Subjectivity
Unit: Cultural Identities in Texts 212 – Implications of Modernity.
Notes from reading The Individual, Self and Subject. (approx 250 word limit)
This article argues that subjectivity cannot be fully explained. Mansfield instead sets out to outline the arguments and differing understandings of the term "subject."
Varying philosophers and thinkers are used as the focus of these thoughts, and are all linked together.
"Subjectivity refers to an abstract or general principal that defines our separation into distinct selves that encourages us to imagine that our interior lives inevitably seem to involve other people." (Mansfield, 3)
Freud believed that subjectivity grew with the human body as it experienced life and interaction with other beings, namely parents. These encounters alert the being to the fact that it is separate to those around it - an individual.
For Foucault, subjectivity is invented by the dominant systems that occur in the social organisation - invented so that these organisations may better control and manage us. The society is taught that the organisation of the world depends on the division of the human race into fixed and polar categories, ie sick vs well. Subjectivity is then not the result of the free expression of interior truth, but instead an exterior motive in which we are led to think about our individual selves in order to present ourselves according to the rules of society.
According to Descartes (I think, therefore I am) knowledge of the world had to wait until selfhood was made philosophically secure. As Kant theorises, in order to have contact with the exterior world, the human requires an awareness of self. (in order to make the distinction, relate to Freud's theory)
Ideas of individuality emerge as key issues during the Enlightenment period - however, it has been complicated and interrogated by the culture of the 20th century. (Most philosophy on subjectivity remains within streams of thought presented by the thinkers of the 18th century)
Reading
Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity and Theories of Self from Freud to Haraway. Allen and Unwin: 2000. 1-24.
Notes from reading The Individual, Self and Subject. (approx 250 word limit)
This article argues that subjectivity cannot be fully explained. Mansfield instead sets out to outline the arguments and differing understandings of the term "subject."
Varying philosophers and thinkers are used as the focus of these thoughts, and are all linked together.
"Subjectivity refers to an abstract or general principal that defines our separation into distinct selves that encourages us to imagine that our interior lives inevitably seem to involve other people." (Mansfield, 3)
Freud believed that subjectivity grew with the human body as it experienced life and interaction with other beings, namely parents. These encounters alert the being to the fact that it is separate to those around it - an individual.
For Foucault, subjectivity is invented by the dominant systems that occur in the social organisation - invented so that these organisations may better control and manage us. The society is taught that the organisation of the world depends on the division of the human race into fixed and polar categories, ie sick vs well. Subjectivity is then not the result of the free expression of interior truth, but instead an exterior motive in which we are led to think about our individual selves in order to present ourselves according to the rules of society.
According to Descartes (I think, therefore I am) knowledge of the world had to wait until selfhood was made philosophically secure. As Kant theorises, in order to have contact with the exterior world, the human requires an awareness of self. (in order to make the distinction, relate to Freud's theory)
Ideas of individuality emerge as key issues during the Enlightenment period - however, it has been complicated and interrogated by the culture of the 20th century. (Most philosophy on subjectivity remains within streams of thought presented by the thinkers of the 18th century)
Reading
Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity and Theories of Self from Freud to Haraway. Allen and Unwin: 2000. 1-24.
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