Reframing the Subject: Abjection in Twentieth-Century American Literature

In response to major societal change in the early years of the twentieth century, modern psychology suggested new ways of thinking about selfhood. One’s relationship with oneself, one’s subjectivity, came to be viewed as being processed through a matrix of factors that the self is subject to. The notion of the Cartesian “self” was thus seriously questioned. Is there an essential self? To what extent is self conditioned by environment? Can we know ourselves? If not, is the self worth talking about?