If there is one value that seems beyond reproach, in our current confused ethical climate, it is that of the self and the terms that cluster around it – autonomy, identity, individuality, liberty, choice, fulfillment. It is in terms of our autonomous selves that we understand our passions and desires, shape our life-styles, choose our partners, marriage, even parenthood. It is in the name of the kinds of persons that we really are that we consume commodities, act out our tastes, fashion our bodies, display our distinctiveness. Our politics loudly proclaims its commitment to respect for the rights and powers of the citizen as an individual. Our ethical dilemmas are debated in similar terms, whether they concern the extension of legal protections to same-sex couples, disputes over abortion, or worries about the new reproductive technologies. In less parochial domains, notions of autonomy and identity act as ideals or criteria of judgment in conflicts over national identities, in struggles over the rights of minorities, and in a whole variety of national and international disputes. This ethic of the free, autonomous self seems to trace out something quite fundamental in the ways in which modern men and women have come to understand, experience, and evaluate themselves, their actions, and their lives.

In writing the essays that are collected in this volume, I wanted to make a contribution, both conceptual and empirical, to the genealogy of this current regime of the self.