Investigating Subjectivity Weeks #2-3

What is a subject?

Implications Subject of subjective “ the mind, ego, or agent of whatever sort that sustains or assumes the form of thought or consciousness” -- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary Subject to “ one that is placed under authority or control” -- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Related Terms Individual Identity Agent Self Ego

Ren é Descartes The ideology of the Enlightenment “I think therefore I am.”

Ren é Descartes “From that I knew that I was a substance, the whole essence or nature or which is to think, and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this ‘me,’ that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is.” (qtd. in Damasio 249)

Ren é Descartes The Cartesian mind-body split: the thinking mind was somehow more real than the body in which it is housed

Louis Althusser “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” es/marxism.html (general) es/marxism.html es/1997althusser.html (Althusser) es/1997althusser.html (an example)

RSAs—Repressive State Apparatuses (e.g. the police, the criminal justice, prison) ISAs—Ideological State Apparatuses (e.g. the family, the educational system, language, the media, the political system)

We are “always already subjects” (32). Rituals of ideological recognition (e.g. the hand-shake, calling you by your name) “guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects” (32).

“[All] ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects” (33). Interpellation or hailing: e.g. police hailing: “Hey, you there!” (33)

Individuals Interpellation subjects hailing rituals recognition misrecognition

“[Ideology] has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality).” (34)

On Christian religious ideology: “there can only be such a multitude of possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God” (35).

“[The] interpellation of individuals as subjects presupposes the ‘existence’ of a Unique and central Other Subject, in whose Name the religious ideology interpellates all individuals as subjects” (35)

“God is thus the Subject, and Moses and the innumerable subjects of God’s people, the Subject’s interlocutors- interpellates: his mirrors, his reflections. Were not men made in the image of God? As all theological reflection proves, whereas He ‘could’ perfectly well have done without men, God needs them, the Subject needs the subjects, just as men need God, the subjects need the Subject” (36).

“[All] ideology is centred, that the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects...” (36).

1. Scientific discourse is privileged as a “subject-less” discourse, the language to be used when uncovering/examining ideology (31-32). Is this view justified? Could we ever be outside ideology? 2. What’s the ideology of the boy scouts’ oath? Or that of US naturalization oath of allegiance? 3. Give an example of interpellation.

梅花 (dir. 劉家昌 )

梅花 What’s the predominant ideology? Locate the moment when the second son ( 柯俊雄飾 ) is interpellated by the Chinese ideology. Which ideology is omitted or repressed?

The End