Dear Friends,
When viewing subjectivity, or also conscious processes, we tend to intellectualize these concepts as being totally rational, and they are not. When viewing subjectivity, I believe that we simply must return to an understanding of “sense,” another term deeply rooted in the individual, personal, which appears to be autonomous…in other words, “sense” must be connected to the social. However, “sense” contains emotions, which can bring us back to the irrational, the unconscious. Surely, there is not one level of subjectivity, and discussions of subjectivity cannot be linear and symmetrical. Lacan is most instructive at this point in many ways, by claiming that the subject (which is represented for him by the je/moi) is not unified in consciousness (it must include the unconscious). My understanding of subjectivity cannot be divided from the inclusion of Vygotskian “concept” building, along with thoughts on sense and inner speech. My perception of subjectivity is that it is unde!
rstood as
a modus operandi used for personal/social/societal transformation (for good or bad)…..it is a vehicle that drives us to continue developing, to make choices, and it is not a single entity that can be understood without context. I truly believe that subjectivity is a living and delicate function that can never be understood through the intellect alone, and cannot be divided from other lines of development. And, I firmly believe that we need to return to areas such as “will” “freedom”…..which of course are relative terms, never absolute. We cannot divide discussions of subjectivity from thoughts on consciousness/the unconscious, and I believe that Vygotsky’s language theories are most relevant to such discussions. My thinking has entered the discipline of Holography, which speaks of a new reality that is truly very different from three-dimensional thinking, but something that is being proven. Subjectivity, for me, is not something I can describe in words (and when I try I am !
drawn
back to sense, inner speech, consciousness, etc.). I can feel an intuitive truth in Holography as a model, but I cannot prove it in three-dimensional thinking. It is the same with subjectivity….. for me, it is a living phenomena that connects me to the world, to others, to myself, and it is dynamic, fluid, a trajectory where growth and transformation can occur…it is more like art and poetry and a larger faith in bigger things….it is potential, and it is not analytic per se. However, it can be better understood through “concept formation” and “word meaning,” etc. Vygotsky stated “Psychologically, the development of concepts and the development of word meaning are one and the same process.” My understanding of subjectivity returns to areas such as “image” “prolepsis,” “transformation.” Peter M. stated part of this belief in a beautiful way: “So, it is an individual’s ‘subjective image’ of ‘how to act in the new situation’ that drives forward the socially-shared body of knowle!
dge. If
we think of the ‘concept' not as the existing body of knowledge but as a kind of vector along which that knowledge increases then the concept is intimately tied to individuals’ subjective ways of acting. But it’s a subjective suggestion for action that is socially (intersubjectively?) evaluated.”
Subjectivity for me is a type of magical zone of the transformation of the ideal. All in all, I believe that we need to go back and read Vygotsky (maybe include Lacan) for some clues on subjectivity.
Dot
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