On anti-identity construction and anti-modeling

Abstract

Abstract Anti-identity construction is a uniquely semiotic behavior that can be witnessed in both fictional and non-fictional narratives. It is not a solitary concept but subordinate to a hypernym that can be defined as anti-modeling, which is a representational or cognitive process whereby a person creates models that challenge or defy certain stereotypes, specific groups of people or individuals, objects, and events. Just like anti-identity construction, anti-modeling is fundamentally different from defamiliarization. A major difference between anti-modeling and defamiliarization is that the former recognizes both prose and poetry, among all the other types of human modeling systems, verbal and nonverbal alike. Nevertheless, defamiliarization does share a critical trait with anti-modeling, that is, habituation or automatism for the economy of mental effort, although in the case of defamiliarization, the habituation/automatism is one of perception, whereas in the case of anti-modeling, it is the habituation/automatism of interpretation. Given that stereotyping is in fact an instantiation of the categorization process and anti-modeling imbricates, if not coincides, with the categorization process, anti-modeling is not only “anti-stereotype modeling”, it can also be thought of as “cross-category modeling”. The import and position of the categorization process in modeling, or more broadly, in semiosis, need to be further explored in future studies.