Early Modernity Without the 'Self': Notes on Anachronism and the First Person

Abstract

AbstractThis article suggests that it is possible to make sense of the use of the pronoun 'I' in directional or intentional statements trans-historically without calling on the terminology of the 'self'. It gives qualified support to this statement through close readings of four passages taken from distinct chronological periods but centring on the French seventeenth century: Alberti, Descartes, Pascal, Wittgenstein. These passages share a common topos: 'the man at the window'. The essay concludes by suggesting that literary scholars should decouple the investigation of the first-person stance from the problem of 'selfhood', and develop instead conceptions of 'outwardness' derived, for example, from cognitive models and rhetorical theory.