Session 5: Explorations of Intimate Self
Chair: David White

Intimacy in Painting
Brigid Twohig Noone
Artist: Department of Visual Arts, University of South Australia, Australia

Engagement in any art practice can create self referential intimacy. In particular painting can be a very intimate process. To be alone in the studio with the body and the art work is a very intimate experience. The intimacy of painting is a world full of personal sensibilities. I love my painting process; I love the studio and the intimacy it builds in me. I experience a connection and a sense of self through my painting world, which is very satisfying.
Art is my first love, the first love that I have chosen. It is possible that intimacy is an ability to be present in the company of another. Painting for me is an active way to be present with myself while developing self awareness; it is an intimacy that feeds back into me.
An individual art practice can create a personal sense of intimacy, a kind of romancing of self. To know your own gifts and love can create the ability to project desire inwards. For the self to be intimately known and appreciated there is an investment; this involves the act of personal sensibilities and desires being manifest as art. The result of this is that painting can become a tangible way to feel true intimacy with self.
In a collective sense artists often look to a muse for inspiration, in this way they are looking and waiting for someone else to intimately inspire them. This includes the cultural expectation that romantic partnership or love can fulfill this.  I have the desire for my internal dialogue to become my source of inspiration, to become self reliant. Though, that is not to say that a balance of external and internal inspiration is not the ultimate.
I believe in the importance of developing self intimacy so that love and intimacy with others is a choice.

---

Alienation, The Self & Being
Gavin Rae
University of Warwick, United Kingdom

This paper will engage with the relation between alienation, the self and being. The concept of ‘alienation’ has had a long and varied life. From its religious roots based on the story of the Fall of Man the concept has altered in meaning from having a primarily religious-metaphysical meaning to one relating to the self. Indeed, while recognising other historical usages of the term it will be argued that alienation only relates to the self and more specifically to the absence of the relations required for the attainment of authenticity. In this respect the concept refers to a splitting and separation of the self from the conditions that comprise the genuine self wherein this may or may not be experienced by the same self.
This epistemological difference leads to the identification of a dual sense of the term; the philosophical sense of the term which refers to alienation from the elements of the genuine self, and the existential sense of the term which operates at a lower level and refers to the subjects mis-understanding of what it is to be a genuine self. The result is that the individual may perceive themselves to be authentic when in fact they are not because the elements of the genuine self are not all present.
The implications for the existential existence of being and the potential for fulfilment and authenticity arising from this are outlined. The multiplicity of relational elements required for authenticity and the requirement to maintain these relations in each an every moment ensures that, while it is possible to attain authenticity, achieving it is extremely difficult and maintaining it when achieved adds further to the difficulty. The result is that the existential condition of the self is one of alienation for the majority of its being. However, while alienation is synonymous with the existential human condition, moments of happiness, fulfilment and glimpses of authenticity can be experienced whenever we attain, even ephemerally, an element of the genuine self. It is this existence in alienation, striving for authenticity and experiencing momentary happiness and glimpses of authenticity from ephemeral authentic relations before these unstable relations break down that accounts for the ups and downs of the human condition.

Download Draft Conference Paper -

---

Book-Marking the Self: The Rituals of Buying and Reading Self-Help Books
Patricia Neville
Department of Humanities and Social Studies, Institute of Technology, Tralee, Kerry, Ireland

Many commentators have argued that contemporary society has become increasing reflexive and with this a return in interest with the self- as both an ontological property that can be ‘rediscovered’ by the atomised social actor, and as an existential project or lifestyle complete with a set of ‘life skills’ (e.g. Foucault, 1988, Moscovici, 1990, Giddens, 1991, Bauman, 1992).  This objectification of the ‘self’ in late modernity has taken many forms but this paper would like to address the increasing psychological nature of the self as a prescriptive discourse through the global cultural industry of self-help books.
Self-help and self-awareness books have had a consistently high rating in the American bestseller lists over the past thirty years (Smith, 2002) with domestic sales reaching $9.6 billion in 2006 (Seate, 2007). This strong consumptive relationship with self-help books is not an exclusively American phenomenon but can also be found to be on the increase in Britain, Japan, China, and India to name a few. Despite the huge popularity of self-help books, the practice of buying and reading self-help books and the many anecdotal claims made by their readers that these books have ‘changed’ their lives the phenomenon of self-help has received very little scholarly attention. In this paper I would like to redress this academic blind spot and investigate the impact that self-help books and their message of self-knowledge and self-awareness have on their atomised reader. A discursive analysis of self-help books will be undertaken with the purpose of exposing the ideological claims of self-help books. This alternative interpretative framework will be tested against the views and responses of regular self-help readers. By combining these two methods it is hoped to expose the nature of self-help books and locate the place that the search for self-knowledge and self-care have acquired in contemporary society.

Download Draft Conference Paper -