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Social Media Is Not Self-Expression – The New Inquiry

thenewinquiry.com · 1,880 words · saved by 7 readers

Self-expression is the internalization of social authority, not the externalization of a “true identity”

1. Subjectivation is not a flowering of autonomy and freedom; it's the end product of procedures that train an individual in compliance and docility. One accepts structuring codes in exchange for an internal psychic coherence. Becoming yourself is not a growth process but a surrender of possibilities that we learn to regard as egregious, unbecoming. "Being yourself" is inherently limiting. It is liberatory only in the sense of freeing one temporarily from existential doubts. (Not a small thing!) So the social order is protected not by preventing "self-expression" and identity formation but enc

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