Description
Book SynopsisThe notion of a personal self took centuries to evolve, reaching the pinnacle of autonomy with Descartes' I think, therefore I am' in the 17th century. This
personalisation' of identity thrived for another hundred years before it began to be questioned, subject to the emergence of broader, more inclusive forms of agency.
Simulated Selves: The Undoing Personal Identity in the Modern World addresses the constructed' notion of personal identity in the West and how it has been eclipsed by the development of new technological, social, art historical and psychological infrastructures over the last two centuries. While the provisional nature of the self-sense has been increasingly accepted in recent years,
Simulated Selves addresses it in a new way - not by challenging it directly, but by observing changes to the environments and cultural conventions that have traditionally supported it. By narrating both its dismantling and its incapacitation in this way, it recor
Trade Review‘Astonishingly brilliant and well-informed. While the concept of the self lends itself amply to philosophical and psychological analysis, through logic and introspection, this is not the approach taken here.
Simulated Selves identifies the self-sense from the traces it has left in the historical environment and this is central to the book’s originality.’ * Charles Lemert, John E. Andrus Professor of Social Theory and University Professor Emeritus, Wesleyan University, USA *
Erudite, elegant and wide-ranging: a fascinating history of the modern undoing of the self by and through art * Sacha Golob, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, King’s College London, UK *
A sweeping and suggestive account of how the 'self-sense' of modern subjects came to be undermined by the cultural forces that earlier fostered its construction. Spira's dialectical vision and lucid writing style make this a compelling read. * Patrick Coleman, Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *
Table of Contentspreface acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. The Narrated Self:Time and the Dramatisation of Historical Agency 3. The Publication of the Self: the Sublimation of Personal Identity in Publicity and Art Appreciation 4. The Disintegration of the Self: the Origins of Abstraction and the De-objectification of the World 5. The Democratisation of the Self: the Integration of Creative Endeavour into the Fabric of Daily Life and the Death of Art 6. The Trans-personalisation of the Self: the Material Culture of Communication and the Communalisation of Identity 7. The Psychological Self: The Pathology of Art and Cinematographic Modes of Self-Remembering 8. The Linguistic Self: the De-verberation of the Self and the End of Meaning
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