Becoming someone else: Cosplay as identity formation and solidification

This chapter takes an alternative vision of what can be considered a “text”, and thus a different way of viewing autobiographical and fan fiction writing. John Fiske noted that any object of culture can be read as a text, including images on a screen and, vitally for this chapter, the clothes that we wear. If these can be read as a text, then they can also be interpreted as such. I therefore intend to take a hermeneutic look at the phenomenon of cosplay, conceptualizing it as a means of forming, and solidifying one’s identity in the world.
At first thought, it may seem paradoxical to think that becoming someone else may have an impact on how a person views themselves; however, it is as GH Mead (1913) suggested – we come to a sense of self via our interpretations of the gazes of others – and what Axel Honneth (1995) asserted in his notion of the circle of recognition.
To build this argument, I will first of all outline cosplay as version of a performative text, and how the choices and projections of the “auth