This Master’s Thesis is a performance, a meditation on performance, and a documentation of performances I have developed and enacted over the course of my 3 years at UCSD. Meant as a book project, Welcum To Me ((an anti-thesis)) consists of 5 chapters, each one providing a snapshot of a different work. Chapter 1, “Bring Your Elsewhere” (2024), surrounds a site-specific all-day performance that exposes the infrastructure that allows the neoliberal University to respond to what it identifies as an emergency. Chapter 2, “Terms of Engagement” (2021 – ongoing), reproduces an online, interactive form created by ME—a frog mascot in pink tutu—to gauge expectations and set boundaries with anyone seeking a relationship with her. Chapter 3, “At The Experience,” is a short story that started off as a performance. A young graduate student gets invited by their ex to attend a night of experiences in the back of a taxidermied insect shop. Chapter 4, “Pen Poem,” provides perforated cards you can remove to play with, accompanied by objectives-instructions for a good time. (What do pigs say in your language??). Chapter 5, the longest one in the book, is the script of a full-length play titled “Parakeet Heist.” In the early 80s, Tony arrives in the U.S. with his family as refugees from Vietnam. He befriends 2 American kids—Raven and Shea—and pubescent chaos ensues.

When an agent “loses herself” in a project, or becomes completely absorbed in an activity, she has what Heidegger calls “reflected self-understanding”. This kind of reflected understanding allows the agent to find herself out in the world, “in things”, without ever holding any reflexive attitudes about herself. In my dissertation, I develop and defend Heidegger’s account of reflected self-understanding, which constitutes – for Heidegger – the most basic grip an agent has on who she is. I suggest that Heidegger’s account of reflected self-understanding is not only a significant contribution to the history of philosophy, but also the central kernel that structures Heidegger’s thought on the topics of understanding, interpretation, truth, and authenticity in Being and Time.