Multiple Selves: Rethinking Identity, Self-Fashioning, and Ethics

Multiple Selves denies that we have a single identity, are unique, or could use either identity or uniqueness as a source of political and ethical guidance. We are a jumble of multiple self- and social-identifications, that change in character and rise and fall in importance over time. Some of these identifications are reinforcing, others are in conflict, and all are context-dependent.

The book offers a critique of identity politics, on both the right and the left. It proposes more realistic ways of self-fashioning, described as much as a social, as an individual enterprise. Recognition of our fragmented selves can produce important ethical insights and greater psychological contentment.