Struggling with Self, Expression, and Identity in Anonymity and Fascism

by Jules de Bouverie

Audio version available here.

I have three legal names and countless nicknames. From those names I have been called many different names at different points in my life.

Growing up and through undergrad I was called a short-hand version of my middle name. My first name was also my father and uncle's name…so one less of that. I actually didn’t realize my first name was my first name until a moment in middle school. I was called into the main office and told my name didn’t match what they found under the social security number my family shared with the school district. This was a bit terrifying considering the immigration raids that had periodically happened in and around my hometown growing up. All that was sorted in a few days.

Then I went by a different name a friend came up with towards the end of undergrad. A few years later, a mentor advised me to 'whitened' my name, so I changed it again into just a letter + my last name. Gone was any remnant of Brown with just a letter. My last name was sometimes optional.

When I met my partner, he legally went by the artist name I had been using, except his name was more than one letter, so I changed it, again, but this time to my first name—my legal name. It was around here that I began to find power, strength, and stability in my ethnic and racial identities. My first name is undeniably THAT. Simultaneously, I was becoming a better artist and was starting to use my practice as a way to excavate and explore my family’s past, my roots, while also contributing to my brown becoming.

Most recently, due to the potential of being targeted by right wing extremists, I once again changed my artist name and reconfigured my online presence as much as I could. My goal was to make it as hard as possible to trace my artist Self back to my day job Self. I also didn’t want my artist Self to be connected to family or friends for various reasons. I work as a higher education administrator in a role that many right-wingers have targeted at other institutions. I don’t want my artist Self to have any impact on the students who I get to support.

This latest change took me about two years to come to terms with (arguably still processing it because here I am writing this post). It was difficult for me to accept this type of forced identity splitting and epistemic self-harm after having spent a PhD documenting how it happens in composing with staff-based scores. Not only that, but then arguing for an exit out of that fucking mess and into a space where a minority artist has the agency to choose when and how to interact with white supremacist logics. In other words, I found my voice artistically and academically, but then had to give up my+- connection to it.

Jules de Bouverie is a drag persona I created for a piece I wrote in 2024 called 'is this white enough for you?'. Originally, I had compartmentalized Jules into this very specific performance where I was reacting to institutional racism--a moment where a phd portfolio composition was banned by the conservatoire I was at. I used Jules to say what I couldn't say as my ‘legal’ Self. Had I said what I said in that piece outside of a performance context using my legal name, my PhD might have been terminated.

I've used names in the past to explore new cities and possibilities of being me. I've never sought to use different names to escape something. For me it was always about an expansion of Self. The change was always a choice. But as more and more people have been targeted by this fascist government and its institutions, as we wait for tomorrow’s Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship that may affect many people I know, and as more and more people have been jailed for expressing themselves, for moving a box of zines and art, for attending peaceful protests, I continue to feel my Self collapsing into nothingness.

My names, regardless of what they were and are, always held a stabilizing power for my Self to anchor to. Now, I struggle to understand how to create art with a name I didn't necessarily choose organically but one I chose in chaos. I like Jules, but I don’t love Jules. I don’t know who Jules is. I don’t know if Jules can be more than what they were in ‘is this white enough for you?’.

It seems silly. Intellectually I know I don't need a name to create art. I don't need a name to call out fascism. But I have this constant feeling, quite literally in my heart, that points towards a loss, perhaps grief, of the Self I had devoted my entire life to. Again, I know my name doesn't necessarily need to represent or even is my Self, but I haven't quite figured out how to move on from this.

Since going by Jules for art stuff, I have performed three times and created one piece with a friend. I'm now in the middle of composing a song. I just submitted a piece for an Earshot reading call for scores and although my preferred name is Jules, I still had to use my legal name in the form.

The crisis isn't present when I'm creating necessarily and I think that’s because I don’t create as Jules, yet. I only really feel this grief when I'm sharing my works publicly in a performance setting or sharing my work via email or other communication mode. I'm stuck thinking about the accumulation of erasure, epistemic and otherwise, associated with BIPOC becoming, and I can't help to feel that although I'm going by Jules to try and protect myself and those around me, I am being forced to detach myself from my Self, and that this is a white affective mechanism disguised as epistemic self-harm and survival.

It happened at the conservatoire with 'is this white enough for you?' on a much smaller scale and now I see it happening for the foreseeable future--a permanent detachment affecting the networks I have made and been a part of in my life. If I can't attach my Self to some sort of linear consistency, my history will be decentralized and scattered. It’s already difficult enough to be a sound artist that composes being BIPOC and AuADHD…

Artists have gone by pseudonyms for many different reasons whether because of misogyny, racism, or queerphobia, for example. Even during other fascists governments, anonymity has been used by artists and community members as a form of resistance and survival.

Jules hasn't brought the same excitement previous names had. It feels like something that's stuck and not something with the potential of expansion. It's not about just picking a different name. Any other name would feel the same (trust, I tried).

These two years have been the hardest because ever since I was threatened by the conservatoire, the feeling they made me feel, of being watched and censored, has grown into a nationalistic horror. While I love my day job, hyper-vigilance goes hand-in-hand.

This fear and accompanying hyper-vigilance has always been there ever since I was a small kid with a family that would joke about la migra (there’s some other details here but can’t share…).

I've not been able to feel empowered by this forced choice. I've tried to lean into my trans Self and have tried to lean into my improv Self and have tried to lean into my queer futurity Self, all I feel is an overwhelming nothingness--sort of like what I imagine it would be like to take a big breath in a vacuum that's also an anechoic chamber.

---

In Part II I will bring in BIPOC psychoanalytic and cultural literature, theories, and philosophies. While I could have combined these two, I am committed to the splitting of my emotional Self with my academic Self for the time being as I continue to use Gloria Anzaldúa’s border phenomenology to stich my ass back up together—an extension of my PhD.