Subjectivity: an Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Abstract

The term subjectivity has widely used in the humanities and social sciences, however, in a quite generic sense, without the necessary conceptual clarity and precision. In psychology, in its various theoretical and methodological approaches, for example, subjectivity has become just another jargon without any significance, thereby obfuscating the field’s own specific theoretical and conceptual approaches. In that sense, this article aims to analyze the concept of subjectivity in the light of different theoretical perspectives of the field of psychology. Specifically, it considers the philosophical analysis of the subject and language, the perspective of social-historical psychology and the discursive approach of institutional psychology. Among the specificities and divergences, this expanded analysis highlights a common element of fundamental, theoretical-methodological distinction. Namely, subjectivity is simultaneously produced by, and (re)productive of, the historical, social and symbolic contents as a product of the educational or formative process, historically embedded and situated in a complex space that shapes certain contradictory social processes, which then determine and / or reassemble objective and subjective processes of submission-resistance or, in other words, alienation-emancipation.

Keywords: subjectivity; discourse; social-historical psychology; institutional psychology.