What is it like to be a person today? To think, feel, and act as an individual in a time of accelerated social, cultural, technological, and political change? This question is inspired by the double meaning of subjectivity as both the "first-personness" of consciousness (being a subject of experience) and the conditioning of that consciousness within society (being subject to power, authority, or influence). The contributors to this volume explore the perils and promise of the self in today's world. Their shared aim is to describe where we stand and what is at stake as we move ahead in the twenty-first century. They do so by interrogating the historical moment as a predicament of the subject. Their shared focus is on subjectivity as a dialectic of self and other, or individual and society, and how the defining tensions of subjectivity are reflected in contemporary forms of individualism, identity, autonomy, social connection, and political consciousness.

But today normality itself is open to medical modification.

Subjects in Process investigates the human subject in the first decade of the twenty-first century in relation to changing social circumstances and belongings. The concept of 'subjectivity' in the Western tradition has focused on the figure of the autonomous, self-conscious, and rooted individual. This book develops a conception of the subject that is nomadic and fluid rather than grounded and complete. Written from a perspective that takes account of globalisation - and the pressures that it places upon individuals and communities - this book draws upon Nietzsche and the post-modern thinkers that followed him. Arguing that a modern conception of the subject must be one based on cultural exchanges and transformations, this book is sure to provide new insights for anyone concerned with or interested in the identity of the individual now and in the future.

Reformulates the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's model of subjectivity for architecture, by surveying the prolific effects of architectural encounter, and the spaces that figure in them.

Explores the history of theories of selfhood, from the Classical era to the present, and demonstrates how those theories can be applied in literary and cultural criticism. Donald E. Hall: * examines all of the major methodologies and theoretical emphases of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including psychoanalytic criticism, materialism, feminism and queer theory * applies the theories discussed in detailed readings of literary and cultural texts, from novels and poetry to film and the visual arts * offers a unique perspective on our current obsession with perfecting our selves * looks to the future of selfhood given the new identity possibilities arising out of developing technologies. Examining some of the most exciting issues confronting cultural critics and readers today, Subjectivity is the essential introduction to a fraught but crucial critical term and a challenge to the way we define our selves.

Intriguing examination of works by Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein, Margaret Mead, and other scientists in terms of subjectivity and the Bayesian approach to statistical analysis. "An insightful work." — Choice. 2001 edition.

For centuries, medicine aimed to treat abnormalities. But today normality itself is open to medical modification. Equipped with a new molecular understanding of bodies and minds, and new techniques for manipulating basic life processes at the level of molecules, cells, and genes, medicine now seeks to manage human vital processes. The Politics of Life Itself offers a much-needed examination of recent developments in the life sciences and biomedicine that have led to the widespread politicization of medicine, human life, and biotechnology. Avoiding the hype of popular science and the pessimism of most social science, Nikolas Rose analyzes contemporary molecular biopolitics, examining developments in genomics, neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychopharmacology and the ways they have affected racial politics, crime control, and psychiatry. Rose analyzes the transformation of biomedicine from the practice of healing to the government of life; the new emphasis on treating disease susceptibilities rather than disease; the shift in our understanding of the patient; the emergence of new forms of medical activism; the rise of biocapital; and the mutations in biopower. He concludes that these developments have profound consequences for who we think we are, and who we want to be.

This book explores a variety of forms of radical political subjectivity. It takes its cue from the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the Occupy Movement and the European Anti-Austerity Movement, alongside the wider opposition to authoritarian and neoliberal forms of governance from which they sprang, in order to ask an urgent series of questions about the subject of radical politics: Who or what is it that engages in resistance? Who or what should they be? And how are we to negotiate the many complexities of that second question? The contributions, drawing on a wide range of theoretical traditions, offer a rich series of provocations towards new ways of conceptualising, evaluating and imagining radical political praxis. They engage different kinds of subjects, including protestors, dancers, self-burners, academics, settlers and humans, in order to think through the ways in which contemporary subjects are constituted within and work to unsettle dominant relations of power. Together, the chapters open up spaces to think about how political and intellectual commitment to social change can be enlivened through attention to the subject of radical politics. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.