Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession - Marjorie Garber

Written by Marjorie Garber
Format: M4A

This panoramic look at the concept of character reveals cultural shifts, unexploded fallacies, and more than a little bad behavior, rhetorical and otherwise. What does it mean to have character or to say that one has character issues? To what extent are character traits or character types fixed or mutable, innate or conditioned, essential or enacted? What about the character of a nation or a group of people?

Surveying philosophical, literary, and social science perspectives as well as recent political rhetoric, the author finds that character is a bewilderingly slippery abstraction that has endured and evolved. Once an assertion of ethical substance and personal virtue, more recent usage implies that character is something to be performed, not built. Too often, it is defined by its absence, as in actions deemed out of character or when someone’s character is praised despite despicable actions. The author wonders if the concept is so hollowed out by misuse that it should be retired, but in the end, she views character as a mirror reflecting the contradictions