Classical Studies
The Others of the Self: Traumatic Relations and the Emergence of Self-Discourse in Ancient Rome
The book at the center of this proposal is the first systematic approach to connect modern research on trauma to the emergence of a discourse of selfhood in imperial Rome. It does this first by analyzing the emergence of self-talk (such as biographies of one’s achievements) in first-century BCE Rome; and by detailing how the civil war and the ensuing imperial rule, and what I coin the resulting “traumatic relations,” complicated both individual self-talk and the models set by emperors. What ultimately develops out of the precarious circumstances is a heavy reliance on self-talk shaped both by a language of conversion to philosophy and investment in self-improvement. This eventually also shaped the religious self-understanding of individuals in the late first and second centuries, and also paralleled key developments in early Christianity. The main sources used are literary, historical, philosophical texts as well as epigraphic evidence.