SELFHOOD

Selfhood is the concept we form about ourselves.

Selfhood is everything that makes us a person.

Descartes said ‘I think, therefore I am’ but Barbara Kruger says ‘I buy, therefore I am’. In both sentences, it is shown the physical and thinking entity of the human being. Through history, humans changed the concept about themselves.

Mental capacity of the human is ever-changing and passing, as well as the body.

Until the Renaissance, God owned our bodies. The body as a beautiful and good owned by the humans emerges from the deconstruction of group identities, with the rise of the individualism and the weakening position of the church.

The aggregate, subjective or optimal identities are ‘dependent’ from our body, from the biological identity. From the birth itself (gender) and throughout the life (well-being, age), we struggle with the restrictions about where, how (appropriately) should we behave.

Above all, is the source of our fears and pleasures, mental or corporeal? Sometimes our body can be faithful, sometimes misguided and sometimes treacherous companion.