thoughtnote 2

The artifice of modern culture; its structures of value, knowledge, technique, and memory; make it necessary that the self be consciously constructed. We might argue that subjects simply exist and have no need of being constructed. However, culture, in its need to understand and empower itself, actively engages the subject as a topic of theory and investigation. Modernity has constructed its idea of subjectivity for numerous ends; some more neutral than others. As a culture constructs a metaphysics and epistemology in order to understand itself, a poetry to experience and express itself, and a mythology to comfort itself; it also develops various mechanism which use these constructs for their effectiveness in its exercise of power, both internally and externally. Thus the forces of political, economic, national and other such institutions have taken advantage of the modern subject-concept. They have used it to further their efficient operation, to defend or expand their territory (material or ideological), and they have worked to develop or change it accordingly. The notion of the subject both benefits and suffers from this involvement.

This double aspect contributes to the dialectics which propel cultures through change. Recently, this debate has questioned the foundations of western culture to their core. Modern thought, a tradition now in its own right, increasingly falls under attack by forces seeking a more inclusive, open and flexible culture . . . one more suitable to the increasing complexity of our means of interrelation and dividing up work, wealth and power. However, this attack does not preclude the complexity inherent in the deep structures of modernity. It is possible to strip away the biases external to the foundations of modernism and allow its foundations to inform us through the complexity which has so often been misunderstood, ignored, misrepresented or covered up by the powers that be. Such a resurrection must start with revisiting the metaphysical sites of the modern impulse. One such group of sites is that of the constructed subject and its implications. We exist as subjects and all enquiry ultimately begins there. However, subjects exist as part of reality as a whole, and as such, any inquiry into subjectivity immediately becomes an inquiry into the nature of reality itself.