Constructing selves: Issues in Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Nation
Autor: Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo , Ángel Mateos-Aparicio
Número de Páginas: 346The notion of self has become crucial for contemporary cultural studies in its examination identities. Identities are often conceptualized as an engagement of the individual’s self—their condition of being a person—with broader cul-tural cons tructs. However, in addition to being culturally situated, the constitution of selves may be conceived of through identity-construction phenomena whereby individuals’ subjectivities take up, or resist, the subject posi-tions made available in discursive practices. Selves—the notion of ‘Who and I?’—may only be understood as resulting from power-based discourses and cultural practices. In this respect, the idea of the self could be best made sense of in the broader context of the circuits of cul-ture where identities are conformed together with other key cultural processes including representation and cul-tural production, consumption and regulation. The chapters in this collection explore the relations of selves with a wide range of cultural products (e.g. mass media, poetry, fiction, film, painting, advertising, the Internet, education, the institutional, etc.) across a multiplicity of social, political, geographical and...