Become Someone Else

“How do you perform your new self that you are becoming?” - T.J. Dedeaux-Norris

Our first unit examines how identity is constructed across multiple media. As we've learned in our discussions today, identity is not flat, static, or preexisting; rather, identity is dynamic, fluid, and thoroughly social. Identity emerges in interaction and is intersubjectively produced across discourse. From Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, we can begin to understand identity across five central principles:

1. Emergence

2. Positionality

3. Indexicality

4. Relationality

5. Partialness

Your challenge for this blog post is take these principles and apply them to your own life.

Your Task:

Taking a selfie is easy. Becoming someone else is a little bit harder. Give some focused thought to the ways you already present your identity and the things you’ve worn or experiences you’ve had that have challenged the way you see yourself. This is an introspective exercise, but with potentially wide-ranging and outward effects, offering insight into your persona and how you present yourself to the world. Your transformation can be big and obvious or small and subtle. You are your own guide—but to which “you” are we referring?

1. Take a selfie 📸

2. Change one thing about yourself—your physical presence, your clothes, your tone of voice, the way you approach others, anything.

3. Go out into the world and interact with people (following UIUC guidelines regarding facial coverings, social distancing, and so on). You can also interact with people digitally.

4. Take another selfie documenting your transformed self.

5. Write a 750-1000+ word blog post that documents your experiences. What do you understand about yourself differently than you did before? Connect your blog post to the Bucholtz and Hall reading--how did their principles inform your process?

How to Do It:

• Physical aspects can be the easiest to change (hair color, clothing, accessories, makeup), but consider how you might adjust your attitude, your tone of voice, the way you walk, or how you interact with others.

• What do you own that you never wear because in it you “don’t feel like yourself”? Think about why you feel that way, and then try it on.

• Feeling uncertain? Try various adjustments alone and in the safety of your home / dorm, observing yourself in the mirror and imagining what it would be like to interact with others.

• Consider using a medium other than photo or video to capture your experience if you’ve changed something less physical/obvious. A journal entry, a drawing, or sound recording might be a better outlet for your findings.

• Try changing the same thing and sharing it in different parts of your life or around different people you know. Does the experience vary at all? Are you more comfortable in one place or another? Is it easy to change something while you’re alone but then hard to maintain it around your friends, your family, or strangers?