#selfhood

[lepidodendrons]

not even an obscure canon call could save me.

[metamorphesque]

Leila Chatti, “Tea”

[funeral]

The equivalent, in Heidegger’s philosophy, of the experience of selfhood is the understanding of one’s being, and for Heidegger the ontological ground for the meaning of one’s being is temporality. That is, it is the ecstatical unity of temporality that makes possible the coherence and meaningfulness of our existence. If Heidegger was right, then his ontological analysis helps us to grasp that trauma, in altering the structure of temporality, of necessity also disrupts one’s understanding of one’s being; it fractures one’s sense of unitary selfhood. I am suggesting that clinical features typically explained as dissociation and multiplicity can additionally be comprehended in terms of the impact of contexts of trauma in disorganizing and reorganizing one’s sense of being-in-time. 

Robert D. Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence

[gothicseverance]

I think a lot of [Severance] has to do with the life unlived. What would happen if I fell in love with a different person? What would happen if I didn’t have this condition? All of these different questions start to get explored and it quickly becomes difficult to reconcile who has the rights to experience and to call themselves a self.

—Critics at Large

Gif by @emziess 🖤

[calcichel]

[chiikawahypemomentsandaura]

SHADOW KINSONA THIS IS WHAT I LOOK LIKE IF U CARE ^_^

[metamorphicmuse]

What are the boundaries between self and performance?

[poupeelait]

oscar wilde, salome // phoebe waller-bridge, fleabag // richard siken, portrait of fryderyk in shifting light // brian fuller, hannibal // agnes varda, jane b. by agnes v.

[deadpoetsmusings]

[nznzz]

Quick portraits

[metamorphesque]

i'm all the people i've ever loved

loseness lines over time by olivia de recat, @i-wrotethisforme, Kaveh Akbar, Olivie Blake

[funeral]

Frank Schawlow, "Temporality Revisited: Kierkegaard and the Transitive Character of Time"

[metamorphicmuse]

The Thing He Hides That Makes Him Feel Most Like Himself

It lives in a drawer, or a box, or a fold of memory—

not hidden out of fear,

but wrapped in the softness of what still matters.

It’s not for everyone.

It doesn’t need to be understood

to be real.

Sometimes, when the house is quiet

and the light comes in just right,

he opens it like a ritual,

not to remember—

but to return.

We all have something kept, not hidden. What's in your drawer?

[poupeelait]

unknown, untitled // sylvia plath, the unabridged journals of sylvia plath // aleksandra waliszewska, untitled from the painting series nasty children // shizuka mariya, everything eventually goes into the ground // jenny zhang, sour girl // frida kahlo, two fridas

[sleepyblanketnova]

Vent.

Being twisted wasn't..the best experience. I cried a lot and held onto myself whenever I was by myself.

[haggishlyhagging]

But independence is not the sole preserve of widows and singles. It can also occur in the home itself, right under a husband's nose. This is indeed the symbolism of the witch's nocturnal flights, which lead her to desert the marital bed, escaping the sleeping man's vigilance, to straddle her broomstick and take off for the sabbath. In the demonologists' tirades, which betray the masculine obsessions of their times, the witch's flight, as Armelle Le Bras-Chopard describes it, represents:

“a freedom to come and go, not only without the husband's permission but generally without his knowledge (unless he is a witch himself) and even to his disadvantage. By picking up a broomstick or chair leg and placing it between her legs, the witch awards herself a simulacrum of the virile member that she lacks. And by artificially stepping outside her sex and giving herself that of a man, she is also stepping outside her female gender: the witch is able to accord herself the ease of movement that, within the standard social order, is the unique privilege of men. [...] Granting herself this autonomy, and thereby escaping the man whose principal freedom is manifest through his dominance over her, the witch spirits a portion of the man's power away from him: her liberation is also a larceny.”

Contrary to what today's "backlash" would have us believe, women's autonomy does not entail a severing of connections, but rather the opportunity to form bonds that do not infringe on our integrity or our freedom of choice, bonds that promote our personal development instead of blocking it—whatever lifestyle we choose, whether solo or in a partnership, with or without children. As Pam Grossman writes, "the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else. Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore—these archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others. The Witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own." Whereas the example promulgated over the period of the witch-hunts, imposed first by violence and then, later, with the nineteenth-century invention of the housewife ideal, by a clever mix of flattery, seduction and menace, locks women into their role as reproducers and disenfranchises them from participation in the world of work. Thus, women are positioned in such a way that their own identity is constantly at risk of being muddled with others,' of atrophying, of being swallowed up altogether. They are prevented from living and fashioning their own lives, for the sake of representing an imagined quintessence of femininity. In New York, in 1969, the WITCH group caused havoc at a weddings trade fair by releasing mice into the main hall. One of their slogans railed, "Always a Bride, Never a Person."

-Mona Chollet, In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women are Still on Trial