Informed by selected postmodern theories and cultural criticism, this study argues that while American fiction of the 1980s and 1990s bears the outward signs of a return to realism, it also evidences recurring themes of postmodernism, such as alienation, social disintegration, personal despair, historical dislocation, and authorial self-reflexiveness.

Russians have often been characterized as people with souls rather than selves. This study considers the stories of self of men and women across 200 years, from peasants to Tolstoy, as 15 historians and literary scholars situate narratives of self in their historical context.

"In Paul in Israel's Story, John Meech addresses the problem of the self in community in a theological hermeneutics that brings together recent biblical scholarship and constructive theology."--BOOK JACKET.

In contemporary societies privatization has long ceased to be just an economic concept; rather, it must increasingly be made to refer to the ongoing shrinking of the public space under the impact of the representation of individual lives and images, which cuts across all discourses, genres and media to become one of the primary means of production of culture. This volume is intended to cover such an historical, social and intellectual ground, where self-representation comes to the fore. Targeting mostly an academic readership but certainly also of interest to the general educated public, it collects a wide range of essays dealing with diverse modes of life writing and portraying from a variety of perspectives and focusing on different historical periods and media. It thus offers itself as a major contribution to a better understanding of the world we live in: its past legacy and present configuration.ContentsIntroduction: Signposts of the Self in Modernity Part I. The Representational Dilemma Christopher PRENDERGAST: The Self as a Work of Art: Proust's ScepticismPaulo DE MEDEIROS: (Re-)Constructing, (Re-)Membering Postcolonial Selves Aleksandra PODSIADLIK: `Doing Identity? in Fiction: Identity Construction as a Dialogue between Individuals and Cultural Narratives Clara ROWLAND: Self-Representation and Temporality: `Parabasis? in Guimar'es Rosa's Grande Sert'o: Veredas Daniel ROVERS: New Man: Marie Kessels? Inner Portrait of a Writing Self Gaston FRANSSEN: Good Intentions, Ethical Commitment, and Impersonal Poetry:The Work of Gerrit Kouwenaar Jan RUPP: `For-Getting? Plural Selves: Narrative and Identity in Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore Lars BERNAERTS: The Straitjacket of Normality. The Interaction with the Psychiatrist in Maurits Dekker's Waarom ik niet krankzinnig benLars DALUM GRANILD: The Self's Struggle for Recognition: August Strindberg and the Other Marinela FREITAS: Unshaded Shadows: Performances of Gender in Emily Dickinson and Luiza Neto Jorge Part II. Signalling Identity Peter BROOKS: The Identity Paradigm Roland GREENE: The Global I Davy VAN OERS: Staining the Past with Ink in Lorenzo Da Ponte's Memorie (1830): The Fallacies of Autobiographical `Writing? Eli PARK SORENSEN: Between Autobiography and Fiction: Narrating the Self in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Vivir para contarla Mirjam TRUWANT: The Passion of Lena Christ: From Fictionalized Autobiography to Biographical Novel Ricardo GIL SOEIRO: Dreams in the Mirror: George Steiner by George Steiner Part III. Images of the Self Across the Arts Timothy MATHEWS: Reading W. G. Sebald with Alberto Giacometti Paula MOR?O: The Impossible Self-Portrait Anna Viola SBORGI: Between Literature and the Visual Arts: Portraits of the Self in William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Fernando Pessoa Jakob STOUGAARD-NIELSEN: Photography and Shadow-Writing: Henry James's Revisions of the Self in the New York Edition Patrick VAN ROSSEM: Consumed by the Audience. Inhibition, Fear, and Anxiety in the Oeuvre of Bruce Nauman Anke BROUWERS: There Was Something about Mary: Mary Pickford's Perfect `Little American? Verena-Susanna NUNGESSER: Paint it Red: Death Artistry as a Portrait of the Self

This book assembles a diverse group of scholars working within a new, pathbreaking paradigm of sexual science, fusing perspectives from history, sociology, and psychology. The contributors are united in their commitment to the idea of "narrative" as central to the study of sexual identity, offering an analytic approach to social science inquiry on sexual identity that restores the voices of sexual subjects. The result is a rich examination of lives in context, with an eye toward multiplicity and meaning across the life course. Central to the chapters in this volume is the significance of history, generation, and narrative in the provision of a workable and meaningful configuration of identity.

This book endeavours to show what capitalism logically is all about. Too much has been talked about without its real identity exposed, or even meant to be exposed.

Religion is not only about understanding the world - it is just as much about how to develop and shape the self’s experience of itself. Because the religious self is shaped by our symbols of God - and symbols of God are also shaped by the self, theology and philosophy of religion cannot ignore this interplay, or the psychological dimension, when they discuss what symbols of God are adequate and not. By discussing critically different ways the symbol of God functions in the formation of the self, the book develops a nuanced and original approach to the interplay between God and the self. It suggests that play is actually an important metaphor in order to develop a dynamic understanding of religion’s way of relating God and the Self. This approach challenges understandings of religion focussing only its cognitive claims, as well as those who emphasize doctrinal orthodoxy as the most important element in religion.

What happens when stories meet mobile media? In this cutting-edge collection, contributors explore digital storytelling in ways that look beyond the desktop to consider how stories can be told through mobile, locative, and pervasive technologies. This book offers dynamic insights about the new nature of narrative in the age of mobile media, studying digital stories that are site-specific, context-aware, and involve the reader in fascinating ways. Addressing important topics for scholars, students, and designers alike, this collection investigates the crucial questions for this emerging area of storytelling and electronic literature. Topics covered include the histories of site-specific narratives, issues in design and practice, space and mapping, mobile games, narrative interfaces, and the interplay between memory, history, and community.

Explores how writers across five continents and four centuries have debated ideas about what it means to be an individual, and shows that the modern self is an ongoing project of global history. In Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert contends that scholars have yet to fully grasp the constitutive force of global connections in the making of modern selfhood. Alpert argues that canonical moments of self-making from around the world share a surprising origin in the colonial anthropology of Europeans in the Americas. While most intellectual histories of modernity begin with the Cartesian inward turn, Alpertshows how this turn itself was an evasion of the impact of the colonial encounter. He charts a counter-history of the modern self, tracing lines of influence that stretch from Michel de Montaigne’s encounter with the Tupi through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau into German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, postcolonial critique, and modern Zen. Alpert considers an unusually wide range of thinkers, including Kant, Hegel, Fanon, Emerson, Du Bois, Senghor, and Suzuki. This book not only breaks with disciplinary conventions about period and geography but also argues that these conventions obscure our ability to understand the modern condition. “Alpert’s scholarship is impressive, offering a focused sweep of intellectual history and incisive readings of many important figures (and the scholarly literature devoted to them). He is a fantastic writer. His prose is direct and evocative, conveying complex ideas in clear and probing terms. This style transforms a long text into a relatively quick and, at times, gripping read.” — Jane Anna Gordon, author of Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon “Through textual and historical analyses and great interpretive abilities, Alpert shows persuasively that Montaigne, Rousseau, Emerson, Suzuki, and others—separately and together—are thinkers not of a Western (monopolizing the sense of modern) tradition, but of global, pluralist thought. His way of reading these thinkers can be a model for others interested in decolonizing and deracializing modern thought while preserving much of the canon with its present membership; with its male, Western-European and Anglo-American membership. But Alpert has done more. Through his arguments he has made room for Du Bois, Fanon, and Suzuki to be included in the canon. This is intellectually progressive and politically significant, and will make a fresh reading experience for many readers.” — Peter K. J. Park, author of Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830

Addressing the relationship between Mead's notions of self and society and those of important continental thinkers, The Cosmopolitan Self demonstrates that Mead's ideas not only speak to resolving the tension between universalism and pluralism but do so in a manner that challenges and advances the positions of these continental theoreticians."--BOOK JACKET.