Becoming Someone Else
Tameka Norris and the Construction of New Selves
Process philosophy includes the idea that our individual selves are always in process. We are becoming slightly new at each moment, relative to the circumstances of our lives and the decisions we are making. There's a cosmology in this: a metaphysics of novelty. As the philosopher Whitehead puts it, a "creative advance into novelty" is at the heart of the universe: in atoms and molecules, stars and galaxies, people and penguins. We humans are part of the universe; we ourselves are always 'creatively advancing' in one way or another, for good or ill. Existentially, this means that we ought not pretend we fully know ourselves. We are never quite the same as we who we were, or who others might imagine us to be, or who we imagine ourselves to be. We are mysteries, and we can surprise ourselves. In her arts assignment below, Tameka Norris shows how we can become new selves, prophetically and playfully, for life's sake.
- Jay McDaniel
- Jay McDaniel
"Tameka Norris (b.1979, Guam) received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles before graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. Through her work in performance, video, photography, and installation,"