The recently rising field of Critical Data Studies is still facing fundamental questions. Among these is the enigma of digital subjectivation. Who are the subjects of Big Data? A field where this question is particularly pressing is finance. Since the 1990s traders have been steadily integrated into computerized data assemblages, which calls for an ontology that eliminates the distinction between human sovereign subjects and non-human instrumental objects. The latter subjectivize traders in pre-conscious ways, because human consciousness runs too slow (...) to follow the volatility of the market. In response to this conundrum Social Studies of Finance has drawn on Actor-Network Theory to interpret financial markets as technically constructed networks of human and non-human actors. I argue that in order to develop an explicitly critical data study it might be advantageous to refer to Maurizio Lazzarato’s theory of machinic subjugation instead. Although both accounts describe financial digital subjectivation similarly, Lazzarato has the advantage of coupling his description to a clear critique of and resistance to finance. (shrink)

Dans cet article l’auteur a souhaité étudier le travail de subjectivation des liens familiaux chez un auteur de violence sexuelle dans le cadre du dispositif pénal qu’est l’injonction de soins. À partir d’une recherche clinique menée sur un mode longitudinal, il propose de montrer comment le génogramme (en test, re-test) peut être un révélateur de la mise en œuvre du processus de subjectivation. Ce procédé permet de relever deux différences notables entre les deux génogrammes : dans le passage (...) d’une place fantasmatique dans les liens (celle d’un « enfant ») à celle d’une position instituée concomitante avec une affiliation intersubjective ; la présence ou l’absence de nom sur les icônes parentales. Des différences favorisées, selon nous, par le dispositif d’injonction de soins. (shrink)

Dans cet article l’auteur a souhaité étudier le travail de subjectivation des liens familiaux chez un auteur de violence sexuelle dans le cadre du dispositif pénal qu’est l’injonction de soins. À partir d’une recherche clinique menée sur un mode longitudinal, il propose de montrer comment le génogramme (en test, re-test) peut être un révélateur de la mise en œuvre du processus de subjectivation. Ce procédé permet de relever deux différences notables entre les deux génogrammes : dans le passage (...) d’une place fantasmatique dans les liens (celle d’un « enfant ») à celle d’une position instituée concomitante avec une affiliation intersubjective ; la présence ou l’absence de nom sur les icônes parentales. Des différences favorisées, selon nous, par le dispositif d’injonction de soins. (shrink)

La pleine reconnaissance de l’existence du problème de la subjectivation sexuée ou colonisée conduit nécessairement à rendre relatif celui de la subjectivation dite « neutre ». Pourtant, le propre de la conscience dominante est de masquer son propre caractère de domination. Comment forcer la subjectivité dominante à se dévoiler? Nous proposons d’associer la description phénoménologique à une méthode de traduction depuis les expériences des dominé-e-s vers la reconstruction des expériences des dominant-e-s en tant que tel-les. Pour cela, nous (...) partirons, dans une perspective intersectionnelle, des travaux phénoménologiques de Simone de Beauvoir et de Frantz Fanon.The full recognition of the problem of sexual or colonized subjectivation necessarily leads to question the neutrality of “normal subjectivity.” Yet the dominant consciousness tends to mask its own character of domination. How to force dominant subjectivity to reveal itself? We propose to associate the phenomenological description with a method of translation from the experiences of the dominated-ones to the reconstruction of the experiences of the dominants as such. For that, we will rely, in an intersectional perspective, on the phenomenological work of Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon. (shrink)

On the basis of a reconstruction of legal theory in the tradition of Marx - a current that has been more or less silenced since the end of the 1970s - Subjectivation and Cohesion develops a critical counter-pole to the theories of law that predominate in social theory today. To this end, the works of Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Evgeny Pashukanis, Oskar Negt, Isaac D. Balbus, the so-called 'State-derivation School', Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas and Michel Foucault are first analysed (...) for their strengths and weaknesses, and then combined to form a new construction: a materialist legal theory that is up to date and can avoid the shortcomings of existing theories - above all their disregard for gender relations and the reductive consequences of functionalist, economic or politicist approaches to law. (shrink)

Engaging with the account of pathic subjectivation developed by Félix Guattari, this article explores the ways in which his thinking about the production of subjectivity takes up and transforms the concept of the pathic dimension of experience that emerges from the rich tradition of existential-phenomenological psychiatry and the thematisation of contact it entails. Explicitly foregrounding the link made within that tradition between aesthetics and existence, this article considers the origins of Guattari’s conception of pathic subjectivation in his work (...) on Proust, the experimental understanding of the semiotic transformations of sensory experience it entails and the practical role it plays in catalysing the creative emergence of new modes of existence. (shrink)

This article defends the theoretical centrality of Michel Foucault’s account of subjectivation for critical responses to neoliberalism against those Marxist critics who claim that his focus on the subject pushed the Left into the fraught terrain of identity politics. A key contention is that a theoretically sophisticated account of subjectivation is a requisite for any philosophically coherent and politically effective theorization of resistance against neoliberalism. Critical accounts of neoliberal subjectivation must be recognized as indispensable for understanding the (...) conditions of possibility for class struggle and not as an alternative theoretical frame to it. The article also relates Foucault’s and Karl Marx’s thought on the question of power and its relationship to the subject. It presents a reading of Foucault as a post-Marxist who modified, rejuvenated, and extended Marx’s views on power and subjectivation. While Foucault developed his understanding of subjectivation as a critical response to the problems he identified in the French Marxist accounts of his time—particularly in the work of Louis Althusser—his appropriation of Marx should be recognized as decisive for the development of his account of productive power and the concomitant understanding of the subject. (shrink)

In this article, I take up one strand – arguably the central one – of the Foucault/Habermas debate: their respective accounts of subjectivation. Against those who hold that Foucault and Habermas occupy such drastically different theoretical perspectives as to preclude the integration of their views into a common framework, I begin to lay the groundwork for an account of subjectivation that draws on the conceptual insights to be found on each side of the debate. While both Foucault and (...) Habermas offer a one-sided analysis of subjectivation – Foucault emphasizes its power-ladenness, and Habermas its communicative, rational, intersubjective aspects – I argue that subjectivation necessarily entails both communicative rationality and power relationships. I then consider the implications of my comparative argument for both Foucault and Habermas’s broader philosophical projects. (shrink)

Une critique de la métaphysique du sujet, prise entre une théorisation substantialiste de l'individu ou au contraire une approche dynamique de la subjectivité. ©Electre 2017.

This book explores, discusses, and assesses the actual and potential sense of subjectivation in a variety of contexts. In particular, it reflects the genealogies, connections, variations, and practical implications of various theories of subjectivity and subjection while providing an up-to-date and authoritative account of how to engage with the 'subject'. Rather than addressing the 'subject' merely in theoretical terms, this book explores subjectivation as a seminal expression of subjective practices in the plural. To the extent that subjectivity and (...) subjection are key terms in a plurality of discourses and for a number of disciplines, Subjectivation in Political Theory and Contemporary Practices advances a trans-disciplinary reading by taking into account relevant debates that stretch from poststructuralism via postfordism to postdemocracy. In this sense, the book introduces readers to current approaches to subjectivation by displacing conventional understandings and suggesting unexpected reformulations. (shrink)

RESUMEN A pesar de la declaración de la muerte del Sujeto en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, tanto Marion como Badiou mantienen esta categoría en el centro de sus filosofías. Sin embargo, para poder hacerlo abandonan sus determinaciones metafísicas de principio y fundamento con el fin de desplazarlo dentro de una posición secundaria de Sujeto de un acontecimiento. Así, el Sujeto, en tanto que substancia, da lugar a un proceso de subjetivación que responde a un acontecimiento que, desde siempre, (...) lo llama. En este texto se muestra que esta estructura apostólica del Sujeto contemporáneo también tiene sus raíces en cierta lectura disidente de Descartes, con la condición de que aceptemos, en una lógica derridiana, escuchar la polifonía de sus textos filosóficos. ABSTRACT Despite the death of the Subject during the second half of the 20th century, both Marion and Badiou maintain this category at the centre of their philosophies. However, in order to do so, they abandon its metaphysical determinations of principle and foundation to displace it within a secondary position of Subject of an event. Thus, the Subject as a substance is replaced by a process of subjectivation that responds to an event that since ever calls it. We show in this text that this apostolic structure of the contemporary Subject has its deep roots in a dissenting reading of Descartes, if we accept to listen, with Derrida, all the polyphonic richness of philosophical texts. (shrink)

This article highlights the impasses of anti-racist struggles that understand racism as an opinion or a prejudice and use education as their only means for addressing it. Racism should rather be understood as a socio-historical subjective structure rooted in the process of constitution of the division of labour on a global scale through colonialism, a process that was crucial to the institution of capitalism. This is why we will put forth the importance of rejecting the narrations that camouflage colonization with (...) the idea of civilization, and the necessity to produce decolonial counter-histories. We will thus claim that such an endeavor should start from the struggles of racialized peoples against the different forms of coloniality—that is, from the refusal by racialized peoples of the representations that are imposed on them, and from their repositioning on the basis of their alterity. Only the position of a powerful alterity can in fact make possible a real equality.Cet article met en évidence les impasses des luttes antiracistes qui conçoivent le racisme comme une opinion ou un préjugé et utilisent l’éducation comme le seul moyen d’y remédier. Le racisme devrait plutôt être compris comme une structure socio-historique subjective qui s’enracine dans le procès de constitution de la division mondiale du travail par le colonialisme, un procès qui a été décisif pour l’institution du capitalisme. C’est pourquoi nous mettrons en avant le caractère problématique des récits qui recouvrent la colonisation de l’idée de civilisation et la nécessité de produire des contre-histoires décoloniales. Il s’agira alors de montrer que, pour ce faire, il faut partir des luttes des racisés contre les différentes formes de colonialité—c’est-à-dire du refus par les racisés des représentations qui leur sont adressées et de leur repositionnement à partir de leur altérité. Seule la position d’une altérité puissante peut, en effet, rendre possible une égalité réelle. (shrink)

When posing the political as first, we imply an order. Such civilisational choice distinguishes the political and installs the subject within a sovereignist hierarchy. It forbids the political to those who are constructed as "others" in time, in space or in culture etc. The production of knowledges and (cognitive) inequality are constructed together. Translation is a politics and a technique of resolving that inequality (though it can produce some too). We attribute "ourselves" the political and concede the "pre-political" or the (...) "non-political" to others. Translation, together with some other instruments should allow to target cognitive justice necessary to a future epistemological revolution. It has its politics. The author's idea is, then, to start from intersecting etymologies as well as from the "untranslatables" which, thanks to the context, never make the whole "un-expressible". She gives some examples from "Asian" and "European" philosophies. The difference between the latter is striking when it comes to the fact that "European" philosophies value the subject/agency, while the "Asian" ones do not value it and do not even construct it. (shrink)

Starting from a Foucaultian perspective, the article draws attention to current developments that neutralise democracy through the 'governmentalisation of democracy' and processes of 'governmental subjectivation'. Here, ideas of Rancière are introduced in order to clarify how democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of 'political subjectivation', that is, a disengagement with governmental subjectivation through the verification of one's equality in demonstrating a wrong. We will argue that democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of political subjectivation, (...) and that today's consensus society tends to depoliticize all processes of subjectivation. A final step in the argumentation is to introduce the concept of 'pedagogic subjectivation'—to be understood as the experience of potentiality—that is to be distinguished from governmental subjectivation and also from political subjectivation. The concept 'pedagogic subjectivation' is proposed as a way of thinking of the school as a public place. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Demos and Cratos in Education Today Police, Divisions and Plebs Democracy, Equality, Emancipation, Political Subjectivation Consensus, Experts of Inclusion, De‐Politization Education, Schools and Pedagogic Subjectivation Concluding Thoughts Endnote: Rancière with Foucault Notes References.

Michel Tournier had a Sartrean youth. But his radicalization of existentialism pushed him to return to a Cartesian cogito. He thus compromised the transparency of our relation to things that phenomenology intended to guarantee. In this respect, the consciousness without thickness put forward by his friend Gilles Deleuze seems more satisfactory. However, the latter was particularly interested in the movements of subjectivation, belatedly following the path that Tournier had opened before him.

The work of the Latvian phenomenologist Theodor Celms provides an interesting attempt to reinterpret Husserl’s phenomenological reduction in terms of Natorp’s subjectivation. This paper summarizes in broad outline some salient features of Celms’ theory of subjectivation and discusses some of its similarities and differences with Husserl’s and Natorp’s views. I focus on two more central points. First, Celms proposes to interpret Husserlian reduction as radicalizing or generalizing an operation of thought that is pervasive throughout all forms of cognition. (...) Secondly, he makes a distinction between epistemological and ontological subjectivation that leads him to adopt a critical stance toward both Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Natorp’s general psychology. (shrink)

Nietzsche est souvent perçu comme un philosophe de la critique du " moi ", qui entreprend d'évacuer le sujet souverain pour en faire un simple effet des rapports entre les volontés de puissance. L'ambition de ce livre est de montrer qu'une telle vision est incomplète. Il y a dans l'œuvre de Nietzsche, et particulièrement dans son dernier livre, Ecce Homo, une forte pensée de l'individu et du rapport à soi qui, loin d'éliminer le problème de la subjectivité, le pose à (...) nouveaux frais. Ce livre procède en deux temps. Tout d'abord, il revient sur l'ensemble du corpus nietzschéen afin de distinguer les différentes critiques que Nietzsche adresse aux notions de " moi ", d'individu, de sujet, et fait apparaître les perspectives ainsi ouvertes. Il s'intéresse ensuite plus particulièrement à Ecce Homo. En convoquant les pensées d'auteurs comme Foucault, Deleuze ou Simondon, il interprète ce dernier ouvrage comme l'effectuation d'un mode de subjectivation inédit : une nouvelle manière de se rapporter à soi et d'en faire le récit. Il tente alors d'analyser ce " moi " spécifiquement nietzschéen, et d'en repérer tant le mode d'apparition que le régime d'action et d'existence. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between Kant's and Kierkegaard's treatment of morality and religious faith. In Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone Kant invokes Christian categories in an effort to resolve certain contradictions which arise in consequence of the introduction of the notion of radical evil. I initially argue that Kant's Enlightenment confidence in the autonomy of ethical selfhood ultimately entails the subordination of these categories to the demands of rational ethical subjectivity. I then suggest that Kierkegaard's defence of (...) the independence of Christian faith, against the encroachments of Kantian Enlightenment humanism, largely proceeds on a foundation of shared epistemological principles, such that the Kierkegaardian existential individual's paradoxical Christian faith offers no genuine alternative, but rather a radically subjectivized extension of Kant's demythologized version of orthodox Christian principles. (shrink)

La clinique des femmes en situation précaire nous confronte aux effets abrupts de la forclusion de l’être sexué femme et à ses conséquences, les difficultés de subjectivation. Cette forclusion repose sur l’impensé d’une réalité : il y a deux sexes. Cela se traduit depuis des lustres par un contrôle de la potentialité créatrice qu’est la maternité au sein du matrimonial, qui mène les femmes vers des impasses quant à leur autonomie psychique en tant que sujets femmes. S’affranchir de cette (...) condition consiste à reconnaître cette part de leur être non symbolisé que représente le matriciel. (shrink)

Critique and subjectivation. Foucault and Butler on the subject In her paper “What is Critique ? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue”, Judith Butler reads Foucault’s “What is Critique ?” According to Foucault, critique is a practice of desubjugation of the subject, which would provide for it a certain form of autonomy. But what kind of autonomy is really possible for the subject, when Foucault rejects the notion of the sovereign subject ? Butler’s reading wants to solve that difficulty in (...) Foucault’s position with the notions of virtue and of speech acts. But Foucault tends more to consider the courage of the truth as a critical mode of philosophical intervention in politics, and he thinks of it as a virtue or as an êthos. Butler’s conception of the subject refuses the whole notion of an originary freedom and she prefers to think an agency which would take place in the context of the subjectivation itself, where being produced as a subject is originally being subjected to different modes of interpellation by the norms. In reading Althusser’s conception of ideology with Foucault’s desubjugation, she considers the critique as the critique of norms of recognition and the subject as vulnerable. (shrink)

Neither Habermas nor his communitarian and poststructuralist critics sufficiently explore the non-linguistic, playful, and performative dimensions of contemporary public spheres. I argue that the approaches of Castoriadis and Touraine can inform a theoretical understanding of the history and current resonance of this public sphere of performance. Their concepts of the social imaginary, the autonomous society, and subjectivation highlight the role of fantasy, images, individualism, and other non-rational factors in late modern public life.

Twentieth century philosophers such as Simondon and Heidegger propose theories of subjectivation that inform our thinking about the definition of personhood and how it arises; including in the potentially wide-ranging context of personhood beyond the human. Simondon’s theory of transindividuation unfolds as a series of decenterings that provides a context for future persons that is a dynamic world of processes without fixity or attachment to any one kind of subject. Subjects participate in but do not cause individuation; and they (...) exist on a spectrum of capacity for action with other living beings including animals; human persons; and possibly a variety of future persons. The role of collectivity in the form of the other has been an important aspect of individuation; however I claim that the function of alterity need not be provided exclusively by a self-similar subject. Philosophical individuation theories serve as a foundation for an approach that opens up greater possibility for individuation in the context of future persons by identifying and alternatively fulfilling the underlying functionality required by individuation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Criticism, Imagination, and the Subjectivization of AestheticsRoger W. H. SavageThe growing discontent with reductivist practices signals a new current in contemporary criticism's understanding of music, literature and art. George Levine's unease with critics who are unable or unwilling to account for their continuing preoccupation with literary texts they expose as "imperialist, sexist, homophobic and racist" illumines the contradiction fueling the reduction of aesthetics to ideology.1 Cultural studies that deploy (...) literature as evidence of the aesthetics' socio-historical substance mask literature's capacity to break open new perspectives on reality by assuming that literary works are politically complicit with the aesthetics' strategic "mystification of the status quo" (A&I, p. 3). Criticism's indifference to its philosophical presuppositions exacerbates the paradox of denouncing a body of works that constitute criticism's aesthetic and intellectual heritage. According to Mario Valdés, literary studies' coming of age mandates that criticism take account of a tradition nurtured by a succession of philosophers including Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur.2 For Valdés, the post-structuralist realization that literary texts are indeterminate and inexhaustible prohibits replacing the work of art with critical commentaries on it; criticism's collective and determining role belongs to a shared community of commentary whose history and thought is a record of the changing interpretations and understandings of literary texts' meanings. [End Page 164]Valdés's claim extends to the field of contemporary music criticism, where the fashion of denouncing aesthetics as socially pernicious turns against traditional musicology's institutional authority. By demystifying absolute music (instrumental music devoid of programmatic associations), a self-proclaimed critical musicology revolts against traditional musicology's perceived political and ideological agenda. Critical musicology militates against the aesthetic conceit that absolute music transcends its social construction. Yet, by overlooking the philosophical presuppositions that set music's autonomy against practical affairs, new musicology accedes to the schema it recoils against.The tradition nurtured by Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology represents a critical current whose significance has been overshadowed by postmodernist investments in decoding music's social and political content. Gadamer's critique of the subjectivization of aesthetics and Ricoeur's meditations on the imagination's capacity for invention offer an alternativeto contemporary music criticism's reaction against the principle of music's aesthetic autonomy. Gadamer and Ricoeur question art's formal separation from reality, which belongs to the history of Kant's radical subjectivization of aesthetics. Gadamer's critique of art's aesthetic differentiation prepares the ground for revealing how socially informed analyses conform to the schema Kant initiates by divorcing judgments of taste from their surrounding cultural ethos. Gadamer argues that, by discrediting theoretical knowledge that does not rely on the methodology of the natural sciences, the transcendental function Kant ascribes to aesthetic judgment lays the foundation for differentiating between art's aesthetic constitution and a concept of truth that accommodates the standard of the natural sciences. Through reducing the "sensus communis to a subjective principle," Kant legitimates his critique of aesthetic judgments by denying taste any importanceas a mode of knowledge.3Ricoeur's hermeneutical reflections on imagination complement Gadamer's critique of a differentiating consciousness that abstracts art works from their cultural worlds. For Ricoeur, imagination is productive when the fictions that works create affect our understanding of ourselves and our world by re-describing reality. Aesthetics' alignment with ideology encounters a limit in the power works evince by unfolding different ways of seeing or hearing reality. Ricoeur's reflections on imagination stand in stark contrast to the idea that individual works represent a form of cultural capital in the struggle for social position [End Page 165] and power. Contemporary critical practices' failure to account for the philosophical separation of judgments of taste from knowledge of reality precipitates the impasse criticism encounters when it identifies aesthetics with ideology at the expense of a work's capacity to affect reality in productive ways. The dispersal and potential disappearance of music's aesthetic character into the recesses of cultural and political analysis keeps step with the conceptual narrowing imposed by a restrictive sociological critique. Demystifying music's ideological representations of gender, race and identity purges romantic... (shrink)

This article focuses on tracing and extending Michel Foucault’s contributions to the philosophy of technology. At first sight his work on power seems the most relevant. In his later work on subjectivation and ethics technology is absent. However, notably by recombining Foucault’s work on power with his work on subjectivation, does his work contribute to solving pertinent problems in current approaches to the ethics of technology. First, Foucault’s position is compared to critical theory and Heidegger, and associated with (...) the approach of “technical mediation” (Latour, Ihde, Verbeek). Next, a detailed study of Discipline and Punish , results in the identification of two distinct “figures of technical mediation”. Finally, Foucault’s later work on ethics and subjectivation is employed to elaborate an ethics of technology that focuses on care for the quality of the interactions and fusions with technology. Hybridization is central in the approach: it is not to be rejected, neither is it the greatest danger, but it does deserve the greatest care. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall make the following propositions: in order to conceptually capture and represent the acts of political protest in a state of exception, we will need to reorient and supplement our representational apparatuses and also our theoretical frameworks for thinking about the gendered modes of protest under emergency laws and political abandonment. Through an analysis of the ‘naked protest’ of the Meira Peibis in Manipur, a ‘state of exception’ in democratic India, I shall argue that a series (...) of supplementations to our current thinking on intersectionality, bare life and political subjectivation are required if we are to make sense of political acts of resistance, refusal and disavowal of the law of exception. (shrink)

With Foucault on subjectivation, seduction, and technology What does Confessions of the Flesh add to Foucault’s approach of subjectivation and its application for the ethics of technology? In his late work Foucault focusses on subjectivation following a fourfold framework, without explaining its development. There are good reasons to believe it relates to Aristotle’s four causes and also refers to Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. Foucault’s analysis of early Christian practices of the conduct of souls and of controlling evil (...) seductions is surprisingly relevant with regard to how today’s digital technologies infringe on thinking and willing. Employing the fourfold scheme to apply insights from Confessions of the Flesh to ethics and technology leads to an approach of ethical subjectivation and technology in which: [1] problematization of seduction and technology [2] prompts good use of technology [3] by technologies of the self [4] realizing a practice of freedom. (shrink)

Starting from a Foucaultian perspective, the article draws attention to current developments that neutralise democracy through the ‘governmentalisation of democracy’ and processes of ‘governmental subjectivation’. Here, ideas of Rancière are introduced in order to clarify how democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of ‘political subjectivation’, that is, a disengagement with governmental subjectivation through the verification of one's equality in demonstrating a wrong. We will argue that democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of political subjectivation, (...) and that today's consensus society tends to depoliticize all processes of subjectivation. A final step in the argumentation is to introduce the concept of ‘pedagogic subjectivation’—to be understood as the experience of potentiality—that is to be distinguished from governmental subjectivation and also from political subjectivation. The concept ‘pedagogic subjectivation’ is proposed as a way of thinking of the school as a public place. (shrink)

The theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or (...) ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actuallysupportthe process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design. (shrink)

Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelug school specifically, promotes a deep skepticism about the ability to know others’ minds. Its scripture is rife with cautionary tales allegorizing and extolling this skepticism in adherents, while claiming a buddha, by contrast, has eradicated this skepticism with their omniscience. I describe a buddha’s purported privileged epistemic access to others’ minds as “double-hiddenness.” On this skepticism, not just what a buddha knows, but if they know it is hidden, making their authority irreputable. I use critical theory (...) to investigate the ramifications of this double hiddenness, demonstrating that the resultant subjectivization brought about by this extreme skepticism—although the product of power—is not merely a type of subjugation, as suggested by Foucault, but also constitutes a robust agency. (shrink)

A partir la thèse avancée par Monique David-Ménard, selon laquelle l’entendement réussi là où la raison échoue, il s’agit d’examiner la révolution kantienne dans la manière de penser. Pour tirer les conséquences du renversement dans la pensée mis en oeuvre par la philosophie kantienne, l’auteur interroge la constitution de la réalité dans la perspective transcendantale comme double opération avec le non-savoir portant respectivement sur le sujet et le noumène. Sur le fond de cette interrogation, il montre que la réalité à (...) laquelle a affaire la philosophie kantienne n’est ni la réalité objective constituée, ni la réalité hallucinée du désir de la raison transgressant les limites de la connaissance, mais à une réalité subjectivée, constituée par la mise en scène de la double destitution : celle de la réalité phénoménale et celle de la raison. C’est sur ce point que peut s’établir une alliance militante entre la philosophie et la psychanalyse, alliance dont l’enjeu principal, pour l’une comme pour l’autre, consiste justement en ceci que chacune, pour son propre compte, pense la réalité comme une telle scène du Deux. (shrink)

Selon une acception très répandue, le terme de néolibéralisme désigne tout à la fois une idéologie prônant un « retour » au libéralisme des origines et une politique économique consistant à retirer à l’État pour donner toujours plus au marché. En somme, la caution d’Adam Smith venant légitimer une marchandisation impitoyable de la société. Ainsi, après la parenthèse de..

While Continental thought has no shortage of criticism and diagnosis of social, political, and ethical issues, it tends to avoid offering guidance on what to do about such issues. In Reconsidering the Life of Power, Garrison argues for a radical new alternative for the Continental tradition: it ought to stage an encounter with the Confucian tradition. This is because, he argues, both traditions have at the center of their political thought a focus on the social formation of subjects, that is, (...) the process of subjectivation. While Continental thought often takes this process to empty the subject of all but nominal forms of autonomy, the Confucian tradition sees subjectivation as the very source of real human autonomy. This paper explores one such possible encounter by synthesizing Deleuze’s account of individuation with the constructivist reading of Xunzi’s view that artifice is the source of human autonomy and virtue. Ultimately, I argue that coupling Deleuze’s defense of the possibility of the New with Xunzi’s transformational account of human nature provides an understanding of subjectivation that is optimistic about the shaping of human autonomy as well as practical guidance for how to do so. (shrink)

Fetishism and Interpassive Subjectification What happens when, in the face of postmodern capitalism, the subject watches as its activity falls prey to the strange forces embodied in the objects present in its immediate environment ? To answer this question, we must take up again the Marxian notion of commodity fetishism. In doing so, we must combine a structural approach with the more traditional approach drawing on the category of reification. The phenomenon of interpassive subjectification, like the omnipresent imperative of frenzied (...) activity, can thus be shown to be one of the emblematic traits of the contemporary versions of our fetishised universe. (shrink)