The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject

by Toby Miller

Overview

In The Well-Tempered Self, Toby Miller argues that the modern capitalist state musters a variety of cultural forces to send deliberately mixed messages about the nature of citizenship and the self. The process creates ideal citizens: "cultural subjects" trained to meet the conflicting needs of the political and economic systems. Miller contents that capitalism's democratic politics requires selfless, community-minded citizens, white its economics depends on selfish, utilitarian consumers. To fulfill these conflicting needs for political order and economic prosperity, powerful cultural forces are employed to instill a sense of "ethical incompleteness." Citizens are then offered political, cultural, and economic opportunities to become better, happier, and more fulfilled—opportunities that, in turn, encourage loyalty to both the political and economic systems. In a series of case studies that demonstrate this process, Miller examines mass enternationment, political discourse, and methods of resistance to these powerful cultural forces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801846045
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/01/1993
Series:	Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Toby Miller is assistant professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. He has taught at Murdoch and Griffith universities in Australia and has worked as a research officer with the Australian Senate and as an announcer and cultural commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

What People are Saying About This

Meaghan Morris

This is a major work on the connection of theoretical to political practice under postmodernity. At once rigorous and readable, its academic concerns will be both accessible and useful to readers asking—as contemporary readers indomitably do—what these debates in cultural theory have to do with the conduct of theirsocial lives.

Douglas Kellner

Miller's work is extremely engaging, original, and successful in producing a set of innovative analyses of the formation of cultural subjects.

From the Publisher

Miller's work is extremely engaging, original, and successful in producing a set of innovative analyses of the formation of cultural subjects.
—Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin

This is a major work on the connection of theoretical to political practice under postmodernity. At once rigorous and readable, its academic concerns will be both accessible and useful to readers asking—as contemporary readers indomitably do—what these debates in cultural theory have to do with the conduct of theirsocial lives.
—Meaghan Morris, author of The Pirate's Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism

Editorial Reviews

This Fouauldian analysis of political identity- formation, social ethics, and cultural policy in advanced capitalist societies is a timely addition to democratic theory. Miller contrasts the ethic of 'incompleteness' which produces an accelerated and self-policing citizens to the 'autoinvention' exemplified by (some) new social movements and hinted at Foucault's later works. The middle, substantive chapters are the strongest; Miller marshalls a wealth of original data on the deep schism between selfless citizen and self-serving customer underlying much Australian and Brittish Public Policy; the politics of incivility (again, in Australia); and the issue of 'cultural imperialism' under the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade. These imaginative discussion denaturalize such classic concepts as national identity, state sovreignty, individual autonomy, self-discovery, and civic virtue.
—Choice

From the Publisher

"This Fouauldian analysis of political identity- formation, social ethics, and cultural policy in advanced capitalist societies is a timely addition to democratic theory. Miller contrasts the ethic of 'incompleteness' which produces an accelerated and self-policing citizens to the 'autoinvention' exemplified by (some) new social movements and hinted at Foucault's later works. The middle, substantive chapters are the strongest; Miller marshalls a wealth of original data on the deep schism between selfless citizen and self-serving customer underlying much Australian and Brittish Public Policy; the politics of incivility (again, in Australia); and the issue of 'cultural imperialism' under the General Agreement on Tarriffs and Trade. These imaginative discussion denaturalize such classic concepts as national identity, state sovreignty, individual autonomy, self-discovery, and civic virtue."

Choice

Shows how institutions and discourses mold people into loyal and manageable subjects by convincing them they are ethically incomplete, and how their method is to shift at will between considering the subject as a private individual and as a public citizen. Furthermore, arguing that people are also unruly, examines how their resistance undermines the inevitability of the dominant culture. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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