Performativity and identity.
February 20, 2009. Friday.
11:00am - 1:00pm.
Palma Hall lobby.
Showdown at noon, wherein the three parties duke it out and sling mud at each other like master mud slingers while courting the rest of the student body for their votes. Personally, I would not mind a dance showdown instead. Or an actual three-way bikini-clad mud wrestling match between the candidates. But this is good too.
I will attend this event because I am a UP student and the University Student Council concerns me. I will bring my press ID to get out of my class early so I can attend this event, because I am a writer for the Collegian. At the debate, I will be there both as a UP student and a Collegian writer. These are two aspects of my identity that I will have to perform at once.
February 20, 2009. Friday.
8:00pm till late.
9mile bar, Kalayaan avenue.
My last class on Friday (Queer cinema, wherein I will have to engage in discourse about all things queer) ends at 7:00pm. I will then head over to 9mile in Kalayaan avenue and attend this ska gig. By this time, I will shelve my identity as a UP student and a Collegian writer --not shelve it entirely, but push it back so that they are not the dominant facets of my identity-- and perform the characteristics of my other identity, that of the punkish, beer-drinking, chain-smoking skinhead girl.
My skinhead friends, they are only vaguely aware of my other identities: the activist, the writer, the student, etc. They will not know or care that I attended the USC debates. My UP/ Kule friends will not know or care that I attend skinhead gigs and occasionally partake in the curbstomping of emo/ skater kids.
How then is it possible to be so many things at the same time? Who can say which identity is real? How can I afford to protest the state's fascism in the morning and moonstomp with the seig-heiling skinheads at night? Why will I only write creative works in Filipino but be willing to write in English for Kule?
I find my hypocrisy the most delicious thing. And I still stand that all these identities are mine, and I get to do command performances when the occasion calls for it. To be one thing, I find, is boring. To be all and anything is to keep them guessing.