(no subject)

[proximoception]

I'm confused when people mention "self-identity." I guess it's a mistake, but new mistakes happen for a reason. Some self must have leaked out of the concept of identity and the addition aims to restore it. Maybe we're getting used to a Johari Window approach, and want to distinguish aspects of our identity we perceive from those only others do - I had a teacher once who said his students know less and less per year about everything except psychology, about which they'd been getting pretty savvy, which he attributed to talk shows. Maybe the phrase is evidence of both trends.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I think it probably trickled down from "self-identify" as a verb, in the sense of the identity you ascribe to yourself rather than the identities other people may ascribe to you, as in "I self-identify as queer woman rather than as a lesbian." Which in turn must have come from the more supercilious "self-identified" meaning an identity someone presumed that's not necessarily warranted, as in "A self-identified expert."

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Sounds right, and weird. I guess various ways in which identification became something done to you, institutionally, are part of what led to the split - police lineups, familiy members identifying dead bodies, various ID cards. Id-entity means something like 'private being' etymologically, what one is as/by oneself. I identify as someone confused that I might now need to self-identify.