We rarely wake up wondering how we became the person we believe ourselves to be. We assume that our beliefs, desires, identities, and even our sense of freedom are genuinely our own. But what if the very feeling of being an autonomous individual were itself historically and socially produced? How, then, do power and ideology enter this story? What do these concepts actually mean, beyond their everyday political usage? Are they external forces acting upon us, or are they the v

"Live, Work, Pose." Popularized by the television series Pose, this phrase captures the ethos of Ballroom culture: a space where marginalized individuals engage in ongoing processes of self-identification and self-fashioning within what has been described as a "fictitious existence." Rather than assimilating into dominant social structures or wholly rejecting them, Ballroom participants enact a form of agency through performance- one that both navigates and contests normative