released 5/21/2021

In the 2000 anthology Identity and Social Change (Transaction Publishers), editor Joseph E. Davis writes that “personal and social identities are a problem because of the destabilizing and uprooting social forces of modern life.” Those forces — and their name is legion — created a new existential task: “how to place oneself amidst a pluralism of incommensurable beliefs and behaviors, maintain that placement, and have it recognized by others.” In this interview from Volume 49 of the Journal, Davis (most recently heard on Volume 150) talks with Ken Myers about why some social theorists have questioned the very existence of selves.

14 minutes

PREVIEW

The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.

Related reading and listening

  • Cosmetic surgery and human perfectibility — Elizabeth Haiken examines the shift that occurred in 20th century America from a focus on developing character to a focus on developing “personality” and achieving physical perfection. (19 minutes)
  • Embodied knowledge —
    FROM VOL. 121
    James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. (18 minutes)
  • Chameleon karma: the fate of plasticity — Cultural historian Jeffrey L. Meikle on how the ubiquity of plastic affected the moral imagination of 20th-century Americans
  • Self-knowledge versus “selfism” —
    FROM VOL.10
    Psychologist Paul Vitz argues that the modern focus on self-actualization makes the self the highest good in the cosmos. (7 minutes)
  • Getting outside of our heads —
    FROM VOL. 128
    Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford explores what forms the self, arguing that individuality is an earned competence achieved through habits of submission to various tasks, traditions, and authorities. (20 minutes)
  • Medical tools and the shaping of identity — C. Ben Mitchell and Carl Elliott examine how we form judgments about bioethical questions, and how various medical capabilities form us. (27 minutes)
  • Davis, Joseph E. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Joseph Davis is a Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and Director of the Picturing the Human Project of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
  • Philip Cushman on Constructing the Self —
    FROM VOL. 16
    Psychotherapist Philip Cushman explains how individual well-being becomes a goal, rather than a by-product of living in communities with a shared sense of purpose. (14 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
  • Praise my soul: the king of Heaven — Robert C. Roberts on Jung’s theology of self-exploration
  • The restless vanity of the untrammeled self — Sociologist Daniel Bell on the rise of “the idea that experience in and of itself was the supreme value”
  • Our commerce, our selves — Thomas Frank argues that the anti-establishment ethos of the counterculture was not a new phenomenon in the 1960s but was already present in corporate America long before the Beatles showed up. (23 minutes)
  • “. . . improvising a raft after shipwreck . . . ” — Gil Bailie on symptoms and sources of the postmodern self adrift
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 150 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Eric O. Jacobsen, Matthew Crawford, Andrew Davison, Joseph E. Davis, and Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
  • Mediated: Thomas de Zengotita on Postmodernity and the Flattered Self — Thomas de Zengotita describes how communication media contribute to the widespread sense of entitlement and of identity as an autonomous chooser. The postmodern self is what Zengotita calls “the flattered self,” increasingly believing itself to be the center of the universe. (59 minutes)
  • Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 118 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, Ron Highfield, Mark Mitchell, Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Helen Rhee, and Peter Brown
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 115 — FEATURED GUESTS: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Andrew Davison, Adrian Pabst, Gary Colledge, Linda Lewis, and Thomas Bergler
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
  • Digital equality and the untuning of the world — Lee Siegel analyzes how web-based pursuits of unique identity is so unbounded that personal definition becomes impossible.
  • Christine Rosen: “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” — Christine Rosen examines how social networking is changing the shape of relationships for millions of Americans, and affecting our understanding and experience of friendship. (50 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 74 — FEATURED GUESTS: Russell Moore, W. Bradford Wilcox, Joseph E. Davis, Barrett Fisher, Jeanne Murray Walker, Darryl Tippens, and Paul Walker
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 70 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Wesley McDonald, C. Ben Mitchell, Carl Elliott, Richard Weikart, Christine Rosen, and Dana Gioia
  • Free trade zone for preferences — Philip Turner examines “the subversion of Christian belief and practice by the logic of autonomous individualism”
  • Life Work: On the Christian Idea of Calling — Paul Marshall discusses how society and the Church have understood work throughout history, and Os Guinness explains how vocation and identity have lost their theological moorings among Christians. (62 minutes)
  • Self, Society, and the Diagnosis of Addiction — Sociologist John Steadman Rice argues that the concept of codependency is rooted in the tenets of “liberation psychotherapy,” a way of thinking that can result in an asocial existence. (48 minutes)
Tags: