Page 103 - Critical and Cultural Theory

CHAPTER 2

SUBJECTIVITY

In exploring the cultural construction of both personal and collec-
tive identities, critical and cultural theory have increasingly moved
away from the word 'self and used the term 'subject'instead. This
is because the word 'self traditionally evokes the idea of identity
as a private possession and a notion of the individual as unique
and autonomous. 'Subject' is more ambiguous. A subject is both
active and passive. For example, the subject of a sentence may
denote the person that performs the act described in the sentence
or the person on whom the act is performed ('Mary ate a bear';
'Mary was eaten by a bear'). The passive side of the subject is also
borne out by a phrase such as 'the Queen's subjects' and by the
idea of the subject as medical patient. Poststructuralism has
emphasized that the subject is not a free consciousness or a stable
human essence but rather a construction of language, politics and
culture. Subjectivity can only be understood by examining the
ways in which people and events are emplotted: inscribed in the
narratives that cultures relentlessly weave to fashion themselves.
Drawing on this position, the present chapter offers a cross-
section of viewpoints on subjectivity, with an emphasis on the
decentring of identity.
In traditional epistemology (the branch of philosophy concerned
with the nature and acquisition of knowledge), the term subjectiv-
ity frequently designates individual experience and thought
processes defined with reference to the T. Relatedly, epistemology
has sought to establish whether it is possible to move from this
inevitably limited perspective to objective knowledge. According
to Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the T denotes a free consciousness
that constitutes the very essence of being human. Descartes's

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