Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
It would be difficult to find a more appropriate image of selfhood in the modern world than that found in Ezra Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro." It is a selfhood which is at once unique and conglomerative, fleetingly visible then tantalizingly out of focus. It is this slippery, indefinable entity that is the subject of Anthony Elliot's book. The title bears witness to the enormous breadth of its subject matter: Concepts of the Self is an attempt to engage with the various contemporary theoretical frameworks through which selfhood is explicated. Elliot's approach is admirably inter-disciplinary, including symbolic interactionism; modern sociology; post-structuralism; feminist and queer theory; psychoanalysis and post-modernism. With such a broad theoretical perspective, Concepts of the Self has the potential to cater for a major gap in contemporary thinking on subjectivity. Theories of the subject are all too often studied in exclusivity and a book of this kind enables the author to critique theoretical positions in a comparative manner. The 21st century self is such a complex, hybrid entity that it is virtually impossible for one theoretical perspective to adequately articulate the multifarious factors that create and define identity. This brimming potentiality is disappointed somewhat however. Elliot admits that the limited scope of the book necessarily means "some sacrifice in respect of detail and complexity" (21). In an attempt to explain and critique concepts of the self from such a variety of disciplines, Elliot chooses only a handful of exponents from each area, leading to an analysis that sometimes ignores the nuanced differences of opinion and complex debates within particular areas, leading to conclusions that are misleadingly straightforward.
Repository Citation
Murphy, Paula. ""A Privatization of Politics": Anthony Elliot's Concepts of the Self (2001)." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 4, no. 4, 2004, pp. 1–7. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss4/8
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Metaphysics Commons, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons