1st Edition
Transitional Selves Possibilities for Identity in a Plurified World
This book engages with the ethics and practices of identity formation in a world experiencing identity stress. It engages with crucial questions such as: What models are shaping our view of ourselves and the society in which we live? What images ground our perception of what is true and real? How have the images been historically produced? What are the effects of such models on definitions of self? Should we break free from these images if we get to know what they are? Is it possible to change our models in order to create freer identities?
Through a range of distinctive lenses, the essays in the volume deals with the ideas of the ‘liminal self’, the ‘digital self’, ‘identities in flux’, and offers up ‘anthropologies of self/selves’ that situates current identity processes within their cultures and explores strategies and dilemmas from this perspective. This key volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of literary stories, critical theory, social theory, social anthropology, philosophy, and political philosophy.
Foreword: Becoming Blind So We Can See
Sohail Inayatullah
1. Introduction: Identity and Becoming in a Plurified World
Marcus Bussey, Meera Chakravorty, Camila Mozzini-Alister
Part 1: Liminal Identities
2. “Who am I?”: Vertigo and the Identity Threshold
Marcus Bussey
3. The Creative Self: Artistic Performance and the Making and Finding of Identity
John Clammer
4. Ecological Identity through Dialogue
Charles Scott
5. On the Crossroads: Hard and Soft Paths at the Centre of International Education
José van den Akker
6. Transilient identities: Creating queer fictive narratives for transmodern cultural realities
Gil Douglas
Part 2: Digital Identities
7. Oceanic Medium: Technology, Identity and Maritime Imagination in Vilém Flusser
Erick Felinto
8. Virtual Belonging in a Plurified World: online culture and how the formation of the digital ‘I’ impacts an individual’s sense of belonging
Ginna Brock
9. The soul of the profile: The subtle link between the practices of mediation and meditation
Camila Mozzini-Alister
10. Identity and political polarization in post-industrial capitalism
Petter Törnberg
Part 3: Identities in Flux
11. A plunge into the inner self: Reflections about spiritual identity in Neohumanist philosophy
Rachel Andriollo Trovarelli
12. Transitional Self: The Other Being
Meera Chakravorty
13. Identity as a construct: Possibilities of Self-Transcendence
Saji Varghese
14. Identity and Ahimsa
Ananta Kumar Giri
Part 4 Anthropologies of Identity
15. Messengers and Media Messages: Learning, Knowledge and Identity of Muslim Women in India
Zazie Bowen
16. Feeling Sexy and Cool in the Diaspora: The Construction of Hybrid Identities for Young Migrants through Dressing and Dancing
Catherine Rita Volpe
17. High tide or low tide: the navigation of modernity, tradition and kava
Madigan Paine
18. The Ayahuasca Voices: an earthly consciousness
Guillermo Giucci and Sebastián Torterola
19. Identity, culture and migration: A personal narrative of an emergent self
Dexter Da Silva
20. It is Hard Being a Whole in a World that Sees You in Parts
Cherie Minniecon
Afterword
Marcus Bussey
Biography
Marcus Bussey is Senior Lecturer in Futures and History, in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. As a cultural theorist, historian, and futurist he works on cultural processes that energise social transformation. He uses futures thinking and embodied workshops to challenge the dominant beliefs and assumptions that constrain human responses to rapid cultural, social, environmental, and technological change.
Meera Chakravorty is a Research Faculty in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore, India. She has been a member of the Karnataka State Women’s Commission, Bangalore. Her engagement has been with Philosophy, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies Consciousness Studies and Translation projects.
Camila Mozzini-Alister is an adjunct research fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia. Her research affinities are in the interfaces between body, digital mediation, tantric meditation, desire for omnipresence, affection, migration, as well as her work as a performing artist.
