My master's thesis, connected to the graduation project "Identitours":
From the Introduction:
The narrative
The text examines how identity is shaped, while it presents the process of subject
formation as a constant negotiation with external forces. How do we come to know
ourselves when the terms of self-definition are not entirely ours to begin with? Is
there a core, an ultimate self that we can reach?
This project aims to show that identity is not fixed, but layered and shifting, and
that while categories, such as gender, age, and motherhood, operate as structuring
forces, we can resist binary oppositions and pull towards multiplicity, using the
potential and the generative qualities of language.
Person and pronouns change constantly in the narrative: to what extend do gender
and grammatical number dictate our understanding of the story? Semantic fluidity
and shift, resistance, and the pull towards certain word clusters are battlefields
where meaning and identity are resolved and at the same time created, in parallel.
Interactivity and the social dimension are emphasized in the story as essential for
providing affordances that help us move away from unconstructive polarities.
The thesis
There’s a methodological ambition here: Phenomenology, linguistics, narrative
psychology, and social theory come together in a hybrid approach that performs
the complexities of identity through form.
The thesis has developed organically from annotations of the text and functions as
a critical apparatus, an inner dialogue that shapes the way the story is understood,
reinforcing the idea that meaning is constructed in layers, that identity is always
in negotiation between text, interpretation, and context. Writing becomes a
recursive system, a form of computational poetics, self-examining and self-modifying,
shifting meaning through time and perception, mapping how identity is both
emergent and imposed. The arguments go beyond explaining, to enacting the
instability of meaning and the fluctuation of categories.
Fiction and critical theory intertwine in a layered approach, in a meta-text that
does more than narrate: it dissects, performs, and destabilizes notions of identity
and meaning-making, offering both an embodied experience (the protagonist’s
journey) and a meta-awareness of the forces at play (the thesis).