Self and Identity

An essay that digests some of the themes in my new book entitled Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self.
A version of this essay was delivered at the September Symposium of the English department at the University of Houston - Downtown in 2019.

Résumé Le fil (1994) est le premier « roman » de Christophe Bourdin qui, atteint du sida, raconte en trois temps-le « temps des hypocondries », le « temps de l'agonie » et le « temps du rêve »-les stades qui ont ponctué sa maladie. Il s'agit dans cet article d'examiner la façon dont Bourdin perçoit son corps et reflète sur son identité à travers le miroir, le regard d'autrui et la page. Une confrontation aggravée par l'avancée de la maladie et comparable à celle décrite par Hervé Guibert dans ces autres récits autobiographiques sur le sida que sont À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (1990) et Le protocole compassionnel (1991).

Arts-based Education in Outdoor Learning is a compendium of artistic endeavour created for the purposes of learning. The contents stem mainly from teaching BA undergraduate Outdoor students at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK, showcased here to promote critical discussion on Outdoor issues and foster pedagogical progress wherever that may be found. This introduction outlines the structure of the book, which also illuminates the plan of teaching that has brought about such a vibrant collection of chapters. The ethos of my educational mission has been for students to become philosophical about things, ‘having ideas’ with a view to making a comment about some state of affairs in the Outdoors. With a nugget of an idea latched on to, fuelled with some passion, the next step was to transform that idea into some physical presence through an artistic medium; shape it. Thereafter, the academic task was to polish and present the artwork with a supporting chapter, in order to communicate their idea to the world; share it. The creation of art in this context was always a means to an educational end, the artworks being an impressive by-product from this experience – but now the artworks are leading the show, representing the style of education we enjoyed. It seems worth mentioning at the outset, that all the Outdoor students I have taught are not artists, they are climbers, canoeists and mountaineers. They never came to university to do or study art and nor did I teach them as such. If I have done anything, it was to free up the possibility of thinking slightly differently about topics they chose, and then equip them with some basic artistic tools to play with those ideas. As a result, I discovered a huge increase in student confidence and a palpable increase in enjoyment of learning, as much for me as their teacher as for them. In effect, what I did was invite into my classroom a raft of untapped talent in thinking and learning that suddenly had a place in their university degrees. Students were writing home asking parents to dig out their pencils and painting sets that they had at school, as there was now an urgent need to express an idea in a creative way. On this point, and towards a student-centred introduction to this book, I invite the reader to turn to the last chapter (chpt 40) Student Voices: living and learning through art and the outdoors which provides a sense of the endeavour, commitment and learning experiences from a selection of student authors in this volume.

This paper responds to continuing commentary on Velmans (2002a) “How could conscious experiences affect brains,” a target article for a special issue of JCS. I focus on the final question dealt with by the target article: how free will relates to preconscious and conscious mental processing, and I develop the case for preconscious free will.  Although “preconscious free will” might appear to be a contradiction in terms, it is consistent with the scientific evidence and provides a parsimonious way to reconcile the commonsense view that voluntary acts are freely chosen with the evidence that conscious wishes and decisions are determined by preconscious processing in the mind/brain.  I consider alternative interpretations of how “conscious free will” might operate by Libet and by Mangan and respond to doubts about the extent to which the operations of mind are revealed in consciousness, raised by Claxton and Bouratinos. In reconciling commonsense attributions of freedom and responsibility with the findings of science, preconscious free will can be shown to have practical consequences for adjudications in law.

Catharine Trotter Cockburn is best known for her _Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding_ (1702). However very little has been said about Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments therein. In this paper I give a brief description of the history of Trotter’s _Defence_. Thereafter I focus on two (of the many) objections to which Trotter responds on Locke’s behalf: 1) the objection that Locke has not proved the soul immortal, and 2) the objection that Locke’s view leads to the absurd consequence that our souls are in constant flux. I argue that Trotter offers a compelling response to both of these charges. This is not only because of what Trotter explicitly claims in the _Defence_, but also because the _Defence_ invites and encourages the reader to return to Locke’s text. I then argue that in Trotter we find additional insights and clarifications once we move past the two objections I just mentioned, and on to the related topic of personal identity.  In this short paper I am not able to offer a full explication or evaluation of Trotter’s treatment of Locke’s metaphysical commitments. I am, however, able to show that this aspect of Trotter’s _Defence_ warrants careful consideration and further study.

Musical Portraits: The Composition of Identity in Contemporary and Experimental Music explores the wide-ranging but under-examined genre of musical portraiture. It focuses in particular on contemporary and experimental music created between 1945 and the present day, an era in which conceptions of identity have changed alongside increasing innovation in musical composition as well as in the uses of abstraction, mixed media, and other novel techniques in the field of visual portraiture. In the absence of physical likeness, an element typical of portraiture that cannot be depicted in sound, composers have experimented with methods of constructing other attributes of identity in music, such as character, biography, and profession. By studying musical portraits of painters, authors, and modern celebrities, in addition to composers' self-portraits, the book considers how representational and interpretive processes overlap and differ between music and other art forms, as well as how music is used in the depiction of human identities. Examining a range of musical portraits by composers including Peter Ablinger, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, György Ligeti, and Virgil Thomson, and director Robert Wilson's on-going series of video portraits of modern-day celebrities and his "portrait opera" Einstein on the Beach, Musical Portraits contributes to the study of music since 1945 through a detailed examination of contemporary understandings of music's capacity to depict identity, and of the intersections between music, literature, theater, film, and the visual arts.

... Dedicated in loving memory to Cates Anderson Gossett and Linda Murray ... To my friends and colleagues, particularly Sydnye Allen, Silvia Bartolic, Scott Blackwood, Candace Boheme, Lila Bouchet, Maggie Brubaker, Melissa Curran, Kristin Doyle, Andy Fiegel, Lynn French ...

This research highlights the crucial role of an intimate link between a disabled person's self-identity and the perceived fairness of legal procedures. In doing so, it brings to the foreground a wholly ignored aspect of procedural justice. Earlier researchers have failed to delve into the role identity politics plays in the relationship between the institutions and the beneficiaries of their services, and the way different members of a group understand and define themselves. This research explores the way people with disabilities in the United States, with different kinds of disability identities, experience and evaluate the procedure of claiming Social Security benefits. The findings suggest that disabled people who identified with the social model of disability (as opposed to the medical-individual models) hold a critical view of the procedure for retaining benefits. They felt they had no control over it, could not voice their opinions, were mistreated by representatives, and had to present an image that was not necessarily true of their disability. They also saw the procedure as discouraging them from participating fully in the labor market, and consequently integrating better in society, an idea that was not present among disabled people who identify with medical-individual models. Exposing this relationship between the way people perceive themselves and the way they experience and evaluate legal procedures can contribute to the creation of better policies, while improving communication between the state and members of the disability community, along with other marginalized groups.

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

Our research study investigated the primary research question: “What are the lived experiences of millennial women holding knowledge positions in South African metropolises that lead them to leave their organizations?” among 25 professional, millennial women in the main economic hubs of Gauteng and the Western Cape in South Africa. Secondary questions explored were: What the experience of resigning felt like for the women, the role of different identities in the experiences, and mechanisms that organizations could use to retain millennial women. For most women in our study, the experience of resigning was unpleasant; while for some, it was appeasing. This study also identified gender, age, race, dress-code, language, accent, relationship status, and country of origin as ideological identity-forming components that affect their experiences in the workplace. Organizational retention strategies identified were: (1) fostering diversity, (2) developmental support, (3) management support, (4) voice amplification, (5) enabling work environment creation, and (6) rewards and recognition. Based on the analysis of the findings, the effect of homogenous norms resulting from homosocial reproduction was then interpreted as the underlying essence of many of the participant’s lived experiences that led them to resign from their organizations.

The book is devoted to the analysis of ethno-linguistic and socio-cultural foundations of the identity of Dagestanis. The author discribres
particularities of  ethno-linguistic situation in the Mountainous and Lowland districts of Dageston, the influence of migration, urbanization, ethnic mixations on the cultural and language identity,  as well as the correlation of ethnic and religious identitues,  forms of actualization of ethnic and civil  consciousness,  ethnic stereotypes and other components of consciousness of Dagestanis. Special attention is paid to the problem of preserving the language diversity and cultural identity of the peoples of Dagestan.The book is intended for anthropologists, historians, philologists.
culture and a wide range of readers interested in Etnea-
takovymi and ethno-cultural problems.

Having asked, What, then, is time? Augustine admitted, I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. We all have a sense of time, but the description and explanation of it remain remarkably elusive. Through a series of detailed descriptions, Husserl attempted to clarify this sense of time. This book traces the development of his account of our temporal self-awareness, starting with his early 1905-1909 lectures on time consciousness and proceeding through the 1917-18 Bernau Manuscripts, the Analyses of Passive Syntheses of the 1920s and ending with the C, B and E manuscripts on time and instincts of the 1930s. Although it covers all the stages of Husserl’s account of temporality, the book is nonetheless systematic in its approach. It is organized about a number of basic topics in the theory of time and presents and critically appraises Husserl’s positions on the issues pertaining to each.

This paper was presented during the first Rubenianum Work-in-Progress Workshop organised the 20 february 20.

The purpose of this paper is to present my initial hypotheses for answering the question of the role of exoticism in the expression of individuality in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through painted portraits with various exotic objects (porcelain, Persian carpets, oriental costumes, etc.) I will question the aesthetic, social and cultural functions of these objects. The dialectic of reality/representation will also be considered.

The relationship between music, the self/identity, and consumption is significant and widely acknowledged, yet it remains under-researched. To further our understanding of the symbolic consumption of music, this study evaluates the usefulness of Larsen, Lawson, and Todd's (2009) conceptual framework of the consumption of music as self-representation, and presents a revised framework. Twenty-two individuals provided data, including in-depth interviews and participant diaries. The resulting framework details the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the symbolic consumption of music. It is based on an evaluation of the level and acceptability of congruency between the image of the music and the self-concept, both of which are socially situated. Identity is expressed through a variety of consumption rituals, which allow the individual to ‘own’ or ‘possess’ the associated meanings. The framework demonstrates that music is a rich and important site of symbolic consumption, and could also be used in contexts other than music to describe symbolic consumption.

Identities, people’s subjectively construed understandings of who they were, are, and desire to become, are implicated in, and thus key to understanding and explaining, almost everything that happens  in and around organizations. The research contribution that this review paper makes is threefold. First, it analyses the often employed but rarely systematically explored concept identity work, and argues that it is one metaphor among many that may be useful in the analysis of professional and more generally work identities. Second, it focuses on five fundamental, inter-connected debates in contemporary identities research centred on notions of choice, stability, coherence, positivity, and authenticity. Third, it outlines the roles that the concept identity work may play in bridging levels of analysis and disciplinary boundaries, and sketches some possible future identities-focused ideas for further research. Under-specification has meant that ‘identity’ has not always fulfilled its analytical promise in either theoretical explorations of identities issues or in empirical studies of identities in practice; and it is to these ends that this paper seeks to contribute.

This paper examines the history and philosophy of a little-known psychological experience: depersonalization. It explores it as a phenomenal experience and as a disorder. It examines nosological debates over the condition, both past and present. It presents speculative hypotheses about phenomenal consciousness, the self and sensation.

Edited collection -- with chapters by Adam Smyth, Barry Windeatt, David Matthew, Molly Murray, Kathleen Lynch, Suzanne Trill, Tessa Whitehouse, Robert Folkenflik, Lynn Festa, John Richetti, David Vincent, Duncan Wu, Richard Hughes Gibson, Timothy Larsen, Carol Hanbery MacKay, Julie Codell, Stephen Colclough, Max Saunders, Georgia Johnston, Hope Wolf, Laura Marcus, Maud Ellman, Michael O'Neill, Nick Hubble, Bart Moore-Gilbert, Joseph Brooker, Neil Vickers, Roger Luckhurst, Andreas Kitzmann

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke. Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

This paper explores the importance of Kendrick Lamar in the entertainment industry, in hip-hop and in American History. The essence of this paper explores his celebrity black body in relation to history, identity and his contribution to rich black historical archives on the black experience. At large, this paper examines his performance in his DNA music video, to see how his lived body, equipped with its historical DNA, informs our modern perception of the black body.

This paper, written from a feminist perspective, seeks to understand the oppressed black body in popular culture to see how public figures like Kendrick Lamar are reclaiming their history. By creating a rich archive of soulful music and meaningful videos, Kendrick is mainstreaming the black reality in a time where the African-American body is at a political crossroads.

Kendrick Lamar is writing history with his embodied performances and his profound written reflections and ensuring that future generations have a reference point in understanding, participating with and learning from their collective history.

"Guavas for Dummies, American Jíbaras, & Postnational Autonomy: When I Was Puerto Rican in the Hemispheric Turn" (2019) re-engages this text after I taught it in Puerto Rico four years. In this 2009 essay, Santiago’s memoir is said to bridge U.S. and Caribbean lit. WIWPR begins with a remembered Puerto Rico, and ends in the author’s adulthood in the USA. Studying Santiago’s text within a trajectory of immigrant narratives familiarizes the text to readers who are often processing their own entries into the US / its cultural orbit. This essay examines Santiago’s representation of jibaros, a subculture whose place in in Puerto Rico parallels the conflicted relationship many Jamaicans have with Rastafarians. Also, the theme of “Translating and Resisting Imperialism” is developed through a close reading of the chapter “The American Invasion of MacÚn.” Santiago’s treatment of gender roles in her family is also explored.

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke.

Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Today, individual identities often undergo radical conversions that were thought to be fantastical only decades ago: transformations of race, sex, gender, and more. These transformations are of great interest to the public, as evidenced by the frequent coverage of trans issues and personal transitions of all kinds on television and in popular magazines. Caitlyn Jenner changes from a man into a woman. Rachel Dolezal changes from a white woman to a black one. It is not new that people attempt these renovations of identity – but what is new is the mainstream insistence upon the totality and truth of these transformations. And while race and gender are certainly different matters, the techniques used to signify them in rhetorical contexts are remarkable similar. The growing discourse on these topics indicates that we have perhaps arrived at a " trans-moment " – a cultural impasse with possibilities for new kinds of transformations to occur. This moment calls for a theoretical reconsideration of ethos, how it functions differently now than it has in the past, and how it is successfully communicated in new mediated contexts. Although people who testify to these transformations often posit their new ethos as self-evident, major renovations of personal identity require sophisticated rhetorical performances in order to win the recognition of others.

Charles Taylor philosophical thought as a whole can be characterised as thorough-going search for and permanent interest in a well-founded philosophical anthropology. From early on Taylor sought to elaborate a picture of human existence which is neither ignorant of scientific developments nor neglecting fundamental human experiences. In doing so, his conception of man as self-interpreting animal integrates various trends of European philosophy, among others Heidegger's theory of Dasein. The many-faceted formula of self-interpreting animal accentuates that to be human is not grounded in having a substance, rather in the process of interpreting oneself. With regard to this conception, the paper mainly focus on the distinctively human aspects and the specific human linguistic capacity as opposed to animal skills and abilities. Furthermore, I shall investigate both Taylor's relation to the hermeneutic tradition, more specifically to Heidegger and Gadamer, and to the narrative theory of personal identity. The last part of the argumentation follows Taylor's recent undertaking in his Language animal (2016) where he expanded in important aspects how and to what extent human being is embedded and intertwined with language.

By studying an extraordinary case, that of the corregidor of Murcia Fernando de Vera y Vargas, accused of sodomy in 1594, this article analyses how different types of trials –a residencia and a sodomy process– require different self-fashioning strategies from the same individual. In opposition to the identity as corregidor, based on merits and the appropriate performance of an impartial loyal officer, in the sodomy trial Vera is presented as a distinguished citizen, from an honorable family and closely related to powerful local families as evidences of a noble character, incompatible with a crime against nature. Despite the differences between the two trials, both of them work on a complementary way to reveal a kaleidoscope of social tension that descends from the well-known sixteenth century Murcian factions. Beyond the self-fashioning analysis focused on discourse, the present work proves that the success of said discourses depended upon its confirmation by a determined fraction of the society and, in order to assure that confirmation, the display of a particular behavior that supported the intended self-portrayal was indispensable.
Keywords: corregidor; sodomy; residencia; self-fashioning; identity; officers; Murcia.

A través de un caso extraordinario, el del corregidor de Murcia Fernando de Vera y Vargas, acusado del pecado nefando en 1594, se analiza cómo diferentes procesos –un juicio de residencia y un proceso por sodomía– exigen diferentes estrategias de self-fashioning por parte de un mismo individuo. Frente a la identidad como corregidor apoyada en sus méritos y en actuaciones propias de un fiel oficial imparcial, se opone la de insigne ciudadano, de buen linaje y que exhibe una estrecha amistad con poderosas familias locales como prueba de un carácter noble incompatible con el pecado nefando. A pesar de las diferencias entre ambos procesos, ambos se articulan de forma complementaria para revelar un mosaico de tensiones sociales herederas de los bien conocidos bandos murcianos del siglo XVI. Más allá de los análisis de self-fashioning centrados en el discurso, se muestra que el éxito de dichos discursos dependía en última instancia de su confirmación por parte de un cierto espectro de la sociedad, para lo cual era indispensable la ostentación de un comportamiento concreto que apoyase la imagen que se pretendía proyectar.
Palabras clave: corregidor; sodomía; residencia; self-fashioning; identidad; oficiales; Murcia.

The following is published on the www.takingtheescalator.com website but is also being made available on Academia.edu for review. It is designed for groups as an in-depth look at self esteem from a realistic perspective, with substance use issues in mind.

Some live their lives in a ‘Narrative’ and ‘Diachronic’ fashion. They intuitively feel they’re the same self or person across long periods of time. Others live in a decidedly ‘non-Narrative’ and ‘Episodic’ way with no strong sense that they’re the same same self or person across time. Some think you have to live Narratively and Diachronically to live a morally or ethically good life. I argue that Episodic, non-Narrative people can lead equally moral, ethical, responsible, conscience-governed, lives, and are equally capable of remorse, love, friendship, loyalty, and so on. I raise and respond to a doubt about gratitude.

key words narrative, non-narrative, Narrativity, Diachronic personality, Episodic personality, remorse, contrition, guilt, conscience, love, friendship, loyalty, resentment, gratitude

In the reputed work Securitization: A New Framework for Analysis (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998), the Copenhagen School theoreticians indicated that the media sector might not offer the correct answers in surveying the nexus between governments’ manoeuvres and sociopolitical developments because it is not easy to determine the principal goals of the sector. Nonetheless, they agreed that media is apt to be exploited as a threat “manufacturing” tool (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 88–89; Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2010, p. 212), even though it does not control the urgency levels of issues without the will of governments
(Hass, 2009, p. 83). The Copenhagen School also claims that securitization theory, which examines the relationship between security threats and political discourses, might have better practicability for peripheral researchers than other critical approaches within security studies (Bilgin, 2011, p. 405). The reference point is that “peripheral scholars may be distrustful of the ways in which ‘security arguments’ are often (mis)used by rulers and elites for domestic purposes” (Bilgin, 2011, p. 403). Although this statement needs to be evaluated in another review, the Copenhagen School’s arguments of (mis)usage of security issues and exploitation of the media sector have been proven in Turkey’s everlasting dilemmas, which were revived by the Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym AKP) after the nine years of desecuritization of Kurdish separatism and Bashar Assad as the old enemy.