Processes Of Subjectivation Research Articles

An inconspicuous sexual dissident in the Georgian Soviet republic: Subjectification, social classes and the culture of suspicion in the late Soviet period

Drawing on a three-hour interview conducted in 2016, this case study sheds light on how the professional identity and career path of a Georgian man born at the beginning of the 1950s, who negotiated the challenges associated with expressing his homosexual desire as an adult in the 1970s-1980s, was informed by his perception of the risk associated with stigmatization and repression. This case study reconstructs a process of subjectification from the tactics of avoidance and survival strategies which were internalized in response to the milieu of repression shaped by antisodomy laws and the medicalization of male homosexuality. It also illustrates how the interviewee’s social identity as a medical doctor and therefore as a member of the intelligentsia protected him, while at the same time precluding the possibility of solidarity with men outside his own social class. Ever suspicious of the possibility that they might be informers, the interviewee internalized social stratification, a dynamic which on a larger scale, we may infer, facilitated the regulation of sexual dissidents by the Soviet regime. We thus chart the landscape wrought by the repression of homosexuality and the disappearance of homosexual social identities and visible communities after 1934, from Stalinism to Perestroika.

‘VV看’의 주관화와 화용론적 분석

In this paper, we discussed the subjectification process of “VV-kan” to represent an attempt and the pragmatic function of “VV-kan”. “VV-kan” is a structure that combines verb overlap VV and tentative particle “Kan(看)”, and in this composition, verb overlap VV is the central meaning and “Kan(看)” is a grammar function word that strengthens the meaning of attempt. Based on theory of subjectivity of Traugott and Langacker, we can see the tendency to develop from objective to subjective in the process of changing tentative particle from verb. Changes in the meaning of “Kan” resulted in grammatical variations, which resulted in object elimination as object components changed from concrete components to abstract components, and eventually changed to the tentative particle “Kan(看)”. While the original meaning of “Kan” rather than “from afar” causes objective interpretation, as “Kan” is subjective, it develops into an observation meaning, a test meaning, and an attempt, resulting in a more and more subjective interpretation. The use environment of ‘VV’ has the characteristics of fieldality in which speakers and listeners are present in the same time·space position. As a result, it will not only serve as a consideration to the speaker or the other party, but also serve as pragmatic function that increases the feasibility of the attempt.

The Subject Is Still There. Judicial Statements and Mexican Political-Military Organizations in the Seventies

This article analyses the judicial statements of members of political-military organizations that were obtained by agents of the national security and intelligence institution Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Department; DFS) during the seventies. The analysis proposes that the conditions in which these documents were produced, as well as their dialogic and uneven nature, brought about narratives of the lives of the detainees that may be used as an index to understand certain aspects of these militants’ process of subjectivation. For example, the heterogeneity of their social origins and the diverse spaces about which they spoke, as a way to account for their political trajectory prior to their participation in armed militancy, and how they conceptualised both the organisation and their militancy. At the same time, it is also possible to find certain traces about the DFS agents who interrogated them: their bias against the militants, the aspects and features of the lives of the detainees that were inaudible to them. The corpus of DFS statements, as a discourse, provides a useful resource for problematising our conception of who the militants and agents of repression were, and for broadening the history of Mexico’s recent past.

Affect, stimmung and governing young drug users: an affirmative critique of a Danish drug user treatment programme

This article has two key contributions. The first is empirical, and looks at how a Danish drug treatment agency, inspired by critical and post-modern approaches to psychology, has developed methods of overcoming problems of participation and stigmatization, and of empowering young people with a known history of illegal substance use. I will analyze how, in collaboration with social workers, young users can utilize media technologies to produce stories about new ways of being, feeling and acting, and how these are used to change the social dynamics around such young people and open for the becoming of new relational subjectivities. Using Governmentality studies as a foundation, the second contribution is analytical and theoretical, and proposes Heidegger’s concept of ‘Stimmung’, (attunement, mood, atmosphere) as a concept that makes it possible to analyze how discursive and affective strategies intra-act and how we can adequately theorize the role of affect in subjectification processes.

The Scopic Feast of Heritage and the Invention of Unthreatening Diversity in Neoliberal Cities

This article explores the role that heritage might play in the representation of ‘difference’, within the context of neoliberal cities. The case is a large-scale urban change in the former working-class neighborhood of Gamlestaden, Sweden. Interviews and on-site observations revealed how authorized heritage practices can enable the celebration of particular social and cultural values, while naturalizing the erasure of others. People’s cultural diversity, and diverging interpretations of the past, have been guided by the power of heritage into a process of subjectification, according to which only ‘unthreatening’ forms of cultural diversity were celebrated and revealed legitimate. The ‘fetishized’ difference and particular historical records have served to conceal the political interest at stake in its’ production and maintenance, and led to a politicised representation of cultural diversity through what Annie Coombes’ terms ‘scopic feast’. All this was made possible through BID, the first neoliberal business improvement district model in Sweden, and its investment in a deeply rooted process of heritageisation. Uncritical engagement with difference in the context of heritage management and neoliberal urban development, make it appear almost natural to erase the cultural values that fall outside the authorized narrative of value.

Being a Zapatista at 4 years old. Socialization and subjectivity of Tseltal children

Con su proceso político pedagógico y autonómico los zapatistas no sólo contrarrestan la guerra de contrainsurgencia del Gobierno Mexicano, desde 1994, sino que impulsan la reproducción sociocultural y cambio en las nuevas generaciones, configurando las prácticas socioeducativas de los niños. A partir del intercambio de más de 20 años con población zapatista, se revisan en este artículo, los procesos de socialización y subjetivación de los menores de 6 años y las relaciones intersubjetivas que entablan con sus mayores. Los más pequeños nos enseñan con sus palabras, juegos y actitudes lo que significa ser zapatista, vivir en resistencia frente a la guerra, contradiciendo el paradigma hegemónico sobre la primera infancia.

I am not a virus! From model minority to public enemy, the racialisation of the Chinese community in Italy through food

Covid-19 has shed light on the Sino-Italian communities, usually perceived as a "minority model", based on their being considered as integrated, hard-working and silent. The media narratives about the relation between the spreading of the virus and the consumption of food framed as "disgusting" have neutralised the color-blindness usually applied to Asian migrants in Italy. The latent racism has been reinforced by a process of distinction focused on the disgust for an "abject" food. The reframing of the Sino-Italians as folk devils through the spread of gastro-panic has yet triggered processes of subjectivation, pushing them to make their voices heard on a public level. By the standpoint of 12 "Asian" restaurant owners in the city of Genoa, we explore the frame in which such dynamics have unfolded.

Afectividades y desplazamientos escriturales en la obra de Nona Fernández

Nona Fernández's work has been catalogued within what is known as the "generation of the children" to refer to those narrations by authors who were children during the Chilean dictatorship. The work of the Chilean writer Nona Fernández will be analyzed to understand how the writing process, its relationship with the event and the processes of subjectivation of the characters, from a narrative perspective towards the autobiographical and autofictional genres, have been crossed by fiction to question the constructed certainties and the failures of memory. We will focus mainly on two works which have a thread of narratological and historical continuity, such as Space Invader (2013) and La dimensión desconocida (2016). Both works are related by the terrible events that happened during the Chilean dictatorship. Everything narrated in a cyclical time, like an unknown dimension, living in the present the horrors that we thought were past.

UMA LEITURA SOBRE O TRANSTORNO DE PÂNICO À LUZ DA TEORIA FREUDIANA DA ANGÚSTIA

Panic Disorder invites us to think about the clinical and cultural implications involved in structuring this type of suffering as treated by psychiatry through the DSM. By reducing the psychology of anguish to nosology, to a technical and ideological discourse, we disregard suffering as a result of new forms of subjectivation and modalizations of the social bond that contemporaneity has produced. Psychoanalysis is interested in psychological suffering in its symptom dimension, that is, considering the malaise in civilization without resorting to the processes of human subjectivation. In view of the above, this study aims to investigate the category of Panic Disorder from the Freudian work, following its clinical and theoretical path to understand the specificity of this form of suffering and its relations with anguish.

Awareness for Atmospheres

In this essay I reflect on the meaning of atmospheres while the human world has been overwhelmed by a respiratory disease. In an auto-ethnographic gesture I reflect different ways of sensing and becoming sensitive to the atmospheric changes in my home during self-isolation. This self-questioning is directly related to the conceptualisation of air in view of its potential risk of carrying infectious virus particles. The air we breathe is currently stylised as a cloud on the micro level of aerosols, which gives reason to think anew about the status of the atmospheric with regard to our being in the world. Through combining philosophical reflection with aesthetic practice, I explore how an attunement towards the ways air flows through our habitats can open a new perspective on processes of subjectivation in a time of ongoing crisis. I argue that becoming sensitive towards air flow not only heightens our sensitivity for the affectivity of atmospheric processes but also for the different registers of our experience able to capture these effects.

OF HOLY COWS AND UNHOLY POLITICS: Dalits, Annihilation and More‐than‐Human Urban Abolition Ecologies

AbstractIn this article, I argue that the ecologies of urban India are constitutively casteist, by which I mean that caste is sedimented into the land, water, and waste of India's cities, with their outcaste bodies of Dalits often providing the critical infrastructural labor necessary for the social reproduction. The casteist ecologies of urban India were cast into sharp relief in 2016 when vigilante Hindu Right cow protectors ruthlessly flogged four Dalit youths as they were doing the stigmatized outcaste labor of disposing of dead cows. The focus of this article is the Dalit struggle that emerged in the wake of this flogging incident to annihilate the casteist logics that undergird India's urban metabolic flows. This struggle nurtures confrontational Dalit subjects who mobilize annihilation as a force of justice to enact urban abolition ecologies that refuse the treatment of Dalits as less‐than‐human while also cultivating ethical relations with the other, including the more‐than‐human other. In this article I build on the abolitionist imaginaries of Dalit struggles to argue that everyday processes of subjectification must be at the analytical center of urban political ecology, and of urban theory more broadly, because subjects, through their everyday incremental and imaginative acts, play a vital role in shaping urban futures. By paying attention to the everyday praxis of refusal and responsibility that constitutes Dalit subjects as planetary subjects who embody a relational ethics of planetarity, I conclude the article by suggesting that the urban theory that we need for our time—a time of the planetary turn in urban studies—is one that approaches the urban through the topos of planetarity.

Conversações sobre masculinidades e cuidado de si no documentário The Mask You Live In / Conversations about masculinity and self-care in The Mask You Live In documentary

As a journey to problematize notions of masculinities that circulate in social life, as well it is multiple effects on the trajectories of men, the present work aims to analyze some speeches presented in a specific thechnological device, the north-american documentary, The Mask You Live In, starting from a dialogue between gender field studies and ethical concept of self-care, as articulated by Michel Foucault. Having documental research as methodological path, the analyses locate the processes of subjectivation as fields of forces in dispute, where hegemonic and subordinate notions coexist in war. Concludes, provisionally, by affirming the importance of the resistance movements, wich trigger critical debates about gender order and which emphasize self-care as a fundamental exercise on the invention of more autonomous and creative ways of existence. Key words: Device; masculinities; documentary; self-care.

Figures of Unwork and Ethics of Care

Abstract The hypothesis of a post-work society has provoked a newfound interest in the role of imagination in political thinking, made explicit by many authors who turned to the literary genres of utopian and sci-fi writing to sketch possible scenarios of a jobless future. This article proposes instead another mode of constructing political narratives, that of figuration. It reclaims three specific figures to demonstrate how it might be possible to build a public sphere of “unwork.” The first is Bazlen, a fictional character of a writer who never wrote; the second is the collective figure of African American “othermothers”; and finally the third is Amy, the girl who gave flesh to Carol Gilligan's “ethics of care” proposition. Departing from these specific figures, the article tackles the problem of reimagining the labors (and pleasures) of social reproduction and creative action away from the work regime. It describes how processes of subjectivation sedimented in collective imaginary impact various modes of being together and naming social cooperation. The conclusions propose that the relationship between living labor and knowledge is a nexus that can escape the violence of capitalist relations only by understanding political action as a plural capacity of unwork.

From absurdisation to subjectification in the play “Terrorism” by the Presnyakov Brothers

The article is devoted to the functioning of absurdist elements and the ways of their organisation in the play “Terrorismˮ by the Presnyakov brothers, as well as to the illustration of subjectivity as one of the most significant categories for the “new new dramaˮ. The emphasis in the work is on paratextual elements, primarily remarks. At the beginning of the study, the thesis about the belonging of “Terrorismˮ to the “new dramaˮ of the 21st century is confirmed, and therefore, about the specificity of the compositional and plot organisations. The article is based on a textual analysis of the theatre note element, which allows us to trace the formation and forms of existence of absurdist components, as well as the emergence of various forms of subjectivity. In the process of analysis, a list of means and techniques of absurdisation is determined, among which the main ones include the elaboration of the structure of the utterance (violation of logic, slowing down the action by introducing similar or tautological constructions), working with the lexical component (various types of artistic shifts, as well as the frequency introduction of modal components). It is proved that the fictionalisation of the play through the inclusion of the lyrical component in the text violates the way of reading and allows one to partially correlate the drama with the play for reading, which, in turn, increases the interpretativeness of the text and makes it possible to talk about the introduction of the reader's figure into it. The conclusion is made about the correlation of the processes of absurdisation and subjectification in the space of the play. The absurd, in turn, is designated as an element that determines the type of perception; a component that contributes to the multiplication of forms of subjectivity; spatial and textual dominant, demonstrating the relationship of the text of the play with reality.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL-EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF SUBJECTIVATION

Recent research has made it possible to trace the nature of the formation of subjectivation. The term, which came from the philosophy of M. Foucault, was considered in the context of historical nature of the subject, peculiarities of its social design. But recently, understanding of such complex terminology is becoming increasingly possible if we turn to modern research in cognition, biology, epistemology. The starting point for this is the activity approach. It opens the way to understanding formation of features and characteristics of the subject. Activity context of the subject's existence makes it possible to understand the nature and conditions of the process of subjectivation, ie its formation. Modern philosophy is characterized by interdisciplinarity, so we were interested in the work of representatives of phenomenology of body movement and research on the influence of music, creating meaning of music based on ideas of modern epistemology, based on research in psychology, biology, semiotics. Of particular interest are the works that examine body movement and musical sound in the context of the search for biological roots of gesture and sound, which is evidence of a naturalized turn in modern epistemology. This article was inspired by G. Kovtun's modern production of A. Khachaturian's ballet "Spartacus" (which premiered recently at the Kharkiv National Opera and Ballet Theater), because it is in it that one can clearly feel phenomenology as a method, note the infinity of the cognitive role of art and to think about epistemological basis of the relationship between the world around us and our bodily capabilities in the form of a gesture, a sound under the conditions of reproduction of certain meanings by them. Phenomenological-epistemological dimension reveals new horizons of human evolution, because cognition seems to unfold in new contexts, and the performance expands the heuristic spectrum of our environment. One begins to think about the importance of bodily rationality under the effective force of musical sound and bodily gesture. Based on phenomenological method, by which perceptions are recognized as a special heuristic system, and the conclusions of modern epistemology, which indicate the need to take into account the peculiarities of the body, on the one hand, in complex interaction with the environment, on the other, can focus on design. Possibilities of the subject's life and trace the process of subjectivation from its ontological to epistemological characteristics. This perspective of understanding the complex process of subjectivation (namely, phenomenological and epistemological dimensions) also allows us to emphasize the differences between those who know and those who observe (as opposed to the study of things and events from only one position). This becomes the basis for understanding the methodological nature of such modern terms as second-order observer and external observer, which allows us to regard subjectivation as a tool or special methodological option in the study of modern scientific thought.

Work and subjectivity: reflections on experiences dealing with COVID-19 in the Brazilian Unified Health System

This article presents a critical analysis of the relationship between work and subjectivity, based on reflections regarding experiences of dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) epidemic in the Unified Health System (SUS) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In order to do so, context is first provided regarding Brazilian policy and the SUS, drawing attention to different modes of health policy formulation. The ways in which the challenges of the pandemic were dealt with in the SUS are then presented, through an examination of material from panel discussions held with healthcare workers - which are publicly available on Youtube - regarding what they have lived through during the pandemic and the political conflicts they have encountered, as well as their lived experiences with the primary level of care, with mental health, and with social movements. This material is analyzed vis-à-vis conceptual elements that seek to expand upon notions of healthcare work, policies and practices in health care, and subjectification processes, shedding light on lessons that have emerged and on future challenges.

Necropolítica, governo sobre as infâncias negras e educação do rosto

In this article, we seek to discuss the recurrence of racism and prejudice toward black lives and childhoods, in spite of repeated initiatives to overcome it by social and educational policy-makers. Following the investigations launched by Michel Foucault on the biopower hypothesis, we revisit some of his interpreters, with the objective of discussing the challenges posed by racism to pedagogical provisions for black children and—following on a concept offered by Emmanuel Levinas--an education of the Face (el Rostro), as a weapon in the political field of struggle against the thanatological dimension of biopolitics. To do so, we retrace some scenes from the history of inclusion devices – especially those policies aimed at black populations. We reflect on the racism embedded in our historical unconscious and discuss how it affects the education of the black Face in our country. We problematize the peculiarities of Brazilian racial prejudice and explore its necropolitical positioning when it comes to the governance of black childhoods. We conclude that the current form of governmentality and education needs a movement of de-rostification—deconstuction of the black Face--in order to identify a future for black children that makes it possible to rise up against the hegemonic order of the white-male-heterosexual-christian-European, and to create processes of subjectivation that can build solidarity with the multiplicity of others-becoming-minoritarian.

She Listened: Vardian Self-Portraiture and Auto-Refrains of Sea, Wind, and Sand

Abstract This article considers Vardian acts of listening and (self-)portraiture. With works that celebrate the material world in its myriad forms and scales, from a beloved button to a bottomless sea, Agnès Varda developed a method of empathetic engagement. Her encounters grasped relations extending from a person, family, or group, to a greater world-memory and duration comprising “us” all. As it heeds these foldings of the world, this article considers subjectification processes that take into a self all elements of nature. With sustained awareness of the “hundreds of thousands of people” she doesn't know, through her acts of listening and portraiture, in her later years Varda simultaneously attained a recognizable persona and an imperceptibility that gestured to an inward-outward movement her works so often foretell: that of a self's full dissolution into memory and world. In line with Varda's lifelong commitment to new forms of making visible the invisible, and her embrace of a sea as a groundless source of intersubjective relations, limits transform via her works into reflective, dissolving surfaces. A doubling of the personal and cosmic—that movement that so singularizes Varda—emanates through this weave of her art and life. As a chiasmatic double herself whose encounters brought extremes into contact, Varda demonstrated a concern for the future of the world that persisted alongside an awareness of her own mortality. Beyond the duration of her own life, Varda's works expose us to ourselves while always foregrounding the woman, and women, behind, before, and beyond the lens.

'Cambiando el chip': The gendered constellation of subjectivities of the financialisation of remittances in Mexico.

In the wake of the global financial crisis and a context of stagnating development aid, the international community now promotes linking remittances to finance as a development strategy, in what has been termed the ‘financialisation of remittances’ (FOR). This article analyses the ways in which the financialisation of remittance manifests in Mexico in gendered ways, and what this tells us about financialisation and financial subjectivation processes beyond the global North. We find that the financialisation of remittance represents a shift from earlier remittance-based development models whereby remittances become linked to financial inclusion and social welfare agendas and the focus is broadened beyond migrant income to diaspora wealth. Focusing on the governing arrangements of the financialisation of remittance, we propose the concept of ‘constellation of subjectivities’ in order to analyse the interrelated and interacting programmatic subjectivities through which the financialisation of remittance manifests in Mexico. Combining this conceptualisation with interdisciplinary feminist insights on financialisation, we analyse the various intersecting social dynamics that weave through such constellations. The analysis – based on document, interview and observation material – finds that the financialisation of remittance in Mexico creates and governs a gendered constellation of financial subjectivities with three dimensions: migrant men, remittance-receiving women and the constitutive outside of the non-transnational family. While most studies tend to focus on transnational families, we demonstrate that non-transnational families are an integral part of the financialisation of remittance. Our analysis destabilises the notion of the universal financial subject and highlights the importance of broadening our analysis of financialisation to constitutive outsides that often fall off the radar.

The Subject in Times of Media and Social Change. The Analytic Potential of the Mediatization Approach Using the Case of Retro Gaming

<span lang="EN-GB">The study focuses on the question of the mediatized constitution of subject and subjectivity, which, surprisingly, has received little attention so far. The analytical reference to the mediatization approach enables a holistic understanding of subject, communication and media. Using the empirical example of the media (sub)culture of retro games, this article empirically examines the extent to which computer gamers are influenced by<span style="font-family: BookAntiqua; font-size: 8pt; color: #231f20; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"> the spaces of experiences of games</span>, not only in the moment of playing them, but also in the long term, with regard to their personal development and social community. The findings illustrate two dimensions of subjectivation processes: on the one hand, the reflective handling of computer games and thus subjectivation through games and game contexts, on the other hand, the nostalgic recollection of specific games and game contexts, which can be clearly separated analytically from the first dimension.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span>