Subjectivity and the Address to the Other

Abstract

This paper remarks upon some enduring debates that both mark the field of psychology in general (the individual vs the social) and have taken new forms within emerging theoretical positions in the discipline. Most certainly, the question of subjectivity as a place of agency, an effect of discourse, as politically installed, and as the ethical source of action has preoccupied a number of contributors to Theory & Psychology. Authors attempt to bridge certain constructionist and historicist insights with a concern for other registrations of subjective functioning, for example the body, the self, a sense of the moral, or political priorities. While retaining a focus on the discursive constitution of subjectivity, this paper explicates the issues that psychoanalysis brings to this difficult conceptual terrain.