Identity (who you are) is fragmentary (divisible) and always in flux (constantly changing). It is permeable (I can touch you) and vulnerable (I can hurt you), and the forms that it takes cannot be predicted (you never know who you’ll be tomorrow).
Identity emerges out of social relationships. It emerges out of the division of labor (you and I do different things), and is unrelated to self-consciousness and Self (Descartes was wrong), both of which being artificial constructs of historians and philosophers (who want to be sure of something, anything).
Identity is distributed between the environments (situations) in which a particular medium (way of interacting with the world) has competence and expertise (you are what you’re good at). It is a narrative (a story that is told) built out of experience (learning) and multidimensional development (change) towards an unknowable set of coordinates (into some other person) in an unknowable system (in some other place and time).
Identity is a singularity, an infinitely dense space (I) bounded by a nonlinear function (me) and defined by agency (I can).
Identity must therefore be discursively defined (talked about), ontologically accessed (translated into everyday language), and visibly articulated (creatively displayed).
Clear enough?
[Thanks to Masco, Bess, Vygotsky, Mead, Hutchins, Bateson, Engestrom, D&G, Wiener, and (of course) Karl freakin' Marx.]
bra freakin vo.