#identity construction

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Kate Demolder, 'Solo, spinster, self-partnered - what do we call a single woman?', RTE

This is a representation of one aspect of my identity and life. I identify as a heterosexual female of Mexican American descent. My race and culture is very important to me. In creating this visual, I thought about the main thing that would describe and identify me the best. When growing up we had no self identity and shared my life with twin sister, I later found myself and realizing I was a unique person with my likes, preferences, and identification. The symbolism of being a Mexican American is a large part of my identity as it guides how I live and the means to me to follow my culture. Being brown is a symbol I tend to keep in mind, as it tells people who I am. Lastly the stereotype of being Latina, educated, and a women, Yes I am brown but I am not a chola (gangster), yes I speak English but I also speak Spanish, yes I am married, but I have no children, Yes I work, But no I am not a laborer, Yes I know how to cook, but no I don't cook Mexican food.

It’s amazing how quickly we can revert to our worst selves. I feel just as bad about myself right now as I did when I was a graduate student. I wasn’t one of the professors’ chosen students and I’m currently “just a SAHM” (which is not respected in any way in academia) so I’m dreading this collision of routes and roots. I want to be proud of the route I have taken - I had my reasons for choosing to focus on my family instead of cobbling together a position that didn’t exist at the time. But I guess I have to slog through this shit before I can get to that place. At least I think that’s how it goes.

Andrea Crespo, parabiosis: neurolibidinal induction complex, 2015

Kate Anne Durbin, Hello Selfie, 2014. Performance

The rise in popularity of social networking services (SNS) in the last few years is not unproblematic. The structure and underlying philosophy of social networking services presents two problems regarding user self-presentation of identity. First, the fixity of profiles creates conflict in user self-presentation strategies. SNS privilege a single identity presentation as both “authentic” and “real”, which diminishes user agency. I present a typology of user presentation strategies on Friendster, Orkut, and MySpace that discusses how users navigate this fixity in a variety of ways, and how successful the application architecture is in encouraging a particular type of presentation. Second, I draw from social networking theory to discuss how the presentation of social networks is decontextualized both in terms of relational ties and larger social structures. The social and cultural power inherently embedded in networks is made invisible, replaced with both structural regulation and power (by the application) and political and cultural assumptions in how identity is presented. Additionally, the structure of both application and profiles encourages framing oneself as a consumer and commodifying complicated relationships as social capital.