Called to Account: Putting Anxiety to Work

Abstract

This chapter recounts how the first of several invitations to speak about my career prompted me to revisit the question Erik Erikson identifies as central to adolescence: Who am I? Who can I be? Like adolescents—and like many of my young-old peers—I found myself working to construct a viable new social identity. Unexpectedly, in rising to the challenge of the invitation, I learned to love the anxiety it generated within me and to affirm my commitment to frank speaking—the kind of direct address that rejects an over-reliance on theory and that draws on our own experiences to engage our listeners in self-reflection. My new understandings of anxiety and the solace of frank speech are grounded in the work of Soren Kierkegaard and Michel Foucault, respectively.

… life might be understood as precisely that which exceeds any account that we may try to give it.

(Butler 2005 , p. 43)