Perezhivanie, Emotions and Subjectivity: Setting the Stage

Abstract

This chapter captures and explores three key themes relevant to the concepts of emotions, perezhivanie and subjectivity. In analysing and transcending how these concepts have been primarily discussed is the past, this chapter goes beyond social determinism and theorises how a cultural-historical perspective on these concepts has led to new understandings of the human psyche. Rather than examining emotions, perezhivanie and subjectivity as the result of internalised operations, this chapter puts forward the view that these concepts must be studied as a generative system inseparable from the individual. In advancing upon the original writings of Vygotsky and others who have followed this theoretical tradition, it is argued that all three concepts are inseparable from the complex network within which human activities and human relationships form and develop. It is through understanding the human psyche as the unity of social, personal and environmental characteristics, that it becomes possible to advance on the essence of the three concepts that are the focus of this book, and thereby generate new understandings of what might constitute a contemporary reading of perezhivanie, emotions and subjectivity.