Upheaval and reinvention in celebrity interviews: Emotional reflexivity and the therapeutic self in late modernity

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2022 ◽  
pp. 072551362110691
Author(s):  
Anne-Maree Sawyer ◽  
Sara James

The disruptions of life in late modernity render self-identity fragile. Consequently, individuals must reflexively manage their emotions and periodically reinvent themselves to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. The rise of psychology as a discursive regime across the 20th century, and its intersections with a plethora of wellness industries, has furnished a new language of selfhood and greater public attention to emotions and personal narratives of suffering. Celebrities, who engage in public identity work to ensure their continued relatability, increasingly provide models for navigating emotional trials. In this article we explore representations of selfhood and identity work in celebrity interviews. We focus on media veterans Nigella Lawson and Ruby Wax, both of whom are skilled in re-storying the self after personal crises. We argue that interpretive capital as a peculiarly late modern resource confers emotional advantages and life chances on individuals as they navigate upheavals, uncertainties, and intimate dilemmas.

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Yasuo Deguchi ◽  
Naoya Fujikawa

This chapter shows that the 20th-century Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō was committed to dialetheism. We show that he argues both that the subject must be knowable as an object and that it cannot be known as an object. We also show that he argues that the self both is and is not identical to the world and to itself in the relation he calls “contradictory self-identity.” This chapter demonstrates that East Asian dialetheism persists in the 20th century.


2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Lars Geer Hammershøj

Self Bildung and new forms of sociality: the technorave as example One of the most significant traits of late modernity is increasing individualization. This article deals with the question of what this radical individualization does to forms of sociality by analyzing individualization as self Bildung or formation of the self. The concept of Bildung is interesting in this regard, since the central conception is that personality and sociality are created in the same process. The Danish social analyst Lars Henrik Schmidt uses the concept of post traditional Bildung or simply self Bildung and outlines how Bildung may be conceived under late modern conditions. For him it is a type of Bildung that takes place on the individual’s terms. The article uses this concept of self Bildung as a point of departure to propose an interpretation of how to conceive sociality under these conditions. Finally as an example of such a form of sociality the articles analyses technorave (this kind of music and dance culture). It concludes that the new forms of sociality tend to resemble sociability in its pure form. The technorave is a form of controlled dionysiac sociality that is oriented towards experiencing union with others. Finally these forms of sociality are characterized by being orient-ed more by tunings than by reasons and interests. Therefore they can be described as a type of sociality that is less articulated but ‘broader’ than traditional forms of sociality.


Hypatia ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-125
Author(s):  
Margaret A. McLaren

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

This article constructs and deploys a set of autoethnographic narratives from the author’s experience as a Baptist minister to critically retrieve the category of ‘women’s experience’ for feminist theological construction. Autoethnography, as a response to the crisis of representation in the Humanities, uses personal narratives of the self to reveal, critique and transform wider cultural trends. It therefore provides helpful tools for analysing, critiquing and transforming theological thought and practice. Following the article’s methodological sections, the constructive sections use the crafted autoethnographies to re-frame Rowan Williams’s vision for how church and world co-constitute each other towards God’s just ends. Whereas Williams argues that this co-constitution occurs through processes of interactive transformative judgment, the feminist theological understanding argued for here founds the process instead on interactive, transformative grace.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 832-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Grimell

Dialogical Self Theory has contributed to the endeavors to map and grid self-identity work in transition from military to civilian life throughout an empirical and longitudinal research project which focuses on existential dimensions. This article is based on a case study from this project and centers upon Sergeant Jonas, who, upon his return from deployment in Afghanistan, struggled with his transition as a new existential position was vocalized throughout the following annual interviews. This voice narrated feelings of meaninglessness, emptiness, and of having been deceived. In turn, this existential voice required an answer to a question which apparently had no answer. The meaning-making eventually evolved into an acceptance which enabled Jonas to proceed with his life. Dialogical processes between positions are important in order to go on with life amid existential concerns in the aftermath of military service since dialogicality of the self opens up a complex of dynamics of meaning-making processes, negotiations, and transformations. Based on the findings, it is suggested that the Personal Position Repertoire could potentially be strengthened by the addition of an internal existential position to its standard repertoire, at least when working with military personnel and/or veterans.


This article advocates a new agenda for (media) tourism research that links questions of tourist experiences to the role and meaning of imagination in everyday life. Based on a small-scale, qualitative study among a group of seventeen respondents of diverse ages and backgrounds currently residing in the Netherlands, we offer an empirical exploration of the places that are of importance for people’s individual state of mind and investigate how these places relate to (potential) tourist experiences. The combination of in-depth interviews and random-cue self-reporting resulted in the following findings: 1) all our respondents regularly reside in an elaborate imaginary world, consisting of both fictional and non-fictional places; 2) this imaginary world is dominated by places which make the respondents feel nostalgic; 3) in this regard, the private home and houses from childhood are pivotal; 4) the ‘home’ is seen as topos of the self and contrasted with ‘away’; 5) the imagination of ‘away’ emerges from memories of previous tourist experiences, personal fantasies and, last but not least, influences from popular culture. We conclude that imagining and visiting other locations are part of a life-long project of ‘identity work’ in which personal identities are performed, confirmed and extended. By travelling, either physically or mentally, individuals anchor their identity - the entirety of ideas about who they are, where they come from and where they think they belong - in a broader, spatial framework.


This article gives an overview of writing by women in a revolutionary phase during the twentieth century and highlights the distinguished features of twentieth century women's literature including the diverse range of themes, change in women's social and family roles, a remarkable shift in subjects of writing which added a new frontier in women's writing. While contemplating the study of twentieth century women's literature, the most significant features that came under the spotlight include discovery of women's self- identity, women coming out from the male defined precincts to achieve independence and the authors' expedition towards autonomy and self-assertion through their writing. However, to trace the growth twentieth century women's literature has witnessed, a comparative investigation of Victorian and twentieth century women's literature has been stated briefly.


Author(s):  
Dmitriy Mikhel

The problems of epidemics have increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. The history of epidemics has its own historiography, which dates to the physician Hippocrates and the historian Thucydides. Up to the 19th century, historians followed their ideas, but due to the progress in medical knowledge that began at that time, they almost lost interest in the problems of epidemics. In the early 20th century, due to the development of microbiology and epidemiology, a new form of the historiography of epidemics emerged: the natural history of diseases which was developed by microbiologists. At the same time, medical history was reborn, and its representatives saw their task as proving to physicians the usefulness of studying ancient medical texts. Among the representatives of the new generation of medical historians, authors who contributed to the development of the historiography of epidemics eventually emerged. By the end of the 20th century, they included many physician-enthusiasts. Since the 1970s, influenced by many factors, more and more professional historians, for whom the history of epidemics is an integral part of the history of society. The last quarter-century has also seen rapid growth in popular historiography of epidemics, made possible by the activation of various humanities researchers and journalists trying to make the history of epidemics more lively and emotional. A great influence on the spread of new approaches to the study of the history of epidemics is now being exerted by the media, focusing public attention on the new threats to human civilization in the form of modern epidemics.


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