Pedagogies Against the State
In our everyday conversations and relations with others we treat individuals and ourselves as stable entities. We relate to each other as though we are responding to a particular person with a specific identity, if we know them or even if we do not. We tend to assume a clear distinction between people and the world in which they live. Frequently we use language as though it was a transparent medium of communication in which we express clear meaning, epitomised by phrases such as, ‘do you see what I mean,’ or ‘I see what you mean.’ Frequently we regard vision as a ‘natural’ universal process in the sense that in our cultural settings we assume we see the world in a similar way. We suppose that knowledge is neutral and associated with ideas of human progress and development. However, just about all of these ‘everyday’ suppositions that facilitate social interaction have been the subject of detailed interrogation in the worlds of philosophy, sociology, art, science, anthropology, literary theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and other disciplines, concerned with trying to understand how the human subject is formed. Indeed the term ‘human subject’ is indicative of a shift from viewing people as free-thinking individuals functioning independently in society towards understanding them as subjects who are largely affected and regulated as subjects by their social contexts and conditions.