[Before proceeding with this entry concerning representation and identity, I feel the overwhelming desire to satisfy my compulsion to nod at the economic structure that throws such great stock in the representation. All I'm saying: keep in mind that the dollar is just a piece of paper folks. It merely represents and is not worth the paper it's printed on. But this is neither here nor there!]
Over the summer, I busied myself for an entire afternoon with a project that entailed reestablishing my internet presence. Please keep in mind that for me, at this time, my internet presence nearly could have been characterized as the “opt out” type of presence. While most people focused on social networking and blogs, I focused on creating and eliminating e-mail accounts and nothing more.
A little lame, I admit. However, as I look back on the experience today, I notice that my mundane work with mere accounts that afternoon later informed me about how the web informs the way I assemble representations of my identity. In other words, the ways in which I represent myself through my e-mail addresses (and the information I include and exclude from these e-mail accounts) reflects a characteristic about the rules of assemblage.
At the time, I considered the distinction between professional and personal e-mail addresses as simply rhetorical strategies for the Internet; the address names provide alternate ways of expressing identity for accomplishing some objective in a specific sets of circumstances. For instance, if I seek a job, I do not provide my potential employer with the contact information, sexyturtle22@server.com.
The most obvious example of the professional e-mail address conforms to a familiar structure in which a first initial, last name or some combination thereof get piece-mealed together for the purposes of business correspondence. The classic example: jsmith@server.com. Through this structure, users exclude specific qualities about themselves for rhetorical purposes. They seek jobs.
I will go so far here as to say that this practice of assembling professional representation of identity (and personal ones for that matter) exhibit an element of fascism. The practice exhibits a fascist element in the sense that specific information concerning an individual’s identity gets excluded from the assembled representation and consequently, it gets relegated to the side. Skeptics might say that the practice of assembling representation of identity need not be fascist on the grounds that the e-mail representation does not purport to represent an entire identity; however, here, I disagree.
Consider the individual at a company with a professional work e-mail address who seeks a position outside of his or her present company.
This individual, has created an identity that purports to represent that individual’s entire professional identity within the company. S/he represents to her company a complete professional identity through the identity of that e-mail address. Now, look what happens when that individual seeks a new position outside of the company. S/he creates an e-mail address (or s/he assembles a new representation of her identity that the former identity cannot acknowledge. In other words, the alternate professional identity allows information concerning alternate employment opportunities while the current professional identity (with the company) must exclude all of this information. Thus, through a fascist practice of hard-line exclusion and relegation, the individual assembles a new representation of identity.
I’m loving this right up to the charge of “fascism.” If this is the case, then all audiences are fascists — all audiences make some sort of demand upon rhetors.
It perhaps grants the hypothetical company more power than it really has to say that there’s any sort of “hard-line exclusion” going on. I don’t use my personal email addy at work, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have it. It’s still mine, still part of “my story,” as it were.
Are we really talking loss, or just a particular expansion within constraints?