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anti-humanist conceptions of subjectivity
(Soper, 1986). In geography, this distinction
is often articulated through debates about
agency and structure (seestructuration the-
ory). Emphasizinghuman agency, humanist
versions of subject formation take identity as
given in experience. ‘Man’ (some feminists
argue that the gendering of this term is by no
means incidental: seemasculinism;phallo-
centrism) is at the centre of the world and, in
order to be fully human, has the ethical
responsibility to act autonomously, to claim
his agency (e.g. Ley and Samuels, 1978).
Anti-humanists de-centre the subject insofar
as they interpret subjectivity as an outcome
of subjection to societal ideologies or regula-
tory techniques, and question the capacity and
the authority of individuals to direct their
actions self-consciously and autonomously.
In the most influential anti-humaniststructur-
alistaccount of subjectivity, Althusser argued
that subjectivity, especially notions of indi-
viduality andcitizenship, are ideological con-
structs (seeideology;structuralism). We
areinterpellatedor ‘hailed’ as particular sub-
jects through the institutions of the family,
education,religionandstate, and through
our own daily practices in relation to them.
Subjectivities are built up through these prac-
tices of subjection, but these are multiple and
sometimes conflicting, always constituted in
particular contexts. Despite the seeming role
for geography (as context) in Althusser’s
account (Probyn, 2003), in the discipline of
geography his theory of the subject often has
been rejected as narrowly economistic. In
cultural studies, particularly film studies,
Althusser is credited with exactly the opposite
effect, for opening a realm for ideology separate
from the economy. Drawing on psychoanaly-
sis, Althusser posited a more psychologically
complex subject for Marxist theory.
There is considerable variation among post-
structuralist theories of subject formation, but
they have two broad characteristics: they view
subject formation as an effect ofpowerrela-
tions; and they posit the boundaries that
define identity as intertwined with processes
of disidentification, such that the effect of
identification is a fragile and contradictory
achievement. To give a sense of the former,
in Foucault’spost-structuralist anti-humanist
history of Western subjectivity, subject posi-
tions are seen to be constructed within and
throughdiscourse. He argues that, from the
eighteenth century, discourses ofsexuality
and individualrightshave altered our percep-
tions of subjectivity andsociety, and haveacted as techniques of disciplinary control
(seedisciplinary power). They introduced
new identities (e.g. the homosexual, the per-
vert, the hysterical woman), territorialized
bodily pleasures as sexual, and brought the
individual into new relations with the social
throughbiopower.
The intertwined processes of identification
and disidentification work differently in differ-
ent theories. Psychoanalytic theories have
offered rich resources for thinking about the
difficulties of recognizing difference, traced
from a young child’s initial difficulties of regis-
tering sexual difference from a loved parent.
From the perspective ofpost-colonialism,
theorists such as Homi Bhabha have drawn
on Freud’s notion of the fetish (which func-
tions as a mechanism for both recognizing and
disavowing sexual difference) as a way
of interpreting the ambivalences of colonial
discourse and relations between colonized–
colonizer. The concept ofabjection, which
describesaprocessby which what is reviled
in oneself is denied and relocated in another,
offers another means for theorizing stigmatiz-
ing discourses oforientalism,racism, able-
ism andhomophobia and heterosexism.If
psychoanalytic theories draw our attention to
the processes whereby what is unbearable or
disallowed in oneself and our loved ones is cast
outside and used to stigmatize others (but
imperfectly – our identity is constantly
haunted and destabilized by what is disavowed
or abject),deconstructionoffers a reverse
perspective, of the way in which identity is
always defined in relation to and inhabited
by what it is not (the constitutive outside).
Recognizing the exclusions that found every
identity, and the necessity of keeping this pro-
cess ofboundaryconstruction and the purifi-
cation of space in view (Sibley, 1995), have
been important ideas for recent theorizing
aboutcitizenshipandradical democracy
(seeprivate and public spheres).
Anti-humanist accounts have been criti-
cized for closing off the possibilities and
responsibilities of agency, rights,ethicsand
politics. Four responses suggest the opposite.
First, discourses are polyvalent: they structure
identities without determining them. The
identity of ‘homosexual’ can become a
resource for persons thus identified when they
demand rights in the name of this identity. So
too, the meaning of the term ‘queer’ has been
reworked, from a stigmatizing identity to a
critique of heteronormativity (see queer
theory). Second, individuals are subject to
multiple discourses and subject positions,Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 729 1.4.2009 3:23pmSUBJECT/SUBJECTIVITY