The Saturated Self

"Today’s technologies are of course far more saturating than those around when Kenneth Gergen wrote The Saturated Self . He’s talking about, ‘What do you do when you come home and you’ve got 10 different voicemails and electronic mail inviting you to a party that conflicts with a trip?’ The predicaments that he describes almost seem quaint because now people have so many more streams of communication. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But I think the idea of saturation from intense involvement with many people is still relevant. There are possibilities to enact different selves and to have different presentations of ourselves with different people. One of the nice points that Gergen makes is that it’s not like an inauthentic theatrical performance. Instead, he describes a splintering of investments and multiplicity of roles. I think that’s probably increasingly true, so I think his points still hold even though, as I was rereading The Saturated Self on the train and the flight here, it certainly did not seem like it was written in this decade. He expresses both tones as he explores romantic, modern and postmodern conceptions of the self. I read a cautious liberation in the way he describes this multitude of investments and opportunities to express different selves and take on different roles. There’s something really positive about that. It runs counter to a notion of the self as this singular coherent entity. That kind of concept of self can be illusory and imprisoning for people, if they say, ‘This is the kind of person I am.’ They’re trapped. I realize this is not the only way to read The Saturated Self . You could say, ‘Oh, we’re distracted; we can’t be true to our families because we also have these other conversations.’ But in part due to technology we have ways to explore the different selves we can be and I see that as positive. There’s also the idea that who we are, at a given moment, is dependent on the context of who we’re talking to and where we are. Having opportunities through technology to have more of that exploration can be enriching."