Description

The Mainz Research Training Group Ethnographies of the Self in the Present examines the variety of current practices and traditions of subjectification and self-forming. Its starting point is the following observation: recent formations of the self are closely linked to the challenges of the digital age and the changing possibilities of acts of self-staging. This book compiles contributions from literary studies, theology, sociology and cultural anthropology. Based on printed sources and empirical material, it focuses on practices and traditions of the self in the present and forms of self-enhancement. Which ways and means of charging one's own biography with religious symbolism are observed? How are they discursively located? What are the cultural, ethical and aesthetic fields in which current sacralizations of the self are placed?