The relationship of self, and self-awareness, and experience: exploring classical phenomenological analyses and their relevance to contemporary discussions in ...

This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, or Licorice is tasty. Standard semantic theories explain the meanings of sentences by specifying the conditions under which they are true; here, Peter Lasersohn asks how we can account for sentences that are concerned with matters of opinion rather than matters of fact. He argues that a truth-theoretic semantic theory is appropriate even for sentences like these, but that for such sentences, (...) truth and falsity must be assigned relative to perspectives, rather than absolutely. The book provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar, working out the implications of this conception of truth both for simple sentences and for reports of mental attitude. The semantic analysis is paired with a pragmatic theory explaining what it means to assert a sentence which is true or false only relativistically, and with a speculative account of the functional motivation for a relativized notion of truth. (shrink)

Subjectivity is that feature of consciousness whereby there is something it is like for a subject to undergo an experience. One persistent challenge in the study of consciousness is to explain how subjectivity relates to, or arises from, purely physical brain processes. But, in order to address this challenge, it seems we must have a clear explanation of what subjectivity is in the first place. This has proven challenging in its own right. For the nature of subjectivity itself seems to (...) resist straightforward characterization. In this paper, I won't address how subjectivity relates to the physical. Instead, I'll address subjectivity itself. I'll do this by introducing and defending a model of subjectivity based on self-acquaintance. My model does not purport to reduce, eliminate, or naturalize subjectivity, but it does make subjectivity more tractable, less paradoxical, and perhaps less dubious to those averse to obscurity. (shrink)

This is a brief and accessible English summary of the "Self-model Theory of Subjectivity" (SMT), which is only available as German book in this archive. It introduces two new theoretical entities, the "phenomenal self-model" (PSM) and the "phenomenal model of the intentionality-relation" PMIR. A representationalist analysis of the phenomenal first-person persepctive is offered. This is a revised version, including two pictures.

In his book The View from Nowhere , Thomas Nagel says that ‘the subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality’ . He speaks of ‘the essential subjectivity of the mental’ , and of ‘the mind's irreducibly subjective character’ . ‘Mental concepts’, he says, refer to ‘subjective points of view and their modifications’ : The subjective features of conscious mental processes—as opposed to their physical causes and effects—cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with (...) the physical world that underlines the appearances. Not only raw feels but also intentional mental states—however objective their content—must be capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in the mind at all. (shrink)

The article presents a perspective on the scientific explanation of the subjectivity of conscious experience. It proposes plausible answers for two empirically valid questions: the ‘how’ question concerning the developmental mechanisms of subjectivity, and the ‘why’ question concerning its function. Biological individuation, which is acquired in several different stages, serves as a provisional description of how subjective perspectives may have evolved. To the extent that an individuated informational space seems the most efficient way for a given organism to select biologically (...) valuable information, subjectivity is deemed to constitute an adaptive response to informational overflow. One of the possible consequences of this view is that subjectivity might be (at least functionally) dissociated from consciousness, insofar as the former primarily facilitates selection, the latter action. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author analyzes Foucault's conception of subjectivity and his history of technologies of the self, the collections of practices by which subjectivity constitutes itself. The first section situates Foucault's conception of subjectivity in his overall body of work and intellectual context, particularly in relation to two figures in French philosophy. The second section explores the conception of the subject that Foucault develops in his late work. Having explained the importance of historical practices to his conception of subjectivity, (...) the third section considers his history of Western practices of the self, mapping the relative fortunes of what Foucault calls the “technologies” of ethics and spirituality. The fourth section explores Foucault's consideration of the contemporary implications of his position, his assessment of the scope for and importance of spiritual or ethical practices today. (shrink)

_The Horizon of Modernity_ provides a historicized account of New Confucian philosophy in relation to the contemporary revival of Confucianism and explores the nexus between subjectivity and social structure in the works of Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xiong Shili.

The conceptualization of the notion of subjectivity within the Anthropocene finds in Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism one of its most explicit and profuse modulations. This essay argues that Braidotti’s model powerfully accounts for the Anthropocene’s subjectivity by conceiving the “self” as a transversal multiplicity and its relationality to the “others” and the “world” as non-hierarchized by nature–culture distinctions; however, by being ontologically grounded on a neo-Spinozistic monism, Braidotti’s model blurs the notions of finitude, agency, and change, obscuring the possibility of critical (...) dissent while decreasing the overall theory’s consistency. An alternative ontological model capitalizing on these elements can be found in Object-Oriented Ontology and its notion of withdrawal. By associating OOO’s non-onto-taxonomical pluralism with Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity, this essay aims at ontologically discretizing the latter in order to overcome these limitations. Grounded on this association and invoking a narrative imaginary propelled by the Greek terms xenos and xenia, the article paves the way for a form of subjectivity deviating from Braidotti’s ecological model and defined as xenological, arguing that, within the context of the Anthropocene, it constitutes an adequate alternative to Braidotti’s subjectivity. (shrink)

Introduction: contemporary conditions and diagrammatic trajectory -- From joy to the gap: the accessing of the infinite by the finite (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson) -- The care of the self versus the ethics of desire: two diagrams of the production of subjectivity (and of the subject's relation to truth) (Foucault versus Lacan) -- The aesthetic paradigm: from the folding of the finite-infinite relation to schizoanalytic metamodelisation (to biopolitics) (Guattari) -- The strange temporality of the subject: life in-between the infinite and the (...) finite (Deleuze contra Badiou) -- Desiring-machines, chaoids, probeheads: towards a speculative production of subjectivity (Deleuze and Guattari) -- Conclusion: composite diagram and relations of adjacency. (shrink)

Palmer's subjectivity barrier seems to be erected on a popular but highly suspect conception of visual experience, and his color room argument is invalid.

This paper proposes a new reading of the interaction between subjectivity, reflection and freedom within Foucault’s later work. I begin by introducing three approaches to subjectivity, locating these in relation both to Foucault’s texts and to the recent literature. I suggest that Foucault himself operates within what I call the ‘entanglement approach’, and, as such, he faces a potentially serious challenge, a challenge forcefully articulated by Han. Using Kant’s treatment of reflection as a point of comparison, I argue that Foucault (...) possesses the resources to meet this challenge. The key, I contend, is to distinguish two related theses about reflection and freedom: Foucault’s position is distinctive precisely because he accepts one of these theses whilst rejecting the other. I conclude by indicating how this reading might connect to the longstanding question of Foucault’s own right to appeal to normative standards. (shrink)

The paper links discussions of two topics: biological individuality and the simplest forms of mentality. I discuss several attempts to locate the boundary between metabolic activity and ‘minimal cognition.’ I then look at differences between the kinds of individuality present in unicellular life, multicellular life in general, and animals of several kinds. Nervous systems, which are clearly relevant to cognition and subjectivity, also play an important role in the form of individuality seen in animals. The last part of the paper (...) links these biological transitions to the evolutionary history of subjective experience. (shrink)

The strong intuition that the facts concerning the subjectivity of consciousness are simply beyond the grasp of objective science is the highest barrier to an intuitively convincing materialism in the philosophy of mind. We are steeped in a tradition which has it that there is, to state it from the first-person point of view, an epistemic difference in principle between my introspectible experience, which only I can apprehend and know, and the things which everyone can apprehend and which form the (...) domain of the natural sciences. This contrast is sometimes cast as that between the subjective stuff of first-person introspectible consciousness and the objective stuff of the natural sciences. In this essay, I will try to budge the view of the subjective-objective distinction which underlies this tradition from its position as tacit dogma. (shrink)

Part 1. Husserl: the outlines of the transcendental-phenomenological system -- 1. Husserl's phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude -- 2. Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction: between lifeworld and Cartesianism -- 3. Some methodological problems arising in Husserl's late reflections on the phenomenological reduction -- 4. Facticity and historicity as constituents of the lifeworld in Husserl's late philosophy -- 5. Husserl's concept of the "transcendental person": another look at the Husserl-Heidegger relationship -- 6. Dialectics of the absolute: the systematics of (...) the phenomenological system in Husserl's last period -- Part 2. Husserl, Kant, and neo-Kantianism: from subjectivity to lifeworld as a world of culture -- 7. From being to givenness and back: some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl -- 8. Reconstruction and reduction: Natorp and Husserl on method and the question of subjectivity -- 9. A hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer -- 10. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms: between reason and relativism: a critical appraisal -- Part 3. Toward a Husserlian hermeneutics -- 11. The subjectivity of effective history and the suppressed husserlian elements in Gadamer's hermeneutics -- 12. Husserl's "hermeneutical phenomenology" as a philosophy of culture. (shrink)

Departing from Bourdieu's collective habitus, this essay develops a theory of the subjectivity of habitus, meaning the social-psychological processes comprising the agent and fueling deliberation. By incorporating George Ainslie's theory of the will and deliberation as the intertemporal bargaining of a population of interests, I theorize the “saturated agent” composed of an economy of interests, analogous to Bourdieu's “economy of practices” invested and saturated with cultural capital. Here culturally saturated interests negotiate strategically within the agent, with the ending balance constituting (...) the habitus. Additionally, reflexivity becomes amenable to habitus as “desaturation” or suspending the commitment to a set of culturally saturated interests as a result of a crisis, followed by “resaturation”, the restructuring of the economy of interests. (shrink)

This innovative volume is an extended intellectual conversation about the ways personal lives are being undone and remade today. Examining the ethnography of the modern subject, this preeminent group of scholars probes the continuity and diversity of modes of personhood across a range of Western and non-Western societies. Contributors consider what happens to individual subjectivity when stable or imagined environments such as nations and communities are transformed or displaced by free trade economics, terrorism, and war; how new information and medical (...) technologies reshape the relation one has to oneself; and which forms of subjectivity and life possibilities are produced against a world in pieces. The transdisciplinary conversation includes anthropologists, historians of science, psychologists, a literary critic, a philosopher, physicians, and an economist. The authors touch on how we think and write about contingency, human agency, and ethics today. (shrink)

(2013). Does consciousness entail subjectivity? The puzzle of thought insertion. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 291-314. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2011.625117.

This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision (...) an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity. (shrink)

The evolution of the concept of subjectivity in the works of Jacques Lacan.

Contemporary philosophy has seen a proliferation of complex theories and intricate arguments brought to bear on the mind-body problem, perhaps the most intractable of perennial philosophical problems. In this concise and accessible text, Barbara Hannan provides an elegant introduction to this contemporary debate. Her emphasis is upon the clear and even-handed presentation and evaluation of the major theories of the mind, but she does not shrink from contributing to the advancement of the argument, including the presentation of an original account, (...) the theory of "content internalism." Along the way to the formulation of this account, Hannan puts into context and discusses the views of all the major contemporary philosophers writing on the mind, including Lewis, Putnam, Searle, Davidson, Dennett, and Fodor. Combining a deep respect for the depth of the issues with clarity of thought and lucidity of expression, Subjectivity and Reduction is the ideal introduction to the central problem of today's philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This paper deals with how telematic technologies such as the cellular phones, Internet, telerobotics and other varieties of telematic communication and control are placing into discussion the nature of knowledge and its scope. These technologies offer us knowledge by description and representation instead of physical contact, a fact that is often seen with suspicion since they are perceived as technologies of delusion in a culture characterized by its conspicuous materialism. What are the possible roles for our mediated activities in relation (...) with the comprehension of our environment and the construction of subjectivity? Telematic mediation necessarily deals with the immaterial aspects of technologies such as the changing concepts of reality and nature, future possibilities of an ethereal afterlife achieved through spiritual or technological means and the concept of distance that can render mediated communication delusory and unsatisfying while acting as an agent of delocalization. This view is supported by our traditional Platonic view that perceives representation of things as a palpable degradation while neglecting the constructive aspects of those fictional endeavours. (shrink)

Dan Zahavi engages with classical phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and a range of empirical disciplines to explore the nature of selfhood. He argues that the most fundamental level of selfhood is not socially constructed or dependent upon others, but accepts that certain dimensions of the self and types of self-experience are other-mediated.

This paper is about one of the puzzles of bodily self-consciousness: can an experience be both and at the same time an experience of one′s physicality and of one′s subjectivity ? We will answer this question positively by determining a form of experience where the body′s physicality is experienced in a non-reifying manner. We will consider a form of experience of oneself as bodily which is different from both “prenoetic embodiment” and “pre-reflective bodily consciousness” and rather corresponds to a form (...) of reflective access to subjectivity at the bodily level. In particular, we argue that subjectivity is bodily expressed, thereby allowing the experience of the body′s subjectivity directly during perceptual experiences of the body. We use an interweaving of phenomenological explorations and ethnographical methods which allows validating this proposal by considering the experience of body experts (dancers). (shrink)

The idea of the subject as a construct, of various external influences, was not new to the cultural and literary circles in the 1980s when DeLillo published White Noise. In the second half of the twentieth century, post-structuralist and postmodern theories unsettled the established ideas of the humanist tradition like the concept of the subject. The idea that the subject is constituted by external factors posed a challenge to the modernist notion of the subject as authentic and independent consciousness. Influenced (...) by post-structuralist and postmodern theories, novelists in post-war America, especially during and after the 1980s, portrayed their protagonists (the subjects) as textual constructs rather than authentic heroic figures we often find in modernists’ works of art. DeLillo engages with technological developments and sociocultural changes in post-war America and explores how such developments/changes influence an individual’s subjectivity. Critics have described Jack Gladney, the protagonist of White Noise, as a late-modernist displaced to negotiate the postmodern landscape. This study, which is purely of scholarly interest, attempts to show how Gladney vacillates between the notions of modernist authentic subject and the de-centred postmodern subject created textually. This article also attempts to explore how DeLillo’s fiction engages with the idea of the subject during the 1980s. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for bringing the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt into dialogue with respect to the links between power, subjectivity, and agency. Although one might assume that Foucault and Arendt come from such radically different philosophical starting points that such a dialogue would be impossible, I argue that there is actually a good deal of common ground to be found between these two thinkers. Moreover, I suggest that Foucault's and Arendt's divergent views about the role (...) that power plays in the constitution of subjectivity and agency should be seen as complementary rather than opposed. (shrink)

_Abstract_: After introducing general problems that a theory of subjectivity must address, the meaning of subjectivity is discussed and defined as the wholeness of first-person somato-psychological life. The most important principle in a theory of subjectivity is the entanglement of socio-subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and intra-subjectivity. This entanglement entails that subjectivity is unique and irreplaceable, which are philosophical elements in a psychological theory. Subjectivity takes place in work, relations, and the self, and in the way that persons conduct their everyday lives in (...) particular contexts and times. Subjectivity is constituted and/or mediated through materialities, discourses, and actions, including technologies. A theory of subjectivity must include reflections on “what is” but also about “what is possible” in human somato-psychological life. Because traditional theories of subjectivity have no conceptual space for socio-subjectivity, forms of subjectivity into which subjects suture themselves are discussed. Consequences for the discipline of psychology are laid out. _Keywords_: Subjectivity; Theory; Interdisciplinarity; Society; Culture; History; Psychological Humanities _Verso una teoria della soggettività_ _Riassunto_: Comincerò illustrando le questioni generali che una teoria della soggettività deve affrontare, per discutere e definire poi il significato della soggettività come totalità della vita somato-psicologica dalla prospettiva della prima persona. Il principio più importante in una teoria della soggettività è l’intreccio tra socio-soggettività, inter-soggettività e intra-soggettività. Da questo intreccio ne viene che la soggettività è qualcosa di unico e insostituibile; questi aspetti filosofici devono caratterizzare anche una teoria psicologica della soggettività. La soggettività trova la propria concrezione nel lavoro, nelle relazioni, nel sé e nel modo in cui le persone conducono la loro vita quotidiana nei propri particolari contesti e tempi. La soggettività è costituita e/o mediata dalla materialità, dai discorsi e dalle azioni, comprese le tecnologie. Una teoria della soggettività deve considerare “ciò che è” unitamente a “ciò che è possibile” all’interno della vita somato-psicologica umana. Dal momento che le teorie tradizionali della soggettività non hanno concesso uno spazio concettuale per la socio-soggettività, in questo lavoro si discuteranno quelle forme di soggettività al cui interno i soggetti si vengono a trovare suturati. Saranno quindi illustrate le conseguenze di questi aspetti per la psicologia come ambito disciplinare. _Parole chiave_: Soggettività; Teoria; Interdisciplinarità; Società; Cultura; Storia; Psychological Humanities. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to take up three closely connected questions. First, does consciousness essentially involve subjectivity? Second, what is the connection, if any, between pre-reflective self-consciousness and subjectivity? And, third, does consciousness necessarily involve an ego or self? I will draw on the Yogācāra–Madhyamaka synthesis of Śāntarakṣita to develop an account of the relation between consciousness, subjectivity, and the self. I will argue, first, that phenomenal consciousness is reflexive or self-illuminating. Second, I will argue that consciousness necessarily (...) involves minimal subjectivity. Third, I will argue that neither the reflexivity nor the subjectivity of consciousness implies that there is any entity such as the self or ego over and above reflexive consciousness. Fourth, I will argue that what we normally think of as ‘the self’ is best understood as a complex, multi-layered process that emerges within the pre.. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of types is most often associated with his account of perception. Here, types operate as pre-predicative frames of experience that guide the perception of objects. In this paper, I will argue that Husserl’s theory of types is also central to his account of intersubjectivity. More specifically, I will show that a foundational kind of typical subjectivity is entailed by his discussion of the sphere of ownness. It is by way of this type that even a solitary subject can (...) tacitly anticipate the possibility of other subjects. It is also this type that is enriched through interactions between actual subjects. (shrink)

It has become almost commonplace to recognise that teaching is an embodied practice. Most analyses of teaching as embodied practice focus on the embodied nature of the teacher as subject. Here, we use Butler's concept of performativity to analyse the reiterated acts that are intelligible as—performatively constitute—teaching, rather of the teacher as subject. We suggest that this simultaneously helps explain the persistence of teaching as a narrow repertoire of actions recognisable as ‘teaching’, and the policing of conformity to teaching thus (...) embodied. However, like performatively accomplished subjectivity, this repertoire is unstable and ambiguous, and thus open to change and disruption. Moreover, teacher subjectivities may lead them to mobilise these possibilities of disruption. (shrink)

It is often held that, in contrast to Husserl, Heidegger's account of intentionality makes no essential reference to the first- person stance. This paper argues, on the contrary, that an account of the first- person, or 'subjectivity', is crucial to Heidegger's account of intelligibility and so of the intentionality, or 'aboutness' of our acts and thoughts, that rests upon it. It first offers an argument as to why the account of intelligibility in Division I of Being and Time, based on (...) a form of third- person self-awareness, provides a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for intentionality. It then shows that Heidegger provides a further necessary condition in his analysis of the collapse of the one-self in Division II. This condition is 'conscience', which is both a genuine first- person mode of self-awareness and, it is argued, the origin of reason as that which distinguishes factic 'grounds' from normative 'justifications'. (shrink)

Traditional western conceptions of pain have commonly associated pain with the inability to communicate and with the absence of the self. Thus pain, it seems, must be avoided, since it is to blame for alienating the body from subjectivity and the self from others. Recent work on pain, however, has began to challenge these assumptions, mainly by discerning between different kinds of pain and by pointing out how some forms of pain might even constitute a crucial element in the production (...) of subjectivity. This article deals with the specific form of pain that is labour pain. Pain in labour has been investigated in medicine and lately, copiously, within the social sciences. Analyses from a more philosophical perspective are still very much missing, however, and in developing such analyses, de Beauvoir’s ideas on subjectivity as inherently embodied, as situated, and as profoundly ambiguous when authentically lived, appear to be of significant use. (shrink)

The article is devoted to revealing the core significance of the con­cept of subjectivity in the modern philosophy of education. The focus on the ac­tualisation of the problem of subjectivity is combined with the awareness of its existential multidimensionality and collision, which has different manifestations in totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic societies. In the semantic field of philosophical anthropology as meta-anthropology (N. Khamitov), the author of the article reveals the philosophical and pedagogical context of the subject-sub­ject interaction between teacher and student. (...) As a result, the concept of the “New Ukrainian School” is understood as a paradigm of education of the present and the future, which generates a strategy of free, dignified and effective human self-realisation. The goal and condition of Ukraine’s civilisational progress is a per­son, their dignified self-realisation, which implies physical, mental and spiritual growth of the individual. It is substantiated that the new paradigm of education as a subject-subject communicative interaction “Human – Human”, co-creation of a teacher and a student, bases the foundations of the civilisational subjectivity of Ukraine. In the difficult conditions of the existential Russian-Ukrainian war, which is a real challenge to human nature, there is a tangle of problems between the con­cept of life and the concept of subjectivity. The development of an openly tolerant, communicative model of “Human – Human” on the basis of meta-anthropology as a theory of everyday, borderline and meta-borderline human existence opens the way to the implementation of the value consolidation of the Ukrainian society. On this path, the philosophy of education is increasingly becoming a philosophy of humanity, a desire for co-creation and co-action. The subject-subject interac­tion “Human – Human” is the basis of the metaphysical and cosmic process of life, which implies human freedom and independence of Ukraine. (shrink)

This book brings together analytically inspired philosophers working on the continent with English-speaking philosophers to address specific issues regarding subjectivity and consciousness.

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; (...) and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today. (shrink)

The article aims at a determination of Heidegger's contribution to a theory of subjectivity and self-consciousness. It does so through a discussion of Øverenget's book on this topic and in particular of his thesis that according to Heidegger the self is given “with” our consciousness of objects. Three ways are considered in which this thesis might apply on the one hand to Heidegger's argument and on the other to the phenomenon in question: with Kant as an expression of a functional (...) conception of our self-awareness, as a determination of its epistemic structure, and as a claim of the irreducible concreteness of subjectivity. It is, among other things, argued that the first way at best does not exhaust the thesis, that the second way corresponds to Heidegger's intention, but that his argumentation does not reach such a determination, and that the third way expresses both his ultimate intention and the field of his real contribution in the theory of subjectivity. Besides, it is argued that Heidegger at these points is much closer to German idealism than he and Øverenget realize. (shrink)

Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. ____Subjection and Subjectivity__ is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.

The pregnant subject has a unique experience of her body. The dichotomy between self and other, self and world, breaks down. She can experience a positive narcissism and sense of process. Some conceptualizations and practices of contemporary medicine, however, can alienate the pregnant subject from this bodily experience. Keywords: Embodiment, Split Subjectivity CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

In this book Paddy McQueen examines the role that 'recognition' plays in our struggles to construct an identity and to make sense of ourselves as gendered beings. It analyses how such struggles for gender recognition are shaped by social discourses and power relations, and considers how feminism can best respond to these issues.

Stanley Cavell is a leading figure in American philosophy and one of the most exhilarating and wide-ranging intellectuals of our time. In this book Espen Hammer offers a lucid and thorough account of the development of Cavell's work, from his early writings on ordinary language philosophy and skepticism to his most recent contributions to film studies, literary theory, romanticism, ethics, and politics. The book traces the many lines of skepticism occurring in Cavell's work and shows how they amount to a (...) rich and subtle picture of human subjectivity. Hammer explores Cavell's passionate engagement with Austin and Wittgenstein's visions of language, and his uncovering of conceptions of the ordinary in Emerson and Thoreau. Central sections of the book are devoted to the tragic and the comic as these modes of existence come into play in Shakespeare and Hollywood cinematic drama. In elaborating Cavell's responses to thinkers such as Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, the author situates Cavell's writing within the wider context of contemporary continental philosophy. Hammer clearly reveals the existential dimensions of Cavell's thought. He argues that his variant of ordinary language philosophy is a vital stimulus to self-transformation in cognitive, aesthetic, ethical, and political domains, contributing significantly to a rethinking of issues such as responsibility and autonomy, and the relationship between philosophy and literature. A critical introduction to the thought of an inordinately complex writer, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, literary theory, cultural theory, comparative literature, and media and cultural studies. (shrink)

This book grapples with these perennial questions, primarily through a dialogue with Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor, using an interdisciplinary ...

The conception of subjectivity developed by the German philosopher Hermann Schmitz (1927-) is especially suitable for cross-cultural investigations because its foundations lie in human experiences that are basic and universal. The paper has two aims. Firstly, to give an outline of Schmitz’s theory. Secondly, to show its usefulness (and its limits) by interpreting some Greek and Indian philosophers which, at the same time, represent certain main approaches to the problem of subjectivity.

Memory is a privileged context for inquiry into subjective life; no wonder that the way philosophers theorize memory is indicative of their conception of subjectivity as a whole. In this essay, I turn to Sartre and Husserl with the aim of unveiling how their accounts of recollection resolve the question of identity and difference within the temporality of one's life. Tracing Sartre's arguments against Husserl's, as well as Husserl's and Sartre's own presentations of recollection, I inquire into the reasons that (...) incited them to bring either the aspect of sameness or otherness at the heart of subjective life into view. (shrink)