What is the writer trying to find out more about through their research (what research question guides his work)?
The main question is does putting on a performance on stage as a rock star diminish being true to yourself or is it simply a form of entertainment separate and apart from an individual’s own identity.
What sort of texts or sources does the author quote from to build his argument?
He cites one website but mainly relies on books about rock stars and two journals that appear to be rock star-entertainment oriented.
In what ways do you see others around you attempting to establish their “authenticity”?
I have a number of friends that are going through a mid-life crisis of sorts. They diet, go through radical workout routines, divorce, separate, and do a number of things in an attempt to “find themselves”. It is puzzling to me why things are done in the extreme. I also don't understand why they are "searching" for themselves, why they have hit 40 and then all the sudden do not have any sense of what their identity is.
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Some would argue that the many "crises of identity" we go through are fabricated mostly to make us desire things people can sell us. I'm not sure I totally agree with this position. But if nothing else, many companies have found ways to take advantage of these crises.
ReplyDeleteThe romantic idea of an essential self that can be known is a powerful cultural myth. Although the phrase "know thyself" is often attributed to various Greek thinkers, one thing rarely mentioned is that the Greeks thought of the self as being composed of competing forces that were almost separate from the individual.
Greek philosophers like the stoics thought of the self as something that had to be cultivated and shaped (for them, often through denial), not something that existed in full before our efforts to shape it.
I guess my point is that ideas of what constitutes our "self" are not stable. But arguments do often assume some model of the self. I tend to think of people searching for themselves as people who are simply unhappy with who they actually are. Our language allows them to think of their work to change their self as "finding" their true self.