Collective Gender Identity in Michelle Obama’s Becoming

Abstract

This paper studies collective gender identity in Michelle Obama’s Becomingimplementing Stuart Hall’s concept of cultural identity, Judith Butler’s notion of gender identity, and Linda Anderson’s idea of autobiographical subjectivity. The identity of a human represents the self in the social, political, and cultural domains. However, it is not limited merely to the representation but works as a constitutive of that represented self. Being affected by the various instances present around, identity remains in motion. It is multi-dimensional. The identity formed in the past is not left behind, instead, new identities are developed, in addition to the previous ones for the performance of the role. A particular gender body performs as per the circumstances around it. With the presence of multiple identities, Michelle Obama succeeds in positioning herself in variant situations and accepting occurrences in her life. And this clarifies that identity is associated with the roles of an individual in society and the definition produced by the people around. Obama’s memoir has melted the absolute self which means her positionality is the major focus here than the standpoint. Her this melted self accommodates the multiple selves which have succeeded to transform different layers of identities in self. And this process of transformation works as two-way traffic: accumulated all identities into one and has presented all as one, because of which even the diverse forms have been the one. This means Obama, in the memoir, is a society and also gender. The ‘she’ is society itself and sometimes society represents her and this can be viewed in the regime of her gender body.