The Detached Self
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4375423 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeremy Page (0000-0002-4279-4692, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 663-695 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/03335372-10017709 |
| OpenAlex | W4310828183 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Daniel C. Dennett has argued that the self is a "theorists' fiction," a narrative self that is spun from the brain and functions like a center of gravity; an abstraction that is "supremely useful," even if an ontological fiction. Various theorists, including Priscilla Brandon, Richard Menary, and Lynne Rudder Baker have retorted that embodiment and a first-person ownership-a "mineness" in Brandon's terms-are both necessary for and prior to such a narrative self. The article proposes that the self that is evident in autobiographical art problematizes both of these accounts, illuminating the possibility for self-detachment: the point at which the self loses its center of gravity, its embodiment and its "mineness," yet remains. Through a consideration of the autobiographical poetry of Charles Bukowski, the article argues that autobiographical art is able not only to construct biography, but to construct identity as well
Abstraction · Aesthetics · Art · Biography · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Self · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Computer Science · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|