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Over the past few weeks, the work we have done in class about life narratives has sparked my interest on the differing pathways that can be used in the construction of human identities. During our PostSecret group presentation, I had the opportunity to delve into the creation of personal identities through visual and the verbal elements in PostSecret postcards. However, looking back, I realize that our presentation suffered a key limitation: in our sole focus on PostSecret, we only touched upon a specific form of self-disclosure- that is, self-disclosure in an anonymous virtual world. We neglected to consider “nonymous” social networking sites such as Facebook, which have come to redefine both our social interactions and our personal identities. In particular, the highly popular website Facebook, (which I assume requires no introduction) provides a virtual platform through which we can shape and re-shape our identities.

Before I move on to my main argument, I’d like to first provide a sociological framework for my ideas, specifically the sociological perspective that we discussed just this past week in our CAP Sociology lectures: Sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy. In essence, Goffman argues that our actions as individuals are a series of theatrical performances. Therefore, much like actors in a play, we adjust and enhance facets of ourselves in different scenarios, assuming masks to project“ideal” images for specific audiences. We see this theatricality explicitly manifested in various forms in our society. To take an example, when political figures such as Barrack Obama deliver public speeches, they laboriously control their vocal gestures and body language to convey qualities that are socially expected of leaders of their stature- the most prominent of which are conviction, courage, strength, and integrity. Once they descend the stage and are away from the public eye in the “back stage” they undergo a transformation. But this is not restricted to political figures. We also change masks constantly in our everyday lives. For instance, the version of ourselves that we show our parents distinctly differs from the version that emerges in the company of our friends.

Taking this into consideration, it could be said that Facebook is its own theatrical stage, where people put forth a “front stage” performance. Through a combination of symbols, photographs and text, individuals present, shape and alter their identities. The template of the personal profile itself allows users to divulge a significant amount of personal information, including personal preferences. These serve to classify them into specific subcultures, acting as vehicles to the projection of a highly-specified “self”. Yet self-representation is not limited to the “About me” box, far from it in fact. Each picture and status, however insignificant it may appear, can actually be considered an identity marker.  A relatively new addition to Facebook that I find fascinating in terms of identity construction is the Timeline Review, a tool that allows us to check photos or posts that we are tagged in before they appear on the public timeline. As you can see below, the tool offers the option to accept or deny the post before it is posted on the timeline. Further, it enables the user to decide which specific Facebook friends will have access to the content. Features such as this are allowing us to attain even more control over who gets to see what dimensions of our personality. As Facebook users, we specifically select the dimensions that we want to highlight. Those that we want to conceal are literally “hidden” from our timeline, helping us to construct segmented online identities.

Returning back to the idea of Facebook as a metaphorical theatrical stage, does this then mean are we all wearing masks?

Perhaps not.  Then again, I do believe that, given the multiple tools that we have to construct our identities, we should be more critical consumers of Facebook profiles.

What do you think?

Can the selves we show in social networking sites ever be considered “authentic”?

It is often believed that our memory is an unreliable source of knowledge: we hear that they should not be trusted, as they only captures brief and unpredictable details of our experiences, if not the broadest gist of these experiences. In recent years, findings in the disciplinary field of psychology have revealed that memories are constructive and deconstructive. In a TED talk by the memory psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, she likens them to “a Wikipedia page”, stating “you can go in there and change it (but so can other people)”. English essayist George Orwell also alludes to the changing nature of memory in his essay Such, such were the joys: “in general, one’s memories of any period must necessarily weaken as one moves away from it. One is constantly learning new facts, and old ones have to drop out to make way for them.” Within their respective fields, these scholars emphasize the dynamism of memories, stating that their constant influence by other knowledge pathways means that they in a perpetual process of change.

This week’s discussion on the graphic novel Persepolis has, in particular, urged me to question the production of individual and cultural memory through life narratives. How is that these subjective products of memory come to be deemed legitimate historic records? Yes, they are significant in the fact that they record history and people’s personal experiences stemming from historic events, but shouldn’t their constant change make us question whether they should be used as evidence? A highly celebrated personal memoir, Persepolis has gained worldwide recognition for its exploration of the act of bearing witness to the atrocities of the Iran revolution and its aftermath. In its careful weaving of the Iranian historical events with her individual experiences, the graphic novel embodies the act of reminiscing. However, given the faulty and biased nature of our memory, can we truly say that Persepolis presents an accurate representation of the Iranian history?

As a graphic novel, Persepolis is narrated in the past tense and divided into three distinct chapters, each encapsulating key experiences throughout young Marji’s early lifetime through the use of flashbacks. As the memoir is narrated in selective chronological order, the reader is taken through time shifts, with the author Satrapi controlling the segments available to the reader. This segmented, disjointed structure that mimicks Satrapi’s own thought process as she embarks upon a recollection the events in her early youth. Yet, it means that we, as readers, only receive a series of episodic breakdowns of Satrapi’s life under the unstable and dangerous political arena in Iran. Writer George Orwell would not deem this selective nature of memory necessarily a bad thing, particularly as he contends in his aforementioned essay that “it is possible that one’s memories [can] grow sharper after a long lapse of time, because one is looking at the past with fresh eyes and can isolate and, as it were, notice facts which previously existed undifferentiated among a mass of others”. In other words, while the content of our collective memories may have diminished over time and may have become more contaminated and distorted with time, often this isolation from past memories allows writers to identify those that are most significant in exposing past realities. Thus, the distance from memories can give people a new perspective, a more mature and insightful way of looking at their past and extrapolating their experiences to wider applications.

Therefore, I think that the fact that Persepolis is based upon Satrapi’s memories does not actually undermine its validity, if anything it allows her to bring out the most relevant experiences to portraying the trauma she experienced in her youth in Iran.

What do you think?

Image links:

• http://iranian.com/Books/2002/November/Satrapi/Images/1.gif
• https://blogs.stockton.edu/postcolonialstudies/files/2011/03/the-veil.gif
• http://unleashthefanboy.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/persepolis-1.jpg

Over the past few weeks, our focus on life narratives in class has prompted me to re-consider their “autobiographical agency”(1) in shaping the global perception of cultures. In her book “Autobiographies in Transit: Soft Weapons”, and in particular in the chapter “Introduction Word Made Flesh: Whitlock argues that, as commodities exchanged through highly complex global networks, life narratives can influence our perception of the values, traditions and forms of thinking intrinsic to a culture or to a multitude of cultures. As a result, life narratives can contribute to reinforcing or defying cultural stereotypes, and consequently to fortifying or weakening cultural barriers. However, for me, it was difficult to grasp that a sole life narrative could have so much power, which has prompted me to question: How specifically do they achieve this? What literary features are involved in the molding and presentation of a culture and in the construction of cultural barriers?

Having read the blog Baghdad Burning, written by a 24-year-old female Iraqi woman in the midst of the American war invasion in Iraq with the pseudonym “Riverbend”, I became increasingly curious as to what these specific literary features were: how is it that they present cultures, and by consequence often reinforce cultural divisions?

Therefore, I sought to investigate the ways in which literary devices in Riverbend’s blog reinforce and challenge cultural divisions, by focusing in particular on her last blog entry. In the entry, written on the 9^th of April, 2013, Riverbend reflects on the fall of Baghdad exactly ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as the events that have occurred since then and her feelings towards them. She comes to the realization she has become the voice of her nation and believes that it is her duty as a citizen to talk about what has happened in Iraq, assumingly to a Western audience. Inherent to the entry is a focus on the knowledge that Iraqis have gathered in last decade and the changes they wish to see in the future.

A particularly salient feature of this entry was the recurring repetition of collective pronoun “we”. In her emphasis on this collective gradual process of learning, Riverbend presents the Iraqi people as a strong united entity, demonstrating the tight communal bonds between the Iraqi people and. There is a determination and a willpower that also propels the passage onwards as each sentence picks up its momentum with a persistent: “we are learning”. However, the use of the pronoun “we” also excludes any foreigners, drawing a barrier between the East and the West in its creation of an exclusive group restricted only to the Iraqi. Although not as prominent in this entry, through the use of anecdotes relating to the struggles that face the Iraqis every day, Riverbend also shows the resilience of the Iraqi people, as they are able to persevere despite living in highly adverse political and social terrains. For example in the entry on the 31^st of April of 2005, despite the electricity shortages and water shortages that they face and are becoming more pronounced with the passing days, they continue to move forward, driven by their need to survive.

Personally, looking specifically at these literary features of blogs such as Baghdad Burning can provide us with so much insight into what people from differing cultures are like. From first hand accounts of what their experiences are like, we can extract small details and deconstruct them to see what they perceive are the predominant qualities of their society and other global societies, and most importantly, how these cultures differ.

Links:

Whitlock, Gillian. Soft Weapons: Autobiography in transit. University of Chicago Press. USA. 2007.

Google Books preview: http://books.google.ca/books?id=4C09Yao332gC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

On Sunday the 15^th of September, I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition “Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools” currently held at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in the UBC Vancouver campus. Having discussed the Truth and Reconciliation commission and the Indian residential schools in class before visiting the exhibit, I thought that I had a sound understanding of the events that transpired in Canada from 1880 to the end of the 20^th century; however, seeing the exhibition showed me just how limited my understanding had been as to the true reality of the Canadian past.

As a collective whole, the exhibition delves into the tarnished past of Aboriginal children and their present reality as they seek to overcome the atrocities they faced in their youth.  Robbed from the safety of their households, young children were thrown into the unfamiliar setting of white Canadian educational institutions and forced to forget their origins, values and beliefs in favor of the “superior” culture. In an attempt to establish a homogenized culture, the regime sought to “take the Indian out of the child”, regardless of the emotional, physical or mental cost to the native communities. Its aim was fundamentally to establish a factory of mass-produced children, passing them along its conveyor belt as you would products, twisting and turning until they were transformed into identical end products. As you walk through the exhibition, haunting portrayals of the children’s mental, physical, emotional and sexual abuse emerge, serving as a reminder of a Canada’s history of colonialism. Ultimately, the exhibition forced me to face the shattered remains of Aboriginal culture resulting from colonialist practices. It encouraged me to reflect on the power of art in portraying inescapable historic events and communicating the emotions attached to them, and thus to analyze some of the formal and iconographic features of the artwork in the exhibition.

The Lesson, Joane Cardinal Schubert, 1989

One piece that gave me a better glimpse of the true nature of the colonialism and cultural indoctrination of “white” culture in the residential schools was The Lesson by Joane Cardinal Schubert. A chilling installation and performance artwork showcasing the classroom setting, the piece is partially enclosed on two walls by chalk boards, where bold, child-like writings recount descriptive stories of Aboriginal children. An almost palpable human presence is created by the contrasting forms of handwriting on the chalkboard, which collectively construct a disordered visual mosaic of the victims. Briskness, impatience and mounting anger are conveyed in the rapid chalk strokes and uneven lines of the writings (a quality also distinctly visible in Gina Laing’s Untitled pieces). Yet, in The Lesson, it is the incorporation of the victims’ names that gives the blur of Aboriginal faces a recognizable and tangible identity and thus urges the viewer to identify with them and their struggle. At the same time, the fixed, static and perfectly aligned rows of chairs in the central area of the installation foster an inhospitable, uninviting feeling, re-creating the restrictive environment within the residential schools. It is then that the viewer’s eyes drift to the upturned apples placed neatly on top of the books lying on the chairs, each with a steel hook emerging from its core. This piercing of a common symbol and hallmark of education perhaps alludes to the brutal destruction of the Aboriginal children’s spirit as they were absorbed into the education system.

Overall, I felt that the emphasis on the experiences of select victims in the artwork, coupled with the visible aesthetic impulse, works to construct a foreboding presence of the victims in the room. The generic Indian residential school classroom is re-incarnated before us in the exhibition, yet now it carries with it the weight of a horrific history attached to it and a responsibility for these stories to be told and passed on from one generation to the next.

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