Why I changed my name

As of November 5, 2021, my last name has officially been changed from “Present” to “Beck”. Changing my family name was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. By now, two questions will probably have crossed your mind: “Why change your family name?” and “Why wait so long?”

To give a short answer to the first question, I can say that I do not have a lot of fond memories of the person who gave me this name. The name ties me to a past that I’d rather leave behind. The prosaic answer to the second question is that despite my desire to change my family name, I didn’t feel like it was worth the hassle and administrative complexity. In hindsight, I can also say that this reluctance was partly motivated by fear of the unknown or the idea of “not wanting to make a fuss”. Better to let things be as they are and get on with my life.

The combination of a desire to change things and an unwillingness to actually effectuate this change gave rise to an internal tension. Having studied philosophy, I had of course been trained to solve this problem by confabulating a rationalization of the situation which allowed me to intellectually reframe my passive attitude as an active choice. My name reflected my history. Luckily enough, I had already developed a certain affinity with philosophical thinkers that emphasised historicity. To be situated in a present (pun not intended) is to be formed by a past which (co-)determines how you direct yourself towards the future. This of course does not mean that one is completely determined by one’s past. It does mean that it is an illusion to think that you can completely break free from it. And it also means that in order to effectuate change, to situate yourself in the present in a way that allows you to move more freely into the future, you have to take your past into account.

This view on the role of history of course resonates with Foucault’s views on his own historical work as providing a “history of the present”. In a late text, “What is Enlightenment?”, Foucault explicitly links this historicist attitude with his interest in self-transformation. He emphasises the primacy of the present and rethinks the Enlightenment as “a permanent critique of ourselves”. On the one hand, this is of course meant as a political reflection on “ourselves” as society, but it is clear that Foucault also sees this as a critical reflection on ourselves as selves, as an attitude, and as a practice of self-transformation:

“The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them”

In “What is Enlightenment?”, Foucault describes this “attitude of modernity” by using a precept provided by Baudelaire: “You have no right to despise the present.” What right did I have to despise my present? Running away from your past is an illusion. And to move beyond it you first and foremost have to acknowledge it. To paraphrase the common saying: to ignore history, is to repeat it. Although I do not believe that merely knowing history is a sufficient condition for avoiding to repeat it, I do believe that it is a necessary condition. So I rationalized my not changing my name as an active choice. By keeping the name, I reminded myself of my history, in order not to repeat it. And I could make some great puns along the way about being a “historian of the present.”

To be part of history is to reframe and reuse that history. To understand this view on (the role of) history, I have always found MacIntyre’s quasi-definition of a “tradition” very helpful: “what constitutes a tradition is a conflict of interpretations of that tradition, a conflict which itself has a history susceptible of rival interpretations.” Applied to my own predicament: what constitutes bearing a name is a conflict of interpretations of that name. I was free to re-appropriate that name and give new meanings to it. Presentist puns, here I come.

But this historicist interpretation came with a vengeance. MacIntyre makes a distinction between living and dead traditions. Living traditions are practices that mean something for their practitioners: something is at stake in the activities that constitute the tradition. Strange as it may sound, the name “Present” however felt to me as a dead thing. It stuck to my first name, but the older I got, the more it felt like an alien body part that I dragged along.

The family that I feel part of, is reflected by the name “Beck”. It is the family in which I was raised and in whose practices I participate. This doesn’t mean that I feel a sort of clan-like pride of being “a Beck”. In this case as well, the tradition is susceptible of rival interpretations. My grandparents and great-grandparents owned a butchery. I am a vegan. But it does mean that adopting that name felt like coming home for me.

This of course meant that I had to make a fuss. The administration was and is a hassle, and going around asking people to change things for me is somewhat outside of my comfort zone. But then again, that is a good exercise in self-transformation. If changing rather than keeping my name is a critical ontology of myself, learning to “make a fuss” when it is necessary and important is part of that process.

So yes, I am Beck*, and for the first time, it really feels like I am using my name.

(* Luckily, not all pun-making fun is lost).