Aspectos Técnicos

The notion of subjectivity has acquired its flavor of privacy out of a semantic inversion. Etymologically, an “object” was in Latin (14th century) objectum: “what is placed in front of”, what affects the senses. A “subject” was in the 14th century “what is subordinated to” (but also, paradoxically 12th century: “what has a nature of its own”). Eventually, the “subject” becomes in the 19th century “the individual being, the person as the origin of an action or an influence” (Rey, 1998). Hence, the subject was at times the subject of something else, and it is today what escapes subjugation and stands detached, facing its object. This etymological excursion is here to suggest the idea I wish to illustrate: to become a “subject” – that is, a person with subjectivity, one has to create a distance from the surrounding, from other persons, and perhaps, from oneself, too.

Psychology has traditionally considered subjectivities as emerging out of one of two sets of determination: that from the world, and that from the inner life. The first locates an individual within streams of multiple social and cultural determinations – what has to do with positions, perspectives, classes, roles, boundaries in- and out groups, etc. The second designates the dynamics by which a person determines her own life – flow of experience, consciousness, or unique interpretations. These determinations have been examined by two classically distinct epistemological perspectives: some observe human trajectories or groups “from the outside”, in a 3rd person perspective; the others attempt to account for the “insider view”, a 1st person perspective, or an “interiority” (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie, Ivinson & Psaltis, 2003). Of course these distinctions are hazardous, and overlap many others (Cornejo, 2010). However, sociocultural psychology is one of the disciplines that considers at once these two sets of determinations (Zittoun, Valsiner, Vedeler, Salgado, Gonçalves & Ferring, in press). Here, I propose to consider subjectivity at the meeting point of these two streams of determinations. For this, I need to further characterize the notion of subjectivity in a semiotic perspective.

A sociocultural view on the lifecourse

Time passes, and humans are immersed in it; their main mean to know they exist in the world is their consciousness, which in itself is in permanent flow (James, 1890). One of the specificities of humans over other organisms is, within this flow, their attempt not only to order it, but also to have a grasp on it – humans are engaged in sense-making and interpreting. In order to do so, humans internalize – find some form of translation, in the mind, of cultural tools, signs and modes of interactions (Valsiner, 1998). Yet these means are not simple perceptual information; they also have cultural values and shared meaning. Hence, the person progressively learns to organize inner dialogues and operations, guided by the social world and other person’s perspectives, from within (Janet, 1926, 1928, 1934; Marková, 2005, Valsiner, 1998).

Life trajectories have been researched by many – starting with mythology and ending with attempts to decrypt DNA. In psychology and social sciences, there is a tension between studies who describe general patterns of life course by finding the “average” behavior of large cohorts, or specific life trajectories in case studies (see Elder, Kirkpatrick Johnson and Crosnoe, 2004; Zittoun, 2012). Either way, it is consensually admitted that life development is best understood as a dynamic process, characterized by the mutual dependencies of lives, their social dimensions, the importance of transitions, etc. (Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson & Collins, 2005; Valsiner, 2008…). Here I will especially emphasize four aspects which I treat as initial assumptions:

1) People are located in the world; they develop in complex systems of interactions – in their immediate proximity, with other people, with objects, then with specific situations; yet these are also taken in, and shaped by wider social institutions, societal debates, generally spread ideologies, material limitations, etc. One cannot understand individual trajectories without taking these dynamics in consideration. Here, I will focus on interpersonal, situational and societal aspects.

2) People have to be understood as a whole – their understanding develops together with their emotional life, their physical changes, their relational experiences, etc. Here my focus will be on people’s sense making of such diversity of experiences;

3) Development goes with logic of differentiation and undifferentiation: as much as people develop