Power

[Carrol Cox]

Interesting. What does the word "subjectivity" mean anyhow in this
context? This screen is a bit blurry for me, and will probably continue
to be until I get new glasses in a couple weeks. That's subjective.
Questions without the questioner providing his/her own answer along with
the question tick me off royally. That's a subjective reaction on my
part which I think I can urge as a necessary social principle, arguing
from several different perspectives: history of rhetoric, semantic
analysis of the interrogative, empirical studies of the actual social or
political results of questions without answers, etc.

I don't know whether any of this has any relevance to the current
discussion of subjectivity or not. As far as I can see the best analogy
for the modern discovery of subjectivity would be a fanciful
hypothetical: Suppose someone announced triumphantly that the
respiratory system of humans was one of the most important functions of
human life, and proceeded to build a political theory on tha, a
political theory aimed at undercutting all political theories grounded
in the assumption of the importance of social relations. We breathe. We
have subjectivity. So what?

Carrol

Miles Jackson wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Catherine Driscoll wrote:
> 
> > But, isn't there a significant difference between "individuals"
> > and "subjectivity", insofar as you could avoid individualism, but
> > not "subjectivity".
> >
> > Catherine
> 
> It is exactly this insistence on the obdurate reality of "subjectivity"
> that intrigues me.  The idea that people have unique subjectivities
> emerged in specific societies at specific points in human history; it
> is not simply human nature to conceptualize "subjectivities".  To me,
> it's no coincidence that the insistence on the value and importance
> of subjectivity is most extreme in hypercapitalist societies like
> the U. S.  To coin a hyperbolic slogan: capitalism produces
> subjectivities.  Like most of the effects of capitalism, there are
> good and bad things about this.
> 
> Miles