If it's a phantasm, some simple charm should be able to dispel it.
> Sorry for the rhetorical questions, but the answer is clear: Bourgeois rule
> and its effect on ideology in the broadest sense. The very idea of this
> construct of an "individual" defined apart from human society has been basic
> to bourgeois thought. (And the rejection of this bourgeois construct is
> basic to Marx's thought, for one--see, e.g., the intro to the Grundrisse.)
> ...
Marx being a materialist, then, we can expect to see a materialist analysis of the social and individual aspects, if any, of human beings. By "materialist" I mean "based on the phenomena of the physical universe which most of us agree exist." Is that what I'll find in the intro to the Grundrisse? I was wondering if Marx had turned is attention to this issue, but I doubted it.
Even if the bourgeoisie discovered the individual, this does not mean the individual doesn't exist. Actually, my reading indicates that among some tribal peoples, for example the North American Indians, a good deal of individuation existed, probably more than in most capitalist polities of the 19th and 20th centuries. (Hence, perhaps, the attraction of the idea of the Noble Savage for 18th-century intellectuals; but only as raw material.)
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> ... In the pre-capitalist world, there was no question that
> individuals are ensembles of social relations, and relations of
> mutual obligation & dependence in a hierarchical class society were
> taken for granted. ...
I am skeptical whether we can know this. If there were humans living out of the purview of the literate classes of those societies whose records were preserved, we would at most catch only a glimpse of them. We have numerous myths, legends and folk-tales of singular individuals usually depicted as living in forests or on remote islands; those could be the glimpses. Of course, this does not prove any of them were entirely asocial; but on the other hand it is difficult to see whatever inspired the myths of Cyclops or Circe as ensembles of social relations.
I suspect the reason that we see more fascination with peculiar individuals like Kaspar Hauser in the last few centuries is because the increasing intensity of State surveillance and control has made such outliers increasingly rare and, therefore, wonderful. Ancient Greece would have found Kaspar not very remarkable.
My thanks to those who provided some keywords; I'll be looking around.