Setting:
You are a stage and all the world acts upon it.
EXAMINER
Who are you that thinks this investigation is your place to instigate?
MR. PROVE-IT
Wasn’t this the first question we answered?
MR. WHINEY
The first question was why this investigation was important, not who thinks it is important, but I think you already knew that.
We may have hinted at the importance of engaging in some self-reflection, but Examiner is right to call attention again to who we are that has undertaken this project now, before we push too much further into an external world that doesn’t seem meaningfully connected to our own.
As we have clearly established, we as investigators exist as fragments of a collected identity, Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett. While individual elements of our voices as “Mr. Whiny” and “Mr. Prove-it” allow this investigation to take place as a conversation, there are necessary lived experiences of the collective identity, Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, that also need to be exposed and discussed in order to establish the ideological superposition that informs this project in the first place.
MR. PROVE-IT
(Scoffing loudly.)
Seriously, what the fuck? You gotta stop using phrases like “ideological superpositions” or you gotta shut yr theoretical trap every couple of sentences and let me make sure I understand where this train is headed.
If I have successfully translated your nonsense, you are claiming that “Who are you?” is a necessary question, because neither you nor I are real narrators.
(MR. PROVE-IT’s voice is frazzled. He continues with a cautious trepidation.)
BUT, Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, as a collection of both of our voices—
MR. WHINEY
(Interrupting to make sure MR. PROVE-IT captures the full spectrum of identities established.)
—AND the Examiner, AND possibly future voices we haven’t met yet—
MR. PROVE-IT
(Continuing as if uninterrupted)
—has ideas and experiences that can’t be fractured between us but have to be shown to expose the weird sunken bullshit that could stay hidden if we didn’t talk about them directly.
MR. WHINEY
Precisely.
(Said with a vehemence.)
MR. PROVE-IT
(Laughs before continuing with the occasional interruption of giggles.)
This might be too far out there for me to get that ball rolling. How would you have us start to answer the Examiner’s question, then?
MR. WHINEY
I propose that we allow Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett to speak for himself.
(MR. WHINEY says this as if it was both obvious, and a possibility that has not already begun to break down the artificial barriers of narrative identity.)
We can accomplish this by showing an essay previously composed by Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett that investigates incarceration in America. Then we can discuss both that essay’s relationship to this specific investigation, and the elements of identity exposed by the act of investigating, that will impact how we, as a fractured “us,” investigate.
MR. PROVE-IT
You can keep that repetitive word crap for yrself.
I get why so many writing instructors discourage it. But as to yr path for moving forward, I’m in, and I know exactly which essay you are talking about: