We're All Incoherent, So There!

It seems as though I must already backtrack on a claim that I tried to put forth in my very first entry in this blog. Well, hey, I expected that to happen. This is a learning space. It looks less and less like I will be creating an identity around, or somehow owning this space, and more like I will be existing and interacting within it. At the moment I am along for the ride, and I'll figure out what happens as I go.

At the beginning, aka a few weeks ago, I decided that I would be "figuring out who I am and discovering my 'identity' from various sources, blah blah blah." This is a misconception that many people seem to have about life writing: the coherent self. It is a myth; it doesn't exist. There isn't one self that remembers every past to present, and who can encompass every identity, affiliation, relationship or interest that one has. Smith and Watson have a good way of putting it (47), "We are always fragmented in time, taking a particular or provisional perspective on the moving target of our pasts, addressing multiple and disparate audiences." Autobiographical writing is instead a performance.

Words from the wise:

~Tiresias - The prophet who existed as both a man and a woman throughout his life claimed that to fully know oneself was to die. Living happens in the exploration and realization of our many aspects.

~Virginia Woolf in Orlando: Orlando tries to call up facets of himself in order to discover which is the "true self", when in fact all are true, but they do not mesh together as one, supporting the idea of the fragmented self.

So, there we have it. No more coherent "self-discovery" from me. Just a performance - or in my case, perhaps an incoherent improv will have to suffice :)