We’ll Always have the Self

Abstract

This article provides rhetorical commentary to Ryan Turner’s arguments pertaining to animal self-hood. Turner’s assessments address one of the central lynchpins of Mead’s subordination of animals (and denial of animal selves), but he also presents a limited and selective review of Mead. In particular, in making his case for establishing the criteria for self-hood, Turner seems to ignore that temporal location, either in a static, individualistic, point-in-time, or more processual, social, and across time terms, becomes central to the question of animal selves. Turner also seems to minimize the extent to which animals can create complex coordination here and now, even employing dramaturgical sophistication as rotted in Goffman’s analysis of the self as performance. Despite his limited use of Mead and Goffman, however, Turner’s assessment of animal self-hood based on his criteria can stimulate interactionist inquiry into the similarities between animals and humans.

Citation

Katovich, M.A. (2013), "We’ll Always have the Self", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) 40th Anniversary of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 40), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 461-465. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2013)0000040022