Affective Transmission and the Invention of Characters in the Victorian Bildungsroman

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-691
Author(s):  
Amanda Auerbach
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interpersonal Emotions

“Affective Transmission and the Invention of Characters in the Victorian Bildungsroman” reconsiders several novels about young women as they make their way into a larger social world. Rather than achieving self-discipline, as has frequently been argued, heroines such as Lucy Snowe, Maggie Tulliver, and Margaret Hale tend to be overpowered by interpersonal emotions. They distance themselves from these affects by attributing them to fictitious characters. The gendered variation of the larger tradition this article sketches out calls into question the premise of the bildungsroman as a whole, raising the possibility that the adjustment of the self to external realities is never as complete as it seems.

Psychotic, acritical and precarious? A Lacanian exploration of the neoliberal consumer subject

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.

scholarly journals Transforming Confirmation Bias to Generate Critical Consciousness in News/Information Literacy and Social Science Courses

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Wittebols
Keyword(s):  
Information Literacy ◽  
Flipped Classroom ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Social World ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Education ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
The World

This paper synthesizes theory and research on confirmation bias (CB), curiosity, and news/information literacy education with the goal of understanding how helping students critique their tendency to engage in CB spurs curiosity and critical consciousness about learning. Curiosity about the self is spurred when people realize their CB tendencies. Curiosity about the larger social world is spurred when students learn how CB affects the way they look at the world. A flipped classroom approach reflects the work of Paulo Freire, who argued critical education should be experiential with faculty playing a facilitating, rather than an “expert” role.

Symbolic interactionism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Brittan
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Interactionism ◽  
Social World ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interactive View

Symbolic interactionism is in the main a US sociological and social psychological perspective that has focused on the reciprocal relationship between language, identity and society. Philosophically it has largely been associated with pragmatists such as James (1907), Mead (1934), Dewey (1922) and Pierce (1958), although in the European context it has affinities with hermeneutics and phenomenology. In addition, it has links with various ‘dramaturgical’ approaches to communication that emphasize the interactive processes underpinning the construction, negotiation, presentation and affirmation of the self. In brief, symbolic interactionism is premised on the supposition that human beings are ‘active’ and not ‘reactive’. Although it is not easy to spell out the central propositions of Symbolic Interactionism in a systematic way, nevertheless, most of its proponents are committed to an interactive view of self and society, that is, they take issue with those views that see the social world as a seamless unity that completely encapsulates and determines individual conduct.

Old Age, Women, and Dynamic Psychotherapy

2018 ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
Sandra Evans ◽  
Jane Garner
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Older Women ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Late Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Dynamic Psychotherapy ◽  
The Arts

Old age can be a challenging time for people. It brings with it changes which include losses as well as opportunities for shifting one’s focus. Societal perceptions of ageing and projections of negative values associated with being old can act as a further blow to peoples’ general resilience. This chapter explores some of these societal projections over the centuries, in public and political life and in the arts. It examines how these influences may impact on women personally as we get older, including how we become ill psychologically and how we react to illness. What the authors consider to be important is that in late life, opportunities for restoration of the self still exist. People can and do recover from mental illness and older women can and do contribute to the wider social world in ways other than as mothers and carers.

Moving between frames: The basis of the stable and dialogical self

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Moore ◽  
Carol Jasper ◽  
Alex Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Dialogical Self ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Stability And Instability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Clear Link ◽  
The Stability

Research on the dialogical self has tended to emphasize instability over stability. Grossen and Salazar Orvig (2011) show how norms, values, material objects, and institutions feed into the stability of the self. We expand upon this contribution by introducing Goffman’s (1974) concept of “frames” to theorize both stability and instability. Social interactions do not begin with individuals but with socially given and pre-existing cultural-historical frames which people are called upon to inhabit. Frames comprise historical, institutional, material, and cultural aspects. The key point is that action within a frame tends to stabilize the self, while being caught between frames tends to destabilize the self. The concept of frames can thus provide a clear link between the structure of the social world and the structure of the dialogical self. We use the concept of frames to distinguish the stability produced by one set of expectations, within one frame, from the peculiar instability and dialogical tensions which result from being embedded in discrepant or contradictory frames.

scholarly journals Agentic Practice and Privileging Orientations Among Privately Educated Young Women

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 800-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Maxwell ◽  
Peter Aggleton
Keyword(s):  
Private Schools ◽  
Young Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Family ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Affective Experiences

This paper examines factors driving the agentic practices of young women who are privately educated. The analysis informing this paper comes from a three-year study, in which 91 young women aged 15–19 years were interviewed. Four private schools in one area of middle England participated in the research, and over half of the young women were re-interviewed 12–18 months later. Our starting point is the degree to which particular orientations within families are aligned to those being promoted within the various private schools in our study. The affective experiences of alignment but also of disorientation within and between the family and the school, drive significant forms of internal conversation ( Archer, 2003 ). In this paper we examine two kinds of internal conversations found within our study – one that is assured and optimistic, and another, which is more fractured. These different internal conversations lead to the emergence of differing projects of the self, expressed through practices that by their very nature of being committed to self-directed progress can be understood as being agentic. The consequences of these different projects of the self suggest that the reproduction of class privilege cannot be taken for granted – but is always provisional and contested, even among those who are privately educated.

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