The self constructed like a fiction

In their place we need a multiplicity of narratives, ones which capture the different, contradictory perspectives that people in different times and places have of the world. This analysis applies to the self as much as it does to anything else. The self has no immutable essence. Rather, it is constructed, like a fiction. But what is doing this constructing? It depends on which postmodernist you ask. The answer is often ‘discourses’: the ways in which language shapes thought and perpetuates power relations.

Saved 23 April 2015

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