The Presence of Self

Front Cover
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000 - Philosophy - 299 pages
Drawing on ideas from Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, Kenneth Burke, and Mikhail Bakhtin, this work focuses on the centrality of the social act in describing and understanding the beingness of the human individual, situating such acts in dialogic and rhetorical processes. Such processes enable actors to give presence to their selves and, it is claimed, put them into play by using both a logic and a poetic of identity. These arguments are supported by an analysis of everyday conversations, certain inter-personal encounters, and acts of reading and watching sporting engagements.

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Contents

Dialogic Acts
3
Rhetoric and the Self
49
Identificatory Processes
81
Identity The Continuity and Differentiation of Self
83
The Poetics of Identity
135
The Self in Action
183
Speaking of the Self
185
The Plays of the Self
221
Epilogue
275
References
279
Index
291
About the Author
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About the author (2000)

R. S. Perinbanayagam is professor of sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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