Karen Eliot is a multiple identity, a nom de plume, or multiple-use name

Multiple-use name

A multiple-use name is a name used by many different people to protect anonymity. It is a strategy that has been adopted by many unconnected radical and cultural groups, where the construct of personal identity has been criticised...

 that anyone is welcome to use for activist and art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

istic endeavours. It is especially popular within the Neoist movement. It was developed in order to counter the male domination of that movement, the most predominant multiple user-names being Monty Cantsin

Monty Cantsin

Monty Cantsin is a multiple-use name that anyone can adopt, but has close ties to Neoism. Monty Cantsin was originally conceived as an "open pop star." In a philosophy anticipating that of free software and open source, anyone should perform in his name and thus contribute to and participate in his...

 and Luther Blissett

Luther Blissett (nom de plume)

Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994...

.

These multiple names were developed and popularized in artistic subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

s of the 1970s to 1990 like Mail Art

Mail art

Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art through the international postal system. Mail Art is also known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art...

, Neoism

Neoism

Neoism is a parodistic -ism. It refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists, and more generally to a practical underground philosophy...

 and post-Situationist discourse, with the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy

Rrose Sélavy

Rrose Sélavy, or Rose Sélavy, was one of the pseudonyms of artist Marcel Duchamp. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which translates to English as "eros, that's life". It has also been read as "arroser la vie" .Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by...

 jointly used by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

 and the surrealist poet Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...

 forming a historical pretext. The political references go back much further, e.g. Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd or Ned Lud, possibly born Ned Ludlam or Edward Ludlam, is the person from whom the Luddites took their name. His actions inspirated the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, also known as King Ludd or General Ludd, who became the Luddites' alleged leader and founder.It is believed that Ned...

, while in poetry there are precedents such as Taliesin

Taliesin

Taliesin was an early British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...

.

In the 1960s underground culture

Counterculture

Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...

 the multiple name Emmett Grogan

Emmett Grogan

Emmett Grogan was a founder of the Diggers, a radical community-action group of Improv actors in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California...

 was adopted by San Francisco Diggers

Diggers (theater)

The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and Improv actors operating from 1966–68, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics were such that they have sometimes been categorized as "left-wing." More accurately, they were "community anarchists"...

 and in the 1970s the multiple name Wally

Wally (anonymous)

In 1974 a group of new age travellers were encamped near Stone Henge, to help hinder the process of eviction by the landowners they all gave their name as Wally of Wessex, "Wally being a conveniently anonymous umbrella for vulnerable individuals"...

 was adopted by a group of squatters in and around Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...

.

External links

• Where's Wally - The origins of the multiple identity Wally in 1970s pop festivals and underground culture.
• Karen Eliot's MNK Investigation - A fictional revolutionary organisation, the MNK, is investigated by a fictional Karen Eliot.