The “Ellipse” as the Emergence of the Self

5/23/2018 The Ellipse as the Emergence of the Self

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The ellipse as the emergence of the self

I think that a core-self must lie somewhere in our self-perception, that

must be hidden below a cloud of reconstructions. That self as I believe

is not an original metaphysical essence; rather it emerges as the verypersonal, individual and spontaneous direct experience of reality and

our adaption strategies to that reality. To adapt means to evolve

mechanisms that would enable us to reconcile our personal needs with

the external direct present reality. But this experiential core-self many

times is under an attack by cultural definitions of a situation, norms

that call for mediating our individual response to a situation through

their collectivistic logic. These cultural definitions I call

reconstructions.

Reconstructions are culturally constructed truths artificial images -

that mediate ones subjective experience on the cultural, semiotic level.

Language could be a reconstruction; the word happiness for

example is an object referring to a subjective experience and it

reconstructs this subjective experience outwards as an artificial

representation: the word happiness.

Under the same principle ideologies could be regarded as

reconstructions narratives of a collectively accepted truth.

Morality and law are also reconstructions- generalizations of what is

good and bad in a situation; stereotypes, identities, and generally

any semantically enriched object material or immaterial - that is

constructed as a cultural generalization of a collectively accepted

truth. The problem with these reconstructions is that they are void

of any actual meaning. If you think about it they are void of any original

meaning because they represent a situation that doesnt actually exist.

For example the word happiness is a reconstruction of the state of

happiness, but on a fundamental level, the word happiness is not whatit actually represents because after all the state of happiness can only be

experienced subjectively and thus remain inevitably only a subjective

reality. The same goes with morality, ideologies and identities; they are

constructs of a totally different situation than the one that they are used

to mediate and thus they cannot describe the actual situation itself. In

other words, morality and ideology could be different in each situation.

Clich is also an accurate word that we could use in the place of

reconstruction, a representation of something original that has been

replaced by its representations.


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In human culture it is not that we dont need these reconstructions

because after all they are the measures upon which any interpersonal

(and sometimes intrapersonal communication) arises, and consequently

our human reality acquires a meaning. These reconstructions are also

the common interface in which people understand and communicateother peoples points of view. Without words you have no myth and

without a myth you have no story, so stereotypes are useful in human

culture. The problem arises when there is an over-identification with

these reconstructions that would alienate us completely from our

experiential subjective sense of self. Also, in the cultural level, the

problem is when these stereotypes remain inert in a culture and they

dont adapt to the changes of a culture.

Generally, Reconstructions can be also understood as cultural

authority, the big other, an external authority that tells us what we

are and what he expect from us.

As it is being understood from the above concepts, there is an external

repressive entity (the cultural reconstructions) and an internal,

individualistic self-understanding. Because the cultural entity is working

as a repressive force towards the individual, we might expect that the

individual would experience a sense of anxiety and compromising.Consequently, because the individual experiences anxiety, he or she

might construct something to resolve that anxiety.

The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott had a similar approach to the

concept of the Self. He distinguished self in two categories: a true

self and a false self. True self according to him is achieved through a

spontaneous experiential interaction between the person and his

environment. On the other hand, a false self according to him would

emerge if the wishes and expectations of his parents were of overriding

importance.

The Different self-concepts

Because the cultural, stereotype cannot adequately describe the

subjective experience and because when we express ourselves to the

outside we inevitably mediate our subjectivity through the cultural

interface, we might experience that a part of ourselves is being either


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neglected or subjected to the authoritarian nature of culture in other

words compromised. For example describing my happiness outwards I

have a set of cultural objects to describe it, but to use them is to

compromise myself to the cultural definition about happiness. So

inevitably my subjective self will either lose some of its meaning oreither be compromised to the cultural definition of happiness. This will

let a part of me unexpressed and neglected. This part of my core-self will

then find outlet in projections and identifications, creating a third kind of

self-understanding, complementary to the cultural one, a self that I call

shadow-self.

Our sense of self emerges as four distinct self-perceptions: one that is

the cultural self-concept incorporating all the cultural norms that we

perceive as important to follow, the core-self that is our personal,

individualistic, subjective ways of adapting and experiencing directly our

environment, the shadow-self which is the mythological part of

ourselves is who we think we are, but we are not; it is the shell that

hides our core-self and there is the ellipse self a self with all the

negative, unfulfilled parts of what we needed to be but we have never

been what we have deprived. In order to gain some more

understanding about these concepts, I explain more below.

The shadow-self is the result of the repression of the core self by the

cultural order or the reconstructions we assign cultural value to. The

cultural order that is constituted by all the reconstructions that I

referred in the beginning: identities, ideologies, language, cultural

expectations or toxic conditioning (prejudices about a behavior), or

reaction to a cultural value, and are working repressively on our

individuality.

We must note here that it is not the constructs themselves that repress

us, but the constructs we ourselves- choose to repress us. So to identify

with a cultural value or to react to a specific cultural value creates a

repressive dynamic on my core-self. The collection of these repressive

cultural forces we choose to repress us is what I define as the cultural-

self and is constituted by the sum of the cultural values we personally

choose to assign value.

That repression is resulted by the demands of our cultural self on our

core-self. What we culturally identify with represses our individual

correspondence with the presence. Additionally, these demands that tellus who we suppose to be on a cultural level, create a void, an ellipse in


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our individuality because the cultural is only a generalization, a

representation of the experiential subjective, so it cannot adequately

describe it as said above. The more we compromise our subjectivity to

the cultural self the bigger that ellipse would be, because we would

trade an experiential value which is the ultimate subjective reality - fora cultural value that merely represents the subjectivity. The sum of these

repressed subjective values and experiences constitute an ellipse self;

a negative opposite of the cultural self.

How the reconstructions emerge and how they alienate us from our

core-self.

If we imagine the core self as a flat square object, and the cultural self as

a typing clich in the shape of a man that staves into that flat object, the

resulted hole in the shape of a man on the flat object would constitute

the ellipse self. Because we humans tend to be after a state of

calmness and stability to prevent chaos, that man-shaped hole the

ellipse self- will create feelings of emptiness, lack and absence in the

persons self that would need to be closed need for a telos. To

resolve these feelings of void, the person will evoke mechanisms that fill

this gap. These mechanism are what constitute the abovementionedreconstructions that alienate us from our core self; they form the

cloud under which our core-self exists. Such mechanisms would be to a.

attract a person that seems to have all these qualities that constitute

his elliptical self thats why feelings of love often are referring to

completeness and thats why losing a person is often expressed by

cultural clichs as losing part of yourself; or to instead project all these

qualities on the other person, fantasizing the other person to be a

certain way when in fact it is not. Thats why people that are in love

often idealize their mates.

Another strategy that one might use to fill that gap, would be to create a

fantasy in the outside world, either by projecting and interpreting an

event in a certain waythat would satisfy the elliptical self, or by actually

creating something that expresses this absence. An example of the first

would be photography: when taking a picture, it is like we unconsciously

choose to perceive the external reality in a certain way. We project all

these qualities of the elliptical self on the external reality; the result of

which is the decisive moment that Henri-Cartier Bresson talks about.Thats the reason why photography could never be objective. An


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example of the second would be art, we tend to choose consciously or

unconsciously our theme based on projected fantasies or neuroses that

are caused by this absence or ellipse self. A clear example in art are

the -isms of the 20th century, which they were expressing the need to

create narratives that expressed the repression of the past, by reactingto it. Another example in the arts could be orientalism in which we can

perceive all the collective fantasies and absences of the European

culture in their depiction of the Middle East.

A third way to fill the ellipse self is c. to construct or consume an

identity. To consume an identity is to identify for example with a

television character, a person, an ideology or something that would

express what you are repressed of expressing, something similar to the

attraction one feels to the person that owns these qualities as explainedabove. Internet identity could work like that; the elliptical self that is

constituted by the repression of cultural and physical constrains in the

physical world, are expressed anonymously in the value- effacing

internet environment. Another way of satisfying this ellipse self would

be d. to createjustifications about the ellipse. This mechanism is

similar to the fantasy mechanism described before; it is like creating art,

nevertheless the difference is that it remains inside as a definition of

ones self; an elusive self-perception, alienating the person from his

reality. For example one could create a lie about his identity in order to

justify the absence (what he is not). Ultimately, this fantasy about

himself becomes his only valid self-understanding, and he tends to cling

onto it because otherwise he would experience what psychologists call a

rupture, a negative feeling or loss-of-self. This mechanism tends to

prevent a person from overcoming his issues, because they are

perceived as justifiable. So a person with repressed his artistic side

for example will tend to justify this repression by saying I am not

artistic, art is bad and other justifications, until they will become hisidentity and his self-understanding. If someone tries to liberate his

artistic side, he will become defensive and he will refuse to be liberated

because by this liberation will require to lose his sense of self. So this

side will most probably remain hidden.

Art and the identification with your shadow-self

Under the above assumptions, art could be a method used by humans toexpress outwardly this ellipse instead of inwardly to prevent the


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aforementioned alienation. Thats why art could be analyzed in both the

individual and the cultural level; it could, because it is the imprint of the

cultural order on the white canvas of the artists individuality, it is the

ellipse that it expressed on art that is caused by the cultural level on the

individual.

To give an example on a personal level, when I, for example have

deprived of a stage in my life, lets say never lived a normal life in a

stage of my life which for the most part is also a cultural construct, an

ellipse will be caused inside me, craving for living period what I was

deprived. In addition because it is a temporal loss, I will project semantic

objects that would connote time, or stop the time. That would be

reflected in my shadow identity in which I will semantically connote the

notion of time. So for example if I am an artist in my artworks, theunderlying theme would be the notion of time, if I am a writer the

general plot of my stories will reflect my worries about time. Because my

desire to fulfill this void would be subconscious, in my artworks I will not

escape this underlying theme even if I consciously try to control it I will

end up in this theme, because our driving force is the fulfillment of this

void; our energy to create would be sourced by the desire to fill the

absence. A bit mechanistic in nature, reminds the electric currents flow

that energizes a light bulb for example.

If the ultimate goal of my artworks is not to evolve and explore

myself find these subconscious mechanisms- but to just express this

void, it might integrate me in a kind of a vicious cycle, where I will cling

to my artworks as definitions of myself; in other words be identified with

my artworks. My creations will then become an addiction because they

will construct a narrative that would be used to describe and fill that

void so I will cling onto it because it will give me a meaning; the only

meaning. So, paradoxically I will tend to recreate my emptiness in order

to sustain my identity through my art. So in my personal opinion, thats

why one must not use his expression as ones absolute identity but

instead as a self-exploration. In other words, thats why a personal

style must exist in arts, because it gets you stuck, but instead a

continuous re-evaluation of ideas and styles.

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The “Ellipse” as the Emergence of the Self