It has been a week since I have been back from abroad. It feels, in all honesty, like I woke up from a dream – those types of dream one doesn’t forget.
I used to always think people that said that their study abroad experience was life-changing were just exaggerating, that there was no way 4 months could change someone like that. But you only get to see how much truth is in that once you have a semester abroad yourself. I have grown and matured so much in these 4 months that it feels like the experience was longer. But its intensity and challenges are what cause this growth, which I will never forget for the rest of my life.
I write this post on Christmas, a time for reflection and gratitude. As I reflect on how I have changed, one main topic comes to mind: identity and self-perception. At the beginning of the semester in Aix, I participated in a diversity panel, which had representatives from universities from all over the US, asking us questions about how our experience had been in France. I remembered being confused about how I was perceived as well as how I perceived myself. How I was a different person in each place I went, according to my surroundings and the local perspective. It confused me a great deal but inspired a topic of discussion and consideration, in a group and on my own as well.
Later in the semester, as we approached the last week, the dean of IAU approached me asking me to represent this semester’s class on diversity and identity, in a short speech at the end of the semester ceremony. I spent much time thinking about what to write and how my perception had changed ever since the first discussion at the panel. I believe I wrote truly what was in my heart and mind, and it could not have been more honest, as it was right as the bittersweet feeling of leaving swept through me. Thus, my speech, which couldn’t represent more of my feelings and thoughts about my own identity and self-perception after my time abroad, follows:
“At first glance, it seems easy to define “identity”. Identity is simply what it is: “I am Brazilian”, “I am female”. The identity thus conceived seems to be an affirmation (“what I am”), an independent characteristic, an autonomous “fact.” From this perspective, identity only refers to itself: it is self-contained and self-sufficient. It is constraining in a way. But it is also comforting. This unsettling process of identity production oscillates between two movements: on the one hand are those processes that tend to fix and stabilize identity; on the other, the processes that tend to subvert and destabilize it. Like many things, the tendency of identity is stable; therefore, there is no doubt nor uncertainty. There is no discomfort. However, in fact, identity is always escaping. Fixation is a trend and at the same time an impossibility. No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. It’s excitement and constant self-discovery.
Thus, interesting are the movements that conspire to complicate and subvert identity. Contemporary cultural theory has highlighted some of these movements, and, incidentally, the metaphors used to describe them all rely almost on the very idea of movement, travel, displacement: diaspora, border crossing, nomadism. The figure of the flaneur (from French ‘flanerie’, to stroll idly without direction), described by Baudelaire, is exactly what it is: mobile identity. In an explorer and a traveler, one is most likely to find this lack of essential, permanent identity. It is ephemeral and it is dynamic: continually formed and transformed in relation to the ways in which we are represented or challenged in the cultural systems around us. Within us there are contradictory identities, pushing in different directions, such that our identifications are continually shifting. If we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we build a comfortable story about ourselves or a comforting “narrative of self”. Fully identified, complete, secure and coherent identity is a fantasy. Instead, as systems of cultural meaning and representation multiply, we are confronted by a disconcerting and changing multiplicity of possible identities with which we could identify ourselves – at least temporarily. An endless process of internal ruptures and fragmentations within itself, as David Harvey speaks.
Which is why I’m standing here right now. I could describe who I am, I could try and explain how I see myself. But identity is not individualistic; it’s a place where one stands – even if as a transient, like me and like you. It is, moreover, covered in social perspective. Am I how I am perceived? Am I what people are socially inclined to think of me, and do I adhere to whatever I am seen to be?
While conflicting, it is exciting. These questions are also part of it. At every instant, I find myself to be someone new while not losing myself, in a constant paradox. I find parts of me that seemed to have been hidden around everywhere I go. The departure is never the same as the arrival and I am not the same as I arrived. I bet none of you standing here are. You have changed, the people around you have changed, things have come and gone, happiness and sadness shifted our days, but most importantly – this series of events have led you to change. Every second, we all do, our identity, how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us change with every word, every mistake, or even with a stare.
A month ago, at a panel at IAU, I questioned who and what I really was, as I seemed to be nothing essentially. But I have come to understand I am not one single thing; I am all at once, and so are you. There are no limits to identity. As comfortable as having an established place is, we cannot put ourselves in a box. We are a product of ourselves and of others. We bring the idea of movement, travel, displacement, this constant diaspora into ourselves, and we have done so throughout this whole semester. Our traveling feet turn into curious minds. Our every thought turns into a new part of us. And every new part of us turns us to change. The ephemerality of our identities is the fascinating part; it’s limitless and there’s so much more to find out about ourselves and about everyone else. The river is not the same anymore.”
Conclusively, all I can say is this experience has definitely changed me for the rest of my life and will remain one of the best collection of memories and friends I have ever had. I did not expect it to be as hard as it was to say goodbye to this moment of my life – but that only means I had something so worth it that it was hard to bid farewell.