The Politics of Becoming

Abstract

AbstractWhat roles do our identities play in democratic politics? When we participate in citizens’ assemblies or in social movement gatherings, we are judged by how we look, which clothes we wear, by our skin colour, gender, and body language. Prejudice does not only lead to discrimination but also limits the freedom of expressing ourselves. The Politics of Becoming explores radical democratic acts of disidentification to counter this problem. Anonymity in masked protest, pamphleteering, street graffiti, and online debate interrupts our everyday identities. By concealing who we believe ourselves to be, anonymity allows us to live our multiple selves. In the digital age, anonymity becomes an inherent part of everyday communication. Through our smart devices we express our selves differently. As cyborgs our identities are disrupted and reassembled. We curate self-representations on social media, create avatars, share selfies and choose the skin colour of our emojis. To counter discrimination and express ourselves more freely in democratic spaces, we need to embrace our inner multiplicity. This argument does not break with the feminist politics of presence. Claiming and reinterpreting marginalized identities is a crucial element of an emancipatory democratic strategy. The politics of becoming, however, rereads presence as the performative act of self-creation. Drawing on queer, gender, feminist, and anarchist thinking, this book argues for an interruption of the dominant order to engage in self-transformation.