What Is Subjectivity and How Can We Study It Empirically? Understanding the Feeling of Certainty Through Psychoanalysis and Ethnography

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the theoretical and methodological challenges that arise in the empirical study of subjectivity in general and the subjectivity of certainty in particular. It approaches the feeling of certainty from two theoretical perspectives based on the Kleinian and Lacanian schools of thought and argues that each perspective is based on divergent but complementary pre-theoretical assumptions about subjectivity. While the Kleinian approach focuses on analysis of object-relations, the Lacanian theory of subjectivity focuses on language and symbolic representation. Drawing on anthropological material on Islamic piety, the chapter argues that robust psychosocial analysis must attend to experiences of both object-relations and symbolic representations in the analysis of subjectivity.