“You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day.” This prologue, spoken by Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) sets the tone for fans of the J. J. Abrams–produced series Person of Interest (POI). For the uninitiated, this hit television drama is built on the premise that a machine, created by Finch after 9/11 to detect acts of terrorism, uses our own electronic footprints to see everything. This includes violent crimes happening to ordinary people. People like you. The government, however, considered these crimes to be irrelevant and wouldn’t act so Finch and his partner, John Reese (Jim Caviezel), decided they would work to prevent these crimes from happening.
POI is, I believe, the first true post-9/11 series in that the entire premise of the show would not exist without the tragic events of that fateful day. Philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Ernest Becker might even go so far as to call it an ultimate event in that it was powerful enough in symbolism (both real and existential) to become omnipresent socially, culturally, and existentially.1 “The horrific loss of life that resulted from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is naturally a severe jolt to us all.”2 Americans’ reactions were wide ranging, with many flocking to blood banks, hospitals, and Red Cross offices. Sales of American flags, patriotic tattoos, Osama bin Laden rifle-range targets (and toilet paper) increased. “For most Americans, paralysis, worry, anger, patriotism, and bloodlust have given way to a more sober perspective and sincere effort to understand what happened and why.”3 Meanwhile, government and military agencies turned their attention to the prevention of further attacks.
In the POI universe, the aftermath of 9/11 creates an opportunity for Finch, with help from Nathan Ingram (Brett Cullen), to create a machine in 2002 capable of using technology and our own electronic footprints to watch and ostensibly protect everyone from future acts of terror. (In the episode “Ghosts” Finch explains that The Machine uses cameras, electronic footprints from debit and credit cards, the Internet, voice and facial recognition software, government servers, and public and private databases.)
The existence of such a machine in the POI universe provides us with an opportunity to explore a wide range of philosophical topics, including morality, justice, and person liberties in the real world. My interest, however, lies with The Machine itself and how its activities relate to postmodern philosophical conceptions of our identity. How does the machine identify the person(s) in the first place? How does it take the pieces of our lives and put them together in such a way that it “predicts” who will be the victim or perpetrator of a violent crime? I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of computer code, so I can’t imagine what kind of programming wizardry Finch performed to enable The Machine to behave as if it has an intelligence all its own.
Throughout POI we’ve been given hints at the origins of The Machine and the processes it uses to identify individuals. Season 1 episode “Super” has provided us with the greatest insight into not only what The Machine does but how it does it.
In the “present” Finch decides to reveal to Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson) what he and Mr. Reese do by “throwing her in the deep end of the pool” when he reveals that Derek Watson is about to commit a violent crime. In a flashback to 2005, The Machine provides the Social Security number of Gordon Kurzweil, a CIA case officer, who is revealed to be a traitor. In both cases, Detective Carter and Deputy Director Weeks want to know how The Machine was able to recognize the crimes when their own law enforcement organizations could not.
Is The Machine recognizing our identities from externally imposed definitions or is it channeling identity models suggested by Gilles Deleuze, who insists that our identities are internal self-definitions just as unique as we are? In this chapter I will approach The Machine from a philosophical standpoint that emphasizes the postmodern concept of multidimensional identities and their intersection and interaction over time.
Who are you? The question seems so simple yet is so very complex. Are you one thing? Are you many things? Are you all things at all times? Are you some things some of the time? How do you know? More importantly, how does The Machine know? Each episode of POI focuses on a victim or perpetrator (or both) whose “number” has come up via The Machine. Somehow The Machine knows that this person is in trouble and it becomes Finch and Reese’s priority to figure out what is going to happen and when and to try to prevent it.
At the heart of how The Machine recognizes the need to help someone is that individual’s identity. Our identity is a tricky and highly complex thing. It’s fluid, dynamic, and ever changing and it is difficult for us to conceptualize more than a handful of our identities at any given moment. In his own book Difference and Repetition (1994) and in his collaborations with Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (2009) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987) Deleuze creates an infinitely multidimensional identity paradigm in which what we would call our identity can be understood as the result of thousands of separate individual occurrences working in conjunction with each other but not necessarily bound by a whole (identity).4 The result is a complex array of differences that, in Deleuze’s view, society typically subordinates to achieve uniformity but instead should fundamentally be the object of affirmation and not negation.5
Modernism, from a philosophical standpoint, is the tendency in contemporary culture and society to reduce and compartmentalize an individual’s identity. Modernism is rooted in the scientific, technological, artistic, and philosophical transformation of society during the 1890s and early 1900s. Modernist models of identity are represented by frameworks based primarily on binary discourses relating to race (white vs. nonwhite), sex (male vs. female), sexual orientation (straight vs. gay), physical ability (able vs. disabled), and class (middle class vs. poor), where those who exist outside the dominant discourses are marginalized.6
Postmodernism, on the other hand, can be understood as a result, reaction, aftermath, denial, or rejection of modernism.7 Postmodern philosophy is a school of thought that proposes that identity is more complex and dynamic than suggested by the objectivity of modernism. Identity is individually constructed and therefore subject to a multitude of factors (social, cultural, chronological), leading to similarities and differences that make each of us unique.
To better understand and appreciate how The Machine predicts crimes that are about to happen, especially those of Derek Watson and Gordon Kurzweil, we must “pop the hood” on what we mean when we say “identity.”
The language of identity is ubiquitous in contemporary social science; however, common usage belies the considerable variability in both its conceptual meanings and its theoretical role.8 The term identity falls into three distinct and consistent usages:
1. to refer to the single dimension relating to the culture of a person, with no distinction drawn between, for example, identity and gender (both Watson and Kurzweil are male);9
2. as a method of identification with a collectivity or social category (Kurzweil is a longtime case officer for the U.S. government); or
3. to refer to parts of a “self” composed of the meanings that individuals attach to multiple “selves” or roles they typically play in a highly differentiated society (Watson is thirty-nine years old, male, Caucasian, a father, married [though his wife has left him] and unemployed).
This third usage of identity has developed among those who recognize the complexity of contemporary society and the need to accurately reflect the nature of identity. This postmodern notion of identity has given rise to a politics of difference.10 Rather than recognizing universal similarities within a society (i.e., human or American) with an identical system of laws, rights, and freedoms, particular groups are demanding their unique identities be recognized.
As opposed to the more sociological definitions of identity mentioned previously, in philosophy personal identity examines how our identity (the thing or things that make us who we are) persists through time given that “each of us shares our current thoughts with countless beings that diverge from one another in the past or future.”11 This is sometimes called the law of identity, where an object is the same as itself: A → A (if you have A, then you have A).
As we consider all of these definitions together, The Machine’s challenge becomes clear. First it needs to identify us as unique individuals, separate and distinct from all others. Then it must also be able to recognize that each of us is the same person over some period of time.
Thinking about how our multidimensional differences might interact and intersect with each other is enough to tie your brain in knots. For convenience, society (and sometimes philosophy) tries to reduce individuals to a singular identity (e.g., ethnicity, gender, sexual preference) in order to compartmentalize us.
“In identity theory, the core of an identity is the categorization of the self as an occupant of a role, and the incorporation, into the self, of the meanings and expectations associated with that role and its performance.”12 Some theorists have proposed that we have distinct components of self, called role identities, for each of the role positions in society that we occupy. There is some disagreement about whether our ability to switch between, create interactions and intersections among, or merge identities to create new identities happens internally or is externally motivated through personal and social interactions and as a product of discourse and participatory action. However, there is agreement “that the self must be seen as complex and differentiated [and] that the self must be conceptualized as constructed from diverse ‘parts.’ One can speak meaningfully of familial identities, political identities, occupational identities, and so on, all of which are incorporated into the self as that which is an object of self.”13
Although multidimensional intersectionality frameworks represent a more flexible and adaptable model in which multiple dimensions of identity interact and intersect with one another, they exhibit a point of view found in other, more hierarchical, models of identity. That view, according to Deleuze, is an outside-in approach through which an individual’s identities are understood only through externally generated stratified social categories.
External differentiation, as Deleuze points out, can be both positive—members of a group focus on what makes them the same—and negative—members focus on what someone is not. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for society, and those within it, to focus on the negative. The common thread that runs through the aforementioned identity models is the position of primacy afforded to identity. Deleuze proposes thinking of identity as secondary rather than primary. In doing so, he shifts the paradigm away from defining one’s identity in terms of “otherness” when compared to individuals who do not possess (or appear not to possess) that identity. Instead, the focus would be on an individual’s relationship with his or her own identities and the inherent differences between individuals with the same identity. In modern and postmodern identity theories (i.e., identity theory, social identity theory, and intersectionality), difference is seen as deriving from identity and subordinated by identity, opposition, analogy, and resemblance.
We recognize X because it is different from Y (or at least from not-X).14 X could represent any identity, chosen or unchosen, that an individual may have.15 Deleuze’s point is that we typically define identity in terms of what something is not. In a Deleuzean ontology all identities are effects of difference rather than the other way around. From this perspective, identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference and “it is not difference which presupposes opposition but opposition which presupposes difference.”16 “Given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus,” Deleuze argues, it stands to reason that there exist differences at any and all levels of classification and identification.17
Over the course of season 1 we have seen Detective Joss Carter become a central character in the POI universe. First she was a semiantagonist seeking to bring Reese to justice. Then she was a “number” that needed protecting from the very person she was trying to hunt down. Finally, toward the end of the season she became a semiaccomplice of Finch and Reese, neither condemning nor condoning their actions.
In the episode “Get Carter” we gain some insight into Detective Carter’s identity by learning that she is not only a highly principled police officer but also a war veteran and a single mother. The Machine, of course, has learned much more about her than we will ever know, but this will be enough for our discussion at this time.
Let’s imagine that Detective Carter’s “mother” identity is represented by M. According to Deleuze, that identity is composed of an endless series of differences, where M is the difference between m1 and m2 and m3 and so on. In this way, being M is a derivative (as opposed to the derivative) from dm where d is the differential between an infinite number of potentially different m’s. Can other individuals also be M? Yes. But their M-ness is inherently different because of the different m’s they possess. All roads may lead to M, but not everyone takes the same roads. Deleuze’s conceptual framework has three conceptual benefits. First, it places an individual’s differences in a more positive light, where one must understand the nature of the differences to understand him- or herself. Second, it looks positively on both inter- and intragroup differences. Last, it creates a framework through which we can appreciate the inherent qualities of the differences on their own merits.
Deleuze challenges the typical Hegelian view in which contradiction and opposition, distinguishing between m and not-m and M and not-M, are the principles underlying all difference and the principle building block of identity. In Deleuze’s ontology difference goes all the way to the molecular level and results in an array of infinite potential identities independent of spatiotemporal restrictions derived from inherent differences as well as those influenced and shaped through sociocultural, historical, and political contexts. “Every organism, in its receptive and perpetual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of the contractions, of retentions and expectation.”18
In other words, the different is related to the different through difference itself, without any mediation by an identity, and that difference should fundamentally be the object of affirmation and not negation. Deleuze’s molecular perspective denotes the existence of the multiple within the singular, where intergroup differentiation arises from consideration that an individual exists as a collectivity.19 Framing this point of view, Deleuze insists “that identity not be first, that it exist as a principle but as a second principle . . . that it revolve around the Different . . . which opens up the possibility of difference having its own concept, rather than being maintained under the domination of a concept in general already understood as identical.”20 “Switching to the molecular level renders things far more messy and fragmentary than their molar representation might suggest.”21 Pure difference is non-spatiotemporal—it is an idea. In contrast to his description of the previous identity theories, Deleuze does not present us with a model nor does he propose that difference transcends possible experience. Instead, differences between M and M or m and m are the conditions of actual experience and the internal difference in of itself based on that experience. A Deleuzean conception of difference and identity is not an abstraction of an experienced thing. It is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.22
When The Machine identifies both Derek Watson and Gordon Kurzweil as individuals preparing to commit crimes, it recognizes that both “possess an identity [that is] a singular, a particular, an exception, that is, in some essential way, unlike all others.”23 This level of individuation, or as Deleuze calls it, actualization, is composed of ideas and multiplicities involving differential relations among heterogeneous components, whose rates of change are connected with each other.
The Machine’s actualization of Watson and Kurzweil’s identities in “Super” crystalizes various dimensions of their identities to create a concretely existing real entity out of a set of virtual ideas. The Machine, therefore, follows an intensive process tracing differential virtual multiplicities with their complex gradients and multiple dimensions within the entity’s overall identity to produce localized and individuated actual substances with extensive properties.24 The actualization (or salience) of a particular individual (or individuals) by The Machine ties together Deleuze’s themes of difference, multiplicity, virtuality, and intensity based on a theory of ideas, as opposed to Platonic essential models of identity, Kantian regulative models of unity, and Hegelian models of contradiction. Instead it is based on problematic and genetic models of difference.
In practice, The Machine takes all the pieces that make up the idea of Watson and Kurzweil to actualize representations of them very near the corporeal Watson, whom Detective Carter prevents from committing a crime, and Kurzweil, who is apprehended after arranging to sell weapons-grade uranium to the Iranian government.
The Machine’s ability to “predict” crime lies in its capacity to collect seemingly disparate multiplicities, gradients, and differentials of our lives and to search, collate, and recognize the patterns (repetitions) among all the differences. Our human brains are capable of performing the same feat, given the appropriate resources, as demonstrated by Detective Carter’s apprehension of Watson before he can assault John Dalton. It’s just that The Machine is faster, more powerful, and has more time and resources.
As if this all of this wasn’t complicated enough, we also have to consider that our multidimensional identities travel across more than just the axes of x, y, and z. They also interact, intersect, and are affected by time. Remember, the typical philosophical concepts of personal identity as they relate to time can be grouped into two overarching problems. Diachronic problems address the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person persisting through time. Synchronic problems, on the other hand, are grounded in the question of what feature(s) or trait(s) characterize a given person at one time. Within these overarching frameworks, there is considerable debate with regard to the continuity of bodily substance, mental substance, and consciousness over time.
In a Deleuzean ontology, not only is identity viewed differently (no pun intended) but time and its impact on identity are deconstructed. The idea that we can be grouped and our behavior predicted based on static positivist identity frameworks is even more unlikely and runs counter to another one of Deleuze’s central tenets: “becoming.” Deleuze used the term becoming in conjunction with his concept of a body without organs (BwO).25 BwO refers to a virtual dimension of the body that complements, affects, and penetrates the actual body. The actual body has, or at least expresses, the traits, habits, movements, and qualities of our various dimensions of identity. The virtual body, on the other hand, is a reservoir of potential traits, connections, affects, movements, and qualities that exist outside of spatiotemporal limitations. Contact with other bodies (i.e., interactions and experiences) and self-activation, in which the individual actively experiments with his or her own potentials, are what Deleuze and Guattari call “becomings.”
Becomings challenge the notion of “being” and complement the previously discussed ontology of internal differentiation. What may appear to be solid and stable is really “permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles.”26 Stable dimensions of identity, such as African American or military, are actually collections of flows—virtual masses of swirling potentialities that can be activated (or actualized) anytime by the actual body. The difference between The Machine and us is that our minds are capable of actualizing only a handful of these potentialities at any particular moment. The Machine, however, is capable of actualizing our entire identity based on all potentialities.
Deleuze’s deconstructed “body,” with its multiple dimensions of identity, reacts, merges, intersects and interacts with time in a nonlinear fashion. In his configuration Deleuze (and The Machine, presumably) conceptualizes time in terms of three different levels (syntheses) within which repetition occurs.27
Level one is exemplified by habit, which embeds the past in the present and gestures toward the future by transforming experience into urgency. Level two sustains relationships between more distant events through the active force of memory. Memory transforms time and “implies between successive presents non-localisable connections, actions at a distance, systems of replay, resonance and echoes, objective chances, signs, signals, and roles which transcend spatial locations and temporal successions.”28 Level three still exists in the present but in a way that breaks free of the simple repetition of time. This level refers to an ultimate event powerful enough in symbolism to become omnipresent (salient).29
The postmodern/poststructural conception of identity as espoused by Deleuze is surely as complex as the reality of our own individual identities. However, the technological wizardry employed by Finch that enables The Machine to actualize individuals in need of assistance is truly remarkable when we consider that The Machine’s morphogenetic process has been happening for each individual within New York City twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since its inception in 2002. This ability takes Deleuze’s themes to a whole new level in that difference, multiplicity, repetition, virtuality, and intensity are not just intersecting and interacting within one actualized individual. The Machine is processing, intersecting, and interacting these themes across millions of actualized individuals, each with thousands of differentials. And, as Ingram comments, it does this all the time to all of us.
The depth of The Machine’s grasp of Deleuzean themes is apparent when Finch reveals to Ingram how Kurzweil’s number came up in another flashback scene at the end of “Super” (also while reading an Internet article titled “Kurzweil Pleads Guilty to Espionage”):
NATHAN: Now tell me, what on earth was it that made The Machine pick out Kurzweil’s number?
FINCH: You want me to pop the hood?
NATHAN: Yeah!
FINCH: November 2002. This isn’t the first item chronologically, but it’s the one that triggered a harder look.
NATHAN: A gas station receipt.
FINCH: Eighteen of them. From a Shell station just outside of Towson, Maryland. Kurzweil stopped every third Thursday of every even month even if he filled up the day before. On three of his eighteen visits this SUV was present two hours before.
NATHAN: A dead drop.
FINCH: The SUV was registered to the wife of a Turkish oil executive that paid for plane tickets used by an Iranian suspect from the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. The thinnest thread connect Kurzweil and his contact and The Machine could see it. It knew and it was right!
While the thought of such an omniscient machine is, in Ingram’s words, terrifying, it is also awe inspiring in that in many ways The Machine is able to do something that we cannot. It sees people as complex individuals with identities based on untold numbers of gradients, events, differences, and ecologies independent of our own spatiotemporal restrictions rather than falling into the social and psychological trap of reductionism. In doing so it is also able to view society as a much richer tapestry of interconnecting, intersecting, and interlocking gradients, ecologies, and happenings that affect the identities of both individuals and groups in constant states of becoming than we may ever be able to conceive.
As opposed to real people, actualized individuals developed within the mainframe of The Machine are threshold people—“they move within and among multiple, often conflicting, worlds and refuse to align themselves exclusively with any single individual, group, or belief system . . . to develop innovative, potentially transformative perspectives [respecting] the differences within and among the diverse groups and, simultaneously, posit commonalities.”30 These threshold people enable The Machine to see, theoretically, all potentialities and hone in on the ones most likely to lead to violent acts of crime.
The power that such a machine could give to an individual or organization is unimaginable, which is why Finch has taken careful measures to protect himself and The Machine. In the wrong hands, The Machine could be used to inflict an Orwellian nightmare on innocent citizens in an effort to maintain the safety and security of society. In the right hands it can champion the voiceless, give hope to the hopeless, and protect the innocent from those who would do them harm. All it takes is someone to act and, as Finch notes, “that, Detective Carter, is what we do.”
1. See especially Deleuze’s solo work, Difference and Repetition (1994), and his collaborations with Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (2009) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987), and Becker’s The Birth and Death of Meaning (1971), Denial of Death (1997), and Escape from Evil (1975).
There is a branch of experimental social psychology that focuses on how terror and mortality salience affect human behavior, known as Terror Management Theory (TMT). “The basic gist of the theory is that humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or worldviews) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with significance (or self-esteem). Since its inception, the theory has generated empirical research into not just the nature of self-esteem motivation and prejudice, but also a host of other forms of human social behavior. To date, over 300 studies conducted in over a dozen countries.” “Terror Management Theory,” http://www.tmt.missouri.edu/, updated February 1, 2008.
2. T. Pysczynski, S. Solomon, and J. Greenberg, In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006), 8.
3. Ibid., 7.
4. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
5. G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
6. T. L. Robinson, “The Intersections of Dominant Discourses across Race, Gender, and Other Identities,” Journal of Counseling and Development 77, no. 1 (1999), 73–79.
7. R. Appignanesi, C. Garratt, Z. Sardar, and P. Curry, Introducing Postmodernism (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003).
8. S. Stryker and P. J. Burke, “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory,” Social Psychology Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2000): 284–97.
9. Culture can reference any group to which an individual may belong, including, but not limited to, those defined by ethnicity, gender, age group, and profession. This can include both conscious and unconscious identities as well as those that are chosen or unchosen.
10. C. Taylor, K. A. Appiah, J. Habermas, S. C. Rockefeller, M. Walzer, and S. Wolf, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
11. E. T. Olson, “Personal Identity,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2010, accessed September 2012, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/identity-personal/.
12. Jan E. Stets and Peter J. Burke, “Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory,” Social Psychology Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2000): 224–37.
13. S. Stryker, “Identity Salience and Role Performance: The Relevance of Symbolic Interaction Theory for Family Research,” Journal of Marriage and Family 30, no. 4 (1968): 558–64.
14. In Deleuze’s ontology, this denotation assumes both X and Y are relatively stable identities.
15. The idea of chosen versus unchosen identities was popularized by philosopher Amartya Sen. Chosen identities are those we consciously decide to adopt as part of our overall identity. This could include political affiliation, profession, and even identities relating to marital status. Unchosen identities are those we have no control over. These include ethnicity, sexual preference, gender (although there is some debate on that), and age. Unchosen identities can also include “accidental” identities—identities we adopt due to unforeseen circumstances. For example, a car accident may give one a paraplegic identity or the death of a spouse my give one a widow or widower identity.
16. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 51.
17. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 6th ed., trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen Lane (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 133.
18. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 73.
19. S. D. Brown and P. Lunt, “A Genealogy of the Social Identity Tradition: Deleuze and Guattari and Social Psychology,” British Journal of Social Psychology 41 (2002): 1–23. “Molecular” is Deleuze’s preferred term, denoting the existence of the multiple within the singular.
20. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 41.
21. Brown and Lunt, “Genealogy of the Social Identity Tradition,” 13. “Molar” is Deleuze’s preferred term for a singular and coherent entity or identity.
22. D. Papadopoulos, “In the Ruins of Representation: Identity, Individuality, Subjectification,” British Journal of Social Psychology 47 (2008): 139–65.
23. J. Schostak and J. Schostak, Radical Research (New York: Routledge, 2008), 188.
24. D. Smith and J. Protevi, “Gilles Deleuze,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2012, accessed September 2012, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/deleuze/.
25. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus.
26. Ibid., 40.
27. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.
28. Ibid., 83.
29. As mentioned earlier, 9/11 represents a universal ultimate event in that it has had a global impact corporeally and existentially. Ultimate events, however, can be more localized and personalized yet still have the same deep impact. The assassination of a leader (e.g., President John F. Kennedy), the death of a spouse, or the loss of a job can resonate deep in the individual and collective psyches of those affected by the event.
30. A. Keating, “From the Borderlands and New Mestizas to Nepantlas and Nepantleras—Anzaldúan Theories for Social Change,” special issue, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge (Summer 2006): 5–16, quote on p. 6.