The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art

This book is an examination of personal identity, exploring both who we think we are, and how...
$755.00 AUD
$755.00 AUD
SKU: 9781350091054
Product Type: Books
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Author: Andrew Spira
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: $755.00
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The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art by Spira, Andrew

The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art

$755.00

The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art

$755.00
Author: Andrew Spira
Format: Hardcover
Language: English

This book is an examination of personal identity, exploring both who we think we are, and how we construct the sense of ourselves through art. It proposes that the notion of personal identity is a psycho-social construction that has evolved over many centuries. While this idea has been widely discussed in recent years, Andrew Spira approaches it from a completely new point of view. Rather than relying on the thinking subject's attempts to identify itself consciously and verbally, it focuses on the traces that the self-sense has unconsciously left in the fabric of its environment in the form of non-verbal cultural conventions. Covering a millennium of western European cultural history, it amounts to an 'anthropology of personal identity in the West'.

Following a broadly chronological path, Spira traces the self-sense from its emergence from the collectivity of the medieval Church to its consummation in the individualistic concept of artistic genius in the nineteenth century. In doing so, it aims to bridge a gap that exists between cultural history and philosophy. Regarding cultural history (especially art history), it elicits significances from its material that have been thoroughly overlooked. Regarding philosophy, it highlights the crucial role that material culture plays in the formation of philosophical ideas. It argues that the sense of personal self is as much revealed by cultural conventions - and as a cultural convention - as it is observable to the mind as an object of philosophical enquiry.

Author: Andrew Spira
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 07/23/2020
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.69lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781350091054


Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2021

About the Author
Dr. Andrew Spira is Course Leader, Christie's Education London and a curator. He is author of Avant-Garde Icon: Russian Avant-garde Art and the Icon Painting Tradition (2008).

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