Abstract

With an ever-increasing engagement with the world through social media technologies, our relationship with others takes on novel directions. This thesis will approach this unusual landscape by considering both its emergence and impetus, through the dynamics of the Self. To do so, however, requires a re-evaluation of the concept of self and its critical relationship to chaos, and thereby, desire. Such will be done with the unlikely conjunction of two thinkers: George Herbert Mead and Gilles Deleuze. Despite their numerous differences, their contrasting theoretical stances will rejuvenate an image of self that is no longer a philosophic abstraction simply observing the world, but one unreservedly contiguous to natures unfolding, thus riddled with unforeseen possibilities. It will be shown that the scope of ‘our’ desire can only be captured conceptually when such a force is drawn into the core of the self, expanding the creative potentiality that lies within every individual. Such will allow us to grasp the important role celebrity figures play not only in the progression of society, but furthermore in the mediation of our very desires to a point of indolence – defining the very state of society we see today.