The ever-diminishing liminal space of being: the totalizing subjectification of being

Abstract

Within this article, I make multiple interconnected arguments around the idea of the subject, the process of subjectivization, the essentializing nature of most of our research processes in academia, the socializing of existence, the loss of ‘nature,’ and the obliteration of what Homi Bhabha has so accurately described as liminal space: a space where humans may escape the socializing processes of performance and existence that is demanded in spaces that dictate social aggrandizement. Building upon Foucault’s, Butler's, and Bey's conceptions of the subject and the processes of subjectivization, I will argue, coming from a postanarchist vantage, that the social’s machinations of subjection and subjectivization have undergone various kinds of evolutions throughout the later part of the twentieth century and even more in the last twenty years. For instance, using Homi Bhabha’s theorization of liminal space, I will then point to the ever-decreasing liminal spaces that humanity has to be human with each other outside of the social and scientific realm of study, policy, and existence as such. Ultimately, I will argue that modern all-pervasive systems of identification, particularly those found within realms of liberalistic research (while providing a commendable service in aiding our experiences within the social apparatuses around us–explicating them in various ways) continue/support the functioning of such social apparatuses that they may superficially want to tear down but unintentionally and from a place of power and influence continue the subjectivization of entire populations/groups/figments/folks/communities within tightly controlled spaces of reality always already defined as the social.