The history of the self is a flourishing field. Nevertheless, there are some problems that have proven difficult to overcome, mainly concerning teleology, the universality or particularity of the self and the gap between ideas and experiences of the self. In this article, I make two methodological suggestions to address these issues. First, I propose a ‘queering’ of the self, inspired by recent developments in the history of sexuality. By destabilizing the modern self and writing the histories of its different (...) and paradoxical aspects, we can better attend to continuities and discontinuities in the history of the self and break up the idea of a linear and unitary history. I distinguish 4 overlapping and intersecting axes along which discourses of the self present themselves: (1) interiority and outer orientation; (2) stability and flexibility; (3) holism and fragmentation; and (4) self-control and dispossession. Second, I propose studying 4 ‘practices of self’ through which the self is created, namely: (1) techniques of self; (2) self-talk; (3) interpreting the self; and (4) regulating practices. Analysing these practices allows one to go beyond debates about experience versus expression, and to recognize that expressions of self are never just expressions, but make up the self itself. (shrink)

The metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR” looms large in the conceptualist and experientialist approach of CitationLakoff and Johnson (1980). Despite extensive discussion of this metaphor by critics and supporters of Lakoff and Johnson, it has so far escaped serious scrutiny on several key points. English-speakers can identify verbal exchanges as arguments without resort to metaphorical comparisons or transfers, and speakers' use of war metaphors to characterize verbal dispute depends on conventional understandings rather than personal experience of war or of other kinds (...) of physical struggle. Much of the evidence for Lakoff and Johnson's claims—a culture that metaphorizes argument as dance; the historical and personal priority of force over verbal dispute; the influence of metaphor on action; even the experience supposedly shaping source domains—depends on supposition and ungrounded assertion. In making sense of how people use this metaphor, the discourse-based program elaborated by Naomi CitationQuinn (1991, Citation1997) carries analysis further than a purely conceptualist approach. (shrink)