Stories of non-becoming: Non-issues, non-events and non-identities in asexual lives

In contrast to conventional models of positively ‘becoming’ an identity through social interaction, this article explores the inverse, negational process of ‘non-becoming’, whereby actors start but do not continue along an identity career trajectory. Through cumulative attrition, interactions and encounters at key moments create an overall pattern of nonprogression. Using asexuality as an example, we identify three main trajectory stages of nonawareness, communicative negation and non-consolidation, each involving interactional contingencies. With a wider applicability to other repudiated identities, this model shows how even negational symbolic social objects (non-issues, non-events and non-identities) are constituted through social interaction.