dc.description.abstract | In reading poststructuralist thinkers like Butler and Foucault I have gotten the insight of my self as a subject being not the maker of my >self> and my >identity>, but a participant in an always changing context of sociality that is constituted by and at the same time reproduce the language, the norms and the ideas that I create myself, and even the idea of having a >self>, in relation to. This proposes me the interest of putting these understandings in relation to what is >myself> and my social world and the challenges >we> stand in front of.
If we are indeed made by the discourses, norms and the sociality that surrounds us (this context contains our will for and our options of agency whether we oppose the norms or supply them), and the lines that draw up our options of possible >being> is constituted by communication of language and symbols: how do the (>western>) >subject> respond when the context of its being is dominated by the concepts of globalization, individualization and the knowledge of the unsustainability of its own living? And how is the >subject> formed when these concepts mediates through an never ending, high speed sea of information, sociality, moralisation that is made possible through social and digital media? When the discourse that forms me suddenly, in an escalating speed, opens up for me to participate and when the norms become a product that could be formed by me at the same time as their power over me are even more dominating due to the intensity of their place in my social world, how does the notion of my >self> and the making of >me> take place? I ask the question: At this point where the world is highly at risk of an unsustainable future due to overconsumption and the end of natural recourses and where the concept of globalization should offer us a notion of the >west’s> continuing colonial suppression of a poorer world, is it possible to se oneself in the bigger picture?
The thesis first contains an exploration in to Butler’s, with some help from Foucault’s, thinking on the >subject> and its making, witch is then, with inspiration from the genealogical method of deriving which ideas about >truth> that constructs distinctions about life that >makes> human experience, used to analyse the context and leading concepts of an abstract >western> subjects sociality. I also draw upon Mohanty, Giddens and Mahmood to make a poststructuralist, feminist, postcolonial notion of what these concepts mean. | sv |