Creating Oneself

The question of individual agency lies at the heart of any political and social theory aiming to analyse the social conditions that shape reality. Drawing mainly on the works of Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, this book endeavours to provide an account of agency as a mode of life in which social transformation and personal transformation meet and influence one another. The book describes the shortcomings of associating agency with resisting social norms or institutions, arguing that agency, as a way of life, is a dynamic of self-creation inspired by a horizon of well-being. As part of this new account of agency the book re-evaluates several key concepts, thus far under-theorized in poststructural theory. First, it addresses the question of how we might understand well-being within a post-modern framework. Second, it presents a notion of 'desire to be', designating the motivational force that drives people to act in order to create a different world. And finally, it addresses the question of how a life of transformative political practices might constitute a sense of identity, both individual and collective.

Autorentext

Miri Rozmarin is Assistant Professor of gender studies and philosophy at Tel-Aviv University.

Inhalt

Contents: The limitations of agency as resistance. Can resistance be a way of life? - Agency as affirmative self-creation. Irigaray and Foucault about leaving oppressive horizons - Desire and feminist theory, going beyond the sexualization of desire - Thinking agency with a Delezian notion of desire. Transformation and endurance as principles of life - Can sexual difference be part of agency as a way of life committed to transformation? - Identity and individuality as part of a transformative way of life.