Tara Isabella Burton: Self-Made, From Da Vinci to the Kardashians

Since the Renaissance, we've been increasingly able to define who we are as individuals. But is that a false freedom?

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Tara Isabella Burton: Self-Made, From Da Vinci to the Kardashians

What does Kim Kardashian have in common with Leonardo Da Vinci?

Much more than you might have ever guessed, says Tara Isabella Burton, author of the new book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians. As in her previous work Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, Tara explores the amazing and ever-increasing freedom we have to define our identities and all the complications, problems, and possibilities that come along with greater choice.

We talk about how figures as different as Frederick Douglass, Oscar Wilde, and Clara Bow exemplify aspects of self-fashioning; whether Kim, Kris, or Caitlyn Jenner is the ultimate Kardashian when it comes to reinvention; and how traditional and avant-garde cultures mix uneasily but inevitably in a free society.

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Comments

[Public Entelectual]

The real da Vinci news is that his Salvator Mundi is being turned into a NFT like Trump Superhero cards.

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[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The modern question of our time is not how much or how free we are to create our own identity, but how much is the rest of society required to participate in your creation?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The followup question to this, which intersects with the levels of participation required by the rest of us is, how much of these self-created identities must be underwritten by technology, and if that technology isn't available or affordable to the person involved in their "promethean transformation", what level is society required to subsidize that technological underwriting?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

If you want a good, deep dive into this subject that undoubtedly avoids the Reason-style hip-swiveling, I would strongly recommend this book.

The concept of Identity Crisis came into usage in the 1940s and it has continued to dominate the cultural zeitgeist ever since. In his exploration of the historical origins of this development, Frank Furedi argues that the principal driver of the 'crisis of identity' was and continues to be the conflict surrounding the socialisation of young people. In turn, the politicisation of this conflict provides a terrain on which the Culture Wars and the politicisation of identity can flourish. Through exploring the interaction between the problems of socialisation and identity, this study offers a unique account of the origins and rise of the Culture Wars.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Here's the author being interviewed by perennial Republican Pouncer [and former Reason contributor], Brendan O'Neill.

[Dillinger]

sweet. gracias.

[mad.casual]

whether Kim, Kris, or Caitlyn Jenner is the ultimate Kardashian when it comes to reinvention

The fuck? Anybody know who Leonardo Da Vinci's dad, or step dad is or was? Douglass'? Bow's?

Anybody name who Da Vinci fucked for stardom? Douglass? Bow?

I don't begrudge Kim for making money, but this "self-made" bullshit is every bit as disingenuous as saying Trump is a self-made man.

I guess Reason got paid to hock another book that has fuck all to do with libertarianism.

[Public Entelectual]

A Florentine lawyer, Ser Piero da Vinci

[Bill Dalasio]

There's something fundamentally late-stage cosmopolitan bread and circuses about all this. The peasant, the slave and the plebian feel the boot of the empire on their neck to finance the constant spectacles, but the empire's favorites are free to identify as horses.

The drive for a self-selected identity seems a function of the the atomization of society and the dismissal of all identities organically established. I don't think people rooted in who they are feel a need to establish an identity. Of course, they also pose a challenge to shaping the polity to the empire's needs. It's better for the empire to establish complete rootlessness where who you are can be "re-invented" tomorrow, depending on the empire's needs of the moment and ability to incentivize that re-invention.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

If you get the chance, check out the Furedi interview I linked above (or read the book). He does a great job of describing how this 'identity fluidity' in the modern era gives one a surface feeling of unfettered freedom, but it comes along with a highly constrained set of social norms prescribed by a kind of managerial/technocratic class.

[Dillinger]

>> don’t think people rooted in who they are feel a need to establish an identity.

word.

[Dillinger]

Ray-Jay on line 2. Vivid on line 3.

>>freedom we have to define our identities

freedom we have to poseur ... just be you, you know who you is

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

He is I and I am him, Slim with the tilted brim, *what's my muthafuckin' name?*

[Flaco]

I have always held Brandy responsible for the fact that we even know who those girls are.

[Dillinger]

yes. and Bruce Jenner becomes a bajillionaire on the flipside too lol.

[mad.casual]

Disagree, O.J. Biological non-birthing parent was the 5th man on OJ Simpson’s “Dream Team”.

When you explain it to someone who didn’t live through it, like some anthropologist leafing through the historical record, it was clearly bastard birth of reality TV.

If OJ didn't murder Nicole, none of us would have any clue who the Kardashians or maybe even Paris Hilton is and, at best, the only glimpse we'd have into their lives would be whatever the modern, Web 2.0 instantiation of MTVs Cribs or Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous would be.

[mad.casual]

If OJ didn’t murder Nicole

Sorry, if OJ weren't liable for Nicole's murder.

[Dillinger]

^^ interesting. also the glove didn't fit.