Article Commentary: Modernity, Death, and the Self: Disenchantment of Death and Symbols of Bereavement

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Raymond L. M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Modern Self

In late modernity, the question of death has become more transparent. Modern consciousness either procrastinates on this question or takes death to signal the end of the self. The revival of death consciousness opens up a new field of investigation into the meaning of the modern self. When contrasted with premodern notions of death, the modern self facing death is seen to be isolated, distant, and struggling to preserve its autonomy. Death in modernity is a mirror for reflecting the precariousness of the self.

Confession, conscience, and selfhood on trial

2018 ◽  
pp. 124-177
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Linear Pattern ◽  
Moral Question ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Over Time

This chapter deals with the role of the self and conscience in defending oneself against the charge of witchcraft. To add depth to intellectual concepts—and teleologies—of the self, we must understand how the individual self was understood, felt, and experienced. Particularly for the crime of witchcraft, the crux of the trial was premised on the moral question of what kind of person would commit such a crime. Those on trial for witchcraft in the Lutheran duchy of Württemberg invoked the idioms of ‘mind’, ‘conscience’, ‘heart’, or ‘self’ in constructing their defence. Through four case studies, ranging from 1565 to 1678, this chapter examines the different ways in which people could conceptualize their person, and shows that change over time in the ‘development’ of the modern self was not a uniform or directly linear pattern.

Suffering Games: De Quincean Transgression and Self-Production in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Igrok (The Gambler)

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Lonny Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Self ◽  
Production Functions ◽  
First Person ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
Self Production

This paper compares Dostoevsky’s The Gambler (1866) to certain features of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) to show that the two texts demonstrate the emergence of a simulacral culture of the modern self. The De Quincean model of subjectivity is presented as a prototype of the modern self before The Gambler is investigated in its light. Insofar as the self is constructed in the context of social environments, modernity is characterized by a mimetic mode we might call intensity, where the modern self finds and creates its identity through repetitive patterns of mediated experience. In particular, it is argued that the first-person narrators of Confessions and The Gambler exemplify the obsessive cycle of self-production—a characteristically modern addiction to the decentring and multiplication of the self, rooted in the need for the intoxicating effect of strong sensations and imaginary experience. Self-production functions in a cycle of passion, transgression, and suffering, followed by anticipation of change and renewal, on a par, psychologically, with rebirth or resurrection. The major difference between the works is that, while Confessions emphasizes the causality of social conditions, The Gambler is predicated on the uniquely Russian sense of destiny (sud’ba).

The Passion of Grace

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Felix Ó Murchadha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Self Focusing ◽  
Modern Self

This paper shows how turns in theology in early Modernity and in the last century framed the context of distinct philosophical understandings of the self. Focusing on the concept of “pure nature,” the foreshadowing of philosophical themes in theology is shown. It is further argued that while the modern self emerging from certain early Modern theological discourses from Suárez, through Descartes to Kant was deeply implicated in Stoic apatheia, the self which arises from a phenomenological rethinking (especially in Marion) of the place of love and beauty in the worldliness of being and appearance is one which is fundamentally passionate. At play here is a shift in the notion of will from that of sovereign indifference to desire.

What do we know about “don't knows”? Or, contexts of “ignorance”

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Turner ◽  
Mike Michael
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Public Understanding Of Science ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Don't Know Responses

This paper addresses the meanings of “ignorance” in the context of “don't know” responses to questionnaires. First, we consider some of the broader functions of questionnaires, suggesting that they reflect and mediate between particular types of institutions, respondents and society. We then unpack some of the meanings of “don't know” responses. Specifically, we argue that the “don't know” response is not merely a sign of deficit but, potentially, a potent political statement. Moreover, in relation to studies of the public understanding of science, it can be employed as a resource by people reflexively to express their identity through their relationship with science. Next we consider ignorance in the more expansive contexts of late modernity, which include concerns about the ambivalent role of science in general, the transgressive quality of biotechnology in particular and the impetus to narrate the self. Consideration of these factors, we argue, may be useful for further interrogation of the meanings of “don't know” responses.

scholarly journals Die moderne self as toneelpop in Woyzeck on the Highveld

Literator ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
A. Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
South African ◽  
The Self ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Principal Source ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Central Characters

The modern self as puppet in Woyzeck on the HighveldThis article undertakes a semiotic investigation of identifications of the self in terms of a specifically South African modernism, via an exploration of an adaptation of Georg Büchner’s “Woyzeck”. William Kentridge’s production of “Woyzeck on the Highveld”(1992; 2009) marks at least three intersections of modernist and modernising discourses. Firstly, it uses as its principal source Georg Büchner’s protomodernist text, with its description of an individual alienated from his social context. Secondly, in making use of the puppets of the Handspring Puppet Company for its central characters, the play employs a style commensurate with modernist aesthetics, in terms of the objectification of subjectivity and the mechanisation of the subject. Thirdly, by re-contextualising Büchner’s German soldier as an African mineworker, the production deals with aspects of modernisation by examining the clash, confusion and concomitant syncretism of rural and urban cultures. The article concludes by identifying the all too human desire to be more than a puppet, more than machine, and the potential consequences of the fragmented modernist self on conceptions of identity and freedom.

Hardwired

2020 ◽  
pp. 108-132
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
The Self ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Clinical Ethnography ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Molecular Modulation

Sociologist Nikolas Rose has posited the emergence of a “neurochemical self” organized around the assumption that our personal characteristics, moods and desires arise from our brain chemicals, and are amenable to molecular modulation through psychiatric drugs. Drawing on clinical ethnography of a series of support groups run by and for individuals diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and other autism spectrum conditions, this chapter charts the emergence of a contrasting model of the “neurostructural” self, oriented around the concept of developmental disability and its presumption of fixed innateness and lifelong course. In rejecting the demands for flexibility and adaptation entailed in neurochemical selfhood, this counterdiscourse of hardwired genetic and synaptic brain structure functions as a form of resistance against the demand for constant fluidity and change that characterizes late modernity. However, its core assumptions of a self that is fixed and inalterable are increasingly threatened by the ascendance of neural plasticity as a new mode of both conceptualizing and intervening on the self.

Consuming the Self: New Spirituality as “Mystified Consumption”

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
The Self ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
New Spirituality

Using the analytical lens provided by late-modern social theorists (e.g. Bauman, Beck, Bourdieu and Giddens), the author explores the hermeneutical value of regarding particular forms of new religiosity/spirituality as typically commoditized expressions of contemporary consumer society. Regarded as modes of self-assertion, new spiritualities are first held to promote the cosmic aggrandizement of the late-modern self. Second, new spiritualities may be seen as discontinuous with certain contemporary dynamics and, thereby, to comprise a reflexively orchestrated rejection of modern consumer society. Synthesizing these opposites, it is argued that new religiosities neither wholly affirm nor entirely reject late-modern society and might best be regarded as forms of “mystified consumption”.

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