The Meaningful Contradictions of Our Hidden Identities: A Response to Reviewers

Thomas DeGloma

doi:10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23104

Authors

Thomas DeGloma Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York

Thomas DeGloma is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY (USA). He specializes in the areas of culture, cognition, memory, symbolic interaction, and sociological theory. His research interests also include the sociology of time, knowledge, autobiography, identity, and trauma. In addition to Anonymous (2023), his books include Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery (2014, University of Chicago Press), Interpreting Contentious Memory: Countermemories and Social Conflicts over the Past (2023, co-edited with Janet Jacobs, published by Bristol University Press), and The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism (2023, co-edited with Wayne H. Brekhus and William Ryan Force).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.1971-8853/23104

Keywords:

Anonymity, Pseudonymity, Performance, Self, Identity

Abstract

In this essay, I respond to my reviewers by expanding on some of the core themes I develop in my book, Anonymous: The Performance of Hidden Identities (2023). I argue that anonymity and pseudonymity are in constant tension with personal identity. By putting on a mask of some sort or donning a fake name, we act as though the distinction between the cover representation and the “true” self is meaningful, and in doing so, we make the meaningful contradictions between the hidden and the visible central to our interactions with various audiences. I reflect on my argument and the method of social pattern analysis, the misleading distinction between performance and personal identity, the moral significance of my analysis of different cases, the centrality of power in the performance of hidden identities, and some issues related to typification and the analysis of anonymous acts.

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The Meaningful Contradictions of Our Hidden Identities: A Response to Reviewers

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