Identity and Subjectivity

Three problems have marked the stages in the development of this move in contemporary rhetorical theory. The beginning lay in George Herbert Mead's notions of the role of the communication in the formation of the identity of the individual. Mead theorized the individual integrated through what he called "gestures" (that we would call "symbolic acts") reflected off significant others to construct our notions of ourselves. Mead founded symbolic interactionism and his followers began to map the strategies by which identity developed and evolved.

Mead's notion of how the identity of individuals was formed involved an inherently social context. So it was a small extension to seeing how groups of people were integrated by common discourses and the symbolic actions that they performed with those discourses. Social order could be seen as arrays of identifications jockeying for position, gaining and losing strength, clashing with others, aligning with still others, and defining the texture of social action in their activity. Of particular interest was how new identities formed and became the grounds of social action. McGee and then Charland theorized the ways in which rhetoric birthed identity.

The introduction of new identities seeking power in the competitive environment of societies of interlocking identities gave rise to the third stage of this work: subjectivity. The question was how the process of identity formation empowered individuals and positions to resist hegemonic discourses of control. This overt insertion of the freedom/domination problem led to questions about the tensions that compose social order: silence and voice, power and powerlessness, individual and community. How can the rhetor empower his/her rhetoric? This became known as the problem of agency or subjectivity.

Clusters: rhetoric and identity, constructing the subject, constructing agency, constituting subjectivity, <the people>.

Questions to Stimulate Thought:

The following questions will help you orient to the problems of this move:

* = Reading for December 4
**= Reading for December 11

# = Reading for December 18

Basic Reading:

Additional Reading:

Recent Work: (Selected by Heather Adams and Tom Geary)

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