Event Timeslots (1)
Tuesday
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Western folk wisdom about personal identity tends to promote the idea that we have one stable and unified self, a relatively coherent core including values, preferences, and dispositions that define us no matter the context and situation. This is reflected in the value we attribute to coherence and authenticity as virtues to cultivate and pursue, and it is often tied to culturally-specific emphasis on individual psychology and on individuals as clearly distinct from their social environment. This class will look at philosophical theories of identity and the self and analyze fictional work through the lens of these theories: in particular, we will engage with how some works in European and American literature in the 20th century have conceived of the relationship between the self, society, social roles, and the act of narration. We will start by analyzing some of the main objections to the idea of a distinct, stable self. In doing so, we will also discuss philosophical accounts of self that stress the role of culture and socialization in the creation of our personal identities, as well as the role of narratives. We will then read and analyze a number of fictional texts (mostly from European and American literature of the 20th century) that engage with a variety of themes related to identity and the self: the (at times frightening) fragmentation and pluralization of the self, its narrative and perhaps fictional nature, its malleability, the (im)possibility of authenticity, and the loss of a sense of identity.