It is commonplace to read of 'the invention of the self' at such and such a time as resulting from the rise to prominence of a certain cultural formation, as for example Shakespearean drama or Romantic poetry, or any one of numerous other instances. The evidence might show a historical change not only in the ways that the self was figured in discourse but also a host of other cultural formations such as religion, fashion, food, architecture etc. With a slightly different interpretation of self these same evidences might be used to show the persistent constancy of the self one component of which is a restless and always unsatisfied search for its own nature. The appeal of such arguments is in their promise of further freeing the self from its various cultural accretions and limitations. The wish to discover the self by undoing the self is nothing new, but the fashion is in the particular tools deemed most suited for the undoing.