Collaborative interrelationships allow for agency and the construction of identity. Ardent sets a rigid binary between the private material body and the public site of the political. For her, the material body has no politics, and it doesn't come into play with identity. Action is solely the property of the public. But through performance, action becomes an issue of identity.
Identity is something that is constructed as a reflection back from the other.
It not only has individual and social aspects, but is fundamentally the result of bodies- individual, private bodies set in relations to public bodies, institutions and discourses. This becomes explicitly so in terms of fan culture. Identity influences both private bodies and public texts. The two are so interrelated that trying to make a clear, stable distinction becomes dizzying. From the perspective of dominant tastes, fans appear to be frighteningly out of control, undisciplined and repentant, rogue readers.