Persona Studies 2015, 1 (1) 

SECTION INTRODUCTION  
WHEN ARE YOU MOST LIKE YOUR 

SELF? 
 

GLEN N D’CR UZ 
 

What is the ‘self’? Is it a category of identity, a state of being, an object of contemplation? 
Is the self another name for soul, psyche, spirit, mind or body? And what gives us our ‘sense of 
self’? DNA? Ideology? God? These vexed questions continue to occupy the minds of scholars and 
artists in a variety of disciplines and creative practices, for the ‘self’ is a key term of distinction 
— one that confers us with a unique sense of identity. 

The terms ‘persona’ and ‘self’ are enmeshed; they are mutually constitutive since the 
presentation of a public self or persona necessarily implies a private self, or, at the very least, 
something that is concealed by the construction of a persona. If the term ‘persona’ refers to 
some kind of social mask or performance, what lies beneath the mask? What entity controls or 
directs the presentation of public personae? Whether we accept or reject the existence of a core, 
or essential self, we are compelled to act as though we possess a sense of self even if this self is 
persistently under siege.  

Today, more than ever, most people find themselves living part-time lives in part-time 
worlds, each with their own particular regulations and expectations. In other words, we 
perform multiple roles — parent, worker, lover, mentor, friend, hobbyist — and adopt a series 
of personae to cope with the varying demands of each social performance.  

But how do we prioritize different roles when they clash? Does the role of parent trump 
the role of worker? Is there some ‘core’ self that negotiates the demands of different roles and 
personae? Can we accept our multiple identities or do we feel we can only be one identity at any 
one time? More importantly, is it possible to make a distinction between role identities, social 
personae and authentic self?  

This exhibition investigates whether there are places and activities that people consider 
more private, and more authentic than others. It also seeks to discover how people actually talk 
about their ‘authentic’ selves without recourse to academic theorization or speculation.  

The simple question, ‘when do you feel most like yourself?’ acted as a prompt for the 
artists appearing in this exhibition to produce works connected to the themes outlined above. 
The pieces on display cover as wide range of mediums, and explore a multiplicity of themes that 
are perhaps best captured in the compound words that contain the term ‘self’ 

self-worth, self-indulgence, self-esteem, self-hatred, self-accomplishment, self-
discovery, self-obsession, self-pity, self-service, self-knowledge 

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make a meaningful distinction between private 
and public life. Indeed, the blurring of this divide is a key feature of contemporary society, and 
one that produces profound political consequences. As preparation for my own contribution to 
this exhibition, I posed the question, ‘when do you feel most like yourself’ to my family and 
friends. While I received a wide range of responses to this question, I detected certain 
commonalities in the answers proffered by my subjects. First, very few people questioned the 

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D’CRUZ 

category of ‘the self’ — it is clear that most people felt ‘the self’ to be ‘self-evident’. Second, they 
associated the self with authenticity and liberation, responding that they felt most like 
themselves when free from the constraints of public life. Many people I spoke to claimed to be 
most like themselves at home in the company of trusted family and friends. It seems people are 
only too aware of the need to adopt some kind of public persona at work; however, some 
expressed a great deal of anxiety within the home because they feel compelled to adopt a 
persona in order to keep the peace with those closest to themselves. So, the people I spoke to 
generally experience the requirement to adopt different personae, in both private and public 
life, as a form of performance anxiety, and therefore take refuge in what the sociologist Erving 
Goffman called ‘back stage’ areas (Goffman 126) — that is, those sites where we don’t feel the 
inquiring, critical gaze of an audience. One respondent, a close friend, said he felt most like 
himself when he was in my company because he didn’t have to perform a ‘politically correct’ 
version of himself to his wife and kids. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or appalled.  
Another friend, a confirmed contrarian, responded that he felt like a different person with each 
person he encounters since each person brings out different aspects of his personality.  

We hope that these works give you pause for thought, and generate debate and 
discussion about the relationships between selves and personae.  

 

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	Glenn D’Cruz