Simulated Selves

The Undoing of Personal Identity in the Modern World

Andrew Spira

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350298163
• eBook ISBN: 9781350091108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

The notion of a personal self took centuries to evolve, reaching the pinnacle of autonomy with Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' in the 17th century. This ' personalisation' of identity thrived for another hundred years before it began to be questioned, subject to the emergence of broader, more inclusive forms of agency. Simulated Selves: The Undoing Personal Identity in the Modern World addresses the 'constructed' notion of personal identity in the West and how it has been eclipsed by the development of new technological, social, art historical and psychological infrastructures over the last two centuries. While the provisional nature of the self-sense has been increasingly accepted in recent years, Simulated Selves addresses it in a new way - not by challenging it directly, but by observing changes to the environments and cultural conventions that have traditionally supported it. By narrating both its dismantling and its incapacitation in this way, it records its undoing. Like The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art (to which it forms a companion volume), Simulated Selves straddles cultural history and philosophy. Firstly, it identifies hitherto neglected forces that inform the course of cultural history. Secondly, it highlights how the self is not the self-authenticating abstraction, only accessible to introspection, that it seems to be; it is also a cultural and historical phenomenon. Arguing that it is by engaging in cultural conventions that we subscribe to the process of identity-formation, the book also suggests that it is in these conventions that we see our self-sense - and its transience - best reflected. By examining the traces that the trajectory of the self-sense has left in its environment, Simulated Selves offers a radically new approach to the question of personal identity, asking not only 'how and why is it under threat?' but also 'given that we understand the self-sense to be a constructed phenomenon, why do we cling to it?'.

CHAPTER ONE

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Introduction

The notion that human beings have personal ‘selves’ is so ingrained in us – in the ‘West’, at least – that we rarely question it. At the most basic level, we think we know who we are. Even if we subscribe, at a theoretical level, to the notion that, after fifty years of post-structuralist and postmodernist philosophy, the self has been ‘deconstructed’ and rendered conditional or provisional, the discourse of personal identity retains its position at the heart of western culture.¹ Generally speaking, we consider ourselves to be the consistent ‘subject’ of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs, even if our thoughts, feelings and beliefs may constantly change (as in ‘I can’t make up my mind’); and, from a purely practical point of view, we know what our name is, who our family and friends are, where we live, what we own, where we like going, what we like doing, reading and eating. Although there are, of course, innumerable exceptions to these basic buildings blocks of self-awareness, and although they are perpetually shifting, each of them contributes in the long term to a relatively continuous sense of self. The theory of deconstructed selfhood is not, therefore, always underpinned by practice. Indeed, because the western world is pervaded by conventions – practical, institutional, social, linguistic, psychological – that are based on the presumption of coherent and enduring selfhood, it would be difficult to live without the ‘mask’ of a self, even if one wanted to; even to think beyond it is difficult because by activating the thinking mind, and operating as rational subjects, we affirm its existence and automatically slide into the ‘grooves of convention’ that have developed around it. Thus, even though it is frequently upheld that the sense of a ‘personal self’ – the sense of a ‘me’ or ‘I’ – is ‘merely’ a social and psychological construct – that is to say, a kind of illusion – the implications of that intuition could be realised more deeply. To do this, it is necessary to consider, firstly, how, when and why the self-sense was constructed in the first place, and secondly, how, when and why the self-sense began to lose its coherence and integrity, whereupon it could be seen to be constructed. These questions have frequently been discussed abstractly – from psychological and philosophical perspectives – and they have been raised by anthropologists in relation to non-European cultures. But they have rarely been addressed in relation to the material culture of Europe and the European tradition in which they germinated, constituting a kind of ‘anthropology of selfhood in the West’. This is what the present project sets out to do. The first question – how, when and why was the self-sense constructed? – was addressed in a companion volume, The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art; the second question – how, when and why did the self-sense begin to lose its coherence and integrity, whereupon it could be seen to be constructed? – is addressed in the present one.

The origin of the self has been variously traced back to antiquity on the one hand and to the emergence of empirical philosophy in the seventeenth century on the other.² It has also been associated with the ‘discovery’ of the individual, both in the twelfth century and the fifteenth.³ While classical notions of the self can in many ways be said to provide a ‘prehistory’ of the modern self, these later periods can be said to cover ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘late’ aspects of the same phenomenon. Indeed, it is arguable that the sense of a personal ‘self’ evolved in conjunction with a swathe of cultural conventions that co-evolved with it over several centuries. These conventions both accommodated the burgeoning self-sense and precipitated it in subsequent generations.

Despite ancient precedents, a continuous notion of selfhood, leading directly to the modern self-sense, can be said to have first acquired form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Originally manifest in initiatives that turned against the collectivised interests of the Church and were therefore considered – by the Church – to be ‘heresies’, the impulse to incarnate a self-sense was subsequently manifest in numerous different ways. In the late Middle Ages, increased engagement in personal devotion began to complement collective participation in ecclesiastical ritual. A discourse of personal conscience, eased by confession but sometimes at odds with the doctrines of Church, also began to emerge. Changes to the domestic environment reflect a new appetite for private spaces among the laity, and for the solitary and self-reflective activities to which private spaces were conducive, such as silent reading and study. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the formation of the self was accompanied by the development of the ‘artist’ as an archetype of selfhood, and of the notion of ‘art’ as a medium of self-expression. Painters, traditionally afforded the lowly status of craftsmen, were reconfigured as ‘artists’, a new role invested with the elevated status of the liberal arts. Whereas a ‘craftsman’ was a mere technician, an ‘artist’ was a more creative and imaginative individual, akin to an ancient poet. Moreover while artists were directly involved in developing artistic conventions in which the experience of individual selfhood was implicit and legitimised – for instance, through the use of optical verisimilitude in representation (in contrast to medieval stylisation) and the development of portraiture – they also put these conventions at the disposal of their viewers, thereby extending the possibility of a highly personalised mode of experience to that constituency too.

Although traces of the self-sense became more common at this time, it was not, arguably, until the seventeenth century that the self’s awareness of itself became explicit and self-authenticating. Manifest signs of self-reflexivity (for instance, self-portraits and autobiographies) were generated from the fifteenth century onwards, but it was only at this later date that self-awareness became circular, authorising itself from within its own experience – as consummated in Descartes’ epoch-making observation in 1637 that ‘I think, therefore I am’. Besides becoming independent, the self-sense also became widespread at this time. Institutionalised in the new word ‘self-consciousness’ (in Britain), its dissemination was epitomised by the proliferation of mirrors, which had hitherto been expensive luxuries, available only to the elite. New forms of behaviour and expression – reflecting the legitimisation of personal emotion and private pleasure on their own terms, without regard for ‘higher’ sources of valorisation – also became current. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the self-sense became so habitual in culturally progressive circles that it became the fundamental ground of experience; that is to say, in normal circumstances, all experiences seemed to be naturally rooted in a sense of ‘I’ as their subject. This privilege was extended throughout western society in the nineteenth century, when primary education became universally available and the mechanical production of an abundance of cheap commodities enabled people from all walks of life to participate consciously in the process of identity formation. Indeed, it did so to the point at which the presumed existence of personal identity became coterminous with mental and cultural conventions at every level. On the one hand, new cultural forms were continuously generated to accommodate and propagate new aspects of personal selfhood (most recently, personal blogs and selfie sticks); on the other hand, it was perpetuated by historic conventions (traditions, institutions, buildings, language, modes of communications, etc.) and the sheer momentum of the cultural habits that these conventions supported. In so far as it was sustained by conventions in this way, the experience of a self-sense itself became a kind of convention.

Despite the fact that the notion of personal selfhood has become engrained in western culture to the point at which it is unnoticeable, it is nevertheless arguable that in many significant ways it has run its course. While it continues to function as an official component in human societies – for instance, as the subject of human rights and/or as a responsible legal entity – the objectivity of its existence is ever more open to debate. Why does this matter? In some ways, it doesn’t – it is expedient to accept it. Just as we allow ourselves to identify, and use, certain objects as ‘functional items’ despite knowing that they are merely conglomerations of atoms, or to be moved by a film despite knowing that it is no more than light flickering on a screen, so we are perfectly happy to function as ‘selves’ despite accepting that the self is ultimately a construction. Having said that, although the self may be an ‘effective myth’ – an ‘illusion, or fantasy, that works’ – it does not always work well and there is therefore plenty of reason to scrutinise it. While it may serve as the apparent subject of personal dignity, responsibility, creativity, etc., it is also a source of political, social and psychological anxiety – from ideological and religious conflict on the world stage, to personal fear of identity theft, death and non-existence. It is the purpose of this book to explore the extent to which shifting historical circumstances have relativised the value the self-sense, amounting in some formulations to its disintegration, but also to consider why, despite exposing it as a conditional convention of mind and culture, we continue to cleave to it as if it was an absolute truth.

While the concept of the self lends itself amply to philosophical and psychological analysis, through logic and introspection, this is not the approach taken here. Indeed, Simulated Selves makes little reference to theoretical discourse. This is partly because an abundance of theoretical perspectives on personal identity have been published in recent years. But, more significantly, it is also because the argument of the book is rooted in the perception that the self-sense is generated by cultural processes rather than existing in itself as an object of contemplation, and that it waxes and wanes as they do. For this reason, the book attempts to present its subject in such a light that the material reveals the structures it conceals according to its own logic – as it acquired them in the course of its history – without having to conceptualise them as philosophical abstractions; for it is arguable, paradoxically, that a theoretical analysis of the self presupposes the kind of rational coherence in the self-sense of the analyst which the analyst is, at the same time, employed to question; and even if a man looking at himself in a fragmented mirror will see his face fragmented, his eye will only ever see itself clearly. In order, therefore, to avoid the circularity of direct self-analysis, Simulated Selves attempts to identify the self-sense and its demise from the traces it has left in the historical environment. That is to say, it does not focus on what the self consciously sees in itself, or says of itself; for whatever it sees is subject to its capacity to see, and is therefore solipsistic. On the contrary, it looks, more obliquely, for accidental evidence of selfhood – and, above all, of its suggested disintegration, dispersal or ‘undoing’ – in the body of conventions that have grown up around it and in conjunction with it; such conventions act like a slowly evolving mould, carrying the self-sense as a range of possibilities, over and above the comings and goings of individuals, into the future. ‘Undoing’ here has a double meaning, suggesting both enervation and incapacitation. On the one hand, the word refers to the deposition of the self-sense from its seat of absolute power or freedom in the life of the individual, leading to anxiety; on the other hand, it refers to the increasing inability of the self to determine its own future, or do what it wants, with regard to certain key areas of its life – such as controlling personal data that is accrued about it online, or making an impact on political situations. Nor is it as instrumental in the process of personal decision-making as it has habitually been thought to be. Disempowered, therefore, in real terms, it has become something of an expedient; it is useful to imagine it – so useful, in fact, that we overlook the fact that this is what we are doing. But, given that its power and freedom may not be what they seem to be, it is highly constructive to interrupt ourselves – to reflect on the fact that we imagine our selves, and to explore, and hopefully understand, why we do so.

Various challenges present themselves. Firstly, the subject involves both positive and negative evidence. While it may be possible to identify the presence of selfhood, because the self seems to be reflected in its objects, it is difficult to identify its absence, for the simple reason that the absence of a phenomenon can only be surmised in relation to an expectation (based on knowledge), past experience or imagination. Two solutions have been taken to this problem. One is to examine the disintegration of the objects in which the self has arguably invested itself and with which it disintegrates symbiotically; this is the subject of the fourth chapter on the changing status of ‘art’ over the last two centuries. The other is to observe the emergence of other, larger-scale conditions of identity formation – communal, institutional, national and social – that have arguably overshadowed the notion of personal identity by usurping the power of the individual to control his or her life and experience. The first of these emerging conditions is changing attitudes towards the forces of history and evolution. An opening chapter on the ‘narrated self’ charts how historiographical conventions developed to reflect the emergence and existence of the self by increasingly crediting it as a source of agency in historical processes. Reaching its apogee in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dominant agency of the self was subsequently eclipsed by the vision of ‘objective’ forces in history that overruled it, signalling its relegation to a peripheral role, or, in extreme cases, to no role at all. Other conditions that consign a diminished role to the self in the life of the individual, and which are addressed in their own chapters, are the institutionalisation of art appreciation (chapter 3); the development of utilitarianism in design and the mechanisation of the processes of object production (chapter 5); the depersonalisation of the media of communication (chapter 6); and the fragmentation of the self by psychoanalysis (chapter 7). The final chapter addresses the extent to which the self-sense is sustained as a mental construct in linguistic conventions.

Given the scope of the project – more ‘continental drift’ than ‘microbiology’ – there is the obvious danger of generalisation. A study that chooses to cover such an enormous amount and variety of material is inevitably going to find itself voicing opinions that can easily be challenged by exceptions and variations. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, it may be difficult to imagine that the earth is round. Conversely, it is perfectly legitimate to argue, from that perspective, that the earth is not absolutely round. This problem only increases as one approaches the twenty-first century when the evidence becomes infinitely vast and various. Moreover, we only need to compare our own experience of a given moment to our retrospective descriptions and analyses of it, as it slips from ‘memory’ into ‘history’, to realise how profoundly artificial and stylised our representations of the past are. Generalisation, therefore, is an occupational hazard in all histories, but it is to be hoped that the pros (the usefulness of generalisation as an instrument of reflection) outweigh the cons (the undue protection it offers to preconceived ideas). The book also makes choices about which cultural trends to focus on, and in which regions. Allowing for a certain amount of osmosis, the guiding principle here has usually been to go where the ‘pulse’ of any given development has been especially strong, in the knowledge that many of its effects would in due course spread and become representative of wider trends. That the classical style in architecture only became fashionable in England one hundred years after it was revived in Renaissance Italy, or that psychoanalysis took root in Spain long after it was developed in Vienna, or that there was no branch of Starbucks in Italy until 2018, reflect the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of all historical occurrences, but they do not invalidate the albeit easily overgeneralised observation that architectural classicism, the practice of psychoanalysis and American consumerism have all become ubiquitous in Europe and the West. And so it is, arguably, with the self-sense and its ‘undoing’. Although there is an infinite number of potential reflectors of personal identity in the world, which we, as self-conscious individuals, are profoundly conditioned to recognise and use, the infrastructures of other ‘scales’ or ‘denominations’ of identity are also growing in their influence, but we are less inclined to see them because we do not see ourselves reflected in them.

CHAPTER TWO

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The Narrated Self: Time and the Dramatisation of Historical Agency

Surely one of the frames of reference that accommodates the self-sense most securely is the concept of time. On the one hand, it is from the notion of a ‘future’ that the self derives its sense of its possibilities, which are only realisable in the future: it is from its possibilities that it derives its sense of freedom and potency, in which its identity as a conscious, causal subject resides. On the other hand, it is from the ‘past’ that it derives its sense of its character, via memory and reflection. It is arguable that the notion of time as a personal experience – in the present moment and in the course of everyday life – was only fully abstracted, becoming an independent function of the self-sense, bet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Narrated Self: Time and the Dramatisation of Historical Agency
• 3 The Publication of the Self: the Sublimation of Personal Identity in Publicity and Art Appreciation
• 4 The Disintegration of the Self: the Origins of Abstraction and the Deobjectification of the World
• 5 The Democratisation of the Self: the Integration of Creative Endeavour into the Fabric of Daily Life and the Death of Art
• 6 The Transpersonalisation of the Self: the Material Culture of Communication and the Communalisation of Identity
• 7 The Psychological Self: the Pathology of Art and Cinematographic Modes of Self-remembering
• 8 The Linguistic Self: the Deverberation of the Self and the End of Meaning
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright