Zygmunt Bauman 's 'liquid time''(2009) - quote and reference to self -identity

Extract from K Thompson Published in the sociology review in february 2009 [...]Bauman also has a pessimistic take on the common practice of the continual reinvention of the self. Bauman argues that the process of constructing an identity is sold to us as something that is fun, as something that should be pleasurable, and as something that is indicative of individual freedom. One only needs look at the various networking and profiling sites to see that the expression of self identity is something associated with pleasure and leisure. It has become a normal part of daily life to spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and money on constructing, maintaining and continually transforming one's self.

Bauman, however, reminds us that although we may think we are free, we are actually obliged to engage in this process of continual reinvention because our social lives are in continual flux. Furthermore, many identities are not rooted in the local, the social or the political, they are much more floating and transient, based on fashion, music, and interests, and Bauman interprets many of these strategies as an attempt by individuals to try and escape from a world over which they have no control.

Following Joseph Brodsky, Bauman is rather scathing of the range of shallow strategies many of us adopt to escape from the world, and ultimately argues that they are all pointless....

"you may take up changing jobs, residence, company, country, climate, you may take up promiscuity, alcohol, travel, cooking lessons, drugs, psychoanalysis.... In fact you may lump all these together and for a while that may work. Until the day, of course, when you wake up in your bedroom amid a new family and a different wallpaper, in a different state and climate, yet with the same stale feeling toward the light of day pouring through your window." (105)

Bauman seams to be arguing that individuals will never find peace of mind, never find `who they really are' unless they have stability and security, and in order to have that, people need to root themselves in local and national institutions, otherwise, our attempts to find ourselves through the reinvention of the self will always be less than satisfactory.

Aberystwyth notes 2

Extract from video of Interview:
Noyale to Rebecca

N:
Describe your online profile
R
Incomplete...not sure...unnecessary...big online presence...traces....records...images...reviews...where I live...my age...how I look like...private...I delete past...I like it....make contact....Japan....immediate sense of what is happening...carefully edited...nostalgic...remembering....try to delete myself...I hate
N
Describe your physical profile
R
Flesh...small....4''11...slimish but not thin...well proportioned...white...pale...curly...structures...pointy nose...dependable....sharp bones structures....changeable weight...7 stones...small physical presence...invisible....I feel quite big...quite loud...the loudness of my family...I talk too much...I like everyone at peace together at peace...I am artist....writer...researcher...wife...partner...daughter...future mother...a dancer...an actor...a thinker...a reader...a gardener....a philosopher...a vegan activist....I like the sea....I like to seat in cafes...I am 31....I was ill...traces of medical records.
N
Describe your homepage
R
Simple...different sections...under construction...unfinished...finished...gallery and about me...waiting to see what I want to say about myself...chronological...dark and bright...some images missing...
N
Describe your home
R walks through the imaginary parents home and marriage home
marriage home....gran-ma's table...myself as a child...4 pm winter light...curtain...small place...800 books...big sea view...irritation...damp...dirty floor...smells of gran-ma
Parent's home...pyjama...small 1930's...lots of memories...pictures of me as a child...dark...usually someone else...history repeated...garden..

We have then discussed the notion of displacement and territeriolisation in regard to not being able to print yourself in the space - this is related to the three space we have worked in PAF (france), New Cross studio and Aber I would also add Middlesex campus as well.
The future/past self of the online identity as a projection of the self but in the same time software like twitter are suppose to be about sharing immediacy - twitting someone about present  to 1000 of people at once - multiplicity.

the body...or the self?

I am interested in looking at the term 'self' in relationship to the usual use of the term 'body'. I would suggest to look at the framework of the technology of the self and the idea of distributed self and the need of decentring in collaborative work.
Territories and techniques of deterritorisation ...

How important are spatial and geographical considerations to daily experiences of the body?

Today my head is with the ducks at Regent Canal ... but here I am typing on the keyboard of my laptop sitting on my sofa...