Enigmas of identity / Peter Brooks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Peter, 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Group identity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (235 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"We know that it matters crucially to be able to say who we are, why we are here, and where we are going," Peter Brooks writes in Enigmas of Identity. Many of us are also uncomfortably aware that we cannot provide a convincing account of our identity to others or even ourselves. Despite or because of that failure, we keep searching for identity, making it up, trying to authenticate it, and inventing excuses for our unpersuasive stories about it. This wide-ranging book draws on literature, law, and psychoanalysis to examine important aspects of the emergence of identity as a peculiarly modern preoccupation. In particular, the book addresses the social, legal, and personal anxieties provoked by the rise of individualism and selfhood in modern culture. Paying special attention to Rousseau, Freud, and Proust, Brooks also looks at the intersection of individual life stories with the law, and considers the creation of an introspective project that culminates in psychoanalysis. Elegant and provocative, Enigmas of Identity offers new insights into the questions and clues about who we think we are.

Contents:

Marks of identity

Egotisms

The "outcast of the universe"?

Discovering the self in self-pleasuring

"Inevitable discovery" : searches, narrative, identity

The derealization of self

The madness of art

Epilogue : the identity paradigm.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613227447

9781283227445

1283227444

9781400839698

1400839696

OCLC:

753704556