theorized how these atomistic selves could interact to estabjish a ratioslally

ordered econurny
Those of us in the West are socialized to accept variations of the c o n c q t
of the modern self, the autonomous individual, as an integral part of our po-
litical, legal, economic, cultural, and educational systems, We have an educa-
tional system in which students are assigned separate grades for their sepa-
rate work, We havc an ecoslomic system is1 which individuals sell their labor
power for a separate wage and are bombarded with commercials that present
models of individual success by maximizing separate ego possession and
consumption of commodities. In all such contexts, we carry within ourselves
variations of the autonomous irldividwal as inseparable from what it is to be a
true self. Most of us assume that our views of the self arc not culrurally and
historically constituted but are "natural," objective, ahistorical, nonpolitical,
rational, ethical, and tlniversally applicable.
When missionaries (including contcmporav pofitical and economic "mis-
sionaries" in Washington and elsewhere), anthropologists, philosophers, and
other Westerners have encountered Asian, African, Latin American, Native
American, and orher views of self (including many fcrnale views of self in &c
West), they have often dismissed or devalued tl~eesother views-which. seen1
to lack a separate, independent, I-me self-as premodern, backward, subjec-
tive, irrational, immoral, and relcgalcd to a lower evuIuciunary stage of dc-
velopnlent.
here have been many recent critiques of this construction of self as the
'41iberal," largely isotatcd and insulrtced autonomous individual-
namely, socialist, Marxist, anarchist, feminist, Third Worldist, pragmatist,
"yuslscructuralist," and ""pstmodcrnisf" critiques; but. also various "conser-
vative" critiques, such as those implicit in Alasdair hi2aclnt>iress essentially
neo-Aristotelian social ideal and in Thomist and other theological positions,
especially militant Eundamentalisms tf-tat reflect precapitalist and premodern
conccycs of setf. Cuntcrxzporary feminists havc analyzcd dominant concepts
of the 'honrelational," individual self as "patriarchal'5 and ""mascutinist."
Marxists and socialists have analyzed such self concepts as reflecting capital-
ist historicaf developments. And many Asian, Ahican, Latin American, and
Native American scholars have analyzed such concepts as 'Yestern" o r
64Eurocentric,"
In this section X have examined aspects of the dominant, modcra, Western
approach to self with its hegemonic claims toward ahisroric, transculrural
objectivity and universality. The fact that so many modern Western philoso-
phers have assumed that h e i r concepts of self w r e not socially, culturafly,
and historically constituted may seen1 to have sonle basis in common sense.
Each of us does have a separate body, a separate nervous system, a separate
physical identity But the exislcncc of a separate biological or physical iden-
tity does not in itself account for an ahistoric and universal concept of "the