Right, so I think I know who I want to be, how I want to be perceived, and who I want to be identified with, but how far is that the real me and my true self? And, as a naturally theatrical ‘individual’, how far is this true self the ‘front stage’ performance I present in my everyday social interaction (Erving Goffman 1959).
So, this post may be a bit of a move away from the visceral domesticities of my previous ones but one can’t indulge solely in nappy changing, sock tantrums and washing machine cycles without some cerebral musings into the nature of blog writing and how one is being perceived. I think it is worth mentioning that never did I imagine that when I did eventually get to set the world alight in the blogosphere I would focus my writing on being a beleaguered mother. I honestly thought that having a child would be a little addition, an extra dimension, to an already ‘fully formed’ and self possessed individual with lots to say about the world at large.
My identifications with other social groups such as state school teachers, born and bred Londoners, ‘dysfunctional singletons’, English graduates, contemporary feminists (in the Caitlin Moran style of ‘girls rock’ feminism) and Indie music fans are all perhaps how I tended to enjoy defining myself; the identifications varying in prominence depending on my social situation. David Buckingham‘s essay on Identity (Yes, another social group that defines me at this stage in my life: MA student at London’s IoE!) and the multiple identifications we manage in our construction of identity, has helped clarify how parenthood has become a key social and psychological factor in my sense of self. I find myself following various ‘Mommy in DM boots’ style blogs since starting this course and feeling a real sense of affirmation of who I am as part of this specific collective.
The irony of this – our individual identity being so dependent on our relationship to group collectives and social identifications with others – is an issue which leads to many of the complexities surrounding identity as a concept. ‘Identity politics’ and the dangers of ‘essentialism’ (generalisations that assign marginalised groups a single identity) are caught up in this. Buckingham summarises the fundamental conflict that arises: that in trying to take on the dominant powers through promoting solidarity and group identification, ‘identity politics‘ as social activism can reduce and disempower the individual in their multiple dimensions. It can also have a negative impact on binary oppositions who stand outside the group. Looking at the ‘power’ of and perception of online groups like Mumsnet.com – the criticisms of an anti-male agenda and its role as a target for political support – might be an interesting discussion for a future post, maybe.
Coincidentally, this week ‘Mom at Work’, a fellow blogger (albeit in a different league – her articulate posts sucked me straight in after a recent appearance in the Freshly Pressed feed), has chosen to write about how her identity has been affected by being a parent. Her words resonate with me totally in my current situation. This blogger’s comments on how, for most in her new post-grad class of independent and intelligent women, the ‘mummy’ tag seems to override all others, are particularly amusing and apt for the focus in this post. It’s great stuff. Check out how futile she found it trying to resist using the ‘And I’m a mom and I love it!‘ line as her one extra defining fact about herself after basic ‘circle’ introductions:
As is typical during these first class sessions, there was a lot of introducing going on in my classroom – my name is so and so, I work at such and such, and so on and so forth. One at a time we went in a circle stating our name, age, educational background, occupation, and one interesting fact about ourselves. Amazingly enough, all of the women in the class responded with the same response, which was some variation of “I’m a mother and I LOVE being a mother!”
Some of the “interesting facts” included: “My boy just turned three and one quarter years old and he’s my world!” and “I have a sixteen-year-old daughter and even so I decided to start over with a six month old!” and “My kids are all grown, but they never stop being my babies!”
There were ten women in the classroom, including me and the professor, and of these ten women only two did not mention children – the foreign student, who had enough trouble just spelling her name for us, and me. One woman did not have children, but feeling the pressure perhaps of so many experienced ovaries she dug deep into her toolkit and found two nieces and a nephew with which to define herself…
(‘Mom at Work’: EXPIRED ID in my blogroll.)
Moving away from Mummy Blogger identifications … Identity and Social Networking Theories
NB. Please excuse any lack of coherence – this is an attempt to cover a myriad of suggested questions from my course tutor whilst maintaining my developing ‘blog identity’, still in its unstable infancy.
To move on to theories surrounding identity, Erving Goffman’s ideas on social interactions as ‘performance’ are an area I hope to explore in my foray into blogging and myself as an online construction. The idea of ‘front stage’ performance versus a more ‘honest’ ‘backstage’ self is one that needs reexamining in light of the contemporary and digital world we now live in.
Public and private boundaries are blurring and it can be said that ‘private’ lives/’true selves’ now are increasingly part of a ‘cinematic life’ and a product of the media orientated culture we live in. Personal diaries and private family videos are plastered all over Facebook – and net curtains are distinctly out of fashion. The ‘back stage’ has been hauled into the forefront. Whilst watching strangers tweezing their eyebrows or snuffling in their sleep, as cameras capture endless inane reality on shows like Big Brother, it seems that the significance of Goffman’s idea of ‘front stage’ social performance in the Britain of the 1950’s has undergone a fundamental change. Social awareness and identity construction in Goffman’s terms appears in these contemporary cases to be minimal; the seemingly unconscious ‘honesty’ presented here is apparent and clearly part of the show’s appeal, and perhaps demonstrates the external media’s (as opposed to the individual’s) control of personal identity.
So is there a big distinction between personal identity and social identity anymore? Does conscious self reflection make your ‘identity” more artificial?? How honest can our online identity be where we appear to have so much more room for experimentation and ‘creativity’? Is it any less honest than our offline identities? And, are the two merging as we actually become what we strive to construct on our social networking home pages? All questions I won’t pretend I can tackle here…
Anthony Giddens gives a much more contemporary view of the changing nature of identity in the ‘digital age’. He focuses on how modern consumerist culture has forced us all into the business of taking our identity seriously, or at least to be more explicitly aware of our constructions of self as online commodities. His view that we are now liberated by the ‘multiple possibilities’ of online culture suggests that we can now be more creative and diverse in our constructs of self, part of a broader process of democratisation. He implies the move away from the traditional age where identity is pegged on gender, age, class, race etc. to an age where “…lifestyle, media consumption, and affinity spaces” (Guy Merchant) define us more dominantly .
Whilst I like Gidden’s optimistic theory, Michel Foucault‘s warning that this is just another form of ‘governmentality’ is one that must be taken into consideration when looking at the impact social networking technology is having on the very concept of individuality. His view that technology is now just another way of exercising power over the individual is fundamental when debating how far technology is shaping or being shaped by broader society. Where Giddens talks of self reflection, Foucault talks of self surveillance and monitoring. He claims that, like with most organising social forces, people actively seek to regulate themselves to conform to the dictates of society. This is an interesting debate – are we really expanding as individuals on the net or constantly honing our online ‘selves’ to conform to ultimately limiting norms?
As someone who always felt that they were the leading protagonist in their own novel (or the ‘star’ of their own movie), I have always felt that my personal identity was a ‘performance’ to be weighed up and reflected on; a ‘narrative’ to ‘keep going’. Writing my personal diary as a gushing, emotionally charged 13 year old, with a gurgling hatred for my younger brother and an obsession with Duran Duran, I had read Anne Frank and I knew that I had a readership to present to (even if it was only my future self). My anchored identity (older sister of two brothers) overlapped with more transient identifications (my passion for Simon le Bon) and this overlapping continues today in my social networking ‘performances’. Thankfully, the natural “fluidity and malleability” of my identity has eroded some of these more transient aspects of my adolescent identity, and parenthood and financial independence has added more defining anchored identifications. Yes, I am permanently under construction …
Fill me up buttercup
Leaving gift … Grubby Pete obsession
Creative and arty
Academia…
The constant awareness of self identity in contemporary society described by Giddens is evidenced in the widespread use of Facebook. Scanning through the 10 or so ‘profile pictures’ in my photos is testament to the multiplicity and ‘fluidity’ of myself as an individual construct. Over the last 4 years or so, I have seen fit to present myself in many ways: there’s me with all the boys in a Camden pub, a pint in each hand; there’s me in specs sitting in front of an interactive whiteboard; me again in a floral dress at a country wedding; tenderly cradling a new born baby in my arms and so on. As well as the I LOVE LONDON icon of a red bus (used during the 2011 London Riots), the close up of just the baby’s legs kicking out in knitted pink bootees is worth a comment – what has happened here? My sense of self at this point appears to be solely wrapped up in an another little being… Mmm.
Now that the novelty factor of this incredible tool is settling, some of the negative social implications are becoming more apparent. Facebook’s lack of creative space, corporate control over lay-out, content, privacy and advertising as well as the diversity of the ‘friends’ you have to ‘appeal’ to in your ‘impression management” can make it quite a stressful experience. I have actively hidden from my newsfeed people who I consider friends (that is anyone you would get drunk with or go on holiday with) as their posts bore me. That’s not always because they’re boring but because I know what to expect from them. Facebook has limited them, and this online predictability is not the same as offline. Unlike lots of carefree Facebookers, I am careful about my own Facebook posts as I am aware of overloading others with my ‘identity,’ so much so that I occasionally delete posts that sound either too braggy or smug or ‘samey’, the ones that on reflection make me feel uncomfortable about my ‘performance’ and how I’m perceived. The relentless and explicit maintaining of my ‘narrative of the self’ is getting tiring under these constraints. I often bore myself.
Dear Friends, I used to love you but now you bore me. I don’t want to know…
Facebooking is certainly a ‘front stage’ performance for me, although in the old fashioned sense, I know for many others (the Big Brother generation?) it is not. They are more in the Giddens mould where there is no distinction between ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’; social norms nowadays embracing ‘real voices’, ‘warts n all’ honest expression. The democratic nature of this cannot be dismissed but again, it is quite overwhelming and not something I find particularly edifying.
As Merchant describes, I am responsible for managing my own narrative and identity, fuelled by action and of course ‘performance’ (increasingly online). In an attempt to answer my initial question, I feel I do live up to this ‘performance’ even when ‘backstage’. Although I choose not share with an uncertain audience overly private emotions, relationships or events (and narratives with no physical respondents can always be made a little more ‘satisfying’!) I tend to conform to the norms expected of the identity I have constructed and maintained. Clearly I do not regale my employers or students with inappropriate information on how many pints I can consume or how I like dancing in my underwear to Pulp , but this construction I have nurtured gives me some leeway, as my life choices and the time I live in have ensured many freedoms. Many of my more mundane or challenging life experiences are hurriedly, almost unconsciously, being written up in my head, not necessarily for others but to maintain my own coherent sense of self! I am aware of myself as a cultural product, susceptible to media structures and narratives – this ‘artificiality’ does indeed represent me, and I’m not sure what this means…
The blogosphere has opened up new possibilities and inspiration for exploring ‘individuality’ online. It appears to be a space where more sustained presentation of aspects of the self and a more creative construction of identity can take shape. Even if that does mean writing as ‘Brian the Pigeon‘. Your audience are discerning and not obliged to read you because they get drunk with or go on holiday with you. Whilst there are still concerns about the constraints and implications of ‘networked individualism,’ you’re required to “work harder at producing yourself” communicating without the ‘rich multimodal interaction’ of a physical respondent (Merchant). Care is taken with your writing and your quality of expression, extra dimensions of identification can be added in your blogrolls and theme choices, and you do get immersed in the more developed opinions of other bloggers with something to share – all of which lead to increased self reflection and a greater awareness of identity.
After all this deliberation, I think it would be best to finish with a focus on what all this means for the kids, the Net Generation … Buckingham’s essay on the role of digital media and youth identity brings into view the dangers of technical determinism. As a teacher of teenagers, his writing has helped, above all, to confirm for me that the basic tenets of media education must be applied to this new social networking technology and addressed in the educational context. Ultimately technology serves the interests of the producers who make and develop it. People must be taught about the limits and constraints of social technology in these terms – if our notion of identity in the contemporary world is to be increasingly shaped by online construction than we must be aware of the implications.
So to refer to Jaron Lanier’s prophetic words about the role of technology in the future demise of the individual self:
I am not a gadget. Well, not yet anyway.
Buckingham, David. “Introducing Identity.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.001
Merchant, Guy. “Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication.” E–Learning, Volume 3, Number 2, 2006 doi: 10.2304/elea.2006.3.2.235
Tags: Caitlin Moran, David Buckingham, Erving Goffman, Facebook, identity theory, London, motherhood, social media
Wonder if she got Next fleece pjs for Christmas?
The TV is all set up, remote in position, cushions plumped and lamps on. Ooh, I’ll just get some snacks in to go with the wine. Yes, the posh glass and that gorgeous Spanish terracotta dish, both suitable for such an occasion. Maybe I should put my Christmas fleece pyjamas on and get really comfy? I know, I’ll just check my messages, email, Facebook, eBay bids, the News (the Queen is unwell afterall), just so I’m sure there is nothing that will distract me once I get into it. Shall I remove my contacts and put my specs on? Did I empty the kitchen bin? How pretty my nails look in the lamp light. I’ll just move the angle of the tv a bit. Ah, perfect. Just puuuuurfect. Hit the play button! Hit it NOW!
Midsomerville Musings 