On the production of subjectivity

Technological transformations oblige us to be aware of both universalising and reductionist homogenisations of subjectivity and of a heterogenetic tendency, that is to say, of a reinforcement of the heterogeneity and singularisation of its components. The machinic production of subjectivity can work for the better or for the worse. There exists an anti-modernist attitude which involves a massive rejection of technological innovation, particularly as it concerns the information revolution. It's impossible to judge such a machinic evolution either positively or negatively; everything depends on its articulation within collective assemblages of enunciation. At best there is the creation, or invention, of new Universes of reference; at the worst there is the deadening influence of the mass media to which millions of individuals are currently condemned.

Deleuze and Foucault - who emphasised the non-human part of subjetivity - to suspect them of taking anti-humanist positions! That's no the issue. Rather, it's a question of being aware of the existence of machines of subjectivation which don't simply work within the "the faculties of the soul", interpersonal relations or intra-familial complexes. Subjectivity does not only produce itself through the psychogenetic stages of psychoanalysis or the "mathemes" of the Unconscious, but also in the large-scale social machines of language and the mass media - which cannot be describle as human.

Félix Guattari

1932 - 1992