A Multimodal Approach to Identity: Theorizing the Self through Embodiment, Spatiality, and Temporality

Abstract

This article problematizes the theoretical assumption of communication-as-symbolic that delimits the way identity is theorized. I argue that deconstructing identity requires moving beyond the symbolic construction of social categories, and instead focusing on how a perceptual and embodied subject is constituted through communication. Informed by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologically driven approach to critical inquiry, I present a multimodal approach that reveals how perceptual subjectivity and the reflexive body are constituted within, and constitutive of, the symbolic mechanisms of social construction. Utilizing various examples pertinent to intercultural communication, I theorize cultural identity through the perspective of communication-as-embodied.

Keywords:

• Identity
• Phenomenology
• Materiality
• Social Construction
• Embodied Communication

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Janet Cramer, anonymous reviewers, and the editor for their helpful comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sachi Sekimoto

Sachi Sekimoto (PhD, 2011, University of New Mexico) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented and selected as a top student paper in the division of International and Intercultural Communication at the 2010 meeting of the National Communication Association in San Francisco