Identity without Selfhood

Identity without Selfhood proposes a conception of identity and subjectivity in the context of recent post-structuralist and queer debates. The author argues that efforts to analyse and even 'deconstruct' identity and selfhood still rely on certain core Western techniques of identity such as individuality, boundedness, autonomy, self-realisation and narrative. In a detailed study of biographical, media and academic representations of Simone de Beauvoir, Dr Fraser illustrates that bisexuality, by contrast, is discursively produced as an identity which exceeds the confines of the self and especially the individuality ascribed to de Beauvoir. In the course of this analysis, she draws attention to the high costs incurred by processes of subjectification. it is in the light of these costs that, while drawing substantially on, and expanding, Foucault's notion of techniques of the self, the argument presented in the book also offers a critique of Foucault's work from a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective.

• Brings together in original way range of very important feminist, queer and post-structuralist debates about self, identity, the body
• Applies difficult theoretical arguments to concrete and familiar empirical example of Simone de Beauvoir and how she is represented eg in media and biographies
• Draws on and critiques theorists of central interest to sociologists and literary theorists: Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari