The Cultural Construction of the Self

Who am I?

Growing up in the 21st century, I am familiar with the concept of the self, and I self-apply it. The peculiar way in which I do this is the result of cultural-historical forces in general, and in particular, scientific advancements. This implies that the concept of "the self" has changed over time. I would like to examine the dynamics of these changes, approaching them as shifts in the way that experience is related to, and understood in terms of, its objects.

Pure experience, as in experience without perspective, untempered by the world, is inconceivable and perhaps impossible. To come alive, experience must be manifested in something which itself is not pure experience. It is as if experience were a light shining on our back, invisible to us until we hold something in its rays and reflect it back on ourselves.

I experience an orange, holding it in front of my field of vision. It is essential to the presence of the experience that it be conveyed by something (in this case the orange), yet the fact that it is conveyed by an orange is trivial. I could just as easily have had an experience (albeit a different one) with another fruit.

A self is a coherent pattern of experience extended through time. The coherence of the self comes from the stability of the body which continually captures and creates experiences. The sense of a localized self is caused by the temporal and physical linking of experiences flowing through the same body. The interpretation of each successive experience is shaped by those that have preceded it. At the same time, the unique qualities of each new experience shape the memory of past experiences. This is very similar to the way that new water flowing down a stream bed is (on one hand) shaped by the paths cut by past flows, but also reshapes the path in relation to its own particular movement. New experiences occur in relation to the "same old self" because they are brought forth within a system that has previously brought forth (and been shaped by) all of the experiences of that self.

Before going on, I should note an inadequacy of the otherwise useful river metaphor used above. While both a riverbed and a biological body are shaped by natural forces, bodies are structured to be receptive in a wide variety of extremely subtle and complex ways. Riverbeds have nowhere near this kind of complexity.

While experience most likely exists apart from human society, the general concept of the self most likely does not. The self is necessarily a product of society. On one hand it separates the individual from the rest of society, but at the same time it aligns and coordinates the individual with respect to his/her own goals, as well as to society as a whole. The self can be viewed as either the catalyst for, or the reaction to, the emergence of the social domain. Like most things, it's probably a mixture of both. In any case, the self only becomes practical once organisms become primarily social creatures.

Next time...

The particular form that a self may take in a given society is a function of culture. Here culture is understood as concerning the form of social interactions. What types of interactions are possible is a function of culture in general and a function of the self in particular.