The Collective Self
Reflection and Religion in Byzantium and the Middle East
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Reveals a conception of selfhood in Byzantine and Middle-Eastern sources that is fundamentally collective rather than merely individual, challenging Western-centric narratives of the modern self and enriching contemporary discussions on communal ways of being.
What if the story we tell ourselves about of the modern self is incomplete? The Collective Self challenges narrow histories of Western selfhood that limit our understanding of both past and present.
Drawing on mirror imagery as a unifying thread, this book brings overlooked sources from the eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and Orthodox Christian tradition into conversation with Western genealogies of “knowing thyself.” Reflections and mirrors—an ancient technology—become embedded in discussions of self-knowledge. From the Odes of Solomon and Plotinus's Enneads to the writings of Evagrius, Athanasius, and Ephrem the Syrian, concluding with medieval Syriac writers and a few emblematic Sufi sources, Ugolnik reveals a conception of selfhood that is fundamentally collective rather than merely individual.
The Collective Self intervenes in current debates about embodiment, interdependence, and communion by demonstrating that reflexivity and communal selfhood are not exclusively modern or post-modern innovations. By highlighting optical theories that allow convergence in perception and embodied notions of the self, this book problematizes the assumption that introspection is only mental or individual and challenges typical associations of what is ancient or modern, Eastern or Western.
In these texts, mirror imagery articulates a convergence of gazes between oneself, the divine, and glorified beings—what Ugolnik calls “I and We.” This synthesis occurs through communal practices of prayer, liturgy, psalm and hymn singing that create pathways for practitioners to participate in each other's subjectivity across space and time.
As we enter a new bio-technological and computational age, this alternative history of self-reflection offers vital resources for imagining more inclusive models of identity, empathy, and collective flourishing—reminding us that technology has long served as a medium for understanding who we are.
The Collective Self offers a compelling account of mirror imagery as a mode of self-understanding. Ugolnik shows how reflections blur the boundaries between self, other, and divine, challenging the assumption that collective or fragmented subjectivity is a modern development. By reading mirrored language as the site of a gaze that is neither simply interior nor exterior, Ugolnik reframes how we think about communion, empathy, and divine encounter. This book makes a rigorous and original contribution to the intellectual history of the self and to ongoing conversations about vision, relationality, and theological anthropology.—Emily R. Cain, Loyola University Chicago
