ABOUT THIS BOOK

What explains our current obsession with selfies? In I Love My Selfie noted cultural critic Ilan Stavans explores the selfie's historical and cultural roots by discussing everything from Greek mythology and Shakespeare to Andy Warhol, James Franco, and Pope Francis. He sees selfies as tools people use to disguise or present themselves as spontaneous and casual. This collaboration includes a portfolio of fifty autoportraits by the artist ADÁL; he and Stavans use them as a way to question the notion of the self and to engage with artists, celebrities, technology, identity, and politics. Provocative and engaging, I Love My Selfie will change the way readers think about this unavoidable phenomenon of twenty-first-century life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author, editor, and translator of numerous books, including Reclaiming Travel, also published by Duke University Press.

Adál Maldonado is a visual, performance, installation, and video artist; playwright; cofounder of the first all-artist political party in Puerto Rico; the recipient of a Pollock-Krassner Fellowship; and the author of several books, including Out of Focus Nuyoricans.

REVIEWS

"Rather than seeing selfies as a symptom of modern decay and pathology, Stavans encourages us to see the explosion of selfies as a kind of collective art project, in which everyone’s individualism squeezes into the frame next to everybody else’s individualism."

-- Noah Berlatsky Quartz

"A book of absolute contemporary relevance, I Love My Selfie reminds us that nothing has ever been as hard as having a self, and that perhaps to better be true to it, one has to learn to conceal it, in a game of hide and seek that here gains a political dimension."

-- Carlos Fonseca TLS

"Stavans’ key intuition that selfies might be understood in dialogue with self-portraiture is significant, as putting pressure on the definitions of selfies and self-portraiture—whether in the present moment or across the history of photography—can yield rich insights."

-- Nicole Erin Morse boundary 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Chillin' 1
2. The Plight of Narcissus 10
3. "Decisive Moments" 18
4. Out of Focus 28

Go F_ck Your Selfie: A Portfolio / ADÁL 39

5. Alone with Others 91
6. Rembrandt's Instamatic 98
7. Tropic Noir 113
8. And Then Comes Darkness 122

Acknowledgments 129
Index 131

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