Finishing a major intellectual project triggers an identity crisis requiring rediscovery

Evidence

We have little choice in how we first appear in society: we have immutable characteristics and give off cues unconsciously absorbed from our community. But we’re never condemned to our origin story. Jean-Paul Sartre concluded, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself,” to which the philosopher Michel Foucault raised the stakes: “We have to create ourselves as a work of art.” Eleanora Fagan was a five-foot-five African American woman born in 1915, the product of a teenage pregnancy and the survivor of a traumatic childhood. After living in a series of relatives’ homes, she eventually settled as a teenager with her mother in a Harlem brothel, where they were both arrested for prostitution. But Fagan demonstrated great talent as a jazz singer, and after taking a stage name and crafting a new persona, she became legendary in America as Billie Holiday. Eleanora Fagan created Holiday, for which she is still remembered today. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 280 (#expands, via linked claim)

The construction of the self as a reflexive project, an elemental part of the reflexivity of modernity; an individual must find her or his identity amid the strategies and options provided by abstract systems. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 295 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Individuals can deliberately reconstruct their public identities to escape origins — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 280; Self-identity is now a reflexive project conducted amid abstract systems — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 295

Broader Connections

• Individuals can deliberately reconstruct their public identities to escape origins #expands (0.75) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 280
• Self-identity is now a reflexive project conducted amid abstract systems #expands (0.74) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 295