I am Dynamite

Writer and Auschwitz witness Primo Levi; refugee and engineer Ben Glaser; artist Stanley Spencer; Israeli ceramicist Rachel Silberstein; Friedrich Nietzsche, the dynamic philosopher.What do all these figures exemplify?Freedom. Individuality. Existential power. The capacity and desire to live a life-project: to make one's life one's work. I am Dynamite ignites an alternative theory of the self and will, wrapped up in a combustible assault upon scholarly convention. Asking why the real effort of constructing and living within an identity is so often overlooked, it examines the subjective experience of existing in the world, with the power to define and transform oneself.Nietzsche famously claimed that 'an uninjurable, unburiable force is in me, something that gallops over rocks: it is called my Will'. Today, in contrast, we are taught to believe that social institutions determine the circumstances and scope of individual lives. But can we really write people out of the social power-equation, or subscribe to a dominant Foucauldian analytics that denies access to genuine truths and freedoms? Considering the trials and triumphs of five very different modern subjects, Nigel Rapport asks: can consciousness of being a self in the world enable control over one's life within it?Calling for a renewed appreciation of the extraordinary within us all, this richly inventive work seeks to restore knowledge to its essential practical and moral aims.