Cavell and the Achievement of Selfhood

Abstract Drawing on Hegel, Augustine, and Freud, this chapter argues that selfhood is a status-concept naming a role to be achieved; there is no such thing as the self. Cavell accepts this thought, and he goes on to track a standing incompleteness to the achievement of selfhood that amounts to a standing immigrancy. In the face of this immigrancy, he further points to possibilities of heightened attentiveness to life that are afforded by works of art and by resonances to them. The fate of reflective reason is that we must live with immigrancy but can nonetheless sometimes be fruitfully absorbed, animated, and composed by experiences of art.