The semiotics and politics of “real selfhood” in the American therapeutic discourse of the World War II era
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Benjamin Smith
Benjamin Smith (b. 1977) is a visiting assistant professor at Vassar College 〈besmith@vassar.edu〉. His research interests include semiotics, linguistic relativity, therapeutic discourse, and virtually-mediated social worlds. His publications include “Of marbles and (little) men: Bad luck and masculine identification in Aymara boyhood” (2010); and “Language and the frontiers of the human: Aymara animal-oriented interjections and the mediation of mind” (2012).
Abstract
This article describes the semiotics and politics of “real” and “false” selfhood in American therapeutic discourses of the World War II era, focusing on Karen Horney and Carl Rogers. Giving a semiotic analysis of their work requires developing an account of Erving Goffman's understanding of commitment that can then be used to illuminate the form of politics that underlie their ideologies of selfhood. The article culminates in an account of the ironies of the neoliberal politics infusing these therapeutic ideologies. At stake is a historical period characterized by a knotting of ideologies about commitment, their semiosis, and the neoliberal imagination.
About the author
Benjamin Smith (b. 1977) is a visiting assistant professor at Vassar College 〈besmith@vassar.edu〉. His research interests include semiotics, linguistic relativity, therapeutic discourse, and virtually-mediated social worlds. His publications include “Of marbles and (little) men: Bad luck and masculine identification in Aymara boyhood” (2010); and “Language and the frontiers of the human: Aymara animal-oriented interjections and the mediation of mind” (2012).
©2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Introduction: Linguistic and literary aspects of perspectivity
- Context-dependent vantage points in literary narratives: A functional cognitive approach
- Authorial intention and global coherence in fictional text comprehension: A cognitive approach
- The role of perspectives in various forms of language use
- From trace to topical field: Toward a linguistic definition of point of view
- Indexicals, fiction, and perspective
- Why do we accept a narrative discourse ascribed to a “third-person narrator” as true? The classical, and a cognitive approach
- De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Introduction: De-essentializing authenticity: A semiotic approach
- Culture as accent: The cultural logic of hijabistas
- Why X doesn’t always mark the spot: Contested authenticity in Mexican indigenous language politics
- The semiotics and politics of “real selfhood” in the American therapeutic discourse of the World War II era
- Inauthentic authenticity: Semiotic design and globalization in the margins of China
