Mapping my identity was an
act of engaging in a complex process of self-determination. It was a process
that empowered me through self-perception. Visually mapping out the diverse
social identities and situating myself within this delineation made me think of
the relation between my personal connections, family traditions, external
conditions, social situations and prejudice, and shared cultural values. It was
a virtual experience of exploring and recovering my personal spaces and see how
they relate to the community, public space, and real life.
As I was reflecting on the
various aspects that affect my identity, I was constantly asking myself if I was
omitting anything that influenced who I am today. The more I became aware of
the complex elements that were taking place on the map, the more I experienced
a sense of self-awareness. During the first phrase of mapping, I visually identified
the explicit or sometimes implicit signifiers that wield control over life and
minoritize difference and also recognizing the targets of oppression that are
affected by them, using the four questions as my guideline. I placed these social
identities inside rectangular boxes and spread them out on the map. During the
second phrase, I placed my personal identities in a circle and placed them
between other social identities that I identified in the first phrase. Finally
through the connecting process, I was able to elucidate how the complex
interconnected relationships of the different identities affect each other and
how my identities were in play under this effect. I used the purple lines to
reveal the places where I am privileged, red lines to show where I am
oppressed, and orange lines to display the general power relations between
certain components on the map. The connecting process made me become aware of
not only the categories of identities but also of the means in which they
developed.
While I was finding to locate
my own position in the identity map, I remembered the moments when I became
aware of or became confused of my identity. For instance, I remembered the
moments when the sense of “inclusion” changed to “exclusion.” Spending my childhood
in the U.S., I had some sort of pride in being the only Asian in the entire
school at that time. During that time, I enjoyed being on the spotlight
whenever the class was learning about different countries and different
cultures. I even had a chance to introduce the customs of Korea in front of the
class with my mother, both wearing our traditional costume, Hanbok. I was a minority then, but my
experience of alienation started when my parents abruptly decided to go back
to Korea. My Korean language skills improved as the time passing, but my
classmates gave me a hard time by treating me as a foreigner in my own country.
Things got better as I grew older but I remember that the sudden change brought
to my life at that time caused confusion and a disorder for a certain time in
my childhood. Then coming back to the U.S. after getting married, I once again
experienced how being an ethnic minority forced me to face prejudice through
media and everyday life. I was struggling to maintain the “pride” for being an
ethnic minority that I held so tight as a child, afraid that it would become substituted
by a sense of alienation.
Taking this certain
experience of mine as an example, I contemplated on how my vision of self was
affected by others. To what extent? Do I rely on that too much? How did the
experiences formed the way I am? How did it become an integral part of my
personality? How different is the image I view myself from the image others
think of me? The identities spread out on the map look like montages but they
are contingent upon each other. Similarly, my own experiences are not an
isolated series of events. Each of them connects my past and present, and makes
me ponder what it means to experience a certain time, place, society, beliefs, and attitudes that affect the process of constructing my
identity as a whole. In the map, I was being present and was trying to figure
out how I navigate the external social space and see what blocks me in my
movement.
As I was trying to figure out
what I see as the affects, however, I also began to wonder if this “process of seeing” was in fact blocking my sight at the same time. I was able to see from the map
that the position where I’m oppressed and privileged is relational. I wanted to
find out if my inner vision was distracting my eyesight that affects what I see
in the present moment. What am I missing? What are the other complex elements
that I fail to see? What are the signs that I see but not their meanings? What
am I making things present and making other things absent? What are the
multiple other rectangles and circles that should come into play on the map?
How should I negotiate the territory in between the rectangles and circles that
are already visible on the map? Am I making appropriate interpretations of the
identities and am I being conscious of the inappropriate ones that I have made
in the past? I was asking myself if the identity of the “we,” as the category
where I confine myself, is a “false identity, based on an agreement and a sameness
that do not in fact exist” (Weir, 2008, p. 128). Since everything is
relational, it is impossible to maintain a stable sense of self due to my
position in the dizzying sociocultural context and to my relationships with
each other.
The map delivers a visual
message to me that my identity is not constructed from a fixed context. It is a
product derived from a fluid territory based on relationships in flux. It’s
about how the external world comes to inform and construct my own and others’
identities and how we cannot be separated from outside influences. Accordingly,
I consider my sense of self not as a result of an internal process but as a
reflection as an external understanding. As Greene (2000) points out that “we
are more likely to uncover or be able to interpret what we are experiencing if
we can at times recapture some our lost spontaneity and some awareness of our
own backgrounds” (p. 52), it is important to acknowledge what my self-reflexive
self is reflecting about and to pinpoint where my self is positioned at the
external location.
Being self-reflective is the
first step towards diversity awareness, because only after this process we can “go
beyond the limitations that come from one's location in a particular place at a
particular moment in history and the experience derived from this” (Weedon,
2002, p. 3). As it is visible in the map, I view myself as a product of
academic discourse. My education comes from an institutional structure, enabled
by the privilege of having the economic means to gain access to education,
which is also grounded on the system of capitalism. Through my education,
however, I think of ways to extend the discourses only available to the
privileged and to encompass everyone in the conversation so that they could
inhabit their own interpretations of the discourse. I want my self-reflexivity
not to be centered on me and not to be confined to the text, but to be placed
in the center of an intersection of shared dialogs. Standing on the intersection where multiple crossings of
ideas occur, I will be able to examine everyone’s front, back, and both sides and
negotiate the meaning of things, whereas standing on a two-way zone will only
allow me to see someone from the front and cause us to collide.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the
imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Weedon, C. (2002). Key issues in postcolonial feminism: A Western perspective. Gender
Forum: An International Journal for Gender Studies.
Weir, A. (2008). Global feminism and
transformative identity politics. Hypatia, 23(4), 110-133.
