Abjection, materiality and ontological security: A study of the unfinished Church of Christ the Saviour in Pristina

2020 ◽  
pp. 001083672097243
Author(s):  
Filip Ejdus
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
The Self ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Material Environment ◽  
Kosovo War

Ontological security scholarship in International Relations (IR) has predominantly focused on the importance of social environments for the healthy sense of self. However, material environments can also provide an important source of ontological security. In my previous work I have argued that to assume this role of ‘ontic spaces’ material environments need to be discursively linked to states’ self-identity either through projection or introjection. In this article, I draw on the work of Julia Kristeva to argue that ontic spaces can also come about through abjection or the rejection of a material environment from the narrative of the self. I illustrate this theoretical point in the case study of the Serbian Orthodox Church of Christ the Saviour in Pristina. Its construction began in 1992 during the rule of Slobodan Milošević but was never finished due to the Kosovo war in 1998/9. Over the years, as all proposed changes are considered to be a threat to a healthy sense of self of either Serbs or Albanians, the building has been turned into an abjected ontic space, an ambiguous symbol undermining the self/other and victim/oppressor boundaries and as such both repels and attracts, threatens and protects.

scholarly journals (Re-)imagining the ‘Self’ of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco A. Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Postcolonial State ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Postcolonial States

In this article, I critically engage with and develop an alternative approach to ontological security informed by Jacques Lacan’s theory of the subject. I argue that ontological security relates to a lack; that is, the always frustrated desire to provide meaningful discursive interpretations to one’s self. This lack is generative of anxiety which functions as the subject’s affective and necessary drive to a continuous, albeit elusive, pursuit of self-coherence. I theorise subjectivity in Lacanian terms as fantasised discursive articulations of the Self in relation to an idealised mirror-image other. The focus on postcolonial states’ subjectivity allows for the examination of the anxiety-driven lack generated by the ever-present desire to emulate but also resist the Western other. I propose, therefore, to explore the theoretical assertion that postcolonial ontological security refers to the institutionalisation and discursive articulation of enduring and anxiety-driven affective traces related to these states’ colonial pasts that are still active and influence current foreign policy practices. I illustrate the force of this interpretation of ontological security by focusing on Brazil as an example of a postcolonial state coping with the lack caused by its ambivalent/hybrid self-identity.

scholarly journals Self and identity in personality psychology

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan P. McAdams ◽  
Kali Trzesniewski ◽  
Jennifer Lilgendahl ◽  
Veronica Benet-Martinez ◽  
Richard W. Robins
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self And Identity

Research on self and identity has greatly enhanced personality science by directing inquiry more deeply into the person’s conscious mind and more expansively outward into the social environments that contextualize individual differences in behavior, thought, and feeling. After delineating key concepts and offering reasons why personality psychologists should care about self and identity processes, we highlight important empirical discoveries that are of special relevance to personality science in the areas of (1) self-insight, (2) self-conscious emotions, (3) self-esteem, (4) narrative identity, and (5) the role of culture in shaping self, identity, and the integration of personality. We anticipate that future research will also move vigorously to (1) develop more comprehensive and precise accounts of how life experiences influence the development of self and identity, (2) explore more fully how the brain builds a sense of self, and (3) harness what we know about self and identity to improve people’s lives and promote personality development.

The Lumumba Commission (1999-2002): Shame, Guilt, and the Post-Imperial Self

2021 ◽  
pp. 030582982110509
Author(s):  
Zeger Verleye
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Shame And Guilt ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This article aims to explore the process of colonial redress from the theoretical scope of ontological security. In this theory, shame denotes a challenge to the consistency of state self-narratives, compelling the state to actions that reaffirm its sense of self. However, other works on ontological security argue that post-imperial states are more likely to experience guilt than shame because of their historical connection to international society. By juxtaposing shame and guilt as characteristic of the process of colonial redress, this article gives insight into the challenges, opportunities, and constraints of colonial redress. Empirically, the article discusses parliamentary debates during the Lumumba Commission (1999-2002), a significant moment in Belgium’s struggle with its imperial legacy. To adequately trace the anxieties and narrative changes that ontological insecurity implies, this case-study is approached using a narrative and interpretative sentiment analysis. The analysis indicates that Belgian MPs deployed a comedic narrative, sided by discourses of serenity, objectivity, and guilt. This particular narrative countered Belgium’s anxiety, facilitated an apology, and restated its self-identity. Based on these findings, the article concludes that the conceptual borderline between shame and guilt is less distinct than is assumed in the literature and suggests that further research is needed into the relationship between narratives and emotions.

Vicarious Identity in International Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-88
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Browning ◽  
Pertti Joenniemi ◽  
Brent J. Steele
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
International Events

The chapter identifies vicarious identification as an overlooked yet key constitutive practice in international relations that can be theorized through a rereading of debates on ontological security, status, and recognition dynamics. It demonstrates how vicarious identification is often central to how subjects (re)gain a sense of self-certainty and self-esteem, with the chapter paying particular attention to the contexts within which an emphasis on vicarious identity is more likely to emerge. Three arenas that make vicarious identity relevant for global politics are posited. First, in its manifestation between individuals, often transnationally, in response to major international events. Second, in how citizens generate a sense of ontological security and self-identity through processes of vicarious militarized nationalism, with governments supporting this through processes of vicarious identity promotion. And third, in how states vicariously identify with other states and broader regional and civilizational communities in their pursuit of status, national self-esteem, and ontological reaffirmation.

The Mending of a Fractured Self. On the Self as a Produced and Sustained Entity

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-138
Author(s):  
Sterling Hall
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Critical Phenomenology ◽  
Colonial Violence

"Experientially, we often have a sense of self which is relatively constant across moments in one’s personal timeline. There are instances where this sense of self fractures, though, and self-identity becomes difficult to sustain. This essay argues that such fracturing is the result of an interruption in a process of self-narrativization—an interruption which can be mended, at least partially, through creative and communal practices which allow for the possibility of recreating narratives at the site of their failure—and explores the meaning of this fracturing and mending process in terms of colonial violence as an example of a fracturing situation. Keywords: critical phenomenology, the self, Levinas, anticolonialism, politics. "

Strukturen der Identität und des Selbstverständnisses von Personen

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Katja Crone
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Invariant Features ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe article explores how persons conceive of themselves as individuals. Often, they attribute personality traits to themselves which they exemplify or justify by reference to former life episodes. According to dominant narrative approaches, this biographical self-understanding is entirely constituted by so-called “self-narratives,” that is, the way in which persons construct stories about themselves and their lives. Against this line of thought, it will be argued that the self-understanding of persons is not only characterized by narrative structures but also by certain phenomenal as well as invariant features. This will be shown by analysing a non-narrative sense of self-identity across time, which necessarily grounds biographical self-understanding.

Two Feminist Views on the Self, Identity and Collective Action

Hypatia ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-125
Author(s):  
Margaret A. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Identity

Juvenal in the Specular City

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. J. Larmour
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self

Juvenalian satire writes specularity, firstly, by mirroring its own constitutive elements and discursive procedures, and, secondly, through its preoccupation with gazing at others and the self. The roving satirist-narrator, who resembles Kristeva’s ‘deject’ and Poe’s ‘Man of the Crowd’, inhabits the paradoxical space of Maingueneau’s paratopia within the specular city of Rome. As a specular text, Juvenal’s collection strives for coherence through various devices of doubling, repetition, and mirroring (linguistic, rhetorical, and thematic); yet in this cityscape the search for a unified sense of self, and an accompanying topographical wholeness, is continually frustrated, as the satirist—along with us, the spectators accompanying him—is confronted by human and architectural embodiments of ambiguity, transgression, and the pernicious mixing of categories, including Umbricius at the Porta Capena (3.12–20 and 318–22), Otho with his mirror (2.99–109), and Gracchus’ appearance as a retiarius in the arena (2.143–8 and 8.200–10).

Moral Disability, Moral Injury, and the Flight from Vulnerability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia L. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Moral Reflection ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Moral Conviction ◽  
Moral Importance

This chapter explores the concept of moral disability, identifying two types. The first type involves disabling conditions that distort one’s process of moral reflection. Examples include the incapacity to consider the long-term future, to feel empathy for others, and to be honest with oneself. A noteworthy example of self-deception is systematically denying one’s own—and humanity’s—vulnerability to the power of others, to accidents, and to having one’s well-being linked to that of others and the eco-system. Acknowledging vulnerability often requires a new sense of self. The second type includes incapacities directly resulting from ‘moral injury’—debilitating, self-inflicted harms when one violates a deeply held moral conviction, even if trying to remain true to another moral value. Examining moral disabilities highlights the moral importance of self-identity. More progress may be made on controversial issues if we discuss who we are, how we connect, and how we can heal.

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