Narcissism and the ‘politics of recognition’: concepts of the late-modern self

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Hendrick
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Parent Child

The chapter offers an overview of what it argues is the contemporary obsession with the Self - not only to the detriment of others, but also to that of the human potential for a better nature. It argues, following Hobsbawm, that the problems of values and judgment have been reduced the 'single denominator of the unrestricted freedom of the individual'. Consequently, the decline of social democracy has witnessed the failure of the socialist Left to resist the dissipation of significant Enlightenment values. The chapter is in two parts, the first of which provides brief discussions of the 'postsocialist' condition and the politics of recognition, the self and identity politics, and individualisation as 'a fate not a choice'. In the second part, several critiques of the therapeutic culture are briefly discussed, particularly with reference to what have been termed 'pure relationships' and the 'emotive will' which, it is argued, are mistakenly used to protect the self against the 'bleak coldness' of contemporary life. The chapter concludes by arguing for the jettisoning of contractual parent-child relations and renewal of the idea of parental self-sacrifice as a means of helping children to grow up.

scholarly journals Communities and the individual: Beyond the liberal–communitarian divide

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Volker Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
The Self ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Default Position ◽  
The Individual

Liberalism believes that individuals are endowed a priori with reason or at least agency and it is up to that reason and agency to make choices, commitments and so on. Communitarianism criticizes liberalism’s explicit and deliberate neglect of the self and insists that we attain a self and identity only through the effective recognition of significant others. However, personal autonomy does not seem to be a default position, neither reason nor community is going to provide it inevitably. Therefore, it is so important to go beyond the liberal–communitarian divide. This article is analysing various proposals in this direction, asks about the place of communities and the individual in times of populism and the pandemic and provides a global perspective on the liberal–communitarian debate.

scholarly journals Are you content with being just ordinary? Or do you wish to make progress and be outstanding?' New ritual practices in contemporary Sweden

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 111-127
Author(s):  
Anne-Christine Hornborg
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Employment ◽  
Ideal Self ◽  
Employment Service ◽  
Authentic Self ◽  
Public Employment Service ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Late Modern

This article examines the emergence and features of new practices in contemporary Sweden, which are being sold to individuals as therapy or coaching in order for them find their ‘inner potential’ as a means to achieve health, self-realisation and prosperity in life as well as in work. The focus on the inner self and the formation of a new personhood demands new ritual creativity, responding to the individual’s longing for intense experiences of transform­ation and the authentic self. The development of a new outlook on the self is thus the focus of these practices, that is to say, individuals are encouraged to stage new ways to perform themselves. In this construction of a new self, or the image of an ideal self, the layman therapist or coach is very much in demand. In order to discuss these new practices, the Health Academy Europe (Hälsoakademin Europa) is chosen. One reason for a closer study of this enterprise is that it was one of the coaching enterprises chosen in 2009 by the Swedish public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) to give employment coaching, when the Swedish government allocated 300 million euros to buy the services of 1,500 coaches to help approximately 250,000 unemployed Swedes to get work.These new practices could be classified as new rituals, adapted to late modern society with a focus on the individual, the inner self and prosperity. The ambition is to encourage the participant to design a new, empowered self in order to turn dreams into reality and to find hope for better circumstances in life.

Neoliberalism and Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Johansen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The 19Th Century

The problem of capital and the question of its appropriate or desired relationship with political life and civil society shapes how readers, authors, and citizens understand and experience everyday contemporary life and its cultural products. Capital, in its post-1945 incarnation, is widely held to have been either in a state of crisis or responding to crisis (both historical and contemporaneously). Depending on the critic, these crises and their impacts are varied: the collapse of the 19th-century European balance of power, the rise of Keynesian economics, the birth of biopolitics, the Cold War and the specter of Communism, the repeating “systemic cycles of accumulation” endemic to the history of capitalism. This variant of capitalism that shapes contemporary life goes by many names, though the general consensus tends to call it “neoliberalism.” Despite its varying names, neoliberalism is generally held to be an economic doctrine that understands human freedom to be best achieved through free markets and entrepreneurial enterprise, privileging the individual above all else. Government should, therefore, be minimal; its role is to enforce the rules of the game but not to interfere in it. Neoliberalism is thus both revolutionary in its insistence on rethinking social life as solely economic life and an extension of long-standing values and arrangements of economic life that date back centuries. Contemporary fiction takes part in debates about the hyper-individualized neoliberal subject and neoliberal values in a multitude of ways and at a variety of scales. The predominant way is in its interrogation of neoliberal identity politics—either to reinforce or critique, or something in-between, the possibilities for subject formation under neoliberalism. At another remove from the individual text has been the challenge to long-standing genre conventions, particularly in the novel. If modern novelistic genres rose alongside earlier modes of capitalist accumulation, contemporary authors are reimagining them to reflect changing rationalities. Finally, at the meta-textual level, there has been a variety of critical attention given to publishing, its infrastructures, and the role of the artist for both the appearance and success of texts. Across all these approaches—both imaginative and critical—is a commitment to an ongoing examination of the ways neoliberalism in all its varied impacts inflects “how we live now.”

Self and Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanaz Talaifar ◽  
William Swann
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Possible Selves ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Agency And Communion ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Individual

Active and stored mental representations of the self include both global and specific qualities as well as conscious and nonconscious qualities. Semantic and episodic memory both contribute to a self that is not a unitary construct comprising only the individual as he or she is now, but also past and possible selves. Self-knowledge may overlap more or less with others’ views of the self. Furthermore, mental representations of the self vary whether they are positive or negative, important, certain, and stable. The origins of the self are also manifold and can be considered from developmental, biological, intrapsychic, and interpersonal perspectives. The self is connected to core motives (e.g., coherence, agency, and communion) and is manifested in the form of both personal identities and social identities. Finally, just as the self is a product of proximal and distal social forces, it is also an agent that actively shapes its environment.

Engaging Subjective Knowledge: How Amar Singh's Diary Narratives of and by the Self Explain Identity Formation

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 681-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd I. Rudolph ◽  
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
The Self ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Subjective Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
Subaltern Agency ◽  
Category Formation ◽  
The Public Sphere

What should count as knowledge in political science? We have tried here to show that subjectivity is valid and useful, that firstperson accounts of experience—‘telling what I know,” narratives of and by the self, partial and contingent truths, and self-asother ethnography—contribute to knowledge. The move to subjective knowledge does not require the abandonment of objectivity. Self-consciousness and reflexivity simply make it possible to render the familiar unfamiliar, to gain a certain detachment, to achieve “objective subjectivity.” Subjective knowledge helps to explain identity and category formation and the politics of recognition. Accessibility to the politics of those taken to be outside the public sphere, those whose behavior is not easily observed or counted by objective political science—colonized persons, subalterns, and marginalized minorities—depends on their ability to articulate their identities, purposes, and interests. Such forms of identity politics have become of increasing interest to political scientists concerned with subaltern agency, multiculturalism, and ethnic conflict and peace.

Manageable Self in the Early Hellenistic Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-36
Author(s):  
Vaia Touna
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The Self ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Individual

This paper argues that the rise of what is commonly termed "personal religion" during the Classic-Hellenistic period is not the result of an inner need or even quality of the self, as often argued by those who see in ancient Greece foreshadowing of Christianity, but rather was the result of social, economic, and political conditions that made it possible for Hellenistic Greeks to redefine the perception of the individual and its relationship to others.

Monkey on My Back. An Autoethnographic Narrative of a Therapeutic Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Therapeutic Experience ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Global Uncertainty

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.

CHILD-PARENT RELATIONS AS A FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF PROFESSIONAL PREFERENCES IN PEDAGOGICAL DYNASTIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-130
Author(s):  
N. V. SHAMANIN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Parent Child Relationships ◽  
Professional Preferences ◽  
Parent Child

The article raises the issue of the relationship of parent-child relationships and professional preferences in pedagogical dynasties. Particular attention is paid to the role of the family in the professional development of the individual. It has been suggested that there is a relationship between parent-child relationships and professional preferences.

The Dynamics of Society-in-the-Self

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert J. M Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
The Self ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
The World ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
New Vision ◽  
New Phenomena ◽  
The Relationship

In the field of tension between globalization and localization, a set of new phenomena is emerging showing that society is not simply a social environment of self and identity but works in their deepest regions: self-radicalization, self-government, self-cure, self-nationalization, self-internationalization, and even self-marriage. The consequence is that the self is faced with an unprecedented density of self-parts, called I-positions in this theory. In the field of tension between boundary-crossing developments in the world and the search for an identity in a local niche, a self emerges that is characterized by a great variety of contradicting and heterogeneous I-positions and by large and unexpected jumps between different positions as the result of rapid and unexpected changes in the world. The chapter argues that such developments require a new vision of the relationship between self and society.

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