Blog Post 4

 

     From reading Cooper's piece on social identity and agency I was intrigued to give my thoughts on what social identity and agency means to me. Cooper argues that there's a choice when it comes to social construction, "the choice between a free disembodied interiority" meaning the choice to live off your own rules and not what the people around you are doing. Or, the choice of an "unfree social construction" which would mean to be involved socially within your own circle where you don't have necessarily all the freedom you'd like to have as everything you would do also affects others. 

    My thoughts for this are that due to agency, it's very rare to see people outside of their social construct in other people's lives. When I was at Kansas State University my freshman year before I transferred, I think I did live a choice to be free within a disembodied world around me that I didn't feel apart of. This was lonely, but I was able to find myself within my own structure. Coming back to the University of Minnesota made me realize that now I had to sort of be apart of this social identity where I'm surrounded next to people I've known for years so my choices don't directly affect them but when it comes to wanting to be your own self there is more judgement from others who actually know me then the one's who didn't actually know my presence even existed. So, the "good" to me when it comes to public discourse ethics would be the freedom that comes with your choices. A lot of the time having a social construct around you can help you learn more than just being by yourself although being alone helps you listen and evaluate your choices, so both can work in a way that benefits anyone. Identity can influence a lot of communication ethics, for example, I am half-Jewish American and within my identity I try and let others tell their story before my version of their story comes out just due to being around a variety of people my whole life from different background. I think that your identity can seriously play a huge role in the way you treat not only people around you, but yourself as well.

Cooper, Marilyn M. “Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted.” pp. 5–6.