
Contents
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(1) The Role Player (1) The Role Player
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(2) Demarcating the Phenomenon and Defining its Characteristics (2) Demarcating the Phenomenon and Defining its Characteristics
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(3) Roles and Alienation (3) Roles and Alienation
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The Critique of Roles and the Modern Ideal of Authenticity The Critique of Roles and the Modern Ideal of Authenticity
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Switching Roles and the Limits of the Role Metaphor Switching Roles and the Limits of the Role Metaphor
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Questioning the Self-Role Dichotomy Questioning the Self-Role Dichotomy
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(4) The Constitutive, Ineluctable Nature of Roles (Plessner and Simmel) (4) The Constitutive, Ineluctable Nature of Roles (Plessner and Simmel)
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The Human Being as Doppelgänger The Human Being as Doppelgänger
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The School in which the Subject is Formed The School in which the Subject is Formed
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An Unsocialized Remainder An Unsocialized Remainder
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(5) Aspects of Roles and their Ambivalence (5) Aspects of Roles and their Ambivalence
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(A) “An Alien Human Being”—The Outward-Directed Character of Role-Playing (A) “An Alien Human Being”—The Outward-Directed Character of Role-Playing
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(B) “A Pale Man”—Standardization and Conformism (B) “A Pale Man”—Standardization and Conformism
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(C) “An Incomplete Man”—Fragmentation and One-Sidedness (C) “An Incomplete Man”—Fragmentation and One-Sidedness
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(D) “An Artificial Man” (D) “An Artificial Man”
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(6) Self-Alienation in Roles (6) Self-Alienation in Roles
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Appropriation and Deficiencies of Appropriation Appropriation and Deficiencies of Appropriation
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Obstinacy and the Multidimensionality of Roles Obstinacy and the Multidimensionality of Roles
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The True and False Self The True and False Self
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Coda: Simmel’s Actor and Authenticity in Roles Coda: Simmel’s Actor and Authenticity in Roles
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6 “A Pale, Incomplete, Strange, Artificial Man”: Social Roles and the Loss of Authenticity
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Published:August 2014
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Abstract
This chapter examines behavior in social roles as a form of inauthenticity and under what conditions being immersed in certain social relations manifests itself as self-alienation. More specifically, it considers the extent to which certain forms of role behavior represent cases of self-alienation, even if the absence of alienation cannot be understood as a condition existing prior to or outside sociality—as a condition in which one is a “human being in general” behind all social roles. Its main thesis is that self-alienation is a symptom that emerges in the absence of (the possibility of) appropriating roles; what is alienating is not roles per se but the impossibility of adequately articulating oneself in them. The chapter begins with some examples to demarcate the problem and contrast it with other phenomena. It then analyzes the concept of a role as it is used both in sociological theory and in everyday usage, as well as the assumption that roles are inherently alienating. It also discusses the notion that roles are constitutive for the development of individuality, the various aspects of role behavior, and the distinction between alienating and nonalienating roles or between alienated and unalienated role behavior.
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