Dividual Subjectivation in World Society

Abstract

Today, new insights into our interdependency with biotic masses, ecological ensembles, and technological and cultural practices in a growing world society all create the need to redefine human subjectivation. Since the so-called individual cannot be separated from these different involvements without endangering his/her existence, we should rethink our self-understanding in terms of the ‘undivided’ person and recognize that this concept expresses a misleading negation of our inevitable participations. It should therefore be replaced by the modified term ‘dividuation’, which endeavours to indicate our multidirectional and often ambivalent forms of entanglement and involuntary co-constitution by technological, cultural or even non-human ‘others’. The ever-specific dividuation has to be recognized and moderated in order to keep up our cohesion and psychophysical metastability.