I would tell nonacademics that there are two reason why we are
interested in the self to begin with. One is because we have trouble
with it so it becomes an object of interest. The squeeking part
gets the attention and people's interest. The other is that we are
encouraged so by our social arrangements to be preoccupied with it.I
do think these are sometimes separate things. I think that magazines
called the Self are important indicators. I should look at that
magazine. My hypothesis would be that it encourages a discontent. It
could encourage it by implying that you can have really swell looks
and creat your own wonderfull self and acheive great things that do the
same. What ever, it would not encourage being satisfied and content
because capitalism is premised on the emotions of unrest and
discontentment and purchasing as the answer. My Hos about these
things are frequently wrong by the way. But I am not convinced that
in postmodernism there is no self. Certainly there is in the Meadian
sense that I wrote of in the SSSI newsletter 4 or 5 years ago: Every
human constructs action on the basis on anticipated symbolic responses at
least some time. But that is hardly a part of the common venacular
you asked about. So even if your descriptor of the self (that brings
Geertz's famous quote to mind) is not the common understanding any
more, there is still a mighty interest in ENTITLEMENTs. The whole
public temper of the decade has been a mean-spirited concern that
minority groups are taking away our rights or if you are a minority
you better give me mine, and if I didn't vote for your party or
president he and you are a dispised scum bag. So an increasingly
important salve for our tenuous identities is finding some one that
shares our politically uncorrect hatreds. Few things unite more that
sharing taboed or rare emotions. "See, I'm not so bad after all" kind of thing.
As far as the public goes many don't want to discuss anything
reflective like the self in the many ways us academics take it
because their ambivalence has created such a desire for absolutism
and such an inability for tolerance that they can not cope with
anything thing remotely connected with a critical look at themselves
or society.
In terms of Turner, whatever the public may say, I think we have
definately gone impulsive,. Certainly Ventilationism has increased
by leaps and bounds. (See Tavris on Anger here.) We are a culture of
ventilationists. Clinicians encourage it with no regard for anyone
but thier patients. Listen to the post game interviews of the last
fooball games. Same thing happens after BOTH games??? Certainly our
political leaders are modelling another type of ventilationism that
is just as unconcerned and alienated.
So, the public may not be interested in talking about the self
anymore. My students are. But if they aren't that means nothing
about whether WE should be talking about it. In my SSSI essay I felt
we needed our own sociological definition of self that allowed for
the varience in historical epochs and times. I did this just because
I think it is an important tool. But this may well be irrelevant to
your question. I do know along this same vien though, that when I
visited England in 1976 they could not understand why in the world I
would be interested in the self or why Americans were so preoccupied
by it. Same for my Tiwan students. But that was at least partly
because theirs were built of firmer stuff. Didn't mean they weren't
troubled though!
P.S. The reason self is important is that without it we reify
structure and have no way to critique structures.
So long.
David Franks