Das Subjekt als Gemeinwesen

Abstract

Following Marx s dictum that man ‘in his individual existence is at the same time a social being’, this book explores the question of collective agency. The author’s argument is that, thanks to its social construction as a collective being, the subject is afforded the chance to engage in collective practices. This socioontological justification of collective agency brings with it an anti-normative view of collective struggles, which are no longer subject to the burden of moral regulations and identical policies. In a first step, the author interprets Karl Marx’s concept of the subject as a social being and explicates it through the concept of communist subjectivity based on Jean-Luc Nancy. In a second step and by applying the theories of Georg Lukács, Louis Althusser and Judith Butler, the author shows how the subject emerges at the intersection between labour, language and bodily practices. In a third step, the concept of the plastic body, which the author borrows from Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity, serves to illustrate how the different identities encounter each other in the subject’s body and how they relate to one another. Seen this way, the subject, which is originally structured as a collective, can determine itself if it acts according to its structuration, i.e. if it acts collectively.