Subjectivity and Identity: Between Modernity and Postmodernity

Description

Subjectivity and Identity is a philosophical and interdisciplinary study that critically evaluates critically the most important philosophical, sociological, psychological and literary debates on subjectivity and the subject. Starting from a history of the concept of the subject from modernity to postmodernity – from Descartes and Kant to Adorno and Lyotard – Peter V. Zima distinguishes between individual, collective, mythical and other subjects. Most texts on subjectivity and the subject present the topic from the point of view of a single discipline: philosophy, sociology, psychology or theory of literature. In Subjectivity and Identity Zima links philosophical approaches to those of sociology, psychology and literary criticism. The link between philosophy and sociology is social philosophy (e.g. Althusser, Marcuse, Habermas), the link between philosophy and literary criticism is aesthetics (e.g. Adorno, Lyotard, Vattimo). Philosophy and psychology can be related thanks to the psychological implications of several philosophical concepts of subjectivity (Hobbes, Stirner, Sartre). Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents Preface I Theories of the Subject: Definitions of the Term and the State of the Debate 1 The concept of subject and the subject of theory (a) Individual and collective subjects in society and language (b) Subject and actant: Infra-individual, individual, artificial and supra-individual actants as subjects (c) Individual and collective subjects as discursive instances: Subjectivity, individuality, identity (d) The subject of theory 2 The state of the debate (a) From existentialism to postmodernity: Philosophy (b) From the lonely crowd to the social movement: Sociology (c) From psychoanalysis and the theory of personality to social psychology: The discontent in culture and society (d) Individual subjectivity in linguistics and the theory of literature 3 Aporias of the individual subject in modernity and postmodernity Notes II Subjectivity Between Metaphysics and Modernism: The Subject as a Fundamental, Subjugated and Disintegrating Instance 1 Subjectivity from Descartes and Kant to Fichte: ‘Monsieur Teste’ 2 From Hegel to Marxism: Omnipotence and impotence of the subject 3 Vischer, Stirner and Kierkegaard as critics of Hegel: Particularity, contingency, chance and dream 4 Nietzsche’s criticism of the metaphysical concept of subject: Ambivalence, particularization and nature 5 From Nietzsche and Kierkegaard to Sartre: Sartre’s critique of surrealism and psychoanalysis 6 From Nietzsche to Critical Theory: Subjectivity, mimesis, alterity 7 Adorno, Freud and Broch: The ‘weakness of the I’, the ‘discontent in civilization’ and the ‘theory of mass hysteria’ 8 The crisis of the subject in the literature of modernism: Nature and contingency as menace and liberation 9 From modernism to postmodernism: A Clockwork Orange Notes III Disintegration and Submission of the Individual Subject in Postmodernity: Philosophy and Psychology 1 From Adorno to Lyotard: The ambivalence of the sublime between modernity and postmodernity 2 The linguistic subversion of subjects: Between iterability and iterativity 3 From Laing to Vattimo: ‘Divided self ’ and sogget to scisso 4 From Laing to Goff man and Foucault: Stigmatization and organized experience 5 Ideological reification and ‘normalization’ of the subject: From Foucault and Althusser to ‘normalism’ 6 From Althusser to Lacan: The ‘decentred subject’ as a subjugated and disintegrating instance 7 Psychosociology of narcissism: The individual subject in postmodern indifference 8 Feminist concepts of subjectivity between modernity and postmodernity: From Virginia Woolf to dialogical subjectivity Notes IV The Dialectics of Individual Subjectivity from a Sociological Viewpoint 1 The crisis of individual subjectivity in late modern sociology 2 The decline of subjectivity in a media world: From Bourdieu to Baudrillard 3 The liquidation of the subject by its omnipresence: Niklas Luhmann 4 Alain Touraine’s alternative: Subject and movement Notes V Theory of the Subject: Towards a Dialogical Subjectivity 1 Subjectivity as dialogue (a) Ambivalence and negation (b) Dialogue and reflexivity (c) Identity as semantics and narrativity (d) The ambivalence of chance 2 The subject of Dialogical Theory (a) Particularism vs. universalism: Lyotard and Habermas (b) From the particular to the universal: Critical testing (c) Interdiscursive theorems: Consensus and dissent (d) The practice of dialogue: Psyche, language, politics (metacommentaries to a discussion) 3 ‘The dialogue or Europe’ (a) Language and subjectivity (b) Movement and historicity (c) Towards European politics Notes Bibliography Index