The Question of Self

The Question of Self

In chapters ten, eleven, and twelve of The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm analyzes the social and cultural transformations that took place between 1940 and 1990. He argues that this period witnessed profound societal changes on a global scale. Among the most significant transformations were the end of the peasantry and the increasing requirement of secondary or high school education for most occupations. Additionally, the growing influence of youth and women on society and policymaking became increasingly visible. While young people grew more rebellious toward the state and their families, second-wave feminism flourished, challenging expected roles of women and men in society and even questioning the meaning of sex itself. Hobsbawm (1995) also examines conditions in poor, dependent states classified as the “Third World.” What fascinates me most in these chapters, however, is the cultural transformation and the shifting balance between the individual and society. In this paper, I reflect on these cultural changes.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Esra Dicle’s talk Sanatından Mahrum Kalan İnsan: Günlük Hayat ve Teatrallik at Boğaziçi University. In her talk, Dicle (personal communication, December 11, 2025) questions whether the triumph of individual desire over society may cause us to lose our theatricality. She invites us to think of theatricality as humanity’s art embedded in social codes—ways of behaving, feeling, and thinking shaped by shared norms. Public life, in this sense, exists thanks to these social codes and to people’s participation in them. Drawing on Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man, Dicle questions whether our emphasis on authenticity and the so-called “true self” is inherently asocial, resulting in the loss of our art in everyday life.

Hobsbawm’s arguments about the cultural transformations between 1940 and 1990 reminded me strongly of this talk. In short, he places youth at the center of this transformation. Referring to the slogans of May 1968—such as “It is forbidden to forbid” and “I take my desires for reality, for I believe in the reality of my desires”—he argues that individual desires increasingly came to be gratified at the expense of social values, restraints, and codes. I see clear similarities between Esra Dicle’s discussion and Hobsbawm’s description of the 1968 youth movement. In the remainder of this paper, I explore these similarities from two angles.

First, these critiques led me to reflect on what constitutes the self. In her talk, Esra Dicle (personal communication, December 11, 2025) discussed our tendency to perceive a contradiction between behaviors that stem from our true, authentic self and those shaped by societal roles and norms. As a result, we have come to devalue compliance with society, characterizing such behavior as artificial or insincere. A similar emphasis on the private sphere can be observed in the 1960s. As young people attempted to free themselves from restraints, values, and norms, society itself was increasingly devalued. This view resembles Donald Winnicott’s conception of the true self and the false self (Lee, 2023). Winnicott associates the false self with adaptive performances often required in social life, while the true self is understood as the authentic core through which creativity can flourish.

I think many of us today are also inclined to see the self in this way, and personally, I have long taken these theories for granted. However, particularly through reading Imperial Leather (McClintock, 1995), I have begun to question the seemingly objective and universal nature of such theories—assumptions that claim validity across time and space. Winnicott lived in what Hobsbawm calls “the short twentieth century,” and it is possible that his emphasis on the individual over society was shaped by the historical conditions of his time.

From Imperial Leather (McClintock, 1995), I learned the importance of analyzing ideas in relation to their historical background, material conditions, and the interaction of multiple factors, rather than accepting them at face value. In this respect, Hobsbawm’s discussion of the paradoxes of the youth mindset provides an opportunity to deepen and broaden Esra Dicle’s argument. Hobsbawm highlights that while young people challenged traditional restraints, they simultaneously became central to the market. As a result, they emerged as ideal consumers within a mass consumer society, defined by fashion, music, tastes, and jargon. Paradoxically, the emphasis on individual uniqueness ultimately produced uniformity.

As a result, it seems to me that Hobsbawm’s analysis of the cultural transformations between 1940 and 1990 remains valid in several respects, particularly regarding the changing balance between the individual and society and the growing emphasis on individuality. In this paper, I have attempted to reflect on these questions and to illustrate how they continue to shape our understanding of the self.

References

Hobsbawm, E. J. (1995). The age of extremes: 1914-1991. Abacus. (Original work published 1994)

Lee, T. (2023, May 31). Behind the mask: Winnicott’s “false Self” from an intersectional lens. Medium. Behind the Mask: Winnicott’s “False Self” from an Intersectional Lens | by Teriin Lee | Medium

McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. Routledge.