The Modern Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment
Imagination. By Eyal Chowers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004. 260p. $49.95.
This is an extremely rich and provocative work, wide in learning,
filled with thoughtful interpretations of Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and
Michel Foucault, among others, and containing many insights into the
ways that “modernity” and its consequences for the self
have been conceived in the last century. It is also a disturbing work,
pointing to what the author argues are apparently inescapable dilemmas
for “us” posed by both “our institutions” and
“our notions of identity” (p. 197). And it will be a very
contested work, first, because of what I think are a number of
questionable assertions the author makes about the views of those he
discusses, particularly Nietzsche and Weber; second, because of the
completely unhistorical and uncontextual methodology the author employs
to throw light on these thinkers so close to us in time, yet immersed
in such different social and cultural milieus; and third, because of
the larger thesis and framework of the interpretation, which convey
great depth of concern and sincerity, but which, I think, are very
problematical as an interpretation of these thinkers. To deal with the
book adequately would require much more extended treatment than a short
review can give it here.