In contemporary social and political theory it is not unusual to hear questions as to how a subject is possible. By a subject, of course, one means a self-directing agency that is not a mere puppet of context or environment. In social and political theory, the subject does not refer to human individuals, but rather “the subject of history”, eg, the proletariat. It seems to me that we would do well to abandon this sort of talk. The term “subject” renders a number of things invisible, taking a number of questions off the table. This is because subject has connotations of an isolated individual. Sartre draws a valuable contrast between collectives and groups. A collective is a sort of anonymous social relation in which every individual is exchangeable with other individuals and roles are given. He gives the example of queuing for a bus. Everyone takes a ticket and hopes to get a seat on the bus. Each person is alloted a position that is exchangeable with that of any other position. Here we might think of the Lacanian symbolic and how it allots certain ego/social positions.
By contrast, a groups refers to relations where self-directing praxis Emerges among the members of the group. The members of a group are united around a common project, such as, for example, Lacan’s L’ecole. They aren’t merely passive beings defined by pre-existent social relations, but rather actively transcend the given of the social field and define a common project. As a consequence, groups are self-directing.
There are, in my view, a number of advantages to speaking about groups rather than subjects. First, of course, we can seek the conditions under which groups emerge out of collectives or come into being. Sartre has an exquisite analysis of all of the conditions that led to the storming of the Bastille and the invention of a new unity and the broader conditions that occasioned that invention. However, the concept of group rather than subject brings into relief other valuable questions. With the concept of group we get the question of how praxis is coordinated among diverse individuals. In other words, we get all sorts of practical questions pertaining to how individuals invent a group or themselves or mediate their differences. Likewise, we are afforded with the opportunity to analyze the microfacisms that emerge within groups, how groups ossify and become collectives, and how invention becomes self-defeating and alienating dogma.
The question of political theory is not a question of how subjects are possible, but of how groups are possible. The problem with the concept of subject in political theory is that it illicitly unifies that which must be produced or unified, foreclosing these sorts of questions. As a consequence, we should eradicate this term from our vocabulary when doing political theory, instead asking how a group is possible. It is groups, not individual subjects, that are the subject of political theory.
Larval Subjects . 
November 24, 2010 at 4:23 am
You wrote:
“The question of political theory is not a question of how subjects are possible, but of how groups are possible. The problem with the concept of subject in political theory is that it illicitly unifies that which must be produced or unified, foreclosing these sorts of questions. As a consequence, we should eradicate this term from our vocabulary when doing political theory, instead asking how a group is possible. It is groups, not individual subjects, that are the subject of political theory.”
I’m wondering why can’t we talk about both individual subjectivities – with the processes that generate them, and/or dominate them – as well as groups? Isn’t a social assemblage, or ‘body politic’ simultaneously composed of individuals with psyches (embodied subjectivity) while also being enmeshed into collectives and groups?
D&G: “In short everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.” (1988, emphasis added)
Why limit the analysis?
November 24, 2010 at 4:44 am
We can, but the question of politics is anquestion of organized groups and not individuals. A number of questions are obscured by talk of the subject in political theory. It’s a question of emphasis and the proper object of social and political theory.
November 24, 2010 at 5:23 am
Levi, I think the ‘proper’ object of social political theory is to analysis social complexity (and the world at large) as it is given, as it is disclosed in its fullness, with all its multiplicities, levels and zones of activity, and not to reduce politics to a macro scale analysis.
In Political Affect, Protevi did a fabulous job of investigated the relationship between the social and the somatic viz. how our bodies, psyches, and social settings are intricately and intimately linked. A complex analysis of the governing dynamics of real-world regimes requires just such a multi-scaled sensitivity. I think Guattari suggests a similar thing in The Three Ecologies.
I certainly agree that focusing only on subjects is also needlessly reductive and does indeed obscure, but its simple not the case that we need to privilege one sort of consideration over the other. But when you say, “we should eradicate this term from our vocabulary when doing political theory”, i comes off as anti-subject, or as an anti-individualism.
To be fair, however, I think I you might be trying to point out how politics is inherently social therefore it is more effective in practice to conduct politics at a group level, rather than arguing for an exclusive group analysis. If that is what your point is then I agree that politics must operate with a decidedly social orientation.
November 24, 2010 at 5:33 am
I’ve repeatedly made these points about the need to simultaneously think the individual and larger scale entities in my discussions of mereology. That doesn’t change the fact that political change takes place through collective practice, nor does it exclude the analysis of the impact of social assemblages on individuals.
November 24, 2010 at 5:36 am
fair enough Levi, i don’t want to bust your chops over this, i’m just trying to put the suggestion of privileging groups over subjects into context…
November 25, 2010 at 9:33 am
This reminded me of a critique I recently read of Žižek: “Žižek doesn’t talk about international politics, backroom negotiations, the WTO and the IMF, food prices, etc. He talks about Berlusconi and Chavez and Stalin and Obama and Sarkozy. This is the only reason why Žižek can simultaneously denounce the organics movement and Berlusconian hubris. He sees everything at the level of the individual and the individual psyche. Even mass movements operate at the level of the individual.”