As I’ve been learning about the way in which literature is studied, my own work has focused on two things; the way in which history is incorporated into literature, and how subjectivities (for my purposes that means “identities”, although there several dozen other possible definitions) are formed. Lately I’ve been thinking a good deal about the problems of subjectivity.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two major schools of thought on the matter.
- I’ll call the first school essentialism. It’s often associated with liberal humanism and the Romantics, but it goes back significantly further, right to Plato. The idea is that deep down on some level we may not be able to identify (some might choose to use terms like “the soul”) we are all the same. This is an attractive idea for a writer because it gives us a sense that our work might potentially be understood by everyone, and even better, understood in the way we intended. Five minutes with any group of readers tells us this is not so. This particular view doesn’t allow for the action of socio-cultural pressures in determining not only who a reader is, but how they think about the world and literature.
- Next we have the postmodern camp, which tells us that all readers are fundamentally different because their subjectivities, and thus their reactions to literature, are all constructed by their race, gender, and economic situation (among other factors). This is attractive because it allows us to look more closely at our culture and the way we use art and language, and better yet, the way they use us. But it too is fundamentally flawed, because it makes one assumption it cannot explain: socio-cultural factors must have something to act on; the sociolect does not create physical human beings out of whole cloth.
I’m reminded of the argument between Darwin and Galton over gemmules. Gemmules were thought to be particles that gave the body of a given creature its characteristic; features like big feet, blue eyes, and so on. Galton thought they circulated through the blood, and Darwin thought they were diffused through the body via the cell walls. Neither of them thought to consider where the body came from to begin with. The same is true for postmodern theorists. So the sociolect acts on us and that’s how we get our identity. But what is “us”? On what does the sociolect act?
Following the postmodern idea to its logical extension, we must say this: under exactly the same socio-cultural/economic pressures, I must turn out exactly the same as you. That presumes, then, that at some level, we are all the same. Because if the socio-cultural/economic pressures did not turn us into the same person, then we must start out fundamentally different. There must be something essential about us, which postmodern theorists don’t like to consider.
So here’s my thought: subjectivities are formed when socio-political/economic pressures act on the something that is us (what some might call “the soul”). I don’t think that something is identical in all of us, but I do think it has the same properties, simply because I think in some ways it’s dependent on biology. Our brains all function through the same set of biochemical processes, even if those processes are arranged differently. Therefore subjectivities are formed when the sociolect acts on the essential quasi-biological core of a human being.
Like all my theories this is vastly underdeveloped, but the seeds of something are germinating.
