Transitional Selves: Possibilities for Identity in a Plurified World

This book engages with the ethics and practices of identity formation in a world experiencing identity stress. It engages with crucial questions such as: What models are shaping our view of ourselves and the society in which we live? What images ground our perception of what is true and real? How have the images been historically produced? What are the effects of such models on definitions of self? Should we break free from these images if we get to know what they are? Is it possible to change our models in order to create freer identities? Through a range of distinctive lenses, the essays in the volume deals with the ideas of the ‘liminal self’, the ‘digital self’, ‘identities in flux’, and offers up ‘anthropologies of self/selves’ that situates current identity processes within their cultures and explores strategies and dilemmas from this perspective. This key volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of literary stories, critical theory, social theory, social anthropology, philosophy, and political philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: Becoming Blind So We Can See 1. Introduction: Identity and Becoming in a Plurified World Part 1: Liminal Identities 2. “Who am I?”: Vertigo and the Identity Threshold 3. The Creative Self: Artistic Performance and the Making and Finding of Identity 4. Ecological Identity through Dialogue 5. On the Crossroads: Hard and Soft Paths at the Centre of International Education 6. Transilient identities: Creating queer fictive narratives for transmodern cultural realities Part 2: Digital Identities 7. Oceanic Medium: Technology, Identity and Maritime Imagination in Vilém Flusser 8. Virtual Belonging in a Plurified World: online culture and how the formation of the digital ‘I’ impacts an individual’s sense of belonging 9. The soul of the profile: The subtle link between the practices of mediation and meditation 10. Identity and political polarization in post-industrial capitalism Part 3: Identities in Flux 11. A plunge into the inner self: Reflections about spiritual identity in Neohumanist philosophy 12. Transitional Self: The Other Being 13. Identity as a construct: Possibilities of Self-Transcendence 14. Identity and Ahimsa Part 4 Anthropologies of Identity 15. Messengers and Media Messages: Learning, Knowledge and Identity of Muslim Women in India 16. Feeling Sexy and Cool in the Diaspora: The Construction of Hybrid Identities for Young Migrants through Dressing and Dancing 17. High tide or low tide: the navigation of modernity, tradition and kava 18. The Ayahuasca Voices: an earthly consciousness 19. Identity, culture and migration: A personal narrative of an emergent self 20. It is Hard Being a Whole in a World that Sees You in Parts. Afterword.

About the Author :
Marcus Bussey is Senior Lecturer in Futures and History, in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. As a cultural theorist, historian, and futurist he works on cultural processes that energise social transformation. He uses futures thinking and embodied workshops to challenge the dominant beliefs and assumptions that constrain human responses to rapid cultural, social, environmental, and technological change. Meera Chakravorty is a Research Faculty in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore, India. She has been a member of the Karnataka State Women’s Commission, Bangalore. Her engagement has been with Philosophy, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies Consciousness Studies and Translation projects. Camila Mozzini-Alister is an adjunct research fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia. Her research affinities are in the interfaces between body, digital mediation, tantric meditation, desire for omnipresence, affection, migration, as well as her work as a performing artist.