Rick's Identity

“I remember, I remember everything.”

That was a line from the Bourne Ultimatum, the concluding sequel to the action/thriller hit the Bourne Identity that was released in 2002. Jason Bourne, the protagonist in the series, is a well-trained, highly skilled spy who suffers from amnesia. With “only” his fighting skills and the ability to speak seven languages left in him, Bourne loses memories of who he is. Therefore throughout the timeline of the series Bourne is determined to uncover his identity by triggering occasional gunfights, hand-to-hand combats and explosive car chases. Shockingly the movie ends with Bourne recovering his identity and deciding to abandon it for a normal life.

Unlike Jason Bourne, my identity, or rather my different identities are not well documented and preserved on some super computer in the government archive. Instead, I am in constant search for my own identity, despite the fact that I don’t have amnesia, at least not that I can remember. Then what is identity? Sometimes identity can be explained as a role that one plays in a certain social setting. For example, in school, I am your light-hearted average college student; at work as a community intern at the Cross-Cultural Center on campus, I perform as a dedicated employee; and at home, I act as caring son to my parents. However more often, identity also intertwines with ethnicity, cultural perception and religions. Because of this complexity, my search for identity constantly involves questioning, critiquing and reaffirming.

One may ask, how can we critique and affirm who we are? Kevin Robins provides us with a very creative answer in the textbook. Instead of an innate quality, Robins considers identity a fiction with which people work and live (Bennet, Grossberg and Morris,175). I find Robins' explanation very close to my own definition. To me, identity is a statement, a declaration we make to ourselves in order to become who we desire to be. Following this statement, we behave and perform to create identification traits to convince people that we are that personality we create in our heads. Does this definition explain every aspect of identity? No. But this is the one definition I have a firm grasp on based on my current life experience and knowledge. And so my search for identity continues.