Processes Of Subjectivation Research Articles

Familismo como posibilidad vincular en la subjetivación de jóvenes en condiciones de pobreza en Córdoba (Argentina)

The article considers the processes of subjectivation of youngsters in poverty condition of a neighborhood of Cordoba (Argentina). From a Foucauldian analytic standpoint, it analyzes the ways in which subjects constitute themselves through a historical development and within a framework of practices of government and resistance. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to understand how the youngsters of the neighborhood built their subjectivities within a context of social exclusion. Particularly, it analyzes the relevance of kinship and the consequences for women. The fieldwork was undertaken between 2013 and 2017 by means of observation record and analysis of newspapers and government communications. The way of subjectivation that was observed in the youngsters reinforces kinship as a possible way to maintain social bonds despite the social fragmentation and stigmatization that they experience throughout their lives. In turn, this familist retreat fosters a space in which women are reduced to the role of mothers or caretakers, and because of that, are overwhelmed by everyday demands. These features occurred within a context of State policies that made nuclear family their aim of intervention and, also because of neoliberalism, the only providers of care. It concludes with some questions regarding the possibilities of such familism to become the foundation for broader community processes.

Transformational processes and the analytical field: A new paradigm for models and clinical practices

ObjectiveIn this work we propose a synthesis concerning the notions of transformation and field and their influence on the practices and models of the contemporary clinical approach. MethodAfter describing the use of the notion of transformation by Bion, we describe the development of this notion in the post-Bionian movement (Grotstein, Ogden, Ferro, and Civitarese in particular) as well as its association with the concept of field. We describe the origins of this notion by way of the first writings on this subject by Madeleine and Willy Baranger. ResultsThe concepts of transformation and field are particularly useful in clinical practice. They promote the emergence of a state of reverie which allows the transformation and the integration of traumatic experiences that generate different forms of psychopathology. DiscussionThese theoretical evolutions also translate into an evolution in clinical psychoanalytic practice, within a paradigm that places the emphasis on dreams, emotions, the contact with O, the present moment of the therapy, the negative capability, vertices, and a tolerance of doubt, all with the goal of catalyzing the processes of psychic transformation. ConclusionThese notions contribute to an aesthetic paradigm that promotes the emergence of the process of subjectivation. The approach also shows the limits of the “scientist-practitioner” model, whose procedural and manifest logics are liable to hinder the symbologenic potential of the subject. On the contrary, there is a need to accompany creativity and originality in each encounter on an analytic stage conceptualized as a potential space for dreaming and play.

Maritime Disasters and Collective Identities: Surviving Shipwreck in Early Modern Portugal

This article focuses on one of the twelve Portuguese shipwreck narratives collected by historian Bernardo Gomes de Brito in Historia tragico-maritima (1735–36), Naufragio que passou Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho, capitao, e governador de Pernambuco (1601). Several features make this account unique. Unlike the majority of the shipwrecks which occur off the southeastern African coast, this maritime disaster takes place in the Atlantic. Furthermore, the narrative's title refers to its captain and not to the name of the carrack, which ironically never completely shipwrecks, but just barely survives its arduous journey. Building on Josiah Blackmore's reading of these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts as symptomatic of counter-historiographic impulse to the official textual culture of imperialism, I explore how this story of survival and rupture, while striving to represent subjectivity, in fact, disrupts the country's expansionist rhetoric by pointing instead to the emergence of collective identities. The essay explores the ways in which the narrative interrogates the individualization or subjectivization processes reflected rhetorically in the text. The formal and stylistic practices at play in the account show how shipwreck narratives of maritime disasters unsettle early modern conceptualizations of subjective and ontological experiences and reflect a plural and collective framework of thought.

‘In Virtual Space, You Will Never Die!’

This paper refers to a selected fragment in an ethnographic study on children’s subjectivization processes through digital technologies concerning children’s interaction with the digital world and how their different cultural tendencies reflect virtual space. Children’s digital world experiences, and their new media preferences have become an important part of their peer culture. Studies on children’s peer cultures and on the effects of technological devices on human beings commenced in the 1990s within various disciplines, for example, Aarsand studied children’s interest in computer games, while Turkle focused on human-machine relations. During the 2000s, virtual space changed the trajectories of those studies into other fields. However, studies focusing on people’s interaction with technology have rarely been directly related to children’s agency, or the sociology of childhood. Therefore, this research presents a new approach to childhood studies by using traditional concepts with changing perspectives. The main purpose of this study is to reveal how children’s peer cultures and also individual agencies have been shaped through digital technologies including online activities. For this whole study, various techniques were used to analyse children’s interactions with the virtual world by focusing on their opinions regarding technological development in the world. The parts selected for this paper are based on several clips of interviews, the topics of which are: freedom in virtual space in a comparison with real – virtual worlds on the basis of their limit(less)ness; the possible relations between humans and machines; the possibilities of surviving on ‘internetlessness’; children’s relations with online games according to social media preferences, and interaction with virtual spaces in general.

O carcereiro de si mesmo

O artigo analisa as conexões entre os dispositivos de monitoramento eletrônico de presos e o dispositivo carcerário, com enfoque nos impactos dos sistemas de rastreamento sobre a vida de pessoas monitoradas. O texto se baseia na análise de documentos legais, entrevistas e pesquisa de campo realizadas entre 2015 e 2018 junto a presos e presas submetidos à utilização de tornozeleiras eletrônicas nos estados de São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro. No primeiro movimento do artigo, apresenta-se o desenvolvimento da política de monitoração no país, concomitante ao incremento da população prisional brasileira. Em seguida, são descritas algumas das interfaces estabelecidas entre a prisão e a supervisão eletrônica. Por fim, o terceiro movimento analisa as dimensões políticas dos dispositivos de monitoramento eletrônico e seus processos correspondentes de subjetivação. De maneira geral, o texto é motivado pelo interesse nas atuais transformações operadas pelo poder de punir, assim como na rearticulação das estratégias de condução das condutas mobilizadas pelas novas tecnologias de controle.

Trabajo y subjetivación política: desafíos epistemo-metodológicos

La inquietud por comprender los procesos de subjetivación política que surgen al calor de los movimientos sociales contemporáneos ha generado debates en los que se ponen en discusión tradiciones teóricas, epistemológicas y metodológicas diferentes. En este artículo se revisan los aportes de autores insertos dentro de corrientes críticas con la intención de construir herramientas que orienten el abordaje metodológico de las subjetividades que emergen en torno a experiencias concretas de acción y organización laboral. Finalmente, se analizan dichas propuestas a la luz de una investigación empírica llevada a cabo en la Ciudad de México

Educação teatral como produção de subjetividade

Artigo que visa caracterizar situações em que aulas de teatro possam fomentar uma produção de subjetividade potente, singular, junto a seus alunos. Como exemplo, será analisado um exercício realizado em uma aula de teatro dentro de um processo de pesquisa, propondo que elementos ali ocorridos se deram de modo análogo (homônomo) aos de processos de subjetivação. As referências são conceitos de Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari e Michel Foucault.

Cartografia da Saúde do Homem em Conflito com a Lei

Neste estudo, apresentamos um recorte de uma pesquisa-intervenção realizada em um Hospital de Custódia e Tratamento Psiquiátrico, com o objetivo de cartografar processos de subjetivação da saúde do homem com transtorno mental em conflito com a lei. Para a produção das informações, utilizamos a cartografia e realizamos encontros com participantes da pesquisa por meio de práticas integrativas grupais e uso de objetos relacionais da arte. Para a discussão e os resultados, utilizamos a esquizoanálise, que aponta: a) as ações do cuidado em custódia são reduzidas à medicalização do confinamento e à atenção de urgência e emergência, quando não é adiado ao máximo esse direito humano; b) a promoção da saúde do homem privado de liberdade é associada a ações de humanização e direitos humanos vinculados à determinação social. Conclui-se que os processos de subjetivação denunciam as instituições de violência e anunciam modos de desinstitucionalização da saúde mental custodiada.

The Intersectional Dynamics of Political Violence and Gender in the Kurdish Conflict

AbstractWhat is the relationship between social, historical, and political dynamics and gender in the use of violence? This research uses the Kurdish conflict to examine this question. On the basis of empirical examples about Kurdish women, it focuses on ethnic identity, patriarchy, social class, generation, and politicization within their historical and spatial variations. It argues that gender dynamics do not operate alone but intersect in many ways with these dynamics to influence political violence. It concludes that the way these dynamics engage with each other depends on the subjectivation process taking place within a historically contingent horizon.

Por uma teoria do sujeito intervalar na experiência com a tela escura

Neste artigo, desenvolve-se a noção de sujeito intervalar a partir das experiências contemporâneas com os dispositivos móveis de acesso à internet. A investigação inicia com uma imagem que circulou nas redes sociais da internet durante os protestos de junho de 2013, por meio da qual são feitas relações, sobretudo, com outras duas imagens de dois períodos históricos, sendo uma analisada por Michel Foucault (1999) e outra por Gilles Deleuze (2007). O modo como Foucault e Deleuze se apropriam de obras de arte para investigar a formação de novos campos de visibilidade permite também a análise sobre a emergência de uma outra relação com as imagens e com a qual é desenvolvida a noção de sujeito intervalar.

Promoting integration through physical education (?)

ABSTRACT A common problem in contemporary western societies is segregation, which is also reflected in schools. The point of departure for this study is a political initiative in Sweden, where pupils are being transported by bus from a suburb to different schools in the city with the aim of promoting integration and improved performance results. The study focuses on the teaching practice of Physical Education (PE) at one of the schools where ‘the bus for inclusion’ stops every morning. The research question concerns how ‘the political action’ of the bussing project is ‘acted upon’ in the subject of PE. The purpose is to explore what becomes of this particular PE practice, in terms of rationalities encompassing a PE teacher’s pedagogical actions and the pupils’ ways of acting on them. The data, gathered through extensive fieldwork, including lesson observations and interviews, is analysed from a governmentality perspective [Foucault, 1978/1994. Governmentality. In Power (pp. 201–222). New York: The New Press]. The findings highlight three underlying rationalities in regards to integration, aiming at promoting intercultural encounters, collaboration and mutual respect. These rationalities, manifested through the PE teacher’s pedagogical actions, offer guidance for the pupil seen as ‘a subject seeking to construct himself or herself’ [Wieviorka 2014. A critique of integration. Identities, 21(6), 633–641, 636–637]. In case of compliance, the notion of ‘us and them’ is countered and a shared experience of belonging is achieved through teamwork and self-regulation. In case of resistance, segregation is maintained in the school community as well as in society as a whole. This study does not contribute any incontestable evidence of social inclusion through PE [cf. Bailey, 2005. Evaluating the relationship between physical education, sport and social inclusion. Educational Review, 57(1), 71–90; Dagkas, 2018. Is social inclusion through PE, sport and PA still a rhetoric? Evaluating the relationship between physical education, sport and social inclusion. Educational Review, 70(1), 67–74]. However, the findings indicate that ‘action upon action’ in a culturally heterogeneous PE practice makes a difference insofar as integration is understood as a process of subjectivation [Wieviorka 2014. A critique of integration. Identities, 21(6), 633–641]. Depending on the direction of the PE teacher’s guidance, the process might tend towards either cultural assimilation or pluralistic integration [Grimminger, 2008. Promoting intercultural competence in the continuing education of physical education teachers. Sport-Integration-Europe, 310–320].

Illusionnistes et modèles vivants

Quelle est la signification donnée au travail par ceux qui se revendiquent « travailleurs » aujourd’hui ? Sur la base de deux ethnographies du travail des illusionnistes et des modèles vivants, nous menons un dialogue inter­disciplinaire associant l’ergonomie et l’anthropologie autour du travail. En partant de la notion d’activité et de la distinction entre dimension produc­tive et dimension constructive, nous analysons le travail de visibilisation mené par les modèles et les illusionnistes qui partagent un même paradoxe : rendre invisibles, aux yeux de ceux qui les regardent, certains gestes de travail au cœur de leur activité. Dans un contexte accru de concurrence, comment l’activité constructive et le développement peuvent-ils être rendus compréhensibles par autrui si l’invisibilité apparaît comme étant inhérente au travail réel et dans quelles sphères se jouent alors ces processus de visi­bilisation ? Nous analysons le travail comme une catégorie dont se saisissent les modèles et les illusionnistes parce que s’y jouerait la possibi­lité de s’y réaliser comme sujets dans le monde dans une forme de lutte pour l’existence.

Gender-diverse practitioners in early years education and care (EYEC): a cross-cultural study of Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China

ABSTRACT This paper discusses whether practitioners’ gender subjectivities influence pedagogies and practices in early years education and care (EYEC) settings and whether an increase of men’s participation can improve gender diversity in EYEC. It draws on poststructuralist theories, understanding gender as the product/outcome of the social formation of subjects and the process of subjectification. This is illustrated through accounts for how individual practitioners from Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China discursively construct their gender subjectivities, in accordance with the respective cultural discourses that shape work with young children in EYEC in the three contexts. Thirty-four practitioners from 17 EYEC settings (1 male and 1 female practitioner from each setting) in the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Tianjin were interviewed. The study finds that participant practitioners’ constructions of gender subjectivities vary within and across contexts, and gender-binary discourses are to different extents prevalent in all three contexts. This paper argues for a cross-cultural approach to gender-sensitive teacher training, to interrogate popular discourses that advocate for men to fulfil complementary roles in EYEC to women and to challenge gender binary thinking that persists in EYEC and beyond.

Live together: architectures of care in the Cordon of Montevideo

The subject of our paper is the architectures of care from an ethnographic approach and psychosocial intervention in a building for retirees and pensioners in the Cordon neighborhood of Montevideo, Uruguay. This experience is part of a wider investigation device, about the subjectivation process and mediations in relation of his historic second enlargement. In first place, we characterized the phenomenon in the context of capitalistic city. In second term, we dive into the histories of dwell of the residents, mostly woman. Then, we focalized in the emergent conditions to the live in the housing complex, for advanced on a micro-politics of everyday care. For last, we realized considerations on urban scale about the centrality and the redefinition to the territorialities involved on the zone. We conclude reflecting about the defiance for this housing policy and the city which is promoted.

Pacifying Muslims in Germany’s ‘City of Peace’: interreligious dialogue as a tool of governance in Osnabrück

ABSTRACTAddressing Muslims as a target group in municipal politics is a relatively new development in German cities. Interreligious dialogue, often initiated by established Christian actors, provides a format for doing so. In our local West German case study, the politics of dialogue link up with a historical narrative of Osnabrück as ‘City of Peace’, creating a semantic framework which is hard to resist, yet not undisputed. As a governance tool, interreligious dialogue has the potential to pacify and to structure social relations. It tends to prefer and support certain subject positions, while neglecting others. In this contribution we focus both on actors who are involved in local interreligious dialogue as well as those who – for diverse reasons – do not participate, and who question or oppose it. Thus, we analyse the effects of interreligious dialogue on local subjectivation processes, including alternative reactions that might challenge the dominant paradigm.

The production of subjectivity in neoliberal culture industries: the case of coworking spaces

This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces’ sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux in which to explore the organisation and significance of work. Drawing on the life history of a creative worker and member of a leading coworking space, I unveil the ethical labour that is required to access coworking’s sociality. Using a Foucauldian framework, I conceptualise this process as a process of subjectivation and concentrate on its ambivalent character, signalling the inherent intertwinement of self-commodification and self-improvement. This article contributes to the scholarly debates on the organisation and significance of work in two key ways. First, it expands our understanding of how the production of subjectivity is experienced at the level of the self. Second, it argues that coworking spaces function as apparatuses for the production of subjectivities in neoliberal culture industries.

Reinventing the Common:

Starting from ethnographic research on popular economies carried out in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, I aim to contribute to reflection on the common as a mode of production, analyzing the popular community frameworks, practices of self-management of work, and the processes of political subjectivation in the experience of the textile cooperative Juana Villca. In dialogue with the experiences and subjectivities encountered in the field, I reflect on the relationships between crisis, self-organization, and conflict, analyzing the productivity of the political dimension and the politicization of production and reproduction in self-management dynamics. In the article, I maintain that these experiences constitute the infrastructure of an emerging popular institutionality, which, considered as such, contributes to the analysis of the common as a mode of production and social relationship capable of building a political and productive alternative.

A digital room of their own: Chilean students struggling against patriarchy in digital sites

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the convergence between the Chilean feminist and student movements through the use of public, feminist Facebook websites administrated by Chilean high school students. The article explores the ways in which these feminist students participate and interact with others on these websites while producing their gender/political subjectivities. Using narrative analysis, the paper presents their processes of subjectification as part of emerging social movement stories. I argue that these websites provide the necessary conditions for students to engage in political actions and produce their collective gender/political subjectivities as the protagonists in the feminist student social movement narratives. This process is co-constructed by the visitors to the sites, who sometimes police the students, using hegemonic discourses regarding female minors. The paper amplifies a body of research on online feminism by exploring gender and political subjectivity production through social media in a Latin American context, and calls attention to digital social movement actions as a form of political engagement in the present.

Environmentality by the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change: Neoliberal ethos and the production of environmental subjects in Acre and Mozambique

As part of the transnational governance of the environment, platforms like the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) have created a regime that seeks to reinforce and reproduce the neoliberal ethos that informs current environmental conservation initiatives, as well as that seeks to produce environmental subjects. Such ethos is expressed through the preference for market-based solutions, principles of individual responsibility, or incentives to self-government. Drawing on ethnographic research in Acre (Brazil) and Mozambique, I explore some of the local elements of this neoliberal ethos. I use two public events about climate change to contend that such events constitute local instantiations of the UNFCCC's environmentality, by collectively performing and reproducing the neoliberal ethos that is encapsulated in the governance of the problem of climate change. These collective performances are important for the crystallization of a narrative that explains the reality and the terms of understanding future realities, thus contributing to processes of subjectification. The performances of these narratives are also important instances of mediation between the local and the transnational. I argue that although the production of environmental subjects promoted by the UNFCCC necessarily implies the erasure of localities, such subjectification depends on its indexation to local specificities. Ultimately, the reproduction of these environmental subjects—and the neoliberal ethos that undergirds their own constitution—has the potential to preclude the imagination of alternative models of development and of fighting climate change.

Juventude(s) periférica(s) e subjetivações: narrativas de (re)existência juvenil em territórios culturais

Este artigo apresenta certas linhas singulares de subjetivação experimentadas pela juventude enquanto produção estético-cultural que configura a periferia como território existencial. Pretendemos contribuir para a discussão da relação entre hierarquização socioespacial das cidades e os processos de subjetivação de forma crítica aos processos de vitimização, criminalização e estigmatização juvenil. Buscamos nos orientar por um estudo com os sujeitos e não sobre os sujeitos. Três jovens envolvidos em ações culturais autônomas no território (como sarau, cinema, hip hop) foram acompanhados nestas e em outras atividades de seu cotidiano numa perspectiva etnográfica, descrita no diário de campo, bem como por meio da realização de entrevistas em história oral. Estas foram transcritas, textualizadas, transcriadas e organizadas em categorias temáticas. Privilegiamos as categorias relativas ao “território” e às “invenções estéticas na periferia” que nos permitiram evidenciar que o engajamento da juventude na produção estética na periferia opera como tática, estratégia de luta diante dos estados de dominação hegemônicos e de estigmatização aí presentes. A arte agencia possibilidades de invenção de territórios existenciais e de novos modos de subjetivar-se quando o estigma se converte em emblema; no orgulho de ser jovem, negro, pobre e periférico.