Becoming Multiple

Abstract

AbstractWhen we take part in democratic spaces such as citizens’ assemblies or social movement gatherings, we are judged by our looks, our gender, race, sexuality, age, and bodily ability. Our everyday identities restrict how we can express ourselves, what we can say and who we can be. This chapter develops the concept of a politics of becoming which is realized through disidentification. It explores the freedom of the democratic subject to change. It first considers feminist, participatory, deliberative, and agonistic theory in the search for modes of self-transformation. As these four perspectives render limited results, the chapter introduces a recently evolving perspective: transformative democracy calls for radical transformation of society, as a deep experience of freedom and equality. This transformative perspective enables a politics of becoming. At the heart of the politics of becoming is the notion of disidentification—the rejection of hegemonic identity interpellations through social movements. This results in the emergence of new collective subjects with improper names, such as the ‘99 percent’ or ‘Anonymous’. What remains unexplained, however, is how disidentification can be experienced on an individual rather than a collective level. To answer this question, the chapter infuses transformative democratic thought with intersectional and Black queer theory. Understanding identity performances as masquerade allows for thinking about how the everyday masks subjects are wearing can be deconstructed, resignified, or even abolished. Disidentification enables a temporary interruption of everyday identities, which allows for the expression of different sides of the multiple self.