Formation of The Modern Self

Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of fifth-century ascetic, John Cassian (ca. 360–ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. The social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and rhetorical milieus shaping Cassian's late ancient understanding allow us to read his works as an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. Cassian's practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human possibility in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo.

This volume assembles essential essays—some published only posthumously, others obscure, another only recently translated—by W. E. B. Du Bois from 1894 to early 1906. They show the first formulations of some of his most famous ideas, namely, “the veil,” “double-consciousness,” and the “problem of the color line.”