Abstract

Recently there has been a rising tendency in analysing the phenomenon of Modernity in terms of the notion ofsubjectivity as conceptualised in the Cartesian corpus. I have therefore organised this critical essay around twotasks: to look at the concept of subjectivity in its own right, and to see how far such diagnoses aresuccessful in tracing the origin of Modernity. In this pursuit, I have focused on Harvie Ferguson’s latestmonograph, Modernity and Subjectivity — as part of his seminal works on Modernity — which epitomises theemergence of this particular tradition of theorising about Modernity