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 very
personal, 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 what
it 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reconstruction, a representation of something original that has been
replaced by its representations.
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 communicate
other 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
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 or
either 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 tell
us who we suppose to be on a cultural level, create a void, an ellipse in
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 - for
a 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 abovementioned
reconstructions 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 way that 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
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 reacting
to 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 explained
above. 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 create justifications 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 his
identity 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 to
express outwardly this ellipse instead of inwardly to prevent the
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, the
underlying 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.