other unit, we’re being evaluated on the basis of whether we’re funny or friendly or good-looking or whatever already, it’s just not on the evaluation chart, it’s somewhere else. And that’s the reality, it is somewhere else, there are spaces where students are evaluating teachers according to those measures Well, maybe I’m a bit shit, because I don’t think about any of that stuff. I don’t. I honestly, well, I always feel that slight frisson of anxiety before you walk into the classroom for the first time, where I haven’t seen those faces and they haven’t seen me, and you just have that moment of (gasps), you know, like you’re about to walk onto a stage and perform, you have that moment. But I don’t have that every single time, once I’m in the rapport mode No, I don’t either, after I’ve developed a relationship with the students, but the first class of semester with totally new students

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Yeah, sure. But in terms of what I’m doing in the classroom, I’m always—my only—my concern, the only thing I really actively think about, and I may sort of subconsciously, I probably subconsciously have all these other things that are going on in my head, that I’m clearly not reflecting on (Laughs) We all want to be you! No, but, you know, like… Is this—is this going to mean something? Is what I’m doing here meaningful? Can I help them create meaning from all this stuff that I’m putting together, you know, whether or not they like me, or they like it, do they understand it? And then they can decide whether they like me or hate me or whatever, you know, so that’s about, yes, I want to be a good teacher in the sense that I want to be a good communicator, because I believe that I have something that’s really important to impart, or to (flow), but I don’t think about it For me, the only way of overcoming that and concentrating on the quality of the message and the engagement, is to say I don’t care what they think of me, I don’t care if my jokes fall flat, I don’t care if they don’t think I’m an interesting person, insofar as that affects me personally, but obviously, they have to be somewhat engaged with me and interested in me in order to want to go on this journey that I’m taking them on. There’s a level of trust that I need to build with the students, because I like to throw up all sorts of seemingly unrelated stuff and have them engage with this—developing that trust, that I do know what I’m talking about and I am going to take you somewhere that does have a point at the end of this, and that can be a challenging thing to balance I think that’s true, and it’s particularly true of the student because we’re asking students to do something that most of them will have had no experience of. So we’re asking them to trust us to take them on a journey that will go somewhere, that we’re not just going to kind of destabilize all the things they hook on to give themselves stability, and say, oh, I know what this is about, because I understand this theory, and therefore I know this to be true, we take that all away Yes, and there’s two kinds of confrontation in this unit I think in that, on the one hand, we’re challenging the ideas that they hold about their discipline, but also about their identity, and on the other hand, we’re also destabilizing what they understand education to mean, and especially because we’ve kind of targeted, not so much in the last iteration, but in the one before, those really good students, who are used to working in a particular fashion and getting a particular grade, I think that can be a really challenging thing

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Absolutely, and knowing what the answer is. See, this unit doesn’t have an answer. There’s not a way of being wholly correct and coming up with a solution that is wholly correct. And that’s hard. And that’s real as well. Because it’s a negotiation, there’s this constant negotiation of oppositional points of view, to get various outcomes, and to be able to renegotiate your understanding, and accepting that there is not a predesignated place that we set down that we want them to arrive at is very—incredibly challenging, and requires our students to be brave. Brave with us. There you go, I am brave I was just going to say—yes, I’m glad you’ve come around to it! I mean, it might be that that word is too strong, and that’s what you’re reacting against. I can see that, because we all kind of don’t want to be seen as “brave”, but another way of thinking about it is, we are merging personal and professional, and that takes some courage, and it’s a very risky approach, which is what I talk about in terms of my discipline, you know, my first story ever I did which was about myself, I got criticized heavily, and I found it very hard to separate what usually is my professional identity, and of course it’s painful if people are critiquing my stories and they think what I do is shit, but at least that’s my job I was affected by your story, I really was, and I thought that took a great deal of personal courage, to confront the consequences of your action in making your personal and professional life the same thing, I thought that was genuinely courageous And I somehow wish I hadn’t done it in many ways, or I wish I might have done it slightly differently, and of course, it’s something that’s done all the time now in the media, it’s actually the most—it’s the biggest growth area in journalism is this personal storytelling, because people are much more tolerant to it, so if I had done that story now, I think there would have been less criticism toward it, whereas at that point, there wasn’t. So this idea of merging personal and professional is really, I think, challenging potentially, and I also think it requires a much more mature approach, you need to be able to filter your professional mind through your personal, and vice versa, and that’s something I guess the dual experience of the students and the lecturers, we all had to do that, picking up what you were saying Sarah, we had to—the students had to trust us enough to go on a journey where there weren’t any answers necessarily straight off the bat, but it was—this will mean a lot to you on a personal level, and on a professional level, if you think of being a student as being a profession, and saying we did the same as (?) as well. ((Intervening noise)) They’re being very noisy out there Yes, they are…

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We may be able to just ignore them Yes, I think so So do we want to talk any more about the role of the researcher or have we covered that through some of these discussions around reflection and bias and autoethnography, which is the approach that we’re taking We talked a little bit about the role of the expert, where we’re decentering ourselves as experts and (?) perhaps we’re not the experts, and I think that’s also something the students need to think about themselves, you know, what constitutes an expert, what constitutes an academic, what constitutes the experience of a university almost, and I think we do challenge a lot of preconceptions about how education should take place, not, you know, across two institutions which is a, you know, I’m quite—it’s gone further than I imagined it might do, this whole thing, when we first began it And I wonder if—if you would be able to actually pose the questions as effectively as we could do in that space, because of the fact that you had two physical environments, you had two physical—er, two time zones, you had two separate cohorts, you had I don’t know how many nationalities that were involved, and that in itself—so the actual physical environment, space, I think is perhaps more important than we realized at the time. I don’t know that you would get to those questions quite to the same depth and get similar answers It was always in your face, wasn’t it, this cultural confrontation right there? And also knowing that you were being reconstituted as an image on the other side of the world, what you were saying before about your voice, Mia, that people are reluctant to hear themselves recorded, and feel like, oh, that’s not really me, I don’t sound like that in my head and things like that, I’ve also been reading some studies lately about how we react when we see ourselves on a screen, and how self-conscious we are, anyone who uses Skype will always be fiddling with their hair and noticing things, but in this scenario, we didn’t give students that preview of themselves, generally speaking. Sometimes it was there, but never large enough to actually know what you were looking like It fell into the background, as they became used to the space, they were less conscious of being in that shared environment, and that was in terms of—you noticed that with the microphone, that students might have a little friendly conversation with each other and forget the fact that they’re in a mic-ed space, so there’s no privacy

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One of the most striking things I heard in our module was when you talked about how some of the young women at your—the Australian end were flirting with J Yes And for me, that was a mark of success, real success, because we had natural human behavior taking place across this bizarre (link), so we kind of penetrated the membrane, we dissolved the membrane, it was an extraordinary moment Absolutely. I thought so as well And I’m wondering, again, it’s so natural to us because we’ve been a part of it now, so it’s been, although Nick’s saying that this has taken him much further, taken you much further than you’d ever imagined, and I think that’s probably true for us all, but I think how quickly, because technology’s shifting so quickly now, that we’ve become more and more used to speaking to other people through the screen, seeing each other in this virtual way, that this was actually—it’s a few years ago now, or a couple of years ago, so at that point, I think it was really innovative But I think also that students and people generally might be used to speaking to their friends or their boyfriend or their parents or whomever via Skype or something like that, but they’re not necessarily used to sitting in a semi-formal environment, and that I think is a skill that we’re teaching them about how to negotiate taking turns across different areas and how to value the participation of people virtually and physically co-present. I mean, we were talking yesterday about teleconferenced meetings, and what the issues can be with one person or multiple parties being not present, and whether their voices are equally valued and things like that, I think we’re giving them an interesting kind of scenario that doesn’t pop up all that much in day-to-day personal life to have a multi-party, kind of formal conversation that is a definite skill they’ll need for the workplace And I think the opening activities that Nick constructs around really physically inhabiting that space and, I have to say, it was in the Global Connections unit when Johnathan Needlands did the kind of Open Space techniques, and we were doing some kind of mirroring and play acting and that, and we had to create a picture, like a scene of ourselves, and I was paired with two students at Warwick, and we created an image by positioning ourselves, me in front of the camera linking to them, and then that being projected on the wall. But it became—it wasn’t, when we sit and think about it, we think that’s a really different thing to do, but I’ve been in that space so much now, that I don’t feel, you know, I don’t feel distanced from it

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You feel at home I feel at home in the space And I think that’s what I’m trying to say, but you put it in much better words. That, at that point in time, this was a really big deal But you’re right, it is converging. People don’t make distinctions between online and offline as much anymore. SBS was recently reporting about how people don’t say “brb” anymore. They don’t say they’ll be right back because they’re always there But what I think we still—I don’t know, I could be wrong on this, but even if you’re in—you know, people are getting more used to interacting in that space in that way, but I don’t think they’re used to fully embodying that interaction and physically filling that virtual space in the way that we ask the students to do in these classes I think that’s right Not in a professional sense. (All laugh) Well, there’s all sorts of other embodiment that goes on—keep it clean, Sarah! Honestly, that’s what I’m saying, there are lots of things—it’s like saying, oh, we don’t need to teach students how to use a telephone or how to write because they know how to do that. Of course we need to teach students to write an academic essay or whatever. The fact that you learned to scrawl on a piece of paper at kindergarten does not mean that you are able to produce something—and I feel that a lot of discussion about new media assumes that “digital natives” will have all of those skills already. They have the skills to use the technology, generally speaking, sure, but not necessarily to do so in this kind of environment Couldn’t agree with you more And also we have to teach them to move between the personal and the professional And that’s where we run into all sorts of trouble because we’re talking about this merging of personal and professional, how do we negotiate that? And is separating those two things out the best approach anymore? Or do we need to have a completely flat identity?

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So that’s in terms of the social media persona and all those things, and I do think that comes back to that terrible word, bravery, because I guess the risks of moving between personal and professional and professional and personal, especially in a topic that’s focused on your personal identity, can bring out all sorts of things. So we weren’t sure necessarily, what kinds of stories would come out, when we had this idea of presenting a little radio piece using their mobile phone, it was very clear to me, I mean, a lot of people didn’t do it, some people did, most of them were incredibly challenging personal stories, so that’s something that, perhaps, we should talk a bit more about, the risk and the ethics, and the capacity that we need to have as professionals to support students, if we’re asking them to be reflecting on their identity, all sorts of things could come out, and are they prepared to share that in public, should they share that in public. You know, when, for example, my students tell stories about mental health, about self-harm, what do I do with that? What’s my duty of care? And were this research, it would have had to have gone through a committee, and there would have to be informed consent, and there would have to be scaffolding in place in terms of counselling availability and so forth, where are any of those requirements when it comes to reflective pieces, in unit guides? We don’tBut it’s also because I guess the requirement there, I mean, this is just—the students, we always have made it the level to which they share beyond their reflections on the content is up to them, but we do open a door for it And even, if you have had some particular experience which is very upsetting, and you choose not to reflect on that, the very fact that you’ve been told to reflect on something can be triggering that, can’t it I mean, that’s what’s rich, and that’s the human experience, and in many ways, that’s what we think of, because you know that’s how we grow as humans, it’s by confronting some of these things, but whether or not—it’s the environment that it’s done in, and I think this is where these types of virtual, er, experiences, which, in some ways, we’ve talked about how real they are, but they are also virtual, and there is a sense that you might actually say more than you intend to do, were it a face-to-face context, so it’s very complex, a rich, but quite a complex environment, for all those reasons

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That brings be back to the fact of the subject matter. I think it’s—I think a lot of, none of them articulated this, the students, but I think they would have always been reassured by the fact that what we’re studying here is identity, and therefore they’re grounded in the subject matter, they’re grounded in almost the discipline, and consequently, it’s a space that’s already safe, in that sense It’s also extremely intense. I mean, it’s a short—the academic semester is already a very short period of time, we’ve condensed that even further, so you’ve got these sort of long, immersive sessions that are at different times of the day, and for our students it’s generally involved travelling to a different campus as well, you’re in a different space, and I think that’s where that danger of saying something you might not mean to comes in, you’re tired because you had to get up early or stay up late or whatever, there’s all sorts of— And danger is, it’s a word that sounds dangerous, obviously, but for me, that’s linked with maturity, which is why—we kind of started this conversation yesterday about complexity and the world that the students inhabit, and the academic worlds we inhabit, which is much more complex in the way that information is available everywhere, and you can communicate that information, it’s not so clear what and who is an expert anymore, and it kind of requires, I think a maturity, to be able to process and engage with this amount of information. And that’s what I’d like to think that the students have, because it was a complex, nuanced, and, ah, mature environment for all of those reasons. And hopefully we gave them language, and improved their literacy, in engaging in these types of topics But I think this also leads to that issue of trust which we were talking about before, that one of the issues is that we’re in a heavily microphoned environment, you’re being recorded, and all of those sorts of things, there may be issues that students are willing to talk to their classmates about in that particular context, but they would be very unhappy were it to be recorded and disseminated in some other format, for example, and that is an area where I suppose trust is important, and developing that trust over a period of time that we just don’t have as much as we might necessarily like. I guess I’m just looking at this from my point of view of, if I am, if, you know, those tests are to believed, if I am a bit more introverted than the two of you are, then I would find that very difficult I think also, in some ways, the trust builds more quickly in that space because of the intensity and the regularity

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And we know that trust tends to build more quickly in online communication as well, but it can be broken far more quickly. It’s a fragile thing I think we know it can be broken, but I mean, we have technological failure, we have trust with the experience broken very quickly, we know that technological failure early on is very hard to overcome. Whereas very severe technological failure later on is very quick to overcome, because the experience is there, but I think in terms of the relationship that you develop inside that community space, it happens very quickly because we’re moving, we see each other so often, so regularly, and we engage with each other for such a long period of time each time we’re in there, that it’s— But the more reflective students had already come to the point, I think after one or two sessions, that they realized there was a community identity, which they owned, and they had agency in, and manipulation of, to an extent. So I thought it was, again, another fascinating aspect of the performative nature of the subject matter, and that’s what’s key about what you said about the technology—its early collapse is a disaster in the identity of that unit, whereas later, it’s simply a glitch, which is interesting Because you’re asking people to be brave at that moment and go into a different environment and try something new, and if their first attempt at that is a failure— It collapses, and they withdraw Yeah, they withdraw, whereas if they’ve done it successfully over a number of occasions and then it collapses, they know that they can get back straight away And there’s also that promise that what we’re doing is worthwhile, we’ll have a great conversation, whereas if you’re walking into the classroom for the first time, and you’ve never experienced that, and the technology doesn’t work, you’re just gonna complain because you’ve had all the problems and no payoff So while technology was always at the surface of what we wanted to do, it’s actually critical to get the kind of outcomes that we’ve desired Well, it should, I mean, really subscribe to that idea that it should be like air. You only should notice it when it’s not working. This conversation is currently mediated by air, but none of us are talking about that because it’s working, but were the oxygen in this room to suddenly disappear, we would have issues with that (all laugh)

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Which again brings me back to the kind of holistic experience of the thing, which again is utterly—it became an amalgamation that was greater than the sum of its parts, which is what we are as people, as human beings, we’re greater than the sum of our brains and our bodies, and that was (a very good point) I wonder if it’s going to feel more and more commonplace as this—what I referred to as tolerance to human expression, human connection, increases. The way that, when I watch my kids, and I watch the students, the way they seem to quite happily engage with someone on the other side of the world and say okay, I’ll come meet you there and there, you know, this outreach which is something which is very attractive to me, but I think is facilitated through technology, communication technology, and the way that people are willing to share their lives on social media, which I think is perhaps going to make this kind of experience of the Portal more commonplace. So if we were sitting here in three years’ time, I’m just wondering what kind of conversation we might have in three years’ time if it’s just becoming more and more part of— I say we come back in three years! (all laugh) But I think the really unique thing this unit has done is the reflective part. The technology part is in no way interesting, it’s the reflection. If it’s just about identity in an online space, you could look at Facebook, but that’s not going to necessarily challenge your views about what identity is. This is asking people to reflect in a much more complex fashion on things that can’t easily be fit into those profiles, it’s asking people to engage in conversation that isn’t—I really liked this notion of “menu-driven identity” —it’s not here are my interests, I’ll tick the boxes, here is my gender or my sexuality, in the form of boxes that I’ve ticked, but rather, we’re probing the notion of identity itself, it’s not just about your own personal identity, that’s a kind of by-product And the experience of the space, that kind of destabilizing aspect of the space and of all of these disciplines coming into the space, I think is quite critical as well. Because often, we seek out, really, what reinforces our own sense of identity and how we understand the world, we don’t—we often don’t seek to necessarily challenge Actually, what Nick just said, that we’re not just the sum of our bodies and our minds, that’s a view I believe as well, and I think we all sort of just nodded, but if we had someone like Kevin here, I’m not sure he would have been. And that’s what I think is the key feature, the people that we gathered, not the method

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That’s true, and to some extent, why we want to write a book together, why we want to make the book that we write more than just a collection of observations about identity from disciplinary perspectives. We know that there’s something more interesting and complex and nuanced to say about the subject Another way that I find—when you have to explain what you’re doing, when you have to articulate what you’re doing, if it’s an easy story to sell, and to make sense of, that usually means that you’re on the right track. And every time I’ve talked about the Portal, all the bits fit, and people go, oh, yeah. They get it straight away. And I think there’s something really useful in that. Because it’s when you’re trying to explain, you know, projects that you’re involved in, and they don’t quite make sense, you need to do a bit more work, it was just… …coherent… …coherent, it’s of course it should be done in two different countries, of course it should be in this space, of course the topic should be identity, of course it should be discipline— interdisciplinary, so all the bits, all the bricks somehow fit together. I’m not 100 percent sure what that actually means, I can’t give you the proper conclusion, but it’s a really easy project to sell, if I can use such a word, because it makes sense It’s kind of self-evident why you would do such a thing. The subject matter should be the way the subject matter (looks) Yeah, but what does that mean? That’s a good question, I don’t know But I think there’s a lot of things in education that have been sort of heralded as a panacea like technology or international exchange or things like that, and often they’ve fallen short of the expected outcomes, and generally speaking, I would say it’s because of the sort of thing you were talking about yesterday, transplanting a university into another environment without considering what different needs the students there might have, or making something online for the sake of making it online, not thinking about the different affordances and constraints of that particular mode, and I think that what we’re experiencing in this is a match or a fit between the affordances of the technology and the two universities and the experts that we have and all of those things, and it’s really sad actually that we don’t necessarily experience that elsewhere, I mean, thinking about something like Moodle, Moodle has great affordances that are terrific for some subjects, not necessarily others, but it’s rolled out across everything and is sort of mandated, at least in most universities, it’s not fitting the content to the method necessarily, whereas in this case, we had the agency to really put together what fit

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So we’re back to form and content and an organic kind of approach to the experience, which I think is—I hesitate to use the word “natural”, but feels maybe it’s about naturalness, and feeling comfortable with something, because it feels like it represents how the world outside of education is as well, so that makes it easier to accommodate (so to speak) Or perhaps being okay with the discomfort Possibly, yeah I would add logic into it somewhere. I think you can reason all of those things that we’ve got here, that if we had to come up with academic arguments as to why each of these things were, you know, with a bit of thought and research, we certainly could. It’s not a case of something that we can’t pin down necessarily But I ought to say it, without (pretending) to say that I meant all this, I did take it from, you know, a lot of what I did, I’ve designed the elements that I did design, were taken from first principles about the way space is used in pedagogy, which I’ve learned from doing things in other ways, and we’re simply transferring those ideas via technology, you know, just allowing technology to extend the options for us Because Forms of Identity existed, and you were teaching it to a Warwick cohort, the first time I taught or appeared in it, and what it was, was we were sitting there thinking—couldn’t we do this together? …can we do this better? Can’t we do this better? Can our students here, and your students there, actually share this in some way, and then, you know, the principles that were underlying what you wanted to happen in the module didn’t shift, it was finding the way in which we could achieve something more, with a—you know, beyond the confines of space and time, and technology was the way that that happened And even though the technology and the space are not the focus of this at all, I mean, one of the roles that I had immediately before we were doing this project was at the Education Centre and I read a lot of stuff about lighting and air and carpets and things like that, and how those environmental factors affect how we feel in different spaces, and going to that room at Warwick, and then trying to replicate something similar at Monash, made me realize that yes, it is possible to do a lot of these things. It’s always going to be a compromise, you’re never going to get anything perfect, but even though there are many things in that room that I wish had been done differently, in the end, I think that we really did cover a lot of those really basic, fundamental principles

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Yes, we did. And that identity module was taught in an open space, in order to not separate the mind from the body, to reinforce that principle originally, and that got carried through, in spite of the technology, almost You know, I had—there was one session we couldn’t teach in the Portal, which was why girls throw differently to boys, that was, you know, where we threw a ball to each other around this large open space, you know, so it was translating those ideas that enabled it to be the success it came to be Mia was talking about a colleague, if you don’t mind me repeating what you said, who you bounced ideas off of and who you had a relationship with that was greater than the sum of its parts, and I responded to that by saying that part of that is having the courage to be able to assert something, have that assertion challenged, and then to reincorporate those ideas into your own thinking. Bravery is the right word I think. We can become ossified into these postures as experts in our own field, and we’re quite actually frightened, and defensive, and we reassert ourselves in the face of challenge, in this environment, that’s not what we’re doing actually, we’re doing something quite different, and I think that’s productive to the (section) in some ways And you were just saying Sarah that the first time you came across Identity when it was taught at Warwick, you just felt that, yes, I’d like to be involved in it, that this makes sense to me, and I actually remember, when I got the request, which was—I was at the ABC at the time, as a (respondent), and would you like to do this (lecture) and I was like, yes, I’d love to! Straight away, it tickled me, and I was keen to throw myself into it, because I could see right away that this is a field that interests me, it’s about the human condition, it’s about humans, and it’s with a group of people that I imagined that I would work well with, but it’s the openness, it’s the multi-multiple perspectives that interest me, and I—you know, you were saying about these different parts, different parts that make up more than their- and, what’s the word I’m looking for, so you’ve got the sum, and it’s not 1 + 1 = 2, it’s 1 + 1 = 3. In radio, one of the things I say to the students is that you can often create something that is so much more than 1+1, it’s three. So simple example, if you’re using an editing style that really enhances and speaks to content, you can create an experience of listening that takes people to a space that’s much more than just listening (?) it’s all about craft and creativity and things that we understand, and I think that might be a useful analogy as well, for us, when we think about why this has worked

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I agree… It’s quiet now (all laugh) So we’ve got one more hour in here I’d quite like to talk about the trajectory of disciplinarity actually, you know, Sarah early on mentioned beginning from adisciplinarity, and for me, this was actually a somewhat clear trajectory through that to disciplinarity. So the adisciplinarity occurred in the fact that we were all standing in the space with students, with a notion as opposed to a discipline, and we were all about to work on that notion, so the theory-building exercise we talked about was an exercise in adiscplinarity. We asked students to actually look at a collection of materials and generate a notion of identity out of those materials. So we didn’t talk about whether that notion was going to be biological, or social In fact, even the unit code or the module codes, are sitting outside, really, aren’t they, of a clear—I mean, the Arts Faculty has now gone to breaking that down entirely, but it wasn’t that long ago that we had codes that very clearly defined units as being of a particular area That’s right. And a new code has had to be invented for this module at the University of Warwick, and that became utterly extradisciplinary. And for me, that at an administrative level performed the identity of it, it had an identity all of its own. And as identity, all of these little coincidences seem to be reinforcing the fact that we might be on to something, I’m not at all quite sure what we might be on to, but I’m sure that we are. But then we invited subject specialists in, to give us an hour of material, and the idea was that, in the second hour, we developed those with the students, and folded them into the ideas that had come before, and therefore, we got to a stage of multidisciplinarity And I think that inviting those different subject specialists also was interesting in that kind of “medium is the message” kind of sense, in that they had different approaches to how they wanted to run that particular hour, so that was disciplinary in itself And we were wholly unproscriptive about that And we see that in the chapters that we’ve now collected as well. We were talking about a style guide, well, again, that’s kind of evidence of the fact that, what discipline’s conventions do we write with here Yeah. And we don’t have the answers to that

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And I think that’s something that academia more generally is struggling with, that we’ve got much more use of digital media and things now, it’s part of our collection, it would be difficult to do ethnography and so forth now in most places without acknowledging digital media, but the methods of presentation in academia haven’t caught up, we don’t have good methods for transcribing or for capturing what goes on on the other side of the screen, we don’t have good conventions for presenting that data in journal articles and things like that. Even film, obviously, is problematic to treat in the conventional modes of publication, so… But it is also challenging, I think, to do work that is outside disciplines, because when I think about sending proposals, for example, to peers, so the book proposal, if you send in a grant application, it goes to the panel that’s specific to that discipline, same with examiners, it is—it is—there’s a small number of academics around the world who are willing to engage as assessors, as examiners, you know, as peers who might have to gauge and assess content that is sitting outside their area of expertise. So that is something that— Yeah. But I think that is because of our narrow understanding of what our area of expertise is I think it is also because there aren’t, I think, good structures in place to ensure that you have balanced teams. So a lot of kind of interdisciplinary work could be well assessed by having one supervisor—sorry, one examiner from this field, one from that field, each of whom is really critically looking at their own area of interest, and then seeing how well that melds together, but there’s not really any guidelines that I’m aware of that specify that that needs to be the case But also, to a degree, that doesn’t achieve what you want to evaluate, because if you only go in and look at your discipline area, and evaluate that, you’re not evaluating an interdisciplinary project, and I think with what’s happening in this unit, around disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, is the fear of disciplinarity is “losing” in some, I’m waving my fingers in an inverted comma sense here, the discipline, but I think we at no sense—or at no stage, are trying to dispense with disciplinarity, what we’re trying to do is move through it, and enhance it, enhance it by, you know, giving students not just the skills to go and engage outside, in meaningful ways and meaningful dialogue outside their own disciplines, but the bravery to speak outside their own comfort zone, and that, with staff, is the issue, it’s the same issue, and it’s probably more so ingrained in an academic. The security that comes with being in a field which you know that you know, and you’re acknowledged in, perhaps, or whatever, but it’s what interdisciplinarity does, to my mind, it doesn’t ask you to give up that, but asks you to take it further

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I think there’s an argument for destroying some of those boundaries that I personally think are quite useless anyway. There are many, many conventions that we hold on to that are the result of things from decades or centuries ago that are no longer relevant in our current society For example? Ah, I recently changed the requirements for a lot of my assessment tasks at the undergraduate level because I realized that many of the things I was requiring in terms of presentation were relevant to a print-based society that we don’t live in any longer. Page numbers, thick margins, double-spacing, Times New Roman. All of those things are optimized for reading on paper. I’m assessing things on the screen, the students that I’m teaching will be transmitting things via the screen in the future, why on earth do we still require those things I think that’s partially disciplinarity, but it’s partially… That’s probably a bad example for a discipline, but in terms of what is no longer relevant… another thing in different disciplines is why on earth do we all need to have different ways of citing things. One of the biggest hallmarks of disciplinarity is whether you use footnotes or whether you use endnotes or whether you use reference lists that is in this particular style, Harvard or APA or whatever type of referencing. But the function of all of those systems is to give somebody a link to another thing that they can then go and look it up. We actually have technology that permits us to do this in a wholly better way than what we’ve ever been able to before, to link to the original source in most contexts, and yet we persist in using something that is ridiculously outdated, fraught with errors, and is a worse system. It’s similar to why do we have to have different converters for all of the different countries and why is there, on the Trans-Siberian railroad, a change in gauge. It’s all of these historical reasons that have pent up until now, and I think, when we acknowledge discipline as a construct, as something that isn’t real, that maybe we can get rid of some of the distinctions that are useless and only prize the things that are useful, because there are different intellectual distinctions that different disciplines have, and I think a lot of the time, we focus on surface level stuff. I don’t think it matters what referencing system you use. I think the intellectual notions that each of those disciplines contain are the real value, and that’s where I think—

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To be honest, I don’t think that—I agree with what you’re saying, there are conventions around particular disciplines, but I don’t think many people would—I mean, I know there are some people who would, but if we were having an argument around disciplinarity, it wouldn’t lie in those—it would like in a deep understanding of the theory— Absolutely, but from students’ perspective, I think, when I have students who come from a different field, you know, from a different faculty, and they ask me about how to do work in Arts, they’re never asking me “How do I conceive of the person in Arts?” “How do I think about my own communication with others?” They’re always asking me nuts and bolts questions about whether I use this style or the other Yeah, sure. But to me, that’s a different question. It’s different—I understand what you’re saying, but it’s a different question than the question about where disciplinarity comes into conflict with interdisciplinarity Yeah. I think the real conflicts are around those concepts we were talking about before, like do we have free will or not. And that’s something that is going to be argued within each discipline anyway Yeah Maybe it’s about an openness. So you can say, turn your argument around, and say to students, it’s really good to have to have different referencing systems, to understand that law does their engagement with students completely differently to how Arts does it. Because in a real life workplace, students are going to need to be able to be agile, to be able to jump between different ways of thinking and approaches Absolutely So I’m just wondering whether we can use the same idea for the disciplines as well Yes That it’s really, really important that students understand that disciplines have different conventions and understandings and methods, but what we try and do, I think, is to encourage openness, to say that not one discipline is right and the other ones are wrong, it’s not a judgment, it’s not a right or wrong, it’s a respect and an understanding And to move beyond that, because that respect and understanding to some extent is where multi and interdisciplinarity might—there are levels of respect and understanding that could fit within both, but if we want students to actually move to a space of transdisciplinarity, then that is taking that respect and understanding, and going back to this idea again of creating meaning around issues and problems, from multiple perspectives. Not losing your own, and giving up your discipline, but allowing the permeability of your discipline

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I think what concerns me about these notions of different conventions and different ways of doing in different disciplines is that I think they form barriers that make it really difficult for the uninitiated to get into any of those areas. If you don’t know how to read a paper because it’s structured in a completely different way in this field to that field, I think that sometimes we unnecessarily complicate things. It’s like, I don’t understand why I can’t plug this (takes the PC power cable) to that (gestures to Mia’s Mac). This is a conduit for electricity, it should be the same for all devices. It’s incredibly frustrating, and the reason that that is impossible to do is that Mac has decided that it wants to sell its own power chargers, and it wants you to only be able to buy them from Mac, and all of those other various things. And I worry, is that what we’re doing with disciplines as well? If we’re saying that, if you want to join this club, you have to use this set of rules that is quite difficult for an outsider to get into—and I will admit and say why this bothers me so deeply is that I came to university without knowing anybody who had been to university except for obviously my teachers, and in my first class there was an argument about which referencing system was better, and I didn’t even know that such a thing as a reference list or a bibliography existed. That kind of thing is, I guess, (?) the education system I went through, but why do we have to worry about that? When you think about what it actually does, there’s no sense in arguing that the Mac cable or this cable is better than the other, but when you think about the function that it actually performs, it does the same thing. Why do we create these barriers? It’s a form of defending intellectual property and making barriers, I think I agree with that, but I think the problem’s worse. I think that disciplinarity fundamentally misrepresents the world. The world is not a collection, it’s not a disciplinary—this is not a disciplinary thing (picks up a wine bottle). This is chemistry and this is— It’s marketing, it’s— He’s holding up a… …a very, very expensive bottle of champagne! It’s physics, it’s history, the world escapes disciplinarity, and the students must know that. If they don’t know that, they’re in for some serious trouble. Therefore, we must give them notions like identity which is—which by their very nature escape disciplinarity I completely agree And there we get to transdisciplinarity, through that process. They can’t go out in the world thinking they’re chemists or they’re literary scholars, because the world’s not like that And I think if we think about something like Problem-Based Learning—

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Right It encourages people to draw from many different areas. I personally don’t even think we need the notion of disciplines at all No, I agree But it comes back to a sort of human need for identity, so many of us like to belong to a group (Indistinguishable overlap among participants) And I feel like, oh yes, my people around me, I’ve just been to a conference, everyone needs to be (in that room) But sometimes you need to get out of that warm bath environment Have a roll in the snow (all laugh) You know, to sort of, I don’t know, be a wet blanket, it’s just that, I agree, I agree with the idea that this discipline then becomes a question of territoriality and people push back because they’re scared of losing their territory. Having said that, you know, transdisciplinarity or interdisciplinarity is for me certainly a set of skills that you apply to interaction, but your contribution may be disciplinary Yes, I agree So I don’t think there should be any grand dispensing of disciplines, or disciplinarity, because we can’t Is your T that shape, or is it that shape? Yeah, yeah. But it’s just, I think that—that the thing that’s not useful for me is the entrenching of people in disciplines, saying you can’t have interdisciplinarity until students are masters of a discipline. I don’t believe that to be true, because it’s a skill set, it’s an approach, it’s a methodology. It’s dehumanizing And who is ever really a master of a discipline? But, but at the same time, I don’t think—there’s no position also for a radical dispensation of everything I think it’s enough to recognize that these things are constructs, there is no such thing as gender studies, or mathematics, or whatever. We’ve made all of that stuff up. It’s similar to saying that there’s no such thing, really, as black or white or male or female or whatever, it’s, you know—the fact that race doesn’t exist does not prevent racism, and it’s the same thing here, we’re grappling with a situation in which disciplines do not actually exist, but the in-fighting between disciplines definitely does, because people act as if they are real So they’re useful mainly up to the point that they allow us to understand the world. Beyond that, they become useless Yes

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And of course, I remember our conversation from yesterday, when we were talking about French universities from the 1200s, That had four— That only had four disciplines, and comparing that to however many we think we have today, and I’m not actually sure whether it would have been easier just to have four disciplines, because clearly, you would have been able to have more people sitting within those four, rather than the— Except that you didn’t have anyone sitting within those four, because it was 1231 or something— Yes, I know, but hypothetically, whereas this myriad, this fragmentation, doesn’t that then mean that we’re really setting it up to have smaller kind of pools of definitions, or pools of identities, where I’m now sitting in this very, very tiny area And if you think of things like the FOR codes that we have to ascribe our research to, I mean there are so many decisions that go into how it is that we describe ourselves, and this is why I’m saying it’s entirely a construct. The way that I define myself is as a linguist, but in terms of the finance of the university, I am not a linguist because I am in Japanese Studies, and within linguistics, I consider myself to be an applied linguist because I view applied linguistics as encompassing sociolinguistics, but then there are other people who view it the other way around and say that the relationship is the inverse. I mean, even within the one “field”, the agreement about what is the umbrella term and what is the sub-field and so in is not universally agreed upon. And linguistics is a field that has existed for less than 100 years, so—but that doesn’t mean that the study of language isn’t something that people haven’t thought and reflected on for, you know, centuries. So many of these distinctions that we make are entirely arbitrary or are confected for reasons other than the ideas that they contain, they’re really about, you know, I want to be the chair of something or other, and I’ve got this money behind me, and therefore I’m going to construct a school about something or other. That’s my cynical view of it. (Laughter) I don’t necessarily disagree, but I do think there’s a level of cynicism there that—because the reality is, we could say about disciplines, it doesn’t matter whether this is inverse or that, but everyone will have an idea about, okay, if we’re not going to have applied linguistics inside sociolinguistics, we’ll have sociolinguistics inside—there will be, the decision around that all, if 90 percent of the people could agree to subscribe to the idea that it is not what you think, and therefore—it’s that argument. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the argumentation that happens in disciplines about how they define themselves and how they understand themselves

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259

SM

260

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261

ML

262

SPN

No, it’s really important intellectual work. It’s when that stuff gets done by administration instead that it becomes problematic. That’s a bit off-topic, but But I think that becomes a discussion about the corporatization of the modern university, and things like that, which is all well and good, but if we go back to the topic of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, I mean what we’re trying to do in this module, I think, is what we’ve talked about, is getting students to kind of, show them the possibilities of the permeability of discipline, and show them the ways in which you can move your positions and negotiate your positions because that is real. That is the lived experience that they will have So maybe what we’re doing is a kind of meta version of what we are doing in so many of the social sciences anyway. That we’re trying to say that these constructs exist, that many of them are formed—they’re socially constructed, in various ways, and we’re just taking that one step further and applying that to the university and the knowledge-making setting I think—I think the beauty of the book and a unit like this is to say that you have to really have a (constituent) view of identity, you can’t possibly—we are so complex as human beings, our lived experiences are so different, so varied, you’ve got languages, our culture, our definitions, our religions, everything, we’re such complex entities, that to engage with a topic like identity, you have to really want to be open and follow through a kind of path that takes you through a number of different perspectives, so you can incorporate all of that, process it, what does this mean, what does it mean for the person I want to be and how I approach the world, how I engage with other people, how I continue to learn. It might mean that students come out of the unit, or reading the book, going, ah, I want to be back in that discipline! Or that is where I belong, that is my sense of identity. Or I’m going to actually go into here, because that really interests me Mmm, and there’s nothing wrong with having a particular lens that you work through, because we do need concepts upon which we can hang things, and framework with which to understand stuff. It’s just being aware that it is a particular viewpoint, that it’s not the only way of seeing things

 Appendices     263

ML

264 265

NM SPN

266

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311

I love the complexities. So really, it’s a (tricky) place to be, but it’s very rewarding. I—sometimes, when I listen to radio documentaries about (?) obviously about the human condition, because that’s what, yeah, it’s good storytelling, and most of the time, I’m walking when I listen, and I feel that sometimes stories completely shift me, and I can never go back to where I was before, and it’s a really amazing place to be, because you can kind of feel inside of you, almost, the dial going (makes a click-click noise) and you’ve just shifted to the right or to the left, or up or down, I’m not even sure, but you see the world slightly differently after that, and everything about the way that you see the world has shifted a little bit, and you continue to think about it, in your daily life, and then it disappears, but somehow, it’s always there, little things will remind you, I remember where I heard that, I can remember exactly where I was That’s what I feel about books I was about to say that sounds like what you said at the beginning, and that’s the same reason that I got into where I am now, was because I felt that going to experience a different culture and also reading things that really made me see the world in a different way, and I wanted to share that experience with other people and have them— And that’s what I’m wondering, whether we can have hoped to have achieved that, for some students, it might just be another unit (?), but for some students, it might have actually taken them to a place where they went oh, wow, this is really changing me, this is changing my understanding of myself, others, and it’s something that they would come back to and talk to their friends, I did this unit, which was really this, or that, or whatever it was, but it fundamentally shifted something in me, which I think, coming back to purpose, I would be very happy to know, if that is my purpose, that I managed to shift something inside of a student, I’d feel really satisfied And I agree with you, that is something that can permeate through their friends and family, that’s it’s not just the one individual but the lives of the people that they touch as well I mean, I still think about some of those stories that the students did, like we do with all the stories, they come back to me, because they are human stories, they are experiences, and it’s really powerful, and very humbling to be a part of, I found

312  Appendices

Fig. A.1  Autoethnography Wordcloud

Appendix 2 A wordcloud graphic representation of the transcript from recorded conversations with co-editors, Nick Monk, Sarah McDonald, Sarah ­ Pasfield-­Neofitou and Mia Lindgren, 12–13 December, 2015, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Fig. A.1).

Appendix 3  eaching Practice: A Suggested Exercise Based T on Forms of Identity Module The focus on narrative links all the essays in this collection. In order to reflect this, and to begin the process in which we asked our students to create their own understanding of identity, we used an activity known as “theory building”. Theory building requires the tutor or facilitator to prepare in advance a series of laminated images and/or fragments of

 Appendices    

313

text, anywhere between 12 and 15. Each laminate should address some aspect of the session’s subject matter either directly or tangentially. It is important that the information does not lead participants in too specific a direction, but also that it is appropriate to their levels of knowledge and ability. The exercise is for groups of 8–30. The facilitator divides the larger group into several smaller groups. The groups are each provided with a set of identical laminates. Each group is required to create a “theory” or “narrative” from the materials and represent this as a pattern on the floor of the space. The facilitator should be ready to step in at various moments to clarify, for example, what the images represent and from where the quotations are taken. Each group, when they are ready, invites the other groups, in turn, to enter their space and “read” the theories. This part of the exercise is complete when every group has read every other group’s work. This lasts anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and can be concluded with a plenary of whatever length the facilitator determines is appropriate—this would usually involve the entire group of participants. It is possible to add two stages to the process. Participants can form a “tableau” or still image of their theory. They can also add movement through an improvised performance. It is also possible to conclude a theory-­building exercise with a writing session in which participants articulate their theory in 500 words. Examples of the images provided to students for the initial identity workshop were a blue-eyed, blonde-haired young woman who had obviously had extensive cosmetic surgery; a photo-shopped baby with logos on its body from a variety of large companies; a piece of art showing the skin of a human torso ­hanging from a coat hanger; an illustration of a composite of racially different characteristics creating a single human face; an illustration of a collection of religious symbols and a representation of a DNA helix. Accompanying these images were fragments of text. For example: Thus the principle of individuation is nothing but the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object, thro’ a suppos’d variation of time, by which the mind can trace it in the different periods of its existence, without any break of the view, and without being oblig’d to form the idea of multiplicity or number. (Hume 144)

314  Appendices

I know that I exist; the question is, what is this “I” that I know? (Descartes) There is a face beneath this mask, but it isn’t me. I’m no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it, or the bones beneath that. (V for Vendetta)

While it is true that the facilitators chose the images, and it might be argued that we must be in some way leading the students, the process  can be made more impartial by asking that students supply an image or phrase themselves before the session. It is also true that what might appear to be a simple exercise can create profound experiences for students if the facilitator creates materials that allow participants to own the narratives they create. The activity provided students cohorts from both universities with the opportunity to work in their respective locations in the UK and Australia to produce theories and narratives from the materials that were unique to them. Indeed, the patterns that both groups produced were rich and nuanced and displayed a kind of  native insight into the complexities of identity. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement within the groups, and the conclusions at which they arrived were very different from each other. The Warwick students produced a more exploded or disconnected pattern, and the Monash students had something more linear and developmental. What was common to both groups, however, was the notion that identity escapes disciplinary bounds. Even though they were able to bring to bear their own disciplinary patterns of thinking and their disciplinary languages on certain aspects of the material, they recognized that this was necessary but not sufficient. The activity produced an extradisciplinary intellectual space for the students and allowed the facilitators to position notions of identity as de-disciplinary. For additional information on theory-building and other related exercises, please see ­http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/resources/ outputs/osl/osl_practice/workshop_practice/

Index

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS

360 Documentaries, 191 A

Abelson, Robert, 245 ABO blood group, 64 academia, 274, 275, 277, 282, 304 acculturation, 173, 267, 278 acetyl groups, 77 action(s), 10, 106, 117, 123, 124, 134, 137, 152, 186, 229, 292 activism, 102, 135 actors, 6, 190, 217 Acts of Meaning, 186 Advertisement, 141, 145 African-American culture, 93, 94, 102 age, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 66, 77, 120, 165, 198, 279

al-baqq wa-l-qursan/Le cimici e il pirata (The Bedbugs and the Pirate), 165 Al Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fassi, 171 Aldi, 259, 260 Alemão, 121, 123 Algeria/Algerian identity, 165, 167, 173 allele(s), 64, 65, 72, 76 Alone Together, 234 Alzheimer’s disease, 24, 27 Amaral, Tata, 114, 115, 126, 127 America, 107, 108, 219 amino acid(s), 69 androgen receptor, 72 Android, 209n5, 219 anthropology, 35, 221, 254 anthropometrics, 66 Antin, Elanor, 141, 144 Antônia, 114, 123, 125, 127, 128 Anzaldúa, Gloria E., 90

© The Author(s) 2017 N. Monk et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Identity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0

315

316  Index

apophaticism, 34 Apple, 213n12, 214, 217, 245 appropriation, 248 Arabic language, 165 archetype(s), 35–7, 224, 244, 253–8, 260, 261 Archetypes in Branding, 255 art feminist, 132, 141 performance, 132, 152 queer, 133, 141 Articulations of African-Americanism in South Asian Postcolonial Theory, 107 Aryan, 93, 93n7 Asian Exclusion Act. See Immigration Act Asia-Pacific, 94 audience(s), 147, 148, 150, 152, 186, 190, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 221, 247, 248 audio, 13, 187, 187n2, 188, 189, 200, 202, 231 Australian culture/identity, 224n34 autobiography and memory, 251 writing, 202, 250 autoethnography, 4n2, 183–5, 193, 265, 266, 270, 286–8, 293, 312 as methodology, 184, 185, 286 avatar(s), 87, 220, 223, 225, 228, 234 B

Babbage’s Difference Engine, 210 Bacon, Francis, 140

base-pairs (bp) of DNA, 67 Bateson, Gregory, 6 Bay of Pigs Invasion, 97 becoming, 133, 134, 140, 143, 144, 149–51, 192, 200, 244, 299 Becoming an Image, 147, 148n7, 150 behaviourism, 208, 209 being raced, 101 states of, 157 belonging, 88n1, 91, 109, 165, 168, 185, 191, 192, 195, 196, 200 Benglis, Lynda, 141, 144 Benvenuti, Giuliana, 160 Berghamre, Anna, 193, 194 Bhabha, Homi, 105, 106, 164 bilingualism, 158, 165, 192, 233 binaries, 109 in art, 140 black/white, 95, 108 gay/straight, 65 male/female, 137 biological identity, commercial uses of, 67, 68, 73 biology, 7, 61, 71, 75, 208n2 black. See binaries Black Power movement, 94, 100 Bleuler, Eugen, 48 blood group. See ABO blood group boca (drug den), 119 Bodies that Matter, 137 body non-conforming, 150 as site of gender/racial identity, 9n4 BOPE. See Special Operations Police Battalion (BOPE)

 Index    

borderline personality disorder, 54, 54n3, 55 bot as person, 230 brain, 12, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27–32, 33n7, 33n8, 38, 47, 48, 56, 69, 96, 97, 208, 210n7, 214n16, 234, 246, 255, 276, 299 damage, 29 Brain and the Inner World, The, 28, 28n5 Brain that Changes Itself, The, 22 brand(s), 2, 13, 216, 245, 248–53, 256–61 identity, 13, 243, 244, 252, 253, 255, 258, 260, 261 Brazil, 113, 114, 123, 127n10, 128 brasilidade (Brazilianness), 114–15 Breines, Wini, 89n3, 101, 103, 104 Bruner, Jerome, 186, 245, 247, 249, 250 Building Brands and Believers, 255 Butler, Judith, 137, 138, 143, 150–2 C

Campbell, Joseph, 254 Camus, Marcel, 115 Canada, 95, 99 Capitalism, 97 Cartesian dualism, 33, 190 Carving, 141 case studies, 6, 13, 105, 184, 185, 191

317

Cassils, 12, 132, 133, 141, 144, 145, 145n6, 146–50, 152 Cassirer, Ernst, 36, 37 caste, 93, 96, 100 Caucasian, 62, 65, 74 cell division (see meiosis) duplication (see mitosis) phone (see mobile phone) Cellar, Emanuel, 94 change, 5, 22–8, 32, 45, 46, 51, 72, 73, 77, 96, 98, 135, 159, 160, 162, 169, 170, 172, 192, 202, 217n22, 219, 231, 249, 252, 254, 256, 259, 266, 268, 279, 283, 284, 286, 305 chemistry, 307 children. See also family, development and dolls, 234 and robots, 231, 234 China, 98, 227 Christian, Barbara, 107 Christianity (including Methodist, Catholic), 99, 168–70, 171n4 chromosomes, 68, 71–3 cinema, 12, 114, 115, 116n4, 128 citizenship, 161, 164, 167, 184, 185, 191–201 City of God, 117–19, 121, 122, 125 civil rights movement, 89, 98, 109 clandestine (illegal immigrants), 161 class, 89, 91n5, 92, 93, 96, 98, 101, 102, 134, 197, 290, 295, 307 Clifford, James, 134, 135, 139 cloning, 63

318  Index

clothing, 117 Coca-Cola, 252, 256 Cog, 232 cognitive revolution, 210, 210n8 cognitive science, 245, 247 cognitivism, 209 Cold War, 91 colonialism/colonization, 90n4, 91n5, 92, 93n7, 99 colour, 65, 66, 88–90, 93, 95, 108, 230, 270. See also race women of, 92, 100, 101, 104–9 coming out, 103 commedia all’italiana [comedy Italian style], 168 communism, 97, 98 community, 12, 14, 31, 50, 92, 104n12, 113–21, 124, 125, 127, 128, 163, 170, 172, 185, 193, 209n4, 220, 275, 279, 298 computer, 13, 208–17, 218, 217n20, 218n24, 219, 229–31, 234, 236 as mind, 209, 211, 230 confessional, 184, 187, 188, 193, 196–9, 202 confusion, 54, 90, 144, 147, 149, 190, 196, 201 consciousness, 33, 34, 89, 90, 91n5, 92, 93, 97, 101, 102, 133, 268n1 constraints, 236, 300 consumer identity, 252, 256, 257 contact zones, 159, 160, 173 content, 2, 8, 11, 14, 77, 187n2, 191, 193, 202, 254, 267, 270, 278, 285, 286, 296, 300–2, 304

convergent concepts, 10, 11, 268, 270 Cooppan, Vilashini, 92, 92n6 Cortana, 215 Coward, Rosalind, 183, 187, 188, 195, 197, 202 Creating Brand Meaning, 255 Creation stories. See origin creativity, 140, 184, 259, 302 Cronin, Michael, 163, 172 cultural affiliations, 90 culture/cultural affiliation, 90 analysis of, 193 production of, 116, 126 and relativity, 173 studies, 283 Cuts, 97n9, 141, 143, 144 Cyberspace, 214n16, 226, 226n38, 227. See also place cybertyping, 223 D

damage, cerebral. See brain Damasio, Antonio, 24, 24n4, 25, 25n4, 31, 38 data trails, 226 Dawkins, Richard, 244, 254, 255 de Moraes, Vinícius, 116 dedisciplinarity, 6 deformities, 66 Deleuze, Giles, 140, 141, 143 delusions, 48, 51 demarcation, 267 dementia, 47, 187 dementia praecox, 48 Denisovan DNA, 74

 Index    

Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), 63 depression, 51–3 Descartes, 314 Descartes’ Error, 25 desegregation, 94 design, classroom, 216 desire, 4n2, 36, 104, 125, 134, 137, 143, 174, 186, 198, 210, 220n28, 223, 230, 279, 298 developmental psychology, 71 diagnosis, 6, 44, 48, 51 dialogue, 13, 97, 99, 100, 170, 171, 243, 244, 258, 260, 270, 304 diaspora, 92, 98, 102, 104n12, 106 Diegues, Carlos, 114, 116, 116n4, 117 digital divide, 225 native, 213n13, 295 rights management (DRM), 216 diploid, 68 disappearance, 28, 29, 167 disciplinary/disciplinarity (extra-), 2, 3n1, 5–9, 9n4, 10–12, 14, 136, 136n2, 265–71, 276, 278, 279, 282, 285, 303–8, 310, 314 convergence, 10 Disfigured Pin Ups, 143 disorder affective, 47, 51 of memory, 47, 55 of mood, 47, 48, 51, 52 personality, 47, 53, 54, 54n3, 55 disorganization

319

of motor behaviour, 48 of thinking/speech, 48 diversalism, 170 diversity, 3, 67, 69, 73, 74, 90, 222, 257. See also similarity Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi [Divorce Islamic Style in viale Macaroni] (Divorzio), 168 Divorzio all’italiana [Divorce Italian Style], 168 dizygotic, 76 DNA-fingerprinting, 75 DNA triplet code, 69 doctor-patient relationship, 45 documentary production, 189, 201 Doidge, Norman, 22 Dominican Intervention, 97 doppelgangers, 77 download, 195 drag, 138. See also clothing Dravidian, 93 dressing. See clothing DSM-5 (or DSM-V), 44, 47, 48, 54 Dyson, James, 252 Dyson, Michael Eric, 119, 119n6 Dyson vacuum cleaner company, 252 E

education, 5n3, 52, 95, 100, 101, 101n11, 104, 207, 209, 246, 270–2, 274, 275, 279, 291, 293, 300, 301, 307. See also learning and teaching, pedagogy

320  Index

elastic transformation, 23. See also plasticity Elite Squad, 121–3, 125 ELIZA, 211n9, 214 embodiment, 135, 151, 152, 276, 295 emigration, 159, 166. See also migration emotion and engagement, 190 journalism, 183, 190 literacy (see literacy) English-language, 221 enlightenment, 105 environment effect of, 62 (see nurture) mediatized, 267, 276 epigenetics, 30, 65, 76, 77 epistemology, 4, 11, 88, 90n4, 91, 93, 103–5, 267, 270 ePortfolios, 226 equal opportunity movement, 94 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 33 essentialism, 88 ethics, 73, 75, 189, 195, 296 ethnography, 184, 193, 304 Europe, 88n2, 223n31 European Union. See Europe evidence-based medicine, 44 evolution, 67, 69, 87, 118, 254, 260 ex nihilo anthropology, 37 experience embodied, 286 intellectual, 10, 288 experts on identity, 267 extracomunitari (non-EU citizens), 161

extra-neuronal factor. See environment eye, 13, 27, 66, 284 F

face, 37, 66, 67, 70, 77, 120, 147, 183, 212, 252, 256, 290, 293, 302, 313, 314 recognition, 70, 77 Facebook, 1, 4, 223, 226, 234, 299 memorialization of, 232 faith, 62 family, 12, 24, 29, 31, 42, 45, 49, 51, 56, 57, 75, 119, 124, 162, 171n4, 184, 187, 191–5, 197–9, 274, 278, 311 Fast Twitch Slow Twitch, 141 favelas, 12, 113 feeling(s), 24, 29n6, 51–5, 134, 139, 196, 198–202, 280, 281, 286, 301 female(s), 63, 71, 109, 116–19, 123, 126–8, 133, 217n22, 308 characters as ‘good’ and ‘bad, 116 feminism black, 89, 100, 101, 103–5 liberal, 89 Marxist, 89 postcolonial, 12, 87–9, 91, 92, 101, 106, 108, 109 radical/cultural, 89, 103 socialist, 89 transnational, 107 fetish, 141, 145 fiction(s), 114, 157, 161, 162, 244, 248 figural, 140 Film studies, 128–9. See also cinema

 Index    

Firmat, Gustabo Pérez, 163 fluidity, 3, 11, 132, 134, 150 folk psychology, 186, 247 Folk Psychology as an Instrument of Culture, 247 form(s), 2, 173 Forms of Identity, 2, 3, 6, 11, 14, 301, 312–14 Foucault, Michel, 42, 136n2, 137 French language, 11, 21, 23, 115, 164, 165, 231, 309 Freud, Sigmund, 27, 28, 48 friend(s), 12, 24, 25, 32, 45, 56, 57, 116, 123, 124, 191, 195, 231, 232, 233n43, 294, 311 Frodeman, Robert, 5, 6 Furby, 233, 234 future queer, 12, 139, 150, 151 t3, 51, 57 G

Gage, Phineas, 24, 24n4, 25, 26, 29–31, 38 gametes, 63, 68 gametogenesis, 63, 77 gayness, 138 gender gendering, 102–3 genderqueering, 12, 132, 135, 150, 152 studies, 151, 308 Gender Trouble, 137 genes co-dominant, 64, 70 dominant, 64, 65, 70 recessive, 64 Genesis, 36, 36n9

321

genesis stories, 251. See origin genetics genetic component, 74, 76 (see nature) genetic variation, 63 genome, 67, 68, 73, 74, 76 genotype, 64, 71 geopolitics, 92 Germi, Pietro, 168 Glass, Ira, 189 globalization, 1, 4, 88n1, 135, 268 Gloria, E., 90 God, 35–7, 169 Google, 199, 212n12, 227, 244, 252 Gregory of Nyssa, 34–6 Grewal, Inderpal, 102, 107 Guatarri, Felix, 140 H

hallucinations, 48, 50 Halperin, David, 134, 149 handcuffs digital, 216 velvet, 216 Harari, Yuval Noah, 243, 251 Harley Davidson, 248, 249 Haven, Kendal, 245, 246 health. See medicine Hegel. See plasticity Hell’s Angels, 248 Her, 115 hermaphrodism, 71 Hero and the Outlaw, The, 255 Herring, Susan, 221 heterogeneity, 160, 168 heterosexism, 62, 102, 133, 137 Hispanic culture, 93, 94 histones, 68, 76, 77

322  Index

history, 4, 13, 23–5, 31, 33n7, 43, 45, 52, 55, 75, 78, 89, 90, 90n4, 91n5, 92, 97, 99, 101, 105, 114, 140, 150, 161, 186, 270, 286, 307 Hodgman, John, 217 Hoffman, Eva, 173 home society, 170. See also host society homosexuality, 145. See also heterosexism homophobia, 125 host society, 170. See also home society human/humanity, 2, 5, 7, 12, 13, 21–4, 26, 31, 34–8, 43, 44, 47, 61, 63, 65, 67, 70–3, 75, 89, 102, 104n12, 165, 184, 187, 192, 196, 201, 202, 207–10, 211n9, 212, 214, 218n24, 224n32, 227n39, 229, 233, 234, 247, 253, 254, 269, 270, 277, 285, 286, 294, 296, 299, 302, 308, 310, 311, 313 human genome project, 73 Hume, David, 250, 313 hybridity, 98, 164 I

I, 21, 50, 56, 64, 199, 211n10, 314. See also we, us vs. them, you Iatros (physician), -iatry, 43 ICD-10, 44, 47 identity, 160, 161, 270 academic/expert/professional, 42, 183, 193, 194, 200, 202, 266, 278, 285, 287, 292

analysis of, 1, 5, 6, 137, 270 biological, 2, 12, 63, 64, 66, 68, 73, 78 construction/creation of, collective/singular, 13, 23, 172, 173, 212n12, 223, 244, 249, 250, 256, 261 consumer, 135 disciplinary, 2, 3, 5, 6, 133, 151, 300, 314 disturbance of, 54 as fixed, 131, 152, 172 gendered, 12, 136 group, 221, 244 individual, 9n4, 12, 173 inter-personal vs. intra-cranial, 38 material/mediation of, 3, 26, 224, 236 menu-driven, 223, 234, 299 narratives of, 5 national, 9n4, 115, 158, 167, 168, 170, 191–3 online, 213, 229 patient, 32, 41, 48, 55 politics, 12, 134, 144, 149 private/personal and public, 2, 4, 12, 13, 21, 41, 42, 45–7, 55–7, 184, 185, 192, 193, 248, 275, 278, 296, 299 as process, or performance over time, 12, 249 reflexive, 185, 259 social, 46, 57 theft, 226, 227 youth, 221 illness, 44, 47–50 immigration, 90, 92–4, 98, 101, 105, 109, 160. See also migration

 Index    

‘open door’, 94 Immigration Act of 1924, 94 Immigration and Nationality Act, 94 Immigration and Naturalization Services Act, 96, 98 imperialism, 88, 91n5 in betweenness, 157 independence, 100, 186, 189 India, 91n5, 101n10 information age, 213 inner life, 28, 29 interchange, 3, 172, 210n8 Internet, 2, 207, 209, 212, 220, 221, 223, 223n31, 226, 227, 234, 236 addiction, 227 intersexuality, 71. See also hermaphrodism interviews, 44, 151, 166, 184, 188, 190, 193–7 Islam, 170 Italy Italian language, 165 Italianness, 161, 167, 257 J

Jane, Emma, 2 Japan, 198, 277 Japanese language, 233 jargon, 61, 209 Johansson, Scarlett, 215 John, Mary E., 93, 100, 102, 103 Johnson, Lyndon B., 94, 98 Johnson-Reed Act. See Immigration Act Jones, Amelia, 132, 144 journalism

323

personal, 13, 186, 190 and values (see ethics) Julia, 215 Jung, Carl, 253, 254 juvenocracy, 119 K

Kaplan, Caren, 107 Kayfa tarda’u min al-dhi’ba dūna an ta ‘addaka [How to be Suckled by the She-wolf without Getting Bitten], 165 Kennedy, Ted, 94, 98 Kismet, 231 Knowledge and Memory, 245 Koenig, Sarah, 188, 200 Korea, 227 Korean language, 231 Korean war, 97 Kraepelin, Emil, 48 L

labelling, 96, 133, 218n24 Lakhous, Amara, 159, 162, 164–71, 171n4, 172–4 language acts, 162, 163 as empowering, 172 and nationality, 167 (see also individual languages) other than English (LOTE), 221 preferred, 162 of psychology, 214 theoretical, 101 law, 36, 94, 185, 192, 306 Lawler, Steph, 246

324  Index

learning and teaching, 3, 5, 7, 265, 266, 269, 271, 278, 281 space, 3 Lebanon Crisis, 97 Leo Africanus, 171 lesbian identity, 138 liberalism, queer, 136 Life on the Screen, 212, 220 life sciences, 61 lingua franca, 95 linguistics, 158, 163–6, 168, 170, 171, 174, 254, 309. See also language linguistic hybridization, 172 Lins, Paulo, 118 literacy computer, 216 emotional, 201 of young Internet users, 230 literary theory, 254 literature, 5, 54, 66, 132, 255, 279 migrant, 161 location, 12, 102, 113, 114, 122, 145, 160, 246. See also place Locke, John, 33, 33n8, 34, 46 London bombings, 168 Long, Justin, 217 Löschnigg, Martin, 245, 247, 250, 251 Losing My Identity, 184, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199–202 Lost in Translation, 173 Louis XIV, 42 love, 116, 138, 169, 192, 214n16, 274, 279, 280, 302, 311

M

machine, 13, 210, 210n7, 211, 211n9, 212, 217, 230 Machine of the Year. See Person of the Year Macintosh (Mac), 216 Madrid bombing, 168 Malabou, Catherine, 11, 21 male, 63, 71, 102, 117, 118, 119n6, 120–3, 127, 133, 163, 169, 308 Maloney, Kellie (Frank), 72 Malouf, Aamin, 171 Mandler, Jean, 245 mania, 51, 52 marketing studies, 4 masculinity, 116, 124 masculinization, 117 materialism, 22, 23, 31, 38, 137, 138, 288 materialist plastic transformation, 37 Matrix, The, 225 MEAA. See Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) media digital/online, 221, 304 social, 1, 77, 183, 210, 296, 299 studies, 4 Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), 189, 195 mediation, 224, 235 medical psychology, 43 medicine, 42–5 Mediterranean, 170, 171, 171n4, 257 meiosis, 68

 Index    

meme, 255 memory, 29, 29n6, 30, 32, 33, 46, 47, 50–7, 99, 104, 134, 150, 165, 171, 192, 194, 208, 214, 245, 247, 251 men. See male Mendel, Gregor, 64 menstrual cycle, 63 Mental Health Act, 45 mental health/illness, 2, 12, 41, 42, 45–7, 50–2, 57, 296 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), 69, 70, 77 metamorphosis, 25, 27, 28 metaphor, 13, 32, 157, 166, 172, 207, 208n2, 209–11, 270 methionine, 69 methyl groups, 77 microcomputer. See PC microsatellites, 75 Microsoft, 217 migration, 74, 92, 95, 157, 159, 161, 166, 173, 191–3 mind and body, 9n4, 43 cognitive functions of, 48 as computer, 210, 211, 213, 230 meld, 215, 234 perceptual functions of, 48 as program, 214 rationalizing functions of, 48 Mink, Louis, 246 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico Della, 34, 36, 37n10, 37n11 Mitchell and Webb, 217 mitosis, 68 mobile phone, 218, 219, 236, 296 mobility, 100, 162

325

model minority, 96, 105 modernity, 33, 33n8, 88, 99, 105 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 102 Monash University, 2, 7 monozygotic, 76, 78 Moraga, Cherrie, 90 mother tongue, 174 Motta, Zeze, 117 multiculturalism, 95, 193 multidisciplinarity, 2, 303 multiple selves/identities, 45 multitasking, 207 Muñoz, José Esteban, 139 Muslim. See Islam N

Nakamura, Lisa, 207, 217n21, 220, 222–4, 226–8 naming. See labelling Narayanan, Shireen, 193, 194 narrative (anti-narrative), 2, 12, 13, 38, 55, 88, 93, 99, 103, 108, 114–16, 118, 119, 123–6, 134, 159–62, 164, 166, 169, 170, 184–9, 194, 201, 243, 312–14 nation/nationality, 2, 4, 62, 87, 87–8n1, 93–7, 97n9, 98–101, 105, 108, 109, 114, 123, 133, 163, 167, 170, 244, 293 national (extra-) belonging, 90, 193 bureaucracy, 90 identity, 9n4, 12, 157, 158, 161, 167, 168, 170, 191–3 imaginary, 98

326  Index

nationalism/nationhood, 88, 92, 103, 108, 164 black, 103 National Origins Act, 94 National Union of Journalists (NUJ), 189 natives, 160, 222, 270, 314 nature vs. nurture, 62. See also genetics and environment Neanderthal DNA, 74 Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 114, 115, 129 neoliberalism, 135. See also neo-liberalism networking, 231 neural crest, 70 neuro-identity, 21, 22n2 neurophilosophy, 21 neuroplasticity. See plasticity neuroscience, 23 New Journalism, 187 The New Wounded, 23, 31, 32 Nike, 253, 255 normal, 26, 50, 71, 133, 136, 162 normativity, 134, 138, 152 norms, 132, 138, 146, 160, 222 discursive, 137 nucleosomes, 68, 76 nucleus, 68, 69 O

O’Rourke, Michael, 151 objectivity, 183–6, 189, 190, 196, 200, 202, 285 offline life, 208, 226 online commentary, 198–200

aliases, 209 On the Internet Nobody Knows You’re a Dog, 220, 228 On The Origin of Man, 35, 36 ontology, 4, 6 Ontology of the Accident, 33 Opie, Catherine, 141 Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oration), 36 Orfeu, 116, 117 Orfeu Negro, 115, 115n2, 116 origin, 29, 87–8n1, 92, 93, 101, 108, 168, 194, 252. See also place stories, 251 other otherness, 161, 170 robot as, 211n9 outside, 3, 10, 22, 69, 87, 139, 172, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 218, 271, 278, 283–5, 301, 303, 304 P

participatory culture, 213, 225 passport, 192, 195, 196, 200 online, 228 past, 23, 27, 30, 31, 34, 47, 50, 51, 55, 57, 139, 150, 161, 185, 186, 192, 194, 197, 246, 275, 288 t1, 46, 55–7 Patient, traditional, 45 pedagogy, 301. See also learning and teaching Pereira dos Santos, Nelson, 115 performativity, 137, 143

 Index    

person/personhood, 21, 27, 30–3, 34, 33n7, 38, 42, 44–8, 49n1, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 65, 71, 127, 172, 186, 189, 191, 192, 196, 197, 200, 210, 225, 244, 248, 257, 275, 281, 285, 287, 288, 291, 294, 306, 310 as bot, 230 Persona, 220, 296. See also personae personal computers (PCs), 209, 212, 252, 307 personality, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30–2, 46, 47, 57, 210, 218, 225 disorders, 47, 53, 54, 54n3, 55 personal journalism, 13, 186, 187, 190 Person of the Year, 212 pharmacology, 44 phenotype, 64, 71 phenylalanine, 69 philosophy, 4, 6, 43, 46, 93, 259, 260, 283 of psychiatry, 43 physician, 29n6, 42, 44–6. See also iatros25 Physiological continuity, animal/ brain theory, 47 Pinel, Philippe, 43 Pinker, Steven, 210n8, 247 place, 2, 4, 6, 10, 12, 26, 27, 29, 33, 35, 37, 50, 55, 64, 76, 98, 105, 106, 108, 113, 135, 150, 152, 159, 160, 167, 171, 229, 266, 274, 276, 280, 281, 286, 292–4, 296, 304, 311. See also origin plasticity, 37

327

destructive, 22, 23, 23n3, 26 Hegelian, 37 of transition, 22 poetry, 211n9 politics and dissention/affiliation, 109, 162 gendered, 135 of identity, 134, 164 lesbian, 103 progressive, 135 sexual, 135 polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 75 portal pedagogy, 3, 7 posing, 141, 145n6, 217 postcolonial feminists, 88–92, 101, 105, 106 post-identity, 222 post-Internet age, 221 postmodernism, 244 power, 10, 14, 25, 32, 91, 94, 100, 104, 106–9, 119–21, 123, 126, 127, 133, 136–8, 163, 164, 172, 173, 185, 213, 247, 250, 253, 281, 285, 307 Pratt, Mary Louise, 160 present, 3n1, 11, 14, 26, 34, 44, 45, 52, 56, 98, 118, 139, 161, 171, 186, 192, 194, 195, 197, 201, 202, 214, 254, 260, 294 t2, 46, 50, 56, 57 privacy, 187, 224, 226, 228, 293 professional development, 186 practice, 188 profile, 75, 223, 227, 228, 234, 299 Promethean, 37

328  Index

protein, 68–72 psyche (mind), 27–9, 31, 43, 254 psychiatry, 12, 41–5, 47, 57 psychological continuity, 32, 46, 47, 50, 55–7 psychology cultural, 45 social, 221 Psychopharmacology, 43 psychosis, 48. See also schizophrenia psychosomatics, 43 psychotherapeutics, 43 purines, 67 pyrimidines, 67 Q

queer as identity category, 133, 135–7 queering, 151 studies, 151 subculture, 139 temporalities, 139 theory, 132–4, 136, 138, 144, 151, 152 R

race. See also colour in the American nation, 92–5, 105–7 (see also America) consciousness, 92, 100, 105 memory/racial history, 93 other, 3, 74, 89, 96, 98, 99, 106, 108 (see also other) theory, 88, 106, 108 Race After the Internet, 221

Race for Theory, The, 107 racial categories, 96, 100 racial divide, 98 racialization, stratification of, 94 racial justice, 94, 103, 107 radio, 13, 184, 185, 187, 187n2, 188, 189, 191, 192, 196, 198–201, 226, 277, 288, 296, 302, 311 Rahmens, 217 Rancière, Jacques, 146 real life (RL), 188, 202, 225, 227, 228, 306. See also second life, virtual life reality/ies, 1, 31, 48, 67, 115, 135, 150, 151, 161, 174, 196, 201, 226, 229, 233, 243, 247, 248, 269, 270, 290, 309 ideal, 248 re/articulation, 152, 160 reconstruction, 1, 5, 24–5n4 reference systems, 267 reflection, 1, 2, 9, 14, 33, 34, 48, 152, 194, 198, 200, 202, 229, 266, 282, 283, 287, 290, 293, 296, 299 journals, 4, 9, 10 reflexivity, 201 Reid, Thomas, 46 Reil, Johann Christian, 43, 44 re/iteration, 138 relationship gendered, 120 interpersonal, 55 with online identity, 220 with robots, 231, 234 religion. See faith

 Index    

reproduction, 61–3, 139 re-signification, 138, 152 Resilience of the 20%, The, 147, 150 Rhesus factor, 65 ribose, 67 Ricœur, Paul, 249 right marriage, 136 parental, 136 to speak, 7 RNA, 69 robot, 209, 210, 230–2, 234. See also bot roles, social, 48, 51, 53, 57 Rushdie, Salman, 160 S

Said, Edward, 105 Sakai, Naoki, 159, 173 Sapiens, 243 Schank, Roger, 245 schizophrenia, 47–9, 49n1, 50, 76. See also psychosis Schueller, Malini Johar, 95, 106, 107, 109 science, 4, 6, 33n8, 43, 62–4, 73, 77, 208, 252, 283 Scontro di civiltà per un ascensor a Piazza Vittorio [Clash of Cililizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio] (Scontro), 165, 167 scripting, 199 second generation, 104n12, 194, 196 second language, 173, 233 second life, 220, 225, 227

329

Second Self, The, 212 self cultural-linguistic, 160 extension of, 218 ideal, 256 individual idea of, 244 inner, 26 narrative, 55 unitary, 226 Self and Emotional Life, 28, 33, 33n7 self-concepts/conceptions, 45, 46 self-development, 55 self-esteem, 46, 51, 53, 57 self-expression, 125, 164, 183, 221 selfie bump, 234 journalism, 183, 183n1 stick, 224 self-indulgence, 199 Selfish Gene, The, 254 self-realization as a conversion process, 101 self-reflexivity, 91 self-translation, 157, 158, 158n1, 160, 164–6, 170, 172, 173 semiotics, 93, 169, 253 sense-making, 184, 186 Serial, 188, 200 sex sexual identity (biological), 61, 71 sexual orientation, 72 sexual relationships, 117 Shorter, Edward, 42, 43 simian, 74 similarity, 51, 67, 226. See also diversity Sims, The, 225 Sirena, 257

330  Index

Siri, 214, 214n16, 215, 227n39 skeleton, 65, 66, 270 slave trade, 94 Smith, Barbara, 103 social connectivity, 51 social organization, 131 social psychology, 221 social sciences, 4n2, 102, 188, 244, 310 sociology, 221 Solms, Mark, 28, 28n5 soma (body), 43 someone (else), 27, 201 Soto, Sandra K., 107 soul, 26, 35, 172, 198, 279 South Asia, 92, 103 Soutphommasane, Tim, 193, 194 space, 5, 5n3, 7–11, 62, 90, 91, 95, 101, 102, 114–19, 121–4, 126, 127, 139, 143, 144, 147, 160, 162, 164, 168, 189, 200, 251, 266, 267, 271, 275, 281–90, 293–303, 306, 313, 314 Special Operations Police Battalion (BOPE), 121 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 88n2, 91n5, 99, 102, 104, 105, 107, 134 Stallman, Richard, 229 Starcraft, 224 stereotype, 223 Story Proof, 246 storytelling, 13, 184–90, 193, 194, 197, 201, 202, 245, 289, 292, 311

structure, 2, 5, 11, 12, 22, 66–9, 167, 213, 246, 247, 250, 271, 304 struggle, 55, 91n5, 98, 100, 103–7, 115, 152, 194, 288 students, 3, 3n1, 4–9, 9n4, 10, 11, 14, 101, 231, 252, 265–7, 269, 271, 272, 274–308, 310–14 Stuff of Thought, The, 247 subculture, 136, 139, 244, 248 subjectivity, 4n2, 28, 29, 119, 125, 134, 136, 149, 157, 202, 285 linguistic, 137 (see also language) Sustainable Knowledge, 5 Swedish identity, 184, 199, 201 symptoms, 44, 48, 50–2 T

taglines, 245 Tamagotchi, 232, 232n42 teaching-led research, 3, 276 technology, 8, 13, 93, 99, 207, 208, 217, 217n22, 219, 221, 223, 229, 231, 234, 236, 254, 270, 282, 286, 294, 295, 298–302, 305 television (TV), 114, 127n10, 210n6, 218, 222, 224, 226 testosterone, 72 theology, 35 theoretical-language, 101 theory building, 284, 303, 312–14 third world, 89–93, 97, 98, 104, 105, 107–10 women of the, 87, 88, 109, 270 This American Life, 189

 Index    

This Bridge Called My Back, 90 threshold concept, 10 tongue rolling, 65 tools, 43, 99, 100, 131, 151, 166, 172, 185, 211, 214, 219, 253, 261, 277 tools-to-theories heuristic, 211 tradition(s), 22, 34, 35, 37, 38, 93n7, 132, 135 trait(s), 34, 35, 55, 57, 62, 64–6, 76, 189 tranlingualism, 13, 158, 158n2, 160, 162, 170, 172, 173, 270 trans- (as prefix), 6 transcendence, 6 transcription (biological), 69, 70 transdisciplinarity, 2, 6, 14, 270, 306–8 transformation(s), 10, 22, 23, 25–9, 31, 32, 37, 38, 48, 94, 96, 100, 109, 127, 141, 144, 159, 161, 220 transgenderism, 135 transgression, 101, 135, 151 transitivity, 57 translation between disciplines, 11 biological, 69 cross-cultural, 159 of identities, 13, 157, 159, 162 studies, 4, 157 translational accommodation, 163 translational assimilation, 163 vertical/horizontal, 174 translingual writing, 158 transparent computing, 216 transphobia, 147

331

trauma, 22, 24–6, 29, 30, 33n7, 149, 196 treatment(s), 33n8, 44, 55, 122 tropes of identity, 115 truth, 167, 187, 227 Tuke, William, 42 Turkle, Sherry, 207–9, 211–20, 220n27, 222, 223, 225–33 twin, identical, 63, 76, 78 Twitter, 226 U

United States (US). See America us vs. them, 161 V

V for Vendetta, 314 video, 68, 113, 141 Video games, 215 Vietnam war, 97 violence, 50, 115, 117–22, 124, 125, 132, 138, 148, 150, 152 virtual life, 220, 226, 227. see also real life, second life voice(s), 27, 50, 105, 126, 161, 162, 164, 187–9, 193, 195–8, 202, 224, 230, 266, 280–2, 287, 288, 293, 294 Volcano, Del LaGrace, 141 W

Wadia, Laila, 162, 163 Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin, 186, 190, 196 Warwick, University of, 2, 7, 303

332  Index

we, 101, 213n12. See also I, us vs. them, you Web 2.0, 213, 227 West, John, 257, 258 Where in the Transnational World are U.S. Women of Color, 107 whiteness, 106, 107. See also binaries Wills, Sara, 95 Women. See female World of Warcraft, 224, 224n32 World War I (WWI), 248 World War II (WWII), 248 World Wide Web (WWW), 213, 221

writer(s), 13, 104n12, 136, 158, 158n2, 160, 161, 163, 164, 173, 174, 187, 215 as bridge or interpreter, 158, 165 Y

you, 28. See also I YouTube, 213n12 Z

Zaltman, Gerald, 245