If a tree falls in a forest...

One of the major topics I study is identity, and one of the major debates in the literature is about whether identity is something individually constructed/achieved or whether it is based in social relations. (I do not think identity is either individual or social/relational; it seems like more of a both/and situation to me. Incidentally, Terence Tilley claims that a commitment to both/and thinking is a particular trait of the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition.) Lately, I have come to understand in a new way the relational component of identity. Living in Australia, I am relatively isolated. Sure, I can talk to friends and family from home through e-mail or skype phoning, but there are many days when the only human interaction I have in person is with my husband and with the check out people at the grocery store or library. Thus, I have temporarily relinquished a lot of the identities that formerly populated my life: here I am not a daughter, sister, best friend, teacher, student, colleague, writer, expect in the most provisionary sense. Without these identities mirrored back to me by people in my life, sometimes I feel as if I have become one-dimensional, both in the physical and the metaphorical sense. The only role I am expected to play here is wife, and there are days when I feel as if my personhood is flat, nearly non-existent. And I think it is because I am not engaged in the relationships that normally give my identity its familiar heft.

There is an age old question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise? This is a question about the relationality of knowledge. My current question is: if a girl is living in Australia, and there is no one there to know her, does she have an identity?