What are we willing to give up to find meaning, connection, and a sense of belonging? What happens if we don't self-promote, self-create, and self-brand on social media? Will we find the right partner? Will we get into the right college? Or find the best job?
Tara Isabella Burton is the author of the novels Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and Here in Avalon, as well as the nonfiction books Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and Self-Made: Curating Our Image from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. She is currently working on a history of magic and modernity, to be published by Convergent in late 2025. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Granta, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In Strange Rites, you explore remixed religious movements, some of which I didn't even consider to be spiritual movements – CrossFit, polyamory, SoulCycle, the social justice movement, or Harry Potter fandom. The book opened my eyes to what was going on in different subcultures.
TARA ISABELLA BURTON
I wanted to both look at the kind of vast, rich tapestry of spiritually adjacent practices among millennials and younger people, particularly in the unaffiliated world, but more broadly, what is the underlying ideology underpinning it all? This idea that religion is something for us because the goal of religion is to make us live our best lives, and it doesn't matter, which is the sort of shadow side of this, if it's true or not. If it's real or not. What matters is if it "works for you."
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
How do you think contemporary digital platforms have amplified or altered the dandyism and the theology of self-creation that you explored in your doctoral research?
BURTON
So this idea that we can present ourselves as works of art, that we can create ourselves has always had a particular sort of aristocratic coding, historically associated with monarchs, who create their public image and their public persona, including through fashion. Today, if we don't self-promote, self-create, and self-brand, will we find the right partner? Get into the right college? Even secure the best job?
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What is your take on archetypes and different practices or hidden forms of knowledge?
BURTON
I think that we always try to find ways of defining ourselves against culture, archetypes, and narratives. And one of the things that interests me most is the process of trying to figure out what story we're in, to try to figure out who we are relative to stories. I don't think we are reducible to archetypes exactly, but I think that constant trying on the different hats, metaphorically speaking, and saying: Am I this? or Am I that? Am I a vamp? Or am I an ingenue? I would say that probably, as a woman, I am very, very aware of it. I think there is actually some kind of self-knowledge that is linked to knowing something true about ourselves.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
As you think about the future, education, the importance of living an examined life, and finding our spiritual path, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
BURTON
So everyone should probably throw their smartphones in a river, myself included. And I think that it is hard. There's never going to be a version where you get the right answer, and suddenly your life falls into place, and everything's perfect. And that's not what it's supposed to be for anyway. And I think there is a tendency in self-care circles that once we solve our demons and figure out our path in life, we are in touch with the vibes of the universe. Like suddenly, we're going to be wealthy and healthy and happy and have the perfect marriage. And I think the questions of philosophical inquiry are about how to live a good life, but that's not the same thing as assuming, as so much of contemporary wellness culture assumes, that a normatively successful life will come to us by virtue of doing the right things.
