Self and Identity

Waking up Muslim on 9/11 by Jameelah Medina

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

I have often stated that I went to sleep as an African American woman on September 10, 2011 and woke up Muslim on... more I have often stated that I went to sleep as an African American woman on September 10, 2011 and woke up Muslim on 9/11. It may seem odd to say this since I am a third-generation Muslim; however, my reason for doing so is that my life as an American Muslim now has two main eras: 1) pre-9/11 and 2) post-9/11.

In the pre-9/11 era of my life, I felt more black than Muslim because my color was a point of conflict and controversy throughout my life. I grew up in two areas as a child—an urban area with majority Latinos/as and then in a very rural area with majority whites. In both areas, being black was not so popular. I was called “mayate,”which is a bug but also the Mexican term for “nigger.” I was also called, “tar baby,” “nigger,” “African booty scratcher,” and a host of other hurtful names as a young black child.

On Galen Strawson's Criticism of Narrativity

by Andrei Buleandra

draft only

This paper challenges Galen Strawson’s proposed distinction between two ways of experiencing the self: the Synchronic... more This paper challenges Galen Strawson’s proposed distinction between two ways of experiencing the self: the Synchronic and the Diachronic. While the Diachronic experiences his self as existing in the past, present and future, for the Synchronic the self is fully in the present. According to Strawson, a Diachronic view of the self is an essential ingredient of adopting a Narrative attitude towards one’s self. By contrast, a Synchronic or Episodic personality has no need for defining one’s self through narrative. I will argue that this distinction is in tension with our ordinary concepts of self and identity. These concepts have essential connections with the commitments and self-constituting decisions we make. We usually define ourselves in terms of what we care about or what we take to be important and Narrativity is just our way of keeping track of these crucial commitments (MacIntyre, 1981; Taylor 1989; Frankfurt 1998; McAdams 2001). These conceptual connections become prominent when we consider widespread phenomena like losing one’s self or going through an identity crisis. I will argue that the Narrativity view of the self, the view criticized by Strawson, has the conceptual resources to accurately describe and explain these phenomena. By contrast, Strawson’s proposed distinction is in direct conflict with these significant psychological facts and cannot account for our intuitions regarding them.

Being an artist you kind of, I mean, you get used to excellence’: Identity, Values and Fine Art Assessment Practices

by Susan Orr

International Journal of Art & Design Education
Volume 30, Issue 1, pages 37–44, February 2011

In this article I report on a study into fine art lecturers’ assessment practices in higher education. This study... more In this article I report on a study into fine art lecturers’ assessment practices in higher education. This study explores the ways that lecturers bring themselves into the act of assessment (Hand & Clewes 2000). I interviewed twelve fine art lecturers who worked across six English universities. Lecturers were asked to relate to me how they learnt to assess student artwork and what informed their judgement making. My research explores the interfaces between fine art lecturers’ assessment practices, their values and identity/ies. My analysis offers a rendering of the ways that values underpin lecturers’ assessment practices. The article explores the ways that lecturers’ assessment decisions relate to their experiences as ex art students, their identity as artists, their own artistic practices, their conceptualisation of the arts arenas and the HE sector. My key overarching argument is that identity/ies and values underpin and enrich fine art lecturers’ assessment practices.

'We live beyond any tale that we happen to enact'

by Galen Strawson

published in Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (2012) pp. 73–90

Some say [1] we all experience or conceive of their own lives as a narrative or story of some sort. Many more say [2]... more Some say [1] we all experience or conceive of their own lives as a narrative or story of some sort. Many more say [2] we ought to do this. I think both these claims are false (cp Strawson 2004). Many go on to claim something more specific: we not only experience our own lives as a narrative of some sort; [3] we ‘constitute our identity’ as a person or self in this way (the ‘narrative self-constitution thesis’). Others again claim that [4] we ought to constitute our identity in this way. Again I reject both these claims. People are very different; there are different good ways to be and to live. I consider Emerson, Nietzsche, Proust and Woolf—among others. Suppose Socrates is right (it may be doubted) that the unexamined life is not a life for a human being: suppose he’s right that self-examination is always a good thing. Even so, the narrative approach is not the only way to do it, nor the best way. I advise against it.

Chandler, J., Konrath, S., & Schwarz, N. (2009). Online and on my mind: Temporary and chronic accessibility influence the assimilation of online characters. Media Psychology, 12, 210-226.

by Jesse Chandler

El tiempo libre como heurístico del self: una metodología para el análisis de la complejidad del sujeto

by Nuria Codina

The technologies of normalization and self

by Marco Gemignani

The Past if Past: The Use of Memories and Self-Healing Narratives in Refugees from the Former Yugoslavia

by Marco Gemignani

Freud, Sartre, Laing: power and authenticity

by stanley wilkin

The flaws in Freud's understanding of the mind. An article.

A matter of authenticity. A matter of authenticity.

THE SELF

by stanley wilkin

This work and others can be found on: www.greenwich-academy-books.com

The nature of the integrated Self. The nature of the integrated Self.

I am Beginning to Understand by Carol P. Christ

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Elizabeth Kelly Inglis died in 1927 at age 62 from complications of a stroke. Secondary causes were malnutrition and... more Elizabeth Kelly Inglis died in 1927 at age 62 from complications of a stroke. Secondary causes were malnutrition and exhaustion.

When I was a child, my father, though he was very close to his own parents and sister, spoke very little about his ancestors. I knew that both of his parents lost their fathers when they were small children. I was told that the Christs were German and the Inglises were Scottish and Irish. My grandmother Mary Inglis Christ was as Irish as the day is long. She prayed to the blessed Virgin and took me to church with her in the early mornings where she lit candles and whispered the rosary while fingering faceted lavender beads. She voted for Kennedy because he was Irish and Catholic—to the horror of my father and his father who had no use for the Democrats. My grandmother sometimes cried when she showed us photographs of her family, especially when she pointed to her sister Veronica, called Very. I sensed that my grandmother felt sad to have left her family in New York when she moved with her husband and children to California during the depression, but I was too young to understand fully. As far as I know, I never met any of the relatives from her side of the family, even when I moved to “back east.”

What I am, as I am, when I am.

by Gestur Hilmarsson

Paper written for a seminar on Self/Identity, taught by Prof. Páll Skúlason at the University of Iceland in March 2012

A paper outlining Sartre's theory of the Self according to his book Transcendence of the Ego, which I then compare to... more A paper outlining Sartre's theory of the Self according to his book Transcendence of the Ego, which I then compare to the theories of Kristján Kristjánsson and finally Paul Ricoeur.

Villains, Victims, and the Financial Crisis: Positioning Identities through Descriptions

by Andrea Whittle

Chapter 7, in Constructing Identity in and around Organizations
Edited by Majken Schultz, Steve Maguire, Ann Langley, and Haridimos Tsoukas (Oxford University Press, 2012)

This chapter draws insights from the field of Discursive
Psychology (DP) to examine the identity positioning... more This chapter draws insights from the field of Discursive
Psychology (DP) to examine the identity positioning employed in the
narratives surrounding the financial crisis. Existing narrative, discursive,
and communicative approaches to studying identity have tended
to focus on more or less explicit identity-talk, where participants produce
direct accounts of themselves or others. What is less well understood
is how descriptions of objects, actions, and events perform
identity work. This chapter contributes by showing how DP enables
us to understand how apparently “neutral” and “factual” descriptive
accounts act as a form of identity positioning.We focus our analysis on
the identity positions constructed during a public hearing involving
senior banking executives in the United Kingdom. The analysis suggests
that two competing identities, victim and villain, were constructed for
the bankers in the dialogue between the witnesses (bankers) and the
questioners (politicians).We argue that apparently neutral descriptions
of events, such as accounts of what happened and why, can represent
methods of positioning identity.We propose that a “discursive devices”
approach, inspired by DP, contributes to the understanding of identity
positioning by highlighting the power of micro-linguistic tools in laying
out the moral landscape of the characters involved in the description.
We conclude by arguing that the characters and stories
surrounding the financial crisis are important because they acted to
shape how the crisis was made sense of and acted upon.

The Journey Home: Language, Exile and Identity in Clarisse Nicoïdski’s Lus Ojus Las Manus La Boca

by Celine Piser

Dreaming Moosbrugger: The Other versus Modernity in Musil's The Man Without Qualities

by Celine Piser

Claiming and displaying (national) identity

by Susan Condor

Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in... more Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in which the construct is conceptualised in theory. In particular, approaches that emphasise the strategic and dialogic quality of national identity claims in everyday life do not easily combine with analytic practices that treat interview respondents’ self-descriptions as acts of literal self-disclosure. Applying Goffman’s constructs of frame and footing to a corpus of data collected in England, we consider how national identities may be performatively displayed in interview encounters. We argue that analytic approaches that overlook subordinate channels of communication, which take utterances out of narrative context, and which focus on what respondents report explicitly at the expense of what is elided or assumed in conversation, may contribute to overly literal, and conceptually unsophisticated, interpretations of the process of self-representation.

Melancholic Identities: Posttraumatic Loss, Memory and Identity Formation

by Jeffrey Prager

Immortality of the Soul as an Intuitive Idea

by Vera Pereira

Co-authored with Luís Faísca and Rodrigo Sá-Saraiva
Published in Journal of Cognition and Culture

Call for papers - The Inner Revolution (16th and 17th century) [English version]

by Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia

This tenth issue of Lo Sguardo will be dedicated to the “inner revolution” of he 16th and 17th century; in particular it will delve into the matter of the interiorization of the world” and the development of an “individual interiority” in the period included betweenthe end of the Renaissance and the early modern Age. With this purpose the issue will consider the “psychology of the soul” livering over the role of the “auxialiry faculties” –such as memory, imagination, fantasy – in relation to the notion of apprehensio, to the practice of spiritual exercises and to the concept of homo faber sui.

Accepted languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German
Deadline for the delivery: September, 10th 2012

Please feel free to contact us for any further informations: redazione@losguardo.net

http://www.losguardo.net/index.html
http://www.losguardo.net/public/collabora/collabora.html

Eco-Arsonists, Bomb-Wielding Neighbors & Queer Vegans: Reflecting on Labeling As Reflective Practice [2012]

by Michael Loadenthal

The following discussion will attempt to draw out aspects of reflective practice a bit more, focusing on the three... more The following discussion will attempt to draw out aspects of reflective practice a bit more, focusing on the three venues touched upon namely: researching the animal and environmental liberation movement, organizing and reporting on the Palestinian intifada, and finally, advocating for a politic of holistic anti-oppression situated in problematizing the animal-human binary and advancing a vegan framework within academic fields of analysis.