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Reassembling individual subjects

Events and decisions in troubled times

University of Cambridge, UK, ch10001{at}hermes.cam.ac.uk

The troubled times in which many anthropologists work require the conceptualization of singular analytical subjects: individual actors who are constituted as subjects in particular circumstances. The difficulty of this task lies in the fact that 'the death of the subject' has been convincingly argued for in so many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet several deconstructivist philosophers have also proposed ideas that reassemble the subject, and this article discusses the work of Alain Badiou. Badiou defines the subject as one who recognizes the truth of a great historical event, but it is suggested here that anthropologists need a rather different theory capable of analysing individuals in more mundane circumstances. Here truth is not the issue, but fixing, if only temporarily, on 'who I am'. Debating with depictions of persons as actor-networks (Latour) or changing effects of perspectival relations (Strathern), it is argued that 'decision events' are occasions when the multiple strands of personhood achieve unity and singularity.

Key Words: event • history • individuality • multiplicity • singularity • subject

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4, 357-380 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499608096644


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