Original Ar ticle

SUBJ ECTIVITY, SELF AND

E V E RY DAY L I F E I N
CONTEMP O RARY C AP I TAL I S M

I a n Bu r k i t t
University of Bradford, Bradford, UK
Correspondence: Ian Burkitt
E-mail: i.burkitt@bradford.ac.uk

A b s t ra c t

In this piece, I make a distinction between the terms ‘‘subjectivity’’ and ‘‘self’’ in social
science, arguing that the term subject – a being subject to others by control or dependence
and subject to itself through reflexive domination – cannot be simply substituted for the
term self. Talk of subjectivity helps critical psychologists understand how individuals are
formed in power relations, but the term self helps us understand individuals in a more well-
rounded way as having identities formed in more general social relations. However, I argue
that the power relations shaping everyday lives today are those of neo-liberal capitalism,
which is attempting to create individuals who are the subjects of work and consumerism. Yet
to understand the agents who resist this form of power and subjection, we need a
conception of selves that have the social bases from which to develop critical ideas and
alternative lifestyles and values.

Ke y wo rds
subjectivity; self; neo-liberalism; capitalism; power; resistance

Subjectivity (2008) 23, 236–245. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.13

I n tr oduc ti on

O
ne of the key terms to have been used by critical social psychology
over the last couple of decades has been that of ‘‘subjectivity’’, so it
seems timely to investigate that concept here in a journal that bears

c 2008 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1755-6341/08 $30.00

Subjectivity, 2008, 23, (236–245)
www.palgrave-journals.com/sub
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that title and to contrast the concept with one that previously had more
currency in social psychology – that of ‘‘self’’. What I want to argue here is that
the use of the term subjectivity has had great benefits for critical work but also
some costs, and that the way in which it has been conceptualized has obscured
key elements that have been shaping the everyday lives and self-identities of
those who live in a world dominated by neo-liberal capitalism.
The term subjectivity, of course, has its roots in French philosophy,
particularly in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser and in the Nietzschean
influenced philosophy of Michel Foucault. I think that Foucault summarized
this view of subjectivity best when he played on the word’s dual meaning of
being both ‘‘subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to
[our] own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge’’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 212).
This concise definition reveals both the strength and the weakness of this
conceptualization of subjectivity. Its strength is that it sets both the definition
and understanding of subjectivity squarely within relations of power, so that
subjectivity can no longer be theorized in critical psychology as somehow at a
distance from power or from social relations more generally. Its weakness is that
subjectivity is defined a priori in terms of domination alone, as subjectivity is
only seen to emerge in relations of control and dependence, both in respect of
relations to others and in respect of the relation we have to our own self. The
problem created here is that of agency and how it could be possible for subjects
to ever change relations of power – the very conditions that have formed them
and the possibilities for their agency. In his later works, Foucault tried to get
around this problem by talking about pluralistic forms of local knowledge that
oppose power, but the difficulty he faced was that the weight of the corpus of his
own work had been primarily focused on the official powers of medicine, law
and the various branches of the sciences that seek to categorize, divide and
manage populations, in the process forming subjectivity.
In her recent book The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler takes up this
mantle by trying to theorize subjectivity as both the subject and agent of power.
That is to say power forms subjects in the process of the reflexive turn, in which
subjects turn to look at themselves through the normative categories in which
they are interpellated, yet at the same time subjects assume elements of the
power that has formed them, thereafter possessing a power of agency with the
potential to go beyond the conditions set by the power that has created it. Yet as
Couze Venn (2002) has remarked, this is still an understanding of the subject
couched in terms of domination, as subject to itself and to others through
control and dependence. It is a guilty subject – or as Nietzsche put it, the subject
of bad conscience – in which one element of the self turns against others in a
striving for power and control. In the philosophy of both Foucault and Butler
the subject is also lifted out of the intercorporeal and intersubjective relations of
everyday life and understood as subject to discourses and norms in a more
abstract sense. While Foucault put the flesh and bone on this in his historical

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work on institutions, such as the asylum and prison, these are only elements of
the everyday lives of most people. Experience of institutional life does not
exhaust the totality of the life experience of most modern individuals. In
contrast to the official forms of power and control to be found in workplaces
and schools, for example, are what Vološinov (1986) called the ‘‘unofficial’’
behaviours and ideologies of people in the streets, in works’ canteens,
playgrounds and homes. Selves are formed in all these contexts, something
that needs to be understood by any critical psychology that seeks to understand
people not only as the subjects of control and dependence, but as selves that
emerge from the intercorporeal and intersubjective world of interactions and
mutual interdependence.
As Butler (1997) has said, the term subjectivity is distinct in this sense from
the terms self or person. I would argue that we get a more rounded view of
individuals from a phenomenological understanding of the intercorporeal and
intersubjective lives of selves, one that is able to see individuals as not only the
subjects of relations of control and dependence, but also as selves who can be
reconstituted within and through their social relations. I want to go on to
explore this a little more towards the end of this piece in terms of the way in
which neo-liberal discourses have reshaped the everyday world and how selves
have responded by forging new interconnections and identities to oppose this.
However, before I do, I want to make one more critical remark about the
concept of subjectivity as it has emerged from both structuralist and post-
structuralist discourses, which is to do with the way that subjectivity has been
conceptualized within the ‘‘discursive’’ or ‘‘linguistic’’ turn. At its best, this turn
in the social sciences has enabled critical psychologists to think beyond the old
base and superstructure arguments of structural Marxists in order to understand
how discourse shapes the very order of things – the relations between people,
between people and things, and between things themselves within the
institutions that partially order everyday life, thus changing the social, political,
economic and material fabric of the world (Rose, 1999; Hook, 2001). At its
worst, the discursive turn became a purely epistemological critique that sought
to deconstruct the concepts of the human sciences – and with it, many believed,
subjectivities formed by control and dependence, freeing them from the
straightjacket of normative conceptualization – with little understanding of
how their own reconceptualizations mirrored what Jameson (1991) has called
the post-modern cultural logic of late capitalism. For example, how do fluid
selves that lack a core identity fit with the cultural logic of the ‘‘new capitalism’’,
which above all else demands flexibility and fluidity from workers and acts as a
corrosive influence against the type of social solidarities that might provide the
conditions for more stable social identities? (Sennett, 1998). How ironic that
shortly after Margaret Thatcher declared there to be ‘‘no such thing as society’’
many academics, including Laclau and Mouffe, joined in the chorus (Elliott,
2002). Perhaps this is not so ironic after all: it is, rather, the result of exactly the

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same social and cultural trends that have inspired neo-liberalism – the war
against a Stalinist version of Marxism, the collapse of the Soviet Union (and
with it the influence of Marxism on many Western academics), the dominance
of neo-liberal, pluralistic (albeit exceptionally unequal) capitalist discourses and
practices in the West and parts of the East, and, with this, the growth of
consumerism in which freedom is defined as an infinite series of individualized
cultural and market choices.
In response to this, I do not suggest for one minute that we go back to a
structural Marxist view of the world and prescriptions for action (although I
think the humanist Marxism of the likes of E.P. Thompson, especially in The
Making of the English Working Class where the early workers’ movements were
understood within the context of the rise of capitalist power, is still exemplary
as a study of power and resistance); rather, I want to expand upon that position
which I see as taking the best of the ‘‘discursive turn’’, steering it into the realm
of everyday life within neo-liberal capitalism. Of course, I am not going here
alone without guides, but want to draw on some current thinking in social
theory to indicate current and future possibilities for critical psychology.

Contempora ry capitalism: subjects, s elves a nd agents of

r es i s ta n c e

As Valerie Walkerdine (2002) has recently remarked, there is a form of

economic rationalism now dominating many regions of the world that demands
an autonomous subject that can cope with any conditions thrown at it.
Furthermore, in the recent past, critical psychology has not always been engaged
with the resurgence of neo-liberal capitalism and the ravages that can follow in
its wake for both individuals and communities. Richard Sennett has been an
exception to this, who, in his book The Corrosion of Character, has looked at
the damage done to individual lives by a contemporary form of capitalism in
which the long-term disappears and is replaced by short-term contracts and
flexible work routines. In this study, Sennett (1998) notes the difficulty in
maintaining life narratives over the long- or medium-term within a short-term
world where people constantly have to start their lives over again in new jobs or
new geographical areas. Not only does this threaten individual life narratives, it
also eats away at the networks of intercorporeal and intersubjective relations in
which life narratives are embedded. Those found to have been uprooted from
social solidarities in such a way were not just the poor, having to cope with
doing up to three different jobs each day, it was also the professional classes
who were affected by having to be constantly flexible and adaptable in both
their work and in their social lives.
Some of the effects of power relations in contemporary capitalism therefore
seem to be the erosion of stable local networks of interaction, the
individualization and ‘‘autonomization’’ of selves, and the demand that they

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be constantly open to flexibility and change as required by the market. This can
manifest itself in the form of learning new skills and capacities, retraining,
restyling the self, recreating one’s life narrative or forming new social
relationships. Of course, nothing is wrong with any of these things if they
remain in the person’s own control; it is when constant change is beyond the
individual’s control that it can provoke anxiety and a sense of alienation. It is
the very forced nature of a certain type of autonomy and flexibility that can be
the focus of critical scrutiny in psychology.
For example, using Rose’s notion of neo-liberal discourses of governmental-
ity, Mat Partner has analysed the UK government’s White Paper (2001) on
services for those with learning difficulties, showing how these individuals are
now understood as both consumers of services and as potential workers in
the job market. Thus, while the government has taken on board ideas from the
social model of disability, seeing social barriers as the main disabling factor for
people with learning difficulties, it does not see their identity in connection with
the more radical agendas of the disability movement. Rather, with the assistance
of advocates, all barriers must be removed to individual consumer choices in a
privatized market for services, and help must be provided for individuals to
become workers wherever possible (Partner, forthcoming). In this way,
autonomous identity is seen to be achieved by way of individualized work
and consumerism, rather than through links with others within which a more
spontaneous, interactive identity might be formed alongside social solidarities.
Furthermore, the White Paper is not just a textual representation of how things
should be for those with learning difficulties; it is also a blueprint for the
remodelling of services, benefit payments, and access to social facilities that will
have major effects on the social and material conditions of the lives of
individuals, changing them forever. Such changes will also have a profound
impact on the way others see people with learning difficulties and, in turn, the
way in which they view their own identity.
It could then be said that there are two main ways in which neo-liberal
influenced market economies and governments are attempting to create modern
subjectivities, constituting us primarily as workers and consumers. This is so not
only for those directly reliant on government services and benefits, but also for
the rest of society as well. Social surveys in the UK and other leading economies
have found the number of hours people are working is growing, while at the
same time benefits for individuals – such as unemployment, sickness and
retirement pensions – are being curtailed so that more people will have to work
for more of their life span (Hertz, 2001). In addition, the sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman (1983) noted how freedom of choice is now largely posed as choice of
consumer goods on the market, while other life choices and activities – such as
democratic choice of political parties or political activity through trade unions
and other organizations – is narrowing. These are two ways in which the power
of modern neo-liberal capitalism could be said to constitute individuals as

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subjects, through freedom of choice being limited to the market and by creating
an imperative for everyone to work in more flexible and unlimited ways – a
flexibility and lack of limits that suits the needs of globalized capitalism rather
than the needs of workers.
But are we the mere subjects of such powers? Are we not selves who are also
open to other social, intersubjective influences and, as such, possible agents of
resistance? As Alberto Melucci (1989) has pointed out, the manifest aspect of
political acts of resistance, like anti-capitalist and anti-globalization public
protests, rest on the latent aspect of these movements, which are the cultural
networks in which people live according to alternative social values and norms,
such as the social networks among squatters or anarchists, or the relations and
beliefs of those in trade unions or religious groups. (e.g., in the UK, the Quakers
were always a social group that underpinned the peace movement). These latent
aspects of social movements are deep rooted in everyday life and interrelate with
manifest social movements, in that it is through the cultural networks of daily
life that selves actually put into practice their alternative values and lifestyles, so
that squatters may practice living without property ownership and Quakers
may practice non-violence in their relations with others. In this way, as social
individuals with a deep-seated sense of subjective life, our subjectivity is not one
of pure subjection to others or to ourselves. Instead, social relations with others
can also bring us into contact with other unofficial social worlds, values and
ideologies, freeing us as selves from the more official ideologies, lifestyles and
forms of subjectivity based upon work and consumerism.
Naomi Klein (2001) has also illustrated how the very symbols of neo-liberal
consumer capitalism, which act to shape our subjective landscape of social
meanings and values, can become points of resistance and organization for
networks opposing the power of modern consumerism and multi-national
corporations. For example, Coca-Cola is no longer just part of a lifestyle choice
for modern consumers, for it is also the symbol of a global corporation that is
tangibly present in everyday life to those who want to oppose multi-national
capitalism and consumerism. It is also a symbol to work against for those on low
wages in the company’s South American bottling plants, where trade unionists
struggling to improve working conditions are being violently intimidated. Thus,
the symbols of multi-national corporations become targets for local groups of
protesters and a point of contact between people across the globe in their very
different everyday contexts. Because of the Internet, these global links and
solidarities can develop with sparse bureaucracy and minimal hierarchy: it is
thousands of movements linked together seeking to disperse power as widely and
evenly as possible. An interesting project for critical psychology would be to
investigate if new forms of social selves are emerging in these networks with a
subjectivity that is not primarily subjected to domination and control, instead
acting to disperse power. Such a form of subjectivity would not relate to others or
to itself solely as the subject of power, but as the agent of its dispersal.

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The agent of resistance would then no longer be the Marxist ideal of the
historical agent of labour, or the post-structural notion of a deconstructed subject,
fluid, fragmented and decentred, formed in the slippages, tensions and fissures of
language (understood, it seems, more in Saussure’s sense of langue rather than
parole or everyday speech). Nor would the agent of resistance be that of Nietzsche
and Baudelaire, one who turns themselves into a work of art, for this agent of
resistance is highly individualized in two sense: firstly, its powers of resistance seem
to be given to it purely as an individual who, through exercising these powers, can
rise above its social context: and secondly, this leaves in question the relation of
this individual to those around him or her and thus calls into question the
possibility of a more democratic politics. (Indeed, Nietzsche was scathing about
democratic politics believing that the Übermensch would re-enslave the common
herd.) Instead of this, the agent of resistance could be understood as the social self
of everyday life, formed in the relations of the everyday world, both official and
unofficial; a self that is a subject of power in some respects yet open to the
possibility of immersion in alternative social worlds, or to the influence of the
values and beliefs of various ideologies. A subject of power, certainly, but power
that is heterogeneous, embedded in the relational contexts of everyday life with its
various cultures and sub-cultures, social networks and groups, out of which
emerge fully-rounded, if always unfinalized, selves.
This conception of the agent of resistance paves the way for the possibility of
more democratic forms of politics emerging from the opposition to the more
curtailed democracy that currently exist in neo-liberal forms of capitalism.
Indeed, as J.G. Ballard has recently remarked, the West seems to be entering an
era of ‘‘soft dictatorship’’ in which key decisions are taken by an economic and
political elite, while the majority of people are seduced by consumer choices. In
this context, a conception of an agent of resistance would be a pure academic
exercise were there not the glimmerings of the emergence of such selves. I think
we can see some evidence for this in the episodic yet intense bursts of democratic
political actions in opposition to global capitalism and in the recent anti-war
protests against the war on Iraq. In terms of the loose interconnections between
anti-capitalist protestors, which aims to democratically spread power as widely
and evenly as possible, Naomi Klein has written that,
[w]hat seems to be emerging organically is not a movement for a single global
government but a vision of an increasingly connected international network
of very local initiatives, each built on reclaimed public spaces, and, through
participatory forms of democracy, made more accountable than either
corporate or state institutions. If this movement has an ideology it is
democracy, not only at the ballot box but woven into every aspect of our
lives. (Klein, 2001, pp. 456–457)
How deep and wide such calls for participatory democracy go can be
witnessed by the anti-war protests on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003. The

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anti-war demonstration in London in February 2003 was the largest public

protest in modern British history in which up to three million people of diverse
backgrounds took to the streets because they felt that the Blair government was
not taking note of their concerns over the war. What comes across in reports of
that day is the anger felt by people whose views were being ignored, but also a
sense of exhilaration about being able to reclaim public space in order to
express their views (Burkitt, 2005). The calm and ordered demonstration was
not an outpouring of anger, but an example of democracy in action where
people came together to articulate their views and take action to try to stop a
war going ahead in their name. It signals what Hanna Arendt (1973) pointed
out about the changed character of modern political mobilization, in that,
rather than being outpourings of destructive anger, they are more about the
exercise of political capacities. In modern political mobilization, the aim of
collective action is to establish a public space of civic freedom and participation
for all people, something I think was evident in the anti-war demonstrations. As
Klein said, local initiatives have to be built on reclaimed public spaces.
Despite these fragments of evidence, a speculative piece like this can start to
sound highly idealistic in its view of the potential for political mobilization and
the possibilities of the agents of resistance. That is why I feel that critical
psychology could perhaps focus more in future on studies of social movements
and the selves who form them. Certainly within critical psychology something
like this has already started to happen in the work on the Hearing Voices
Network, which is a group of people trying to understand the experience of
hearing voices by developing their own narratives in dialogue with each other,
rather than relying solely on the ‘‘expert’’ classifications of psychiatry
(Blackman, 2001). In addition, critical psychologists continue to understand
types of experience previously classified as ‘‘pathological’’ and, thus, individua-
lized and psychologized, in its social context, setting ‘‘personal’’ or ‘‘mental’’
problems in the social milieu out of which they emerge. A recent, excellent
example of how this can be done is the study of ‘‘paranoia’’ by John Cromby
and David Harper (forthcoming) that looks at the social relations – and the
material conditions and social structures, such as social class and levels of
deprivation, which mediate social relations – through which this experience can
be made sense of. Thus, there may be some environments marked by high levels
of material deprivation and crime in which degrees of suspicion and mistrust are
completely understandable. It is not that society is the sole cause of ‘‘paranoia’’,
more that social, historical and material circumstances are one of the mediating
relational factors that influence paranoid subjectivity. This type of work is a
form of resistance to the style of thinking in mainstream psychology, where
‘‘paranoid’’ subjectivity is understood as the result of individual sickness or
problems rather than an understandable response to toxic social conditions.
Thus, the concept of subjectivity is bound to remain central to any critical
psychology in the future and seems a highly appropriate title for this journal.

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Yet it has been my contention here that we need to remain critically aware of
some of the antecedents and implications of the term subjectivity, so that it may
not be appropriate to use in all contexts. The term is synonymous with the
subjugation of the self, both to others and to its own conscious reflection and
conscience, and this needs to be set against that other term more common in
social psychology – that of ‘‘self’’. It may be unhelpful to simply substitute the
term subjectivity for that of self, as in a world of heterogeneous powers and
multiple social influences individuals can emerge as fully rounded selves with
varying degrees of critical awareness and powers of agency. While the self who
resists oppressive forms of power may be under-researched in some branches of
critical psychology, this is a possibility for future work. It could be that we are,
to varying degrees, only partially the subjects of power.

A b o u t th e a u t h o r

Ian Burkitt is Reader in Social Science in the Department of Social Sciences and
Humanities, University of Bradford, UK. He teaches Sociology and Social
Psychology and is the author of numerous works on self-identity, embodiment
and emotions as understood within a social context. His latest book is Social
Selves: Theories of Self and Society (Second Edition) published by Sage.

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