The Freedom to Become: Henri Bergsonâs Recovery of the Unquantified Self

Thomas Sutherland

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Chapter 1 The Freedom to Become: Henri Bergsonâs Recovery of the Unquantified Self

In: Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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Thomas Sutherland

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 19â41

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004720701_003

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Abstract

This chapter argues that Henri Bergsonâwhose philosophy is in large part devoted to locating human freedom outside not only the laws of causality, but the mechanical modes of thinking and habitual modes of acting that define our usual conductâshould be considered a crucial figure in the tradition of modernist self-optimization and in the intellectual history of media theory. Although Bergson regards such freedom as a fundamental and originary characteristic of our being, he equally posits it as able to be realized only through an ongoing inner labor whereby we work to distinguish our true self from the repetition and similitude encrusted upon it. And whilst his account of freedom is often utilized today as an antidote to rampant quantification of ourselves and our experience, it is very much grounded in an ethos of heroic productivism and transgressive spontaneity reflective of and responsive to the industrial culture within which it was formulated.

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

Series:Â Literary Modernism, Volume: 9

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004720701

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 03 Jun 2025

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

Front Matter

Part 1 The Self

Part 2 Emotions and Nerves

Part 3 Body and Gender

Part 4 The Technology of Self-Optimization

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Chapter 1 The Freedom to Become: Henri Bergsonâs Recovery of the Unquantified Self

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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Chapter 1 The Freedom to Become: Henri Bergsonâs Recovery of the Unquantified Self