Advances in Subjectivity from a Cultural-Historical Perspective: Unfoldings and Consequences for Cultural Studies Today

Abstract

This chapter outlines a general picture of the phenomenon of subjectivity in Soviet psychology. In order to do this, the author organised a non-conventional group of authors, who came from different traditions of Soviet psychology and made important contributions for development of the topic of subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint. These traditions that historically were presented as excluded to one another, by the classical Soviet's official historiography, are discussed in their point of contact and in their complementation as the basis for developing a new representation of subjectivity. It also presents the turn toward the study of the consciousness and symbolical realities of authors who appeared as being followers of the Activity Theory in early moments of their work. After drawing such a picture about the phenomenon of Soviet psychology related to the antecedents of subjectivity, the author develops on his theoretical proposal about subjectivity. He develops a representation of subjectivity as a system that permits to understand how the historical experiences and the simultaneous contexts of the individual's current life experiences appear together in a new units of subjectivity, defined by the author in the intertwined movements between subjective configurations and subjective senses. Finally it discussed the relevance of dialogue for this proposal about subjectivity. On this matter, the author establishes the differences between this proposal and those that characterise the dialogical psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)