Becoming Other

2017

Influenced by Fanon’s idea that the slave needs the master as much as the master needs the slave, this article uses sand play work to explore the unconscious draw for the other in relation to the majority. Offering an important insight into this difficult and contradictory relationship, this research argues that for difference to be fully understood we must make conscious and recognise this relationship for the other in order to free the other from their fear of their potential.

Res Cogitans, 2015

The other or otherness is the ability to objectify a part of self, another person, and/or a group of people that results in an imbalance of power. The human ability to other allows for detachment to happen in social and personal relationship, which affects the self-perception and identity. Hegel argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit the very nature of an interdependent relationship, which expresses identity through the Lord and bondsman. I will argue how extreme detachment and disassociation between human beings has created a complex phenomenon and has redefined what it means to be human in relation to social superstructures. Social superstructures have defined and created norms and morality of societies and cultures, which then creates a division of those who fit these standards and those who do not. Traditionally philosophy and other forms of academic scholarship have focused upon the inequality of power and privilege and examined the relationship of the oppressed to their oppressor. Oppressed groups then have organized to articulate their collective experience, developed academic theory, and social movements to further identify the reality of otherness they experience. I will further explore this through the scholarship of Patricia HillCollins, Peg O'Connor, and Iris Young. This paradigm as power and oppression is also referenced to as political identity; however, I believe this method stratifies the multifaceted nature of the human self and needs to be restructured to uncover a richer sense of authenticity. In this paper I will argue how paradigms of otherness can be used to positively cultivate the multifaceted parts of the self. As an example of someone who lived out of her multifaceted nature of self, I will examine the life of Gloria Anzaldúa. The two primary aspects of social superstructure influences on the self are societal and relational. I will explore how societal influences are the social groups in which an individual identifies based upon social position and life experience. The multifaceted social parts of the self include: class, race, gender, sexuality, physically and psychologically ability, religion/spirituality, age. Relational influences are the intimate relationships, which influence and shape an individual's identity and perception of self. These multifaceted relational parts include: family and friends. Living towards one's authentic self is complete balance and interaction of all multifaceted parts of the self that make up identity in the pursuit of answering the life long question of, "who am I?" The authentic self is one who can identify the social impositions, which oppress or privilege oneself and recognize the balance of all social roles in relation to personal experience and formation. The authentic self is never completely autonomous but conscious of social barriers or privileges that make up one's personal identity, and is an expression of genuine balance. I believe that Anzaldúa expresses this in her life experiences, as a Chicana Lesbian, and so I will reference her experiences to further examine these arguments.

2019

This dissertation seeks to examine the existence of non-human identity through the notion of the project of the (alter-human) self, the utilisation of spiritual language, and the process of integrating these concepts to daily life. These ideas draw largely upon the arguments of Sean McCloud, Christopher Partridge and Anthony Giddens to posit these new areas of thinking about Otherkinity. In framing Otherkinity in this way, this should establish that it is not a religious phenomenon, but rather centres on theories of identity and its formation through these three key themes. It will be set forth that Otherkin rely on a non-secular paradigm to frame their identities, as their identities do not cohere with the normative disenchanted paradigm, however this engagement does not equate with religiosity. There are a variety of beliefs proposed by Otherkin on how they should understand their identity, thus by shifting the focus from purely spiritual understandings to other notions this allows for a more nuanced conclusion to be drawn. Here, the focal point is on how Otherkin live their lives in order to understand their identity, rather than attempting to consider why they are an alter-human individual.

The Vermont Connection, 2017

What does it mean to be Haitian? How can I even consider myself to be a Haitian? I have never even been to Haiti! I don't speak the language!" Questions like these were constantly on my mind during my teenage years. On occasion, I overheard my mother on the phone, saying in her stentorian voice, "Sak pase?" I always knew she was asking someone, "How are you doing," but that is as far as my mind could follow. Even when I attempted to listen to my mother's full conversations, picking up on her tongue's movements that made the flow of her speech sound songlike, I could never grasp what she said. In fact, I could not Roundtree

This book offers a different look at Identity and identification and introduces the notion of substitute identities (and a subsequent repertoire of personalities) as a rather common phenomenon in many people, as the root of PTSD and other identity conflict and dissociation disorders and the key to effective diagnosis and treatment. Identity is a “hot topic" in academia and popular culture. It might be considered as the ideological signifier of our age, but also carries an ever increasing weight as a political emblem, even as this mostly concerns identification, which we easily trade for consciousness. Identity is an essential attribute of being. At a personal level, identity is not only what we think we are or the labels we are given. It includes our unconscious and is more than our personality, the expression of our identity in relation to others. It goes deeper than our subjective selfhood, the notion of me or self which provides the sense of sameness and continuity, but this stability is an illusion. We are not the same all the time, the continuity of a single ‘self’ is a chimera. This is thus also true for our personality, One of the central themes of this book is that our personal identity is not an indivisible, immutable, totally consistent given, but rather a dynamic matrix, often a repertoire of identities. This is not a pathological condition, but something many of us have, with resulting inner conficts, which eventually may cause depression or disease. To help understand these identity conflicts, in oneself and in others, we present a new way to look at the formation and development of the primary identity and substitute identities and how these manifest and change. Dissociation and identification are processes of transformation, they shape us, in a continuous process. Issues like the group mind, social identity, the Western identity crisis, identity politics, radicalization and identification mechanisms are covered in this book, as are PTSD and auto-immune diseases. We show how there is resonance between cell-, organ- and personal-identity at the epigenetic level. This book is full of new and daring insights and visualizations on how our psyche operates and how we as humans function.

Toward a Transindividual Self: A study in social dramaturgy,, 2022

The book examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies, and dramaturgy intersect. Starting from our concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, we critically untangle individualist modes of performing the self, such as possessive, aesthetic, and autopoietic individualisms. However, our critique does not make for an argument for collectivism as a socially more viable alternative to individualism. Instead, it confronts us with the more fundamental problem of ontogenesis: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? This question marks a turning point in our study, where it steps back into the process of individuation, prior to, and in excess of, the individual. The process of individuation, however, encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which we investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual dimension. This epistemic intervention into ontogenesis allows us to expand the horizon of transindividuation in an array of tangible social, aesthetic, and political acts and practices. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it.

Abstract: In creating and negotiating the complex and detailed time-space relations between ourselves and others, we also craft our own unique selves. In other words, we become, and are ourselves, only in relation to others. In such a (relational) view as this - in which we all soak up, and float in, so to speak, the (to an extent) same sea of creative interrelational activity - what it is which makes me as a person unique, in relation to everyone else in the extensive social 'seascape' around me, are the places or positions I and only I occupy within it, and the degree to which I am, or can become, answerable or responsible to others for them. But that 'seascape' is only 'to an extent' the same for us all: some of us have a more easy passage into certain regions of it than others.

Scientific Annals of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iaşi, 2021

What is identity and what makes us be who we are? The concept of identity has changed considerably over the past century, the subject finding itself at the intersection of nation, gender, the rise of multiculturalism and colonial history. While we are born with no selfawareness and our first point of reference is the world outside us, navigating existence involves a constant self-analysis and the realisation that any attempt at defining ourselves will result in newer interrogations. Aiming to provide some guidance to this relentless quest by introducing few of the key concepts used in identity research, the present paper addresses the fluidity of the self by focusing on the identity-alterity nexus and by prioritising the 'becoming' over the 'being'. Identity is, thus, always shifting and never a given; it is a transitional process oscillating between self-identification and identification made by the others, a puzzle whose interlocked pieces can be moved around and change in meaning.

Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology. , 2011

Primarily relying on the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and Niklas Luhmann, this article discusses the effects of the mass media on contemporary consciousness, identity and self/other relations. This article proposes an approach to the self/other binary which opens up the possibilities for relations between individuals by including a third term, the other-self, which allows for a fluid, contextualized understanding of the self in a spectrum of relatedness to others in any given moment.

In this chapter, I propose an account of personalidentity that is thoroughly relational and that makes transparent the ways in which persons are constituted in and through their personal relationships, public interactions, and ancestry. Specifically, I develop an account of relational personal identity as a dynamic, socially, culturally, politically, and historically situated communicative activity (based in narrative and performance) that is informed by the interests, perspectives, and creative intentions of close and distant others. As a prelude to this discussion, I provide background information on: (1) some of my earlier musings on identity; (2) the work of feminist theorists on relational autonomy and relational personhood; and (3) recent scholarship on the narrative construction of personal identity. Strands of these discussions are then woven together into a relational account of personal identity in which "equilibrium" is crucial for identity constitution. In closing, I illustrate the implications of the relational dynamic that I describe in addressing one facet of the question: "Who is Barack Obama?"