Roles are enacted, never inhabited, because identity would collapse into inert being

Evidence

We indicated earlier that we can be nothing without playing at being. “If I am a café waiter,” we said, “this can be only in the mode of not being one.” And that is true. If I could be a café waiter, I should suddenly constitute myself as a contingent block of identity. And that I am not. This contingent being in-itself always escapes me. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: The café waiter example defines the for-itself’s mode of being as perpetual non-coincidence with any role.
• XREF: connects to: A social role can only be played at, never simply inhabited — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 299; Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245; Identity is positional and processual, never reducible to one fixed position (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity is positional and processual, never reducible to one fixed position #expands (0.85)
• Identity is perpetually in formation, never a completed essence. #corroborates (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 203
• Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself. #corroborates (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245
• Human identity is constructed and occasionally invented, not natural and stable #corroborates (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 839
• Identity can only be understood through difference, never self-sameness #complicates (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1189
• Being-in-itself can found its nothingness but never its being #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 346
• Random role assignment still produces self-stereotyping that fits the role #exemplifies (0.75)
• Anguish arises because the self’s future identity is never guaranteed #responds-to (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454