Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
The Arts of Self 7
Concepts of the Self 12
The Structure of the Book 22
1 Self, Society and Everyday Life 26
Self, Symbols and Others: Symbolic Interactionism 28
Presentations of Self: Goffman 35
Reflexivity and the Self: Giddens 42
2 The Repression of Self 51
Psychoanalysis and the Self 54
Culture and Repression 70
3 Technologies of the Self 84
Technologies of the Self: Foucault 87
Governmentality: New Technologies, New Selves 102
4 Self, Sexuality and Gender 110
Feminism and Psychoanalysis: Two Recent Views 110
The Politics of Gender Performance: Butler 122
Queer Theory: Contesting Self, Defying Gender 127
5 The Postmodern Self 136
All that is Modern Melts into Postmodern? 137
Strategies of the Self: Modern and Postmodern 147
6 The Algorithmic Self 154
The Brave New World of AI 156
Chatbots, Talk and the Self 160
Algorithmic Surveillance and the Self 167
7 The Individualized Self: From Reinvention to Mobile Lives 175
Individualization of the Self 177
Self-Reinvention: The New Individualism 184
The Mobile Self 190
Conclusion 197
Inner Depth, or Inside Out 197
Identity Politics, or Critique of Self 201
Afterword: Global Identities, the Rise of Anti-Self Theories and New Horizons 204
Index 210