Build a Theatre
Rena (u.s.a.)
[Writing experiment]
As you take a late night stroll to clear your head after a stressful day, you find yourself walking down a busy sidewalk a few blocks away from where you regularly roam in your neighbourhood. Suddenly, you find yourself stepping inside what looks to be a small theatre. You’ve never noticed this place before, or perhaps it never existed before. As your eyes focus, you begin to take in a brightly decorated podium, and then, standing beside it, you see someone. They are an androgynous person of medium height, smartly dressed in a three-piece grey suit with satin red accents. You both stand there for a moment, just breathing. Their mouth slowly forms a wide smile and then they begin to speak.
‘Welcome … to the Identity Theatre.’
And then, speeding up, they say, ‘Why are you here? What invisible forces guided you to our quaint little building and all the way through our large double doors? Did you see our posters on the street corner? Or was it our bright lights above the doors?’
Your mouth opens, as if to speak, but then they yell, ‘Wait! Was it the glitter bomb we released above your head as you were about to pass us by?’
Stunned, you blink, and then look down at your legs that are plastered in glitter. Huh, you had not noticed that either. What else haven’t you noticed?
‘Oh never mind all that, it all comes out in the wash,’ they say. ‘Come, come. You must walk through the infrastructure tunnel before the show begins.’
‘Infra-what?’ you manage to croak.
‘Infrastructure. Identity infrastructure. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it before.’
Your eyebrows pop up causing your forehead to furrow. ‘Uhh.’
‘Oh, you’re all the same,’ they mutter, shaking their head. ‘Why can’t just one of you surprise me?’
You stand there confused, but still intrigued about the glitter, trying to catch a glimmer as you slowly move one arm from side to side.
‘How do you all think you came to know just who you are??? Infrastructures! They are mainly invisible, but when you start to look you’ll see their inner workings all around you. Just think about all of the people, places, and things that have influenced your very own identity! Media representation. The education system. Family members, friends, teachers, lovers! They all play a game of show and tell with us. They show us how to be and how to live in ways that others can recognize and easily accept. They subtly - and sometimes very openly - teach us which identities are legible to others. Identities that fit nicely into the men’s and women’s sections at H&M.’
Your brow furrows deeper as you blink a few times, wondering if you skipped your afternoon coffee.
‘Come on, you know what I mean! How do you know whether to buy the more expensive women’s razor? How do you know when you are on a relationship escalator? That last one’s easy - people will start asking you the same questions again and again. When are you two love birds going to get married already and have a baby? They offer you a restricted range of options and they do it so repetitively that those options seem so natural. For many of us they become compulsory. Why do you think people have to come out if they want to be seen?’
Finally, your words come to you, all in a jumbled rush. ‘My identity is mine! It’s not other people’s. What tv show I watch doesn’t make me straight or queer or, or, or a different race than what I was born! Not everyone has kids either! My sister-in-law doesn’t want kids. We have tons of options. Ok sure, sure there might be some pressure, but it’s not like the government is out there trying to control us and tell us who we can be. This isn’t 1984.’
‘Ah, the government. Those old guys. Yes, yes, yes. They’ve been involved for a very long time in this whole game. Actually, that’s where the infrastructure tunnel begins. Come, let’s walk! You’ll soon see that your identity is not yours alone. States like to know every person that makes up its population and identity categories are like gold to them. Here in Canada they erased genders like two spirit, forced everyone into the binary, and then had them marry into monogamous heterosexual partnerships. It’s how they could best control the land they stole!’
‘The land?’
‘Yes, including the land you are standing on right now! Come on, I’ll show you everything. It’ll be fun. It might even loosen you up a little, make you question a few things about yourself.’
As you step forward you mumble, ’Like whether I should wear glitter more often?’
They just tilt their head slightly and then carry on: ‘You should know one thing before we enter the tunnel. Technical systems play a big part in human identity. In a way, they always have. Colonial and imperialist identity management systems thrived because of early forms of technology, and … fast-forward to today, AI and data centres have been programmed to store and process an enormous amount of information about all of us. But … be wary of those who say technology is the thing we should fear the most because of its deep capacity to enact bias and discriminatory policies and practices that are racist, sexist, transphobic, and much more. Technology may have been programmed by too many powerful humans but that is not all it has to offer us.’
As you both continue walking forward, they lean closer towards you and whisper: ‘Some of us have high hopes for technology. Maybe it will help us learn to see our identity infrastructures more clearly. Even understand ourselves as participants in them and figure out how best to exploit them. And maybe … technology can help us see each other with much more flexibility. We could all use a little more space to find out who we are, don’t you think?’