ABSTRACT
This chapter instigates an interdisciplinary conversation on the condition of present and on its possible pathologies, guided by the philosophical argument that there is no phenomenological difference between the suffering of an individual and that of a society. The image of the multiple Self with its autobiography of multiple, often colliding drafts, is obviously connected with a certain conceptualization of the Self which has become popular with postmodernism. This fragmentation of self-conceptions corresponds to a multiplicity of incoherent and disconnected relationships. The expansion of neo-liberal capitalism we have observed a significant political enhancement of the autonomous subject through increased individual responsibilities in an over-regulated world. Of course the story of the postmodern Self, the cultural index of our epoch born out of fast-evolving communication technologies, multinational hyper-capitalism and our sense of the limits of Enlightenment rationality, cannot be equated with that of the saturated Self as described by Gergen.
