Subjectivity Notes
(These are meant to supplement the notes in class. The test
will be taken from these notes, class discussion, and readings. You can skip
down to the various topics by clicking on them.)
Definition Process Mirror Stage The Symbolic Review
To get at a definition of what subjectivity means, let's start by thinking of all the different ways we use to describe a person:
Individual--implies uniqueness, but are we all really unique? On the one hand, yes. Even two people who have had the exact same experiences in life process those experiences differently, so in that sense, everyone is unique. But on the other hand, we are each messy conglomerations of common experiences, genetics, environments, etc., in some cases with such strong resemblances that we are not properly "unique." Also, the word individual connotes the idea that we are separate from others, which we most emphatically are NOT. Our very survival depends on close relationships of dependence; as we grow older, our sense of ethics and value is completely tangled up with other people. So while individual might describe in some ways what it means to be human, it doesn't quite get at the complexity of the experience.
Identity--We say, in talking about people, that they have a distinct identity. But if you think about it, an identity is something we establish by comparison to something else--it is the way we see ourselves through other people. We identify with people whom we perceive are like us, and disidentify with people who are seemingly different. During this interplay, we are actively setting the boundaries that comprise our "identity," but again, it is never properly "ours" since it is dependent on the position of others.
Human being--Well, this seems generic enough, but the use of the word being makes it troubled from a philosophical perspective. What is being, anyway? According to Lacan, (who follows philosophers like Descartes and Heidegger) being is a trait that belongs to things--like rocks or inanimate objects or even babies, not language-using people. Humans sacrifice being for meaning when they start to understand and produce language. Try to understand this using your own examples: Things exist, whether we think about them or not. But when we start to think about them, we describe them using words that have nothing to do with them. Does a tree, for instance, care whether you call it something that sounds like tree or something that sounds like duck? But humans care very much about these things, so much that they can actually substitute the word for the thing itself. Follow this through, and you have the idea that we use words to actually create a reality separate from the "real," that is, separate from the things around us. Our reality is what is predictable and stable and in most cases under our control--not the real.
Since none of these ways of describing what it means to be human carries enough meaning to really get at the whole experience, people starting using the word subject. Let's brainstorm what the word subject means:
"Subject"
--most important thing
--things you study
--something you focus on
--person or something under investigation, as in an experiment
(This first set of definitions implies that we find a subject interesting,
worthy of study, and separate from other subjects.)
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--grammatical subject, or the actor in a sentence
--agent
--opposite of object
(This second set of definitions implies that we have the ability to act, that
we have control over the things we do.)
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--another word for servant, someone who is under the rule of a king or under the rules of law (as in, we are subject to the laws of gravity and aging, and we are also subject to prosecution if we commit a crime)
(This final set implies that we are not always in control of what we do, that we are under the thumb of forces outside ourselves.)
So here's a definition of what it means to be a human "subject." Even though there is a contradiction at its heart, don't try to resolve it-- to understand subjectivity, you have to understand that to be human is a thing of irreducible contradictions and complexity:
At one and the same time, a "subject" is something under study, an agent of his or her own destiny, and subject to forces beyond his or her control.
The Process of Becoming a Subject: (back to top)
Before you are a subject, you are an object. (of someone else's desire, of external forces)
{Kids learn it in this order:
-- possessive pronouns first (what is mine or not mine)
--objective pronouns second (me, him, her, it)
--subjective pronouns third (I, he, she)}
As an object, you are in DANGER!!!!!! Think of it--your parents can decide not to have you, they can decide to abandon you, they can decide to treat you badly, they can become incapacitated and unable to care for you, in which case you could be sent out into the world of bureaucratic care, you can be batted around by people's whims, and basically, you have no power or recourse. You MUST become something other than the object of someone else's desire. You must become a subject!
Let's plot the journey, a la Lacan and Stellaluna.
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The infans or the prelinguistic infant, according to Lacan, doesn't perceive itself as separate from its environment, especially its mom. Note how this is illustrated in Stellaluna. You have to look closely to distinguish the little bat from its mother. |
In this period, the child is not a subject, because she doesn't meet the criteria of being in control of her own actions. Also, there is no tension in her inner world--in other words, she has no conscious/unconscious split. This is illustrated by the border illustrations--they are the same. (Note that there is a more straight-forward way to "read" the border illustrations. They can be viewed as simply additional story information. I am interpreting them as the site of Stellaluna's unconscious.)
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The first trauma of becoming a subject, then, is separation from the mother.
--Sometimes accidental
--Sometimes desired by the child
--Sometimes enforced by a masculine figure
What's good about separating from mom?
--Learn independence
--Characters begin to talk
*****Note that separation implies more than an actual separation from an actual mother--it is instead a generalized sense of separateness from the child's surroundings, a sense of one's own boundaries, a sense of the me/not me.
This sense of separation in storybooks become figurative or symbolic for the child reader. After all, most kids will not be literally separated from their mothers--she's there all the time. But EVERY child has the growing sense of being a separate being and this produces a generalized anxiety. Stories about children working through separation from mom, or separation from a beloved object, help the child negotiate his feelings about separateness. They also help inaugurate the child into a world where representations of things make up the reality he has to deal with, rather than real, actual things.
The message of these stories is that separation will be sad, painful, and often difficult, but you will find help, and you will survive. In most cases, your survival will depend on two things: 1) you get a second mother, and 2) you develop strong new peer relationships. (You might want to stop and think of some examples of children's books or movies you know that do this.)
A Word about the Mother, the Unconscious, and Trust:
One of the parts of subjectivity is the unconscious--we are subject to our own unconscious. The unconscious is made up of repressed images, sounds, and words that represent memories, wishes, desires, and fears. The unconscious comes into existence when you realize that you are a separate being in the world, because you try to repress that knowledge. In Stellaluna, the little bat's unconscious comes into being when her mother is attacked by the owl. The pictures in the borders of the book are distinctly different from the color illustrations. Here we have an example of a forced separation by a male presence. In Stellaluna's unconscious, her mother disappears into a cave, forced there by the owl. This represents where the mother gets split into two functions--the internal, sustaining unconscious presence that allows the subject to develop the structure of trust, and the external mother of desire and wish-fulfillment.
Remember through the examples of Love You Forever and The Giving Tree how important it is not to get these two functions of the mother confused--somewhere inside of us we need the figure of the totally giving, totally adoring mother who puts us absolutely first. But as an external, actual presence in our lives, this kind of mother is overwhelming, pathetic, psychotic, weird, and just plain icky.
The Mirror Stage (back to top)
At some point between the ages of 6-18 months, a baby begins to recognize herself in a mirror.
This is what she is:
1.totally dependent
2. not in control of her own movements
3. experience their bodies as fragmented
This is what she sees:
1. independent being with clear boundaries
2. body in the mirror is coherent
3. body in the mirror has control of its movements
Lacan says this predisposes us to always see ourselves as potential or fictional, rather than actual. Think about what you see in a mirror--an image of yourself. It is at the same time "you" and "not you" in that it is in fact an image. Is what you see in the mirror what other people see when they look at you? Nope. You have all kinds of filters--feelings about yourself--and so does everyone else when they look at you. So all you EVER get is a fiction of yourself.
The Mirror Stage signals the birth of the "Imaginary order"--order of images--appearances, feelings, identifications, Ideal images (they're more or less models that you imitate as your potential self.)
When a child is in the Mirror Stage (and this comes and goes throughout life, usually in periods of transition), he or she looks for ideal images to imitate--from life, from media, from books. Books and films are especially important because they are finite--they represent the world in easy-to-grasp chunks with clear boundaries (of the page or TV screen). So they function like mirrors--they show a child his or her potential selves, and the child internalizes them as ideal, or possibly something to strive for. So imagine, if a child sees a lot of fairy tales where the prince rescues the princess with a kiss, he or she begins to internalize the ideal that this is the way things are SUPPOSED to happen. If a child sees a lot of books with stereotyped characters, they begin to see these as ideal representations of these characters, even if they are not, in another definition of that word, ideal.
Gradually, you begin to get drawn into your culture. A vague but painful sense of separateness needs to be satisfied--your "holes," that you are just beginning to understand that you have, need to be filled in. Children try to do this with their bodies--they put things in their mouths, and stick their fingers and feet and heads and whole bodies into small places. But adults intervene, and say NO! Well, that doesn't satisfy the desire. So we find acceptable substitutes for filling in holes. In our culture, we have two primary substitutions: texts (as in stories, movies, words themselves) and things. Stories fill holes by presenting whole worlds in confined spaces (see above). Think how satisfied you feel in a really good movie--you have closed out the sights and sounds of the outside world and entered a controlled environment where the temperature is regulated, the lights are out, and the sound of the movie surrounds you. The director has taken care of the little details, and everything is perfect--"full." The same experience sometimes happens in a good book--you are able to shut out your imperfect, incomplete world and give yourself over to the experience of completeness offered by the book. Objects are trickier, because the advertisers need to create your sense of lack or incompleteness, and then offer their product as the only thing that will satisfy you. Then they have to re-open your sense of lack whenever they come up with a new and improved product. But both objects and texts rely on repetition. You have to keep coming back to them, keep buying more, in order to fill up your holes, because what is missing is your sense of BODILY connection to your environment.
The whole series of separation stages that you go through as you become a subject is forcing you away from the joy of your own body (remember skipping, burping whenever you need to? Imagine what it must have been like to not have to control ANY of your body's functions!). You are being weaned away from that joy into a public persona, by which you will be judged, where you will be forced to live according to other people's desires. Lacan says not to underestimate this loss--you are left with what he calls "a mere pittance of pleasure." (Watch a baby--they luxuriate in all-over touching, in giggles, sometimes even in crying. Ever wonder why toddlers seem to cry at the drop of a hat? Somewhere along the line we stop touching them so much (what was once snuggling is now clinging), we shush them, we give them time outs for those luxurious full-body tantrums. Teenagers too have very mercurial emotions, and one of the psychoanalytic reasons for this is that they are being forced into ever stricter gender roles and stricter sanctions for non-normative behaviors--they are losing the freedom of their bodies and trying to force them into sexually acceptable postures.)
In summary, then, the Mirror Stage forces us away from the world of bodies into the world of representation and ideal images. Although it is most active in childhood, it continues to be important throughout our lives, especially in periods of transition. Careful selection of many many diverse books are important at this stage, because children are processing the books as ideal images. If their literature experiences are too similar, they have a good chance of not tolerating diversity very well later.
Entry into the Symbolic: (back to top)
In many children's stories, you have a dual mother structure. (Charlotte's Web--Fern, then Charlotte, Something From Nothing--mom, then grandpa, Stellaluna--bat then bird, Babar--mom, then the Rich Old Lady, almost every fairy tale--mom to an evil stepmom). Why is that?
Usually, your first mom is wonderful, but powerless. Your second mom, whether she is wonderful or not, is POWERFUL.
Since your first mother represents a sense of unity and one-ness with the world, she is part of your imaginary structure. Imaginary identifications, though they seem coherent and seamless, are illusions. They are necessary illusions, but sometimes, something happens to break the illusion, and we re-experience fragmentation.
Enter the "Symbolic Order." In the Symbolic Order, you really develop all the selves you are going to present to the world, but you KNOW that they are all parts of you, and that even all the parts don't add up to the whole YOU.
Lacan's three orders:
Real: (Not important to our discussion--picture books are representations, and the Real is precisely that which cannot be represented.)
Imaginary: order of ideal images (kids spend a lot of time and energy creating, selecting, and trying on these ideal images, so it is MORALLY important for us as interveners in their development to make sure that we have critically examined the images they see in picture books and media--racially diverse, including images of people who are differently abled, different body shapes, not trapped in traditional gender models)
Symbolic Order: public order of rules, law, language--place where we play various roles, but you know that they are roles that you're playing--they're not the "real you"
One of the things that authority figures in the Symbolic do is to tell you that your natural instincts are "wrong." This is not necessarily bad, because some natural impulses (like aggressivity and bodily functions) need to be regulated in order for humans to exist in groups.
BUT, many times, this regulation goes too far, and social power functions to squelch individual difference and creativity.
Most books for kids emphasize the fact that once you've lost your connection to your mom, the only thing left is for you to grow up and away from her. Stellaluna, on the other hand, grows up without losing her mother--she regains her relationship to her mom, and with that, her joy in her own body. This is emphasized through smells, sights, and tastes. In trying to be like the birds, she had to subordinate her own desires, her own special talents, to theirs. She even forgot that she could see in the dark. But most of all, she wanted the taste of lush mangoes instead of squiggly bugs. Note how sensuality and food are connected to the mother.
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The Development of Subjectivity:
No voice
No sense of otherness
No sense of self (no distinct personality)
Connectedness to "mother"
Lose your sense of connectedness
This results in some gains:
Voice
A need to
grow
Identity--Mirror stage, where we create Ideal images to live up to
Strategies to
deal with loss
3. What's the final outcome?
Possible ways to deal with
difference:
--put
down/separate people with differences
--pretend differences don't matter
--celebrate/emphasize differences
--accept differences as inevitable/not special/natural
4. You develop a set of identities in the Imaginary and the Symbolic that you negotiate and "put on" to adapt to various situations.
Examples:
Stellaluna eating her mango: recognizes her separateness in the Symbolic, but keeps her mother as an Imaginary ideal.
Birds of a different color: recognizes her difference from the birds in the Imaginary (spatially distinct) and the Symbolic (separated by color), yet she maintains a close relationship with them.
Final picture where she is hugging them--same as above--friendship based on mutual respect of differences
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