Preparing for Postmodernity

They argue that the authentic self is being replaced by what they call 'the artificial person'. Whilst this would seem to polarise authenticity and artifice too greatly, it is an interesting distinction to pursue and the authors make clear the ambiguities implicate its structure.

Out of this slow and agonizing death of the authentic self, there is arising a new social character: the artificial person. This new social character is already discernible among a vanguard of the organization offspring and is now emerging among the remainder; it is likely to spread eventually throughout the middle class and, as often happens, attract the lower class and surround the upper.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the designation artificial person does not mean these people are becoming phony or insincere. Rather, it refers to a changing conception of what constitutes an individual and indeed makes someone individual. In the recent past, the organization offspring believed that individuality consists of a pristine, transcendant, authentic self residing below or beyond all the particular accidents of history, culture, language, and society and all the other "artificial" systems of collective life. But for all the reasons we have cited and many more besides, that proposition and the way of life it has entailed have become untenable. More and more the organization offspring are coming to see that the attributes they previously dismissed as merely artificial are what make people individuals—artificial, to be sure, but nonetheless persons, characterized by their particular mix of these ever-shifting combinations of social artificiality of every variety. Starting from this fundamental, and often unconscious, shift of perspective, they are evolving an individualism that is "artificial" but particular, as opposed to one that is authentic but empty. It is an individualism predicated not on the self, but the person: while self connotes a phenomenon that is inner, nonphysical, and isolated, person suggests an entity that is external, physically present, and already connected to the world. In effect, it is the realization that authentic self is more of an oxymoron than is artificial person. (Leinberger and Tucker, 1993, pp. 15-17)

The process of self-definition or as Leinberger and Tucker would have it, person building is increasingly recognised as an emergent process, an ongoing narrative project. In this emergent process, stories and narrative change and metamorphose over time. The life story changes and so does its meaning for both the person and the listener. The story or narrative then provides a contemporary snapshot of an ongoing process — every picture tells a story but as the picture changes so do the stories. To establish a broader picture we need to locate the stories and collate the discussion and understanding of stories and narratives.