The Fantasy of Individuality

On the Sociohistorical Construction of the Modern Subject

Almudena Hernando (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

XIII, 142 Seiten

2018
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-319-86919-3 (ISBN)

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The Enlightenment promised humanity a bright future of emancipation which never actuallymaterialized. Instead, our social order is still based on gender inequality, which rests upon afalse conviction: that the individual can be conceived of as separate from community; that the more individualized a person is, the less they need to establish links with their community to feel safe; and that the more they use reason to build a relationship with the world, the less they need emotions. Th is conviction, which guides the ideals of our social system, is based on a fantasy: the fantasy of individuality.
This volume is a step in fleshing out the historical reasons for gender inequality from theorigins of humankind to present times in the Western world. It is a theoretically-informedand up-to-date overview of the history of gender inequality that takes as its starting pointthe mechanisms through which human beings construct their self-identity.Starting from a peripheral, interdisciplinary and heterodox perspective, this book intends toappraise the complexity of gender identity in all its richness and diversity. It seeks to understand the persistence of relationality in supposedly fully individualized male selves, and the construction of new forms of individuality among women that did not follow the masculine model. It is argued here that by balancing community and self beyond the contradictions of hegemonic masculinity, modern women are struggling to build a new, more empowering form of personhood.
The author is an archaeologist, who uses her discipline not only to provide data, theory anda long-term perspective, but also in a metaphorical sense: to construct a socio-historicalgenealogy of current gender systems, through an examination of how personhood and self- identity have been constructed in the Western world.

Almudena Hernando is a Professor at the Department of Prehistory and a member of the Institute of Feminist Research at the Complutense University, Madrid. Her research focuses on the theoretical basis underlying identity construction, with special attention to oral societies and women in the Western World. She has carried out field work among the horticulturalists Q'eqchi (Guatemala) and the hunter-gatherers Awa (Amazonas, Brazil), and currently she is developing a research project among the hoe agriculturalists Gumuz and Dats'in from Ethiopia. She has been invited as a researcher in the Universities of California (Los Angeles and Berkeley), Chicago and Harvard. She has written several books as "Los primeros agricultores de la Peninsula Iberica" (Ed. Sintesis) o "Arqueologia de la Identidad" (Akal), and she has coedited and participated in others as "La construccion de la subjetividad femenina" (Instituto de Investigaciones Feministas, Madrid), "?Desean las mujeres el poder? Cinco reflexiones en torno a un deseo conflictivo" (Minerva) o "Mujeres, hombres, poder. Subjetividade en conflicto" (Traficantes de Suenos).

1: General approach.- 2: Sex and gender.- 3: The Origin.- 4: Relational identity or identity when one has no power over the world.- 5: Individuality or identity when one has power over the world.- 6: Relational identity/ Individuated identity. The appearance of things.- 7: The fantasy of individuality. Part I: women and gender identity.- 8: The fantasy of individuality. Part II: men's (unconscious) performance of relational identity.- 9: Dependent individuality and independent individuality.- 10: Sex and gender all over again. 11: Conclusion.

Erscheinungsdatum	08.02.2019
Zusatzinfo	XIII, 142 p. 7 illus.
Verlagsort	Cham
Sprache	englisch
Original-Titel	La fantasía de la individualidad: Sobre la construcción socio histórica del sujeto moderno
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	248 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
Schlagworte	construction of selfhood and self-identity • Feminist Anthropology • historical reasons for gender inequality • How gender systems emerge gradually in prehistory • interplay between relational and individualized id • interplay between relational and individualized identity • modern identities of men and women in the West
ISBN-10	3-319-86919-1 / 3319869191
ISBN-13	978-3-319-86919-3 / 9783319869193
Zustand	Neuware