Thesis Title: Subtitle

Distinguishing between the Self and Identity

The literature on the self is quite vast and is spread across many disciplines including philosophy, psychology and sociology. For the purposes of this chapter, the primary focus is on sociological understandings of the self. I acknowledge that drawing such a boundary is somewhat arbitrary as sociology necessarily draws upon and is influenced by philosophy and psychology. The distinction between the self and identity is both important and porous. After all, the concepts of identity and self are intrinsically linked. Jenkins (2008) argues that the self is an individual’s reflexive construction of his or her own identity created in reference to the similarities and differences of others. Without the self, Jenkins (2008) argues, one would be unable to act.

Further complicating the distinction between the concepts of self and identity are the multiple ways in which the latter is invoked. As argued by Jenkins (2008), one’s identity and one’s self are parts of the same whole. Jenkins (2008) further emphasises the externality of one’s identity and argues that this is of particular importance in the internal- external dialectic between the self and its circumstances. Other theorists such as Burkitt (1991) dispute the idea of a dialectical entirely and argue that a concrete division between the individual and society cannot be located. Arguing for a lack a distinction between the collective and the individual means that the ‘I’ of the matter, is elusive, as it constantly shifts in relation to what surrounds it. Thus it becomes redundant to focus on the self at all, but rather to shift the analytic focus to its various situated manifestations (identity). This is different to the dialectical relationships described by Jenkins (2008) earlier. In advancing the idea of a dialectical relationship between internal and external, Jenkins necessarily supposes that the internal must exist, independent of, although inevitably shaped by the external.

The lack of an ‘I” proposed by Burkitt (1991) speaks to post-modern ideas of self, which is argued to be decentred, fragmented and situational. The post-modern self is dismantled

and saturated by an awareness of humankind (Gregen 1991). Gregen’s (1991) work emphasises the role of media is social saturation; this allows individuals to connection to each other through self-referential media narrative. However, this engagement with media is so overwhelming that it does not allow a coherent performance of self. Gregen (1991) argues that the technologies of social saturation encourage this incoherence by offering multiple, and at times, competing possibilities for realising the self. Realising the self amongst this multiplicity requires a version of the self that it flexible (Lifton 1993). Post- modern accounts of the self emphasises its situational and non-linear nature (Harre 2000; Vollmer 2005). This understanding of the self is reflected in Turkle’s (1996) work. The post- modern self is like the layers of an onion – decentred and fragmented (Lacan 1997).
Accounts of the post modern self are well suited to the online environment, which detached the self from the body and thus expands the possibilities for the multiplicitous, reflexive realisation of the self.

In contrast to postmodern theories of the self, which hold that it is not a permanent, real thing, some scholars have argued that the self must be considered in a temporal sense. Ryle (1963) argues that the ‘I’ is a product of temporal ordering and that understanding our selfhood can only be done retrospectively. Ryle (1963) argues that introspection is the necessary condition of selfhood and that introspection can only be achieved retrospectively. One must wait for something to happen in order to reflect on it; yet this does not account for the ways in which individuals position themselves within ongoing events. People can, and do, account for the ‘I’ in the moment, because, to revisit Jenkin’s (2008) earlier claim, without the self one is unable to act.

The ability to account for the ‘I’ as separate from other selves and as something that is positioned in time and space rests on the embodiment of the self that is contained in a living, breathing body. Even the disembodied space of the internet is dependent in the end on bodies in front of screens and keyboard (Hakken 1999). Even the self on the internet cannot (yet) exist in any active way without a body. Further, the body is the starting point for the self; it is the vehicle by which we realise that we are separate from, and different to, others. Through these embodied experiences, body helps provide a stable sense of who we are, where we are and what exactly we are doing. This is not to say that the self is causally prior to our behaviours, ^{because it is in some sense knowable and observable (Jenkins 2008). This definition is} definitely different to the post-modern self described by many authors. The over-reduction of the self into fragmented and only

situationally relevant bits ignores the fact that most individuals, most of the time, have a unitary experience of their self. Following from Jenkins(2008), I submit that the self is simultaneously cognitive, emotional, and an amalgam of both collective and individual knowledge which is in turn tied together by an embodied awareness of being in a spatially organised world. This view is also consistent with Taylor (1989) who argues that identity is enacted in conversations with others, but is also constrained by cultural notions of what identity is. This is in line with modernists’ understanding of the self, which understand it as a linear process of becoming that is anchored in and influenced by mainstream structures and social relationships such as family, work, religion and educational institutions. Taylor (1989) draws on Heideggers’ (2008) Being and Time to construct a case for the importance of other selves in the construction of a self. A sense of other individuals is essential in creating a temporal structure in which to order the self. Lives are understood in the narrative. The relational presence of other individuals makes this understandable, as it is the presence of others that help us create our present self. From the present self (as per Heidegger) we are aware, from a range of current possibilities, of what the future self might be. This, as Taylor (1989) points out, is the structure for any kind of situated action. Not only does the narrative self, or an understanding of the self as temporally situated, shape the present, it is the key in understanding the self – “Who am I?” – as a process of becoming.

In many ways Taylor’s focus on the importance of others in constructing the self echoes the symbolic interactionist perspectives championed by Cooley (1962) and Mead (1934) as well as the later work of Goffman (1959). When referring to symbolic interactionism, the most commonly cited source is Blumer’s (1969) definition of the concept. Snow (2001: 368) refers to Blumer’s(1969) definition as the “Rosetta stone of symbolic interactionism.” Blumer’s (1969) definition of symbolic interactionism rests on three main principles that are closely interrelated. Blumer’s (1969) definition is broadly as follows: people act towards things and other people according to the meaning they have. These meanings are constituted through social interaction with others and are constantly transformed and managed through the interpretative process by which we understand our social worlds. For example, Cooley argues that the self is part of an organic social whole in which individuals are active participants, “everything that I say or think is influenced by what others have said or thought, and, in one way or another, send out an influence of its own in turn” (1962: 4). Similarly, Mead, while critical of Cooley, is also firmly situated

within the symbolic interactionist perspective. Mead (1934) argues that interaction produces consciousness, as opposed to Cooley, who argues the inverse. Mead states:

… the whole (society) is prior to the part (the individual), not the part to the whole; and the parts is explained in terms of the whole, not the whole in terms of the parts or parts…from the outside to the inside instead of from the inside to the outside, so to speak (1934: 7 - 8).

The presence of others is essential in creating and sustaining selfhood; this is a common thread that links Taylor’s moral philosophy to the more sociological approaches of Mead and Cooley.

Aside from the distinction between identity and the self, the other longstanding distinction is between the private self and the public person (Mauss 1985; Harre 2000; Jenkins 2008). The self then is one’s private experience of his or her self; the public person constitutes the parts of the self that appear to others. While there may be differences between one’s image of oneself and others’ perceptions of them (Goffman 1959; Jenkins 2008), the self and the public person are necessarily intertwined. Thus, the self is external, constituted through interactions with other people, and comprises an internal world which is separate to, but necessarily impacted by these interactions. The self, it can be argued, is the ‘essence’ of a person; identity is how the self manifests in various settings. Thus, one can have many identities, but only one self.