RE: a request for some clarification

From: Jay Lemke (jaylemke@umich.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 10:23:36 PDT


In sorting out terminological distinctions, of course people contributing
to this "clarification" have already had recourse to embedding the terms in
particular discourses, and specific texts. If we want to know what they
mean for individual theorists, it's the texts, of course. If we want a
sense of what they might mean for a spectrum of readers when we use these
terms in introducing new ideas, as perhaps Elina wishes to do, then the
discourses fan out into a spectrum of heteroglossia (raznorechie) and not
only don't we expect usage to be consistent, but we can learn something
about the larger "sociology" of the field by how they differ, contrast,
avoid one another, build on earlier usage, etc.

"Subject" for me tends to pair with "object", and this was originally a
grammatical terminology, but then absorbed into philosophy and psychology.
The association with "subjectivity", which is more current for contemporary
readers, I think, poses the "subject position" as (a) the outward looking
view of our consciousness toward the world in which we act and are acted
upon, (b) the speaker-of-our-self and also the do-er or maker of our self
(as for the grammatical subject).

A secondary sense, mentioned already here, is the other meaning of
grammatical subject: the topic or focus of interest, which leads to
"experimental subjects" as the objects of our interest. I think this is now
a pretty specialized meaning that does not leak into other domains of
social theory, but I could be wrong for some readers.

Subject in the sense of "subject position" and "origin of subjectivity"
contrasts with object in that the object is what the subject sees looking
out into the world (at least in subjective philosophical psychology, not
that I would agree with this Cartesian view!), and what the subject acts
upon in the world. This last sense of "object" starts to converge with the
AT usage, but differs of course in that the latter includes the double
sense of "objective" or goal (which works in English and not I think very
commonly otherwise), and of course AT is not based on a purely
individualist ("homunculus") view of subject/subjectivity.

"Agent" on the other hand is more prominent in neo-Marxist sociological
discourses (the "problem of agency"), and both there and in its own
grammatical origins, its connotation is "causal agent". The sense of causal
force or causal power is much stronger I think in "agent" than in
"subject", but in part because most Indo-European languages combine these
two grammatical roles in the default or pre-assumed case ("John boils
water" is both about what John is doing -- John as subject -- and a
description of an event in which John is the causal agent; there are other
"ergative" languages where this pattern is not the normal one), there is
also a connotation of agency in subjecthood.

As Mike notes, to sort out any of this further, you have to come to grips
with the individual-collective issue. Grossly oversimplifying, since we're
only really trying to get a sense of the connotations of these terms, in
the neo-Marxist discourses of agency, the assumption is that the collective
is logically and ontologically prior to the individual, and that the
_structure_ of the collective both enables and limits individual agency. In
Althusser, we get a theory of the subject based on this arrangement
(interpellation), but in general the contrast is structure vs. agency,
rather than object vs. subject.

These days "identity" seems to be taking over from "subject", and the term
"subject position" is shifting from its individualist psychological sense
("the driver's seat") to a more social sense: where a subject is socially
positioned within the structure of the collective.

The "problem of agency" is the problem of how much scope for "free will"
(sorry, but that's the original concept, like it or not) is left by the
effects of structure on agentive causal force in society and history, as
mediated by the social construction of the individual subject
(interpellation, habitus, etc.) Here again it is the _causal_ sense which
is most at issue. You can be a subject (for yourself, or for others)
without being guaranteed much scope for causal agency that matters (i.e.
making social revolutions, major cultural changes, etc.). And the usual
view in this discourse seems to be that _collective agency_ can have causal
force on these scales. But there is much less development of any theory of
"collective subject" or "collective subjectivity". We get
"intersubjectivity", which is socially mediated, but the idea that there
are true social subjects as historical actors or agents (e.g. "The Working
Class") seems to be a less popular metaphor today.

To bring this back finally to AT, I think that just as "object" does not
have its usual Cartesian meaning in AT, so neither does its partner
"subject", and this may be why Wertsch uses "agent-in-activity". Wertsch is
also moving a bit closer to the semiotic view of "actants", adopted by
Latour: in Wertsch, Engestrom, and I think Leontiev, too, "subject" is
defined by its participation in activity, and in the whole of the activity,
and by its relations to all the points of the "triangles", not just by its
relations to other subjects or human participants. For Latour, the actant
is defined by its participation in an extended network that links many
activities. He borrows the term from Greimas, for whom actants are
"characters" in narratives (not just people but things, places, etc.), but
he makes some very original shifts to avoid replicating a Cartesian split
between semiotic and material aspects of activity. He also winds up with a
notion of a collective agent, but it is something closer to an ecosystem
than to a political movement. Actant replaces both 'agent' and 'subject'
and applies equally to humans and nonhumans.

Probably this is more than anyone wanted to hear on this subject!

JAY.



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