Final Reflection

Dear Lil,

          Even in those two words alone, a clear distinction can be made between where I started at the beginning of my studies in writing, rhetoric, and identity and where I now stand. My initial understanding of identity largely drew upon my own religious affiliation and my undergraduate thesis where I explored the identity of Lewis Carroll's Alice as she made her way into Wonderland and through The Looking Glass. I point to my thesis so often because it is the "landmarking" artifact that drove me to graduate study, to taking myself as a researcher seriously, to an unrelenting interest in children's literature, and finally to a close analysis of identity as it pertained to child v. adult consciousness. Identity to me at that time was what I would call a "two-way street". Identity was a composite of my nature (or soul) and the social experiences impressing upon me. Even upon pressing further into the coursework and conversations of our class, I maintained this ideology for my own self-security. That is, until my security blanket was pulled from my hands. And like a child, I was left wide-eyed and wobbly.

       
          Upon reflection, I credit Julian Baggini's TED talk for the shift in my understanding of identity and the shattering of my former premise. I see now that I had to be taken aback in order to re-evaluate my idea of identity before I could move forward to begin recognizing the significance of discourse as "building-block" of identity construction. Recognizing identity as a social construction (with no illusions of a natural self) was not without its challenges. But in relenting my own authority over my own ideology of identity, I came to recognize that the "natural self" was an impression used to cover the errors of social injustice.

          If people believed that their identity and social situation was in their control, there would be no reason to seek out the social pressures which violated their own power. It felt like nothing short of a paradox. As soon as I was ready to let go of my tight grip on the core and individualized self (similar to its sister, the American myth of individuality) I could begin to see the possibilities and potential for (albeit minimal) agency.

          Upon drafting the piece, Who Am I Bringing To Class?, online dialogues began to form between myself, my peers, and my writing group. I point to the artifact below which documents my conversation on the fluidity and improvisation of identity. It wasn't until crafting and reading these pieces, Who Am I Bringing To Class, that I became aware of how much of my identity and others I associated with the past, including experiences, activities, and emotions that build layer upon layer to construct the individuals of any present time. Never once did I consider to draw attention to the possibility that identity could be influenced by future predictions or motivations. Agency then became more feasible, rather than a distance impossibility.

          The next task on the agenda, and "landmark" for my learning over the course of the term, was the Critical Narrative Project in which my examination of identity began to take a focus and streamline into my plans for a Rhetorical Analysis. 

          In this project, I chose to examine the identity of the fan (or fandom) using a narrative assemblage of perspectives from fans, non fans, society, and scholars. In doing so, Holland's figured worlds became clearer as the project came to illustrate the multiple performances that identity can convey depending upon the figured world in which it acts and improvises. Because identities are developed in social practice, they are fluid, improvised, and constantly in flux from the varied figured worlds in which people act and live. For the fan, I realized that a specific performance was being made possible through the practices of curation. A composition practice which strattles the art of creating and consuming.

After "practicing" with Gee's Building Tasks my first "aha" moment in applying these methods of discourse analysis came to me late at night with my back towards my couch and my artifacts thrown abt me on my apartment floor.

          This was the first time that I began to articulate (albeit in a disjointed format, but my thoughts were coming too quickly for my hand to keep up) how my artifacts were using language to convey an identity, draw significance to an activity, perform a relationship, or discard relevance to gender, class, or race.This artifact was one of several which had the good fortune of making it into my paper. 



          One of the many challenges of this course was reigning in my "inner geek". The amount of material that kept flooding to mind, ripe with the potential for analysis, was overwhelming and oddly reassuring at the same time.






          Above all else, this course has enlightened me to the potential and struggle that may lay ahead of me if I choose to pursue the possibilities that discourse analysis provides for fandom (participatory) culture.In conflict with the conventional assuredness that students are "supposed" to leave a course feeling, I in fact feel the opposite. I'm unsettled. I can't leave my rhetorical analysis alone. And I probably won't. I am leaving this course (but not my studies in writing, rhetoric, and identity) with more questions than answers. But I think that's the point. The signifying marker that something is going on beneath the surface. Something that will take hold.