Challenges to Narrating a Multitudinous Self: Towards a Better Ethics of Code-switching - Topoi

We motivate and lay out the broad contours of a research program, namely that of developing a systematic ethics of code-switching. Such an ethics will articulate the values and norms that should govern a feature of human selves that we call multiplicity: the capacity to bear a polyphonic range of identities. Our discussion focuses on narratives, stories, scripts, illustrating how these pivotal entities will be central to advancing our project. We identify two biases implicit in the way prominent cultural narratives depict multiplicity, and explore other ways that stories and scripts can act as both obstacles to and opportunities for the advancement of an ethics of code-switching.

Bluesky