What Is Left of the Subject, What Is Missing in Subjectivation: A Dialogue

By underscoring the processes of becoming, the French anti-idealistic and anti-existentialist approaches of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze have paved the way to a radical reconfiguration of the idea of the “subject” as metaphysical foundation, rational actor or sense making creator. In this vein, subjectivation is a dynamic interplay between singular actions and power constraints, body perceptions and contingencies of the situation; subjectivation is always open to the unpredictability of the environment and its forms of government, autonomy and emancipation are not a simple effect of individual free will but an injunction to be reliable, and adaptable, in a complex society. And yet, subjectivation is not a simple and temporary outcome. The idea of subjectivation, fostered by Foucault’s and Deleuze’s legacy, only partially satisfies the sociological need to understand the dialectics between the human (as well as the post-human) and his/her environment. In the presentation we shall try to investigate whether this partiality can be tackle with a new conceptualization of the idea of “subject” able to include the criticalities highlighted by the idea of “subjectivation”.