THE PLAYING SELF. PERSON AND MEANING IN THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

Descrizione

The playing self is a groundbreaking new work from influential cultural sociologist and clinical psychologist Alberto Melucci, best known for his writing on social movements and collective identities. In this book, based on and developing his Il gioco dell’io (1991), he delves deeper still into questions first addressed there about subjectivity, intimacy, and the self as both a psychological and socio-cultural entity, particularly in the context of global interdependence and planetary delimitations.

Alberto Melucci’s phenomenological approach accounts for the self as a site of highly subjective and intimate experiences, such as crying, laughing, and loving, and in relation to social structural dynamics, through more shared experiences, such as that of time, and links of the self to politics.

In this way, he is able to explore the increasingly critical search for meaning at the boundary of visible collective processes and individual day-to-day experience, making a highly original connection between the two which draws on his own sociological and clinical practice.

‘The playing self addresses the impact of the information revolution, globalization, and “permanent uncertainty” on identity formation and experience of everyday life. Bringing together in a unique combination subjective, cultural and structural dimensions of social change and social action,  Melucci provides a brilliant and original phenomenological analysis of the self and its vicissitudes in “post-industrial society”. Remarkably free of jargon and deeply serious, this text is a “must” for anyone interested in the challenges to and new opportunities for individual freedom in an increasingly complex world.’

Jean Cohen, ColumbiaUniversity

‘The playing self explores the psychic paradoxes of contemporary life. It combines cultural and psychological analyses in a distinctive, readable manner. The result is that every page of this original book contains quotable phrases and imaginative insights.’

 Michael Billing, University of Loughborough