Meg-John Barker: Plural Selves

[lb_lee]

hungryghosts linked me to Meg-John Barker, a plural zinester I hadn't hear about before in the UK! (Though it turns out I'd read at least one of their books in the library, not knowing.) You can check out their Plural Selves zine here, which has some good ideas and suggestions I haven't seen before. (Sadly, I don't think it's screen-reader accessible.)

Barker seems to see their own plurality in more of a faceted, inner family systems sort of way. Some quotes from their FAQ I think are particularly relevant and interesting:

"Probably 1-3% of people have the experience of being multiple separate selves so vividly that they would identify – or be identified – as plural, or DID. But probably most people have some experience of plurality some of the time, and maybe a third to a half of people could experience themselves quite significantly as plural – perhaps if wider culture was more understanding of it as a thing.

"Some nice made-up statistics about plurality there [...] But you take the point.

"[...]

"The risk of completely buying only a trauma narrative of plurality is that it continues the stigmatising view that there’s something wrong with being plural that needs to be fixed or healed: that working towards integration as a coherent, singular self is the way to go. In fact you could argue that an insistence on being one unified individual is a kind of intergenerational trauma: we don’t allow kids to play and embrace all the different potentials that they have because we give them such clear messages about what it is and isn’t okay to be."

You can purchase their work here, see the books they've been involved with here, or check out their free zines here!

Comments

[we_are_spc]

You are correct, it is not. :(

Sadness.

-T~

[pants_of_doom]

Thanks for the Meg-John Barker link, I'd read Queer: A Graphic History and thought the name was interesting but hadn't looked into them further.