Identity's Moments

The work is an examination of the role of language in the constitution of self and in the presentation of identity. Following the path laid out by George Herbert Mead, Kenneth Burke and Mikhail Bakhtin the work presents self, identity and meaning as ongoing accomplishments between human actors who participate in what may be termed the dramas of human relations. Human agents use language as symbolic actions with which they transform themselves and others, as well as places and things, clothing and money etc into meanings with which they conduct their lives.

Robert Perinbanayagam has taught at Hunter College of the City University of New York for several years and recently retired from it. He is the author of Signifying Acts, Discursive Acts, Games and Sport in Everyday Life and The Presence of Self, which wonthe theory prize given by the theory section of the American Sociological Association and the Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. The latter society also conferred the G.H. Mead award for distinguished contribution to the field of interactional studies.

Preface
Chapter 1: The Drama and the Dialectics of Identity
Chapter 2: The Relations of Identity
Chapter 3: TheScenes and Agencies of Identity
Chapter 4: Interaction and the Drama of Engagement (With E.Doyle McCarthy)
Chapter 5: The Meaning of Uncertainty and the Uncertainty of Meaning
Chapter 6: The Coinage of the Self: Page 211
Chapter 7: The Other in the Game: Interactional Processes in Mead and Wittgenstein