5 Impulsive performative identity: Is it just pointless narcissism?
5 Impulsive performative identity: Is it just pointless narcissism?
Darren Lilleker, Bournemouth University
Perhaps like many around 10pm on Friday 13 November 2015 I was dual-screening. Flicking through social media while semi-watching television. Breaking news invaded my dislocated concentration, gunmen had charged a rock concert at the Bataclan in Paris causing multiple fatalities. As the enormity of that and simultaneous attacks on local restaurants emerged I, like many others around the world became gripped by the news, concerned for loved ones as well as feeling compassion for strangers. Twitter became a place for updates. In French and broken English the survivors, those who came to help and the many bystanders began to report events. The band, The Eagles of Death Metal, were reported injured then safe. The number of gunmen on the loose and stories of manhunts were reported in measured and exaggerated forms. Those outside of Paris simply expressed their concern and solidarity. A trend was to have a profile picture blending your current profile with the French tricolor flag. Facebook helpfully suggested if others wished to do that they simply had to click. I did and for a week I demonstrated my solidarity.
Camilla Hodgson, writing in the New Statesman, derided this phenomenon as a fad; a meaningless act. She argued “If none of your Facebook friends were personally affected by the attacks, then the only people who will see your new profile picture and so-called declaration of support are those who do not need supporting. By changing a photo of yourself for a week, you are doing nothing for the victims; instead, you are making the issue about yourself, by making your public, online persona appear more sympathetic”. But is this dismissal missing the point?
It is true that no symbolic act can help the victims, either the dead or the injured, in the aftermath of such an event. But they are sadly not the only victims. Terrorism is designed to make the masses feel vulnerable, to seek to blame others and to seek forms of solace. While there were no reported figures for expressions of solidarity, many in Paris who understandably felt under attack may have felt supported. The simple symbolic act identified a community who cared, caring at least enough to make a public demonstration of empathy. Therefore these random, symbolic and impulsive acts of caring may have had some psychological ramifications. The action may make ‘the issue about yourself’, but may also have had a wider positive impact regardless of the intentions.
The bigger question is whether these acts are simply narcissistic. Sociologists have long argued that social interactions are representations of identity: through the process of communicating, people are telling others something about themselves. These notions have their root in Judith Butler’s theories of performative identity. Butler discussed communication as ‘self-making’, that all forms of communication are mechanisms for makin