Chapter 3
Playing with possible selves and authoring identities
Selves and identities How do I know how to act ethically – to do what’s right in a situation? Should I do what others tell me would be moral behavior, or should I just do what I believe is right? Bakhtin offers a third viewpoint: people ought to be answerable to one another for their actions. In effect, to be ethical we should do the best thing we can live with in a particular situation. To contextualize an exploration of Bakhtin’s theories, I turn first to a work of literature before applying the ideas to child–adult play. On the one hand, to show me what is right, other people can give me advice or point me to a moral code. But, ethical rules have to be interpreted and may not have a clear application in a particular situation. Though the opinions of others are important, only I can live my life and I have to live with the consequences of my actions. On the other hand, if I turn to my beliefs or thoughts or feelings, how do I know which ones I ought to follow? ‘Who am I?’ asks Jean Valjean, a central character in Victor Hugo’s nineteenth-century novel, Les Miserables, as he struggles with how to act. His question probes his sense of self and how he identifies himself ethically. A man, now in chains in the courtroom near the small French town where he is mayor, has been wrongly identified as Valjean. If he identifies himself as a convict who has broken parole, Valjean faces return to the galleys where he had previously spent nineteen years. He knows what that hell is like. If he just walks into the courtroom as the mayor and factory owner he has become, he will be safe but he will have to watch the man be condemned in his place. ‘I am Jean Valjean,’ he finally declares in answer to his question as he strides into the courtroom. His deed is an ethical action performed by his ethical self. But at the same time it is an act of identification with one social group and an erasure of his identity as a member of another cultural group. As he enters the court, Valjean identifies himself as the former convict, and reveals that his identity as the mayor has been built on a lie.
