Marginalizing the Self: A Study of Citizenship, Color, and Ethnoracial Identity in American Society

1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanford M. Lyman
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Ethnoracial Identity ◽  
American Society

A Sense of History

1980 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Bruce Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
The Self ◽  
American Society

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reached the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 1930. This kind of institutional milestone usually calls for special observance to celebrate an organization’s continuity and define its place in history. But besides the conventional impulses for that sort of exercise, the Society’s leaders were men with a taste for ceremony and a conviction that their profession deserved a prominent part in the story of human progress. ASME’s anniversary festivities thus promised to be rich in the self-congratulation customary on such occasions.

Reinventing the Self in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Radha Devi Sharma
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
American Society

Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine is a story of a young Punjabi woman named Jasmine whose life takes her from India to the United States, where she goes through many different destinies with her effort to reinvent her coherent self. Searching for and defining a new identity is a central question for immigrants living in a foreign land. The confusion of identity and cultural conflict pushes the immigrants into an identity crisis. The novel exposes how Jasmine, the female protagonist, as an outsider, strives to shape her identity to fit in the mainstream American society. Fortunately, she encounters confirmations of her shifting identity in different stages of her life. Instead of rejecting these identities and names in various phases, she seeks to create a harmonious relationship with those identities. In this context, this paper tries to explore on how she struggles throughout her life to reinvent the coherent self by her constant effort to assimilate to the alien culture and setting.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol.4(1) 2016: 29-38

scholarly journals A New Description of a Healthcare Professional’s Resilience, Incorporating an Eastern Philosophical Perspectives of Self-definition. How to Bridge the Gap between Independent and Interdependent Self-definition in Medical Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shizuma Tsuchiya ◽  
Yusuke Takamiya ◽  
Linda Snell
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
North American ◽  
The Self ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
The North ◽  
Interdependent Self ◽  
Medical Educators ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Different Cultures

Teaching about resilience is one of the biggest challenges in medical education. One of the problems is that medical educators might still ascribe to the individualistic self-definition mainly promoted in the North American society. This definition includes characteristics such as “enduring ongoing hardship,” “thriving on challenges,” “being healthy,” and “being stronger,” which may raise hidden expectations that a healthcare professional’s personality should be strong enough to bounce back to his or her original condition even in a psychologically demanding situation. Psychological theorists describe two broad modes of self-definition in two different cultures: independent self-definition in North American individualism and interdependent self-definition in East Asian collectivism. Despite this seemingly stereotypical discussion on the characteristics of self-definition, a discussion of the two types of self-definition can still encourage medical educators to propose a broader model of resilience in medical education. More specifically, a person using an independent self-definition may become be a complete, whole, autonomous entity, without others, and thus tends to achieve more and become more productive in a competitive society. In contrast, a person using an interdependent self-definition is more likely to be open to another aspect of the context and thus might be able to find and value the self in different ways even in the same context. However, these two self-definitions may not be dichotomous or mutually exclusive but occur in varying ratios in any one individual, particularly as trends of increased globalization, immigration, and technology call for changes in an individual’s value systems in countries. From this standpoint, this review proposes a new definition of resilience in medical education, which is ‘a person’s capacity to be aware of the aspects of the self differently identified in each context, and to consciously value oneself and others in the context’. This is the first article that incorporates the concept of the two self-definitions into resilience education in healthcare. The proposed definition may provide a broader model of resilience in a healthcare professional for educators as well as trainees in medical education.

scholarly journals The Madness of Jodh Singh: Patriotism and Paranoia in the Ghadar Archives

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Rohit Chopra
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
British Government ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Relationship

My paper focuses on Jodh Singh, a marginal figure in the archives of the Ghadar Party, who was arrested for High Treason against the United States for his role in the “Hindu Conspiracy” plots aimed at the British government of India. Incarcerated in a California prison, Singh was moved to a sanatarium on displaying symptoms of insanity. Through a close reading of a web of archival documents and scholarly reflections—at the center of which lies the report of a commission appointed to inquire into his mental condition—I examine the account of the madness of Jodh Singh as a statement about patriotism and paranoia. In engagement with the work of Foucault, Guha, and scholars of the Ghadar movement, I describe how the record of Singh’s experiences indicts the juridical-legal-medical framework of American society as operating on a distinction between legtimate and illegitimate madness. I also examine how Jodh Singh points to the glimmers of a critique of the self-image of the Ghadar Party as a revolutionary movement committed to egalitarian principles. I conclude with a reflection on what Jodh Singh might tell us about the relationship between madness, political aspiration, and the yearning for solidarity.

Introduction

Hard Reading ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 255-257
Author(s):  
Tom Shippey
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Self ◽  
True Nature ◽  
American Society ◽  
Symbolic Images ◽  
Self Examination

This chapter considers the ways in which modern myths, or symbolic images (such as the Statue of Liberty) may be presented in science fiction only to be disfigured, and on occasion to be recreated in significantly different form. Iconic buildings, flags, beliefs and cherished examples of rhetoric are all in one way or another challenged, ironised, or torn down within science fiction scenarios, as part of a process of self-criticism and self-examination rather rare within American society. Nothing is sacred in science fiction. Yet the self-criticism often co-exists with renewed self-assertion, from deeply patriotic authors, concerned above all to determine the true nature of America.

A Nuclear Rapture: The Apocalyptic Art of Kenny Scharf

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 74-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie E. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Arms Race ◽  
The Self ◽  
Destructive Behavior ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
American Society

Abstract The art of Kenny Scharf is paradoxical in nature. He combines carefree cartoon worlds with distinctly religious apocalyptic images of terrifying nuclear holocaust. The odd juxtapositions Scharf creates between the horrific and the benign are the artist’s means of coping with his own apocalyptic anxiety, as well as a critique of the self-destructive behavior of American society in the 1980s. At the time, Ronald Reagan’s strong doomsday rhetoric and his emphasis on the Arms Race collided with the AIDS Crisis, creating a specific 1980s brand of the apocalyptic. Scharf responds to this widespread, heightened anxiety by using the cartoon (and a cartoon-based religion of his own invention) as a purposefully ludicrous anesthetic to numb his apocalyptic fears.

scholarly journals The Self Lost, the Self Adjusted: Forming a New Identity in Bereavement Memoirs by American Women

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 155-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Małecka
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
Joyce Carol Oates ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Spousal Loss ◽  
Joan Didion ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
American Society ◽  
Self Examination ◽  
Grief Reactions

Abstract Most Western cultures place a great value on autonomy. American society in particular has always stressed the need to succeed via self-reliance, a characteristic which, in recent decades, has additionally manifested itself in an increasing inclination for self-examination reflected in the deluge of autobiographical writing, especially memoirs. This analysis focuses on memoirs of spousal loss, a specific subgenre of life writing in which, due to the loss of a loved one, the narrating self realizes how unstable a sense of autonomy is. In their bereavement narratives, Joan Didion, Anne Roiphe, and Joyce Carol Oates admit that after losing a life partner their world crumbled and so did their sense of self. The article examines the following aspects of the grieving self: 1. how grief tests one’s self-sufficiency; 2. how various grief reactions contribute to self-disintegration; 3. the widow as a new and undesirable identity; and 4. writing as a way of regaining one’s sense of self.

Beyond Drug Education

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
New World ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Drug Education ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Current Drug ◽  
American Society

The intent of this paper is to offer another focus in the quagmire of drug education. The author is convinced that current drug education approaches are failing to help stem the tide of drug use and misuse because their goals, expectations and methodologies are irresponsible and ill-informed. He advocates the abandonment of all drug education attempts that begin and end with a discussion of drugs and their effects. Rather than teach people about drugs, this author maintains that we should stress education of the self. Our goal should not be to convince people not to do drugs, but, rather, to help them to think intelligently and rationally, to control their destructive impulses, to make wise decisions, to resist peer pressure when it endangers one's welfare or inhibits one's growth, to understand their values, needs and desires, and to find non-chemical means of fulfillment and satisfaction. Further, the writer recommends that methodologies utilizing admonishment, indoctrination, persuasion, distortion, and fear be abandoned. The point is made that in a society as complex, dynamic and perplexing as the American society, we must offer our young people opportunities to develop the personal, intellectual and emotional resources to live meaningfully, responsively and responsibly in a new world. It is concluded that educators must abandon drug education and attempt new and unproven means of helping young people develop in a dynamic, confusing, and sometimes disturbing world.

scholarly journals Configuration of the Self-Mythology and Identity of Female Characters in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things and The New York Trilogy

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Mohammad Amin Shirkhani
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
Detective Novels ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
New York Trilogy ◽  
American Society

The works of American novelist Paul Auster (1947- ) are uniquely concerned with the mythology of self, metanarrative and the role gender plays in these transactions. In his earliest works, The New York Trilogy (1985-1986) and In the Country of Last Things (1987), Auster uses genre conventions and styles (for the former, detective novels; for the latter, dystopian fiction) to interrogate these preconceptions of self-mythology and the role of gender within these genres, subverting tropes and traits of these works to comment upon them. In the following, we investigate these works in depth along these themes, conducting a close textual analysis from the framework of Freudian and Lacanian theories of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. By investigating the roles of women in The New York Trilogy and In the Country of Last Things, we hope to illuminate Auster’s uniquely postmodernist, deconstructive approach to the psychological imperatives women are socialized into within American society, and how they are informed by narrative and mythology. The role of women, from the absent trophies of The New York Trilogy to the central voice of sanity of Anna in In the Country of Last Things, posits women as a societal superego whose goal it is to keep the destructive, nihilistic id-like impulses of men in check. 

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