Styling the Self : Ethics and Aesthetics in Absolute Capitalism

With a focus on ‘practices of style’ that reflect both aesthetic as well as ethical qualities, this book examines the emergent forms of contemporary self-making and identity-formation as a turn inwards, towards certainty, in an era characterised by wider uncertainty occasioned by large-scale structural problems.

This volume examines the turn inwards, toward matters of the self, in an era characterized by suffering, destruction and death resulting from large-scale structural problems, including global pandemics, economic inequality and climate change. As uncertainty on a large scale has begotten attempts at certainty on smaller ones, new social and cultural phenomena have emerged that can be understood and analyzed as new ways of crafting selfhood. With a particular focus on “practices of style” that reflect both aesthetic and ethical qualities, the author considers practices stemming from growing interest in sustainability, the popularity of tidying up and the ideology of minimalism, digital detoxing, discourses around “self-care” and the growing digital communities of menswear, style and wellness. An exploration of the trend toward constant reinvention of the self without the scaffolding scripts of religion and the state, Styling the Self will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and social theory with interests in culture, consumption and lifestyle.