“Angela Franks’s superb new study of modern selfhood, Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self.”
Mary Harrington
Mary Harrington: Substack
“Her aim is gratifyingly ambitious: essentially Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self but more Catholic in its priors, less turgid in its prose, with post-structuralism and the missing bit between Augustine and Descartes added back in. …
She is remarkably erudite, a lucid writer, and comfortable toggling back and forth between metaphysical and postmodern vantage-points, meaning she can draw intellectual flexibility from the latter, without ever sacrificing the former’s commitment to truth. Absolute catnip … just so, so good.”