Disjunctive Selfhood: Reconceiving the Self as Multiple yet Continuous Restricted; Files Only
Goh, Shuang (Spring 2025)
Abstract
In this increasingly globalized world, higher mobility has led to larger and more diverse populations of displaced persons, who have left their original home to create a new home in a foreign land amongst strangers. I argue first, that displaced subjects experience an irreducible multiplicity that does not collapse into a hybrid, due to living in several non-overlapping sociocultural contexts; and second, that they nevertheless still have a minimal continuity of self rooted in time that makes possible the experience of having a coherent, non-dissociative self that does not contradict such a disjunction. This project rethinks theories of the self through durational temporality, and offers a novel perspective on disjunctive selfhood and continuity of identity across multiple life-worlds.
Theories of selfhood tend to fall into two camps: either the self is treated as a stable, continuous entity persisting across time, or it is dissolved into a fragmented, fluid constructs shaped entirely by social forces. Neither approach fully captures the lived experience of those who inhabit multiple, incommensurable worlds—where the self is neither singular nor plural, neither seamlessly hybridized nor irreparably fractured. This project theorizes disjunctive selfhood as a structure of identity that remains ontologically multiple while retaining continuity over time.
Engaging with W. E. B. Du Bois’ double consciousness, Gloria Anzaldúa’s new mestiza, María Lugones’ world-traveling, Mariana Ortega’s multiplicitous self, and Homi Bhabha’s third space, this work challenges prevailing accounts of identity that rely on reconciliation, overlap, or liminality. The disjunctive self does not mediate between worlds but moves through them, shifting between fully instantiated identities without collapsing into a singular narrative. In doing so, it resists both the homogenization of hybrid models and the instability of postmodern fragmentation.
Using Henri Bergson’s durée as a foundation to draw together key insights from all of these thinkers, I argue that selfhood unfolds temporally rather than spatially, with distinct selves emerging in response to different cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts. Unlike hybridity, which seeks synthesis, disjunctive selfhood maintains difference—each self remains internally coherent yet structurally distinct, shaped by its own memories, habits, and temporal rhythms. These selves do not blur into one another, nor do they conflict; instead, they persist as fully realized configurations of being that remain tied together through the movement of time itself.
As globalization, migration, and digital worlds continue to reshape personal identity, theories of selfhood must account for the experience of those who live across multiple, irreconcilable worlds. Disjunctive selfhood provides a conceptual framework for understanding identity as a structure that holds multiplicity without requiring resolution, grounding selfhood not in spatial integration but in the temporal logic of durée.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Disjunctive Selves
1.1 Disjunctive Selfhood: An Initial Sketch
1.2 The Logic of A Disjunction
1.2.1 Level 1: Identities
1.2.2 Level 2: Selves-as-disjuncts
1.2.3 Level 3: Self-as-disjunction, or, the disjunctive self
Chapter 2: Hybrid Selves
2.1 Anzaldúa
2.1.1 Mestiza Consciousness
2.1.2 Nepantla
2.1.3 Nos/otras
2.2 Bhabha
2.2.1 Colonialism, Globalization, Cosmopolitanism
2.2.2 Cultural Diversity, Cultural Difference, and Translation
2.2.3 Hybridity, Third Space, and Enunciation
2.3 Border-Hybrids vs. Disjunctive Selfhood
Chapter 3: Multiplicitous Selves
3.1 Lugones
3.1.1 Worlds
3.1.2 Playfulness & the Construction of Worlds
3.1.3 Insiders & Outsiders
3.2 Ortega
3.2.1 Being-in-worlds, Being-with-others, Being-between-worlds
3.2.2 Multiplicities of Multiplicities
3.3 Du Bois
3.3.1 The Internal Division of Double Consciousness
3.3.2 The Psychological Toll of Two-ness
3.3.3 Multiplicities & Doubles as Disjunctive
3.4 Multiplicitous Selves and Disjunctive Selves
Chapter 4: Temporality as Ontological Ground of Disjunctive Selfhood
4.1 Lewis
4.2 Bergson
4.2.1 Durée as Qualitative Multiplicity
4.3 Zahavi
4.4 Disjunctive Selfhood: Redux
4.4.1 Addressing Theoretical Predecessors: Why Anzaldúa, Ortega, Du Bois, and Others Fall Short
4.4.2 Spatiality as the Expressive Ground of Multiplicity
Conclusion
Bibliography
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File download under embargo until 22 May 2031 | 2025-04-17 23:19:24 -0400 | File download under embargo until 22 May 2031 |
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