At the intersection of ethnography, psychology, interactionism, and feminist theory, this essay invites readers to take a closer look the complex gymnastics of self woven from these sundry accounts of identification, to understand mechanisms at work in the domains of play and fiction but also beyond, and to broaden the paradigm of the coherent, constant individual self to include the unstable, heterogenous nature of ordinary identities. At the same time, this work lays the groundwork for a much-needed conversation about one of our era’s great cultural controversies: who can play at being whom?
Anthropologist David Berliner is a professor at the Free University of Brussels. In addition to many scientific articles, he has written several books, among them Perdre sa culture (Losing One’s Culture; Zones sensibles, 2018), winner of the 2019 Belgian Society of Authors Essay Prize (SACD-Scam).