Re: [xmca] ego, self, etc.

Thanks, Andy. The definition of "habitus" in the Dictionary of
Anthropology has an interesting sentence: "Habitus may be understood
as a variant of culture that is anchored in the body."

http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/index.html
"Concept from Bourdieu (with roots going back to Mauss and beyond),
denoting the totality of learned, bodily skills, habits, style, taste
etc. Habitus may be understood as a variant of culture that is
anchored in the body. "Hexis" is that part of habitus, where
communication between people takes place through fine-grained body-
language: tiny movements, micro-mimicking etc. Researchers like Hall
have, from a completely different point of view, done work on similar
problems."

How do the meanings you assign compare?

- Steve

On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:33 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

> Paul Dillon may like to chime in on this one. Paul is far better
> read on Bourdieu than I am and disagrees somewhat with how I see
> habitus. I think the definition of habitus is a "social space" of
> shared, unspoken dispositions or "classifications" (what is good/
> bad, what we/they do, what is to be valued/decried, what is manly/
> feminine, etc.) what mark out and constitute a class-fraction.
> Although the word "habitus" is just the Latinisation of the Greek
> "hexis", rightly or wrongly until I am educated accordingly, I use
> "hexis" as in the phrase "bodily hexis" for the embodiment of those
> dispositions in an individual. I guess the difference is slight.
> I tend to associate "habitus" with Hegel's Subjective Spirit, in
> contrast to Objective SPirit. I think any individual does have the
> possibility to actively appropriate or challenge their habitus and
> innovate it through their interactions with those around them, in a
> way which I distinguish from the larger society occupied by law,
> political parties, legal institutions, science and so on, which
> constitute "objective spirit" though the two of course mutually
> constitute one another.
> Andy
> At 09:43 AM 29/01/2008 -0500, you wrote:
>> Yes, it certainly is a huge and muddy territory. Thank you for your
>> thoughts on these terms, Andy. I found your response very helpful.
>>
>> Part of what I am looking for, by thinking and asking about terms
>> like
>> ego and self and the others you touch on, is a vocabulary with which
>> to describe a person's subjectivity in terms of their specific class
>> and cultural experience. "Habitus" is one term that comes to mind.
>> What does that particular term mean to you, and what terms do you
>> suggest for endeavoring to create that kind of description?
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>>
>> On Jan 29, 2008, at 1:30 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>>> Isn't this a huge and indescribably muddy territory, Steve? It would
>>> be interesting to hear the range of views we have on xmca about the
>>> usage of these terms. Can I just give you a one-liner on each
>>> perhaps and let's see where it goes:
>>>
>>> "SUBJECT" as you mention I have tracked in http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/the-subject.htm
>>> but the most common relevant usage today is that dating from Kant,
>>> in which the subject is "nothing real", but that which is the
>>> subject of all the predicates attributable to a person; it is both
>>> that which knows and that which wills - being a nothing it is not
>>> possible to differentiate between the two I think. Hegel rejected
>>> this idea of the subject as a "nothing" behind cultural-historical
>>> determination (though he also occasionally uses it just to confuse
>>> things) and his notion is the origin of the idea of "collective
>>> subject" when one talks of parties and classes as agents, but I will
>>> not try to go into it here. Hegel's subject is a kind of "node" in
>>> social consciousness, cutting completely across the idea of society
>>> as a sum of individuals.
>>>
>>> "EGO" I believe is the Latin word for "I" and in German philosophy,
>>> e.g., Fichte, the word was "Ich" but translated into English using
>>> the Latin word instead to make it sound better, I suppose. For
>>> Fichte and Hegel the Ego was "pure activity." The Young Hegelians
>>> developed the idea of the Ego as SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS a lot and I
>>> think it became associated with extreme libertarianism. Freud then
>>> so far as I know gave it the most dominant contemporary meaning as a
>>> certain neurological formation which is understood within
>>> psychoanalysis:- EGO, ID and SUPER-EGO.
>>>
>>> "SELF" is surely the most neutral and vague of all these words as it
>>> can be applied to any process. Since it always plays the role of an
>>> OBJECT in a construction in which the Subject or Ego acts, it can be
>>> likened to Mead's ME, in his construction of the SELF as I/ME?
>>>
>>> "IDENTITY" seems to have two shades of meaning and is highly
>>> contested. For postmodern theorists, deconstructionists and so on, I
>>> think "Identity" is like an Althusserian subject position, it is
>>> something imposed upon an actor from outside (a slot into which you
>>> are inserted), by "society" or the action of the structure, and in
>>> general these people understand it in terms of binary, abstract
>>> categories: woman, gay, working class, etc., etc. On the other hand,
>>> even this interpretation does not seem to me to close off the idea
>>> that an identity or "subject position" is voluntarily adopted by an
>>> actor, even if only under determinate social conditions. The other
>>> shade of meaning is what people sometimes call identity as a "verb",
>>> especially that process whereby a self-consciousness identifies
>>> itself as an actor continuously throughout a lifetime as "the same"
>>> actor. This same idea applies well to "extended" concepts of Mind as
>>> well, e.g., the idea of the nation (or state, or class) as being an
>>> actor in history over an extended period of time, and an individual
>>> "identifying" herself with that extended Identity.
>>>
>>> "PSYCHE" I have tried to retain as a word for "CONSCIOUSNESS"
>>> limited to the INDIVIDUAL moment of consciousness. Like Kant's
>>> SUBJECT, the Psyche is not anything real, it is just a concept in
>>> its individuality. One could say it is a "STATE OF MIND" if it were
>>> conceivable to talk of the "MIND" as something which has a certain
>>> "state" or even had "contents" as in the ideas which are in our
>>> mind, or psyche. (I would not accept any of these approaches as
>>> scientific or consistent.) Nevertheless, "EXTENDED MIND"
>>> notwithstanding it is inescapable that there is something individual
>>> and private about consciousness, and that I call PSYCHE. It is not a
>>> "brain state" though, do not misunderstand me.
>>>
>>> As to "SOUL", while it is quite possible to use the word in a poetic
>>> way, to me "Soul" connotes something separable from the body, but of
>>> course many have used the concept in a non-religious way. For Hegel,
>>> "soul" meant the feeling self, "awareness" what a human beings has
>>> before or underneath any conception or communicative relation. There
>>> is also "SPIRIT", which I insist on continuing to use, as in
>>> Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Times) or "Spiritual" meaning needs over
>>> and above material needs.
>>>
>>> I use "COGITO" to designate a knowing consciousness, the implied
>>> subject in "I know" as an aspect of Mind which is not necessarily
>>> human, but is essential to humanness - the "subject" of Kant's
>>> epistemology, suitably extended for Hegel and Marx.
>>>
>>> There is likewise "AGENT" which for Althusser is a mere carrier of
>>> something, as in "The mosquito is the agent for the spread of
>>> malaria" but I take it to be in the sense of moral responsibility
>>> for an action, as when one signs a form on behalf of an invalid as
>>> their "agent", acting on their behalf. Acting of a natural process
>>> has to be distinguished from action by a subject who has moral
>>> responsibility. So "the market" is a process without a subject and
>>> cannot bear moral responsibility, but one could argue that capital
>>> always has a personification and therefore the capitalist class
>>> bears moral responsibility, insofar as there is a corporate
>>> consciousness acting for it.
>>>
>>> Marx uses the term "PERSONAGE" in "The 18th Brumaire" to indicate
>>> the players on the stage of history.
>>>
>>> What do other people think are the key concepts here?
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> At 12:36 AM 29/01/2008 -0500, you wrote:
>>>> Andy, (and anyone else interested) if I may take advantage of the
>>>> momentary lull in xmca messages (or is my email
>>>> malfunctioning?) ...
>>>> and see if you would be willing to weigh in with some more of your
>>>> interesting perspectives on human subjectivity. You have studied
>>>> the
>>>> colorful history of the term "subject" - I looked at an article you
>>>> wrote on this that you had mentioned a while back. Lots to learn
>>>> there (perhaps you could summarize that study?). I am particularly
>>>> interested in your thoughts on some of the other words often used
>>>> to
>>>> refer to individual selfhood and significant aspects thereof. I am
>>>> thinking in particular about the words "ego" and "self." You have
>>>> adopted the term "identity," a term I would also like to understand
>>>> better. Other terms also might be worthwhile taking a look at,
>>>> such
>>>> as "psyche" and "soul." And of course, there are other such words
>>>> and
>>>> terms - not to mention, of course, the many variations of these
>>>> concepts in other languages. From the Hegelian-Marxian-CHAT
>>>> perspective that you are developing, perhaps using the tripartite
>>>> criteria you introduced in your paper, how might these words and
>>>> their
>>>> evolving meanings be better understood?
>>>> Best,
>>>> - Steve
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
>>> mobile 0409 358 651
>>>
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>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
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>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> mobile 0409 358 651
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

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Received on Wed Jan 30 10:00 PST 2008