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Self-Transformations

2007· book· en· W4233623863 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

Venuenot available
Typebook
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicSexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Alberta
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSociologySelfSubject (documents)EpistemologyIdentity (music)NarrativeArgument (complex analysis)Cultural studiesPoliticsAestheticsFreedmanReading (process)PsychoanalysisGender studiesPsychologyLiteraturePhilosophyLawArt

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract This book argues that we live in an age of somatic subjects, whose authentic identity must be represented through the body. When a perceived mismatch between inner self and outer form occurs, technologies can step in to change the flesh. Drawing on Wittgenstein's objections to the idea of a private language, and on Foucault's critical account of normalization, this book shows how we have been led to think of ourselves in this way, and suggests that breaking the hold of this picture of the self will be central to our freedom. How should we work on ourselves when so often the kind of self we are urged to be is itself a product of normalization? This question is answered through three case studies that analyze feminist interpretations of transgender politics, the allure of weight-loss dieting, and representations of cosmetic surgery patients. Mixing philosophical argument with personal narrative and analysis of popular culture, the book moves from engagement with Leslie Feinberg on trans liberation, to an auto-ethnography of Weight Watchers meetings, to a reading of Extreme Makeover, to the author's own practice of yoga. The book draws on philosophy, sociology, medicine, cultural studies, and psychology to suggest that these examples, in different ways, are connected to the picture of the somatic subject. Working on the self can both generate new skills and make us more docile; enhance our pleasures and narrow our possibilities; encourage us to take care of ourselves while increasing our dependence on experts. Self transformation through the body can limit us and liberate us at the same time. To move beyond this paradox, the book concludes by arguing that Foucault's last work on ethics provides untapped resources for understanding how we might use our embodied agency to change ourselves for the better.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow), Research integrity, Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesInsufficient payload (model declined to judge)
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: Other
Teacher disagreement score0.732
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0130.007

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.039
GPT teacher head0.354
Teacher spread0.314 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Quick stats

Citations232
Published2007
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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