First-person perspective and sociomaterial decentering: Studying technology from the standpoint of...

Original Article

First-person perspective and sociomaterialdecentering: Studying technology fromthe standpoint of the subject

Ernst SchraubeDepartment of Psychology and Educational Studies, Roskilde University,Universitetsvej 1, Roskilde DK-4000, Denmark.E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract The article argues for systematically including human subjectivity andthe first-person perspective in the theoretical and methodological framework of thesocial studies of technology. The first part of the analysis explores how the subjectivedimension of human life is conceptually articulated in science and technology studiesand discusses efforts within this field to overcome the dichotomy between humanbeings and technology. On this basis, the case is put for refining the conceptualinclusion of human subjectivity and agency, showing why this requires the first-personperspective and offering an outline of guiding principles for studying technology fromthe standpoint of the subject. The argument illustrates how a first-person perspectivecan overcome individualistic positions and opens up a situated, decentered andsocial-symmetrical epistemology that also embraces the analysis of the power andmaterialized action of technological artifacts.Subjectivity (2013) 6, 12–32. doi:10.1057/sub.2012.28

Keywords: subjectivity; first-person perspective; symmetry; technology as materializedaction; critical psychology of everyday life; science and technology studies

When research addresses the connection between human beings, technology

and society, and the significance of material artifacts in the conduct of

everyday life, the question arises of how one can overcome the widespread

dichotomy and discrepancy between human beings and technology. Human

beings create technological things and use them in their everyday life; yet,

conversely, technological things also shape human beings and their

experiences, thoughts and actions. Without the human being, there would

be no technology, and without technology, there would be no human beings.

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‘Technologies are not foreign to “human nature” but inseparable from it’,

explains historian of technology David Nye (2007, p. 2), they ‘have been part of

human society from as far back as archaeology can take us into the past’ (p. 7).

Hence, it is not only possible to talk of the social, but also of the technological

mediation of individual existence. How can we conceptualize this sociomaterial

mediation and the inner connection between human beings and technology in

the social studies of technology without, on one hand, identifying the human

being and technology or, on the other, reproducing the dichotomy and divide

between the producer and the product, sociality and materiality, human

creation and imagination?

This question is the focus of the following considerations. Starting

from a critical discussion of present Science and Technology Studies (STS),

I suggest that the dichotomy between human being and technology can

only be overcome by systematically including the subjective dimension of

human life. My central thesis is that including subjectivity necessarily

engages the first-person perspective. The concept refers to the point of

view of the ‘I’ and ‘we’. It encompasses the human subjects’ self and world

access and builds on a sociomaterially situated understanding of the human

being. In addition, I try to explain that including subjectivity and the first-

person perspective implies a fundamental epistemological shift toward a

research practice seeking to transcend the common external perspective on

phenomena – a ‘god trick’, as Donna Haraway (1991, p. 195) critically

termed it, a ‘view from above, from nowhere’ – by developing the situated

study of technology from the standpoint of the subject. This does not mean

that I am arguing for a subjectivist, individualistic or anthropocentric

position. On the contrary, I try to show that it is precisely the study of

technology based on human subjectivity and the first-person perspective,

which provides the foundation for a intersubjective symmetrical, socio-

material decentered thinking and a conceptual understanding of the

other that also embraces the powerful effects and materialized actions of

technological artifacts.

Subject and Decentering in STS

Although STS research generally tends to focus on society, culture, economics or

politics, the subjective dimension (or as some might say: the psychological

dimension) of science and technology has constituted an integrated part of this

inter- and trans-disciplinary field of study from its earliest days. That might

come as no surprise in a tradition of thought dealing with the interrelation

between science, technology and human life. However, there is also a more

specific reason for the inclusion of subjectivity that relates to a STS critique of

the idea of technological determinism. The critique of technological determinism

First-person perspective

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reveals that humans and societies are not just determined by technologies, on the

contrary, humans are – within their specific historical and societal contexts –

actively engaged in the creation and appropriation of the world of science and

technology (Smith and Marx, 1994). On the basis of this insight, the critique

elucidates that humans are not just causally effected by technological artifacts;

instead, they are ‘agentic subjects’ (Højgaard and Søndergaard), which can relate

to and act with them (Schraube, 1998, 2003). ‘By changing the shape of material

things’, Langdon Winner (1986, p. 14f) noticed, ‘we also change ourselves. In this

process human beings do not stand at the mercy of a great deterministic punch

press that cranks out precisely tailored persons at a certain rate during a given

historical period. Instead the situation y is one in which individuals are actively

involved in the daily creation and recreation, production and reproduction of the

world in which they live’. This insight into the active involvement of human

beings in the creation and appropriation of the technoscientific world in which

they live their everyday life establishes a constituent integration of subjectivity

within STS. Subjectivity conceptualized not in an isolated and worldless, but in a

contextualized and situated way. Such an understanding opens up the possibility

for a critical, decentered examination of the nature and significance of material

artifacts in human experience, thought and action.

This is not the place to elaborate on the multiplicity of STS approaches engaging

with the subjective dimension of science and technology in their theoretical and

methodological framework. Instead, I will take two currently influential traditions

of thought as an example and highlight how they approach the subject as well as

the practice of decentering. To begin with, I will discuss the work of Sherry Turkle

and what could be called subject-orientated STS, before considering actor-network

theory, primarily drawing on the work of Bruno Latour.

Subjects and evocative objects

Sherry Turkle’s work explores how new computer technologies are changing

human relationships and self-understandings. Her aim is to develop a language

that opens up and facilitates critical engagement with the emerging computer

culture and the transformations of the ways to thinking about oneself, others

and the social world. ‘Technology catalyzes changes’, Turkle (2005, p. 18f)

states, ‘not only in what we do but in how we think. It changes people’s

awareness of themselves, of one another, of their relationship with the worldy.

My focus isyon the “subjective computer.” This is the machine as it enters into

social life and psychological development, the computer as it affects the way we

think, especially the way we think about ourselves’. Her analyses are also

concerned with describing the problems, contradictions and vulnerabilities

produced in this relationship, and make them transparent. ‘These days, our

problems with the Net are becoming too distracting to ignore’, Turkle (2011)

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writes, advocating ‘a state of mind in which we are most open to facing

problems and reconsidering decisions’ (p. 294).

To create access to understand changes to people in the digital world, Turkle

developed a specific approach, which permeates her writings. ‘I had just spent

several years in Paris studying how psychoanalytic ideas had spread into

everyday life in France – how people were picking up and trying on this new

language for thinking about the self. I had come to MIT because I sensed that

something similar was happening with the language of computers’ (Turkle,

2011, p. ix). Texts such as Freud’s interpretation of dreams are read and

understood by recipients in particular ways, and ascribed a specific context-

dependent meaning. Moreover, they can encourage readers to think about

themselves in a new way, and see themselves in a different light, leading to a

more profound self-understanding. Thus, as it is possible to distinguish between

texts and their reception, it is also reasonable not just to identify the content of

the text and what the author would like to say, but also how the text is read and

interpreted in specific contexts. In accordance with her analysis of the text

reception of Freud’s theory (1978), Turkle views technological things as objects

eliciting particular readings and evoking new modes of thought and discourses

facilitating different perspectives on a variety of aspects of oneself and the

world. ‘We come to see ourselves differently’, she explains, ‘in the mirror of the

machine’ (1995, p. 9). As the computer culture has emerged over the past

30 years, she has traced the development of objects it has produced and the

ideas around them, and tried to gain an insight into how technology changes

human beings by analyzing the discourses generated by material artifacts. As she

writes: ‘I look at the computer y as an evocative object, an object that

fascinates, disturbs equanimity, and precipitates thought’ (2005, p. 19).

To explore the new experiences, actions and new ways of thinking about the

self that are derived from digital technologies, Turkle employs field research and

ethnography to delve into the world of the subjects. ‘My goal: to study

computer cultures by living within them, participating when possible in their

lives and rituals, and by interviewing people who could help me understand

things from the inside’ (2005, p. 25). From the inner perspective of individual

subjects including, as she emphasizes, an ‘analysis of the reasons’ (ibid, p. 319),

she seeks to gain insights into the subjective meaning of the digital world of

computers.

For example, she analyzes virtual spaces of social interaction in the Internet,

such as Multi User Domains (MUDs), and their evocative potential (1995).

MUDs are digital real-time worlds based on simulation programs where

participants use computer-based communication from various real-world spaces

to interact in a virtual space. The simulation programs in each particular MUD

allow participants to construct a virtual character anonymously so that, in a

kind of role-play, a virtual identity can be created, with players free to choose

how closely or distantly their characters resemble their real-world selves. In this



way, players take a step, as it were, through the screen to enter a virtual world

where they can adopt the role of a fictive creature, acting in that role in the

MUD virtual world, influencing and shaping it, and interacting with other

fictive beings – in brief: living a virtual life in a digital community. Here too, in

line with her main research focus, Turkle primarily considers how our

experience and action in the world of cyberspace transforms the understanding

of ourselves, and how conducting a virtual life might give us new insights, as

well as a more defined and comprehensive sense of identity in the real world.

For example, she notes that MUDs have generated a new discourse on gender

construction. When developing their virtual identities, MUD players can also

opt to adopt a different gender, experiencing what it is like to belong to the

opposite gender (or have no gender at all). Gender swapping, with men

adopting a female identity and vice versa, is common practice in MUDs, and

this practice is extensively discussed in the Net. In her research into this

discourse, Turkle has observed that the experience of gender swapping does not

only help to work through problems relating to one’s own real-world gender,

but also might facilitate a more profound understanding of gender problems

and the social construction of gender roles. ‘The MUD becomes an evocative

object’, Turkle (1994, p. 163) explains, ‘for a richer understanding not only of

sexual harassment but of the social construction of gender’.

Turkle engages with the perspectives of the subjects, and illustrates in detail

how, in the context of the development of digital technologies, intersubjective

relations, human identity and the possibility of thinking about oneself and the

world have changed. In contrast to individualist and essentialist notions of the

subject still prevalent in psychology today, her analyses do not address the

individual subject, but the digital world and how it is experienced and lived by

the individual subjects – which illustrates her practice of decentering the subject.

Her research is not directed at the subjects and their inwardness, but at the

world of objects and how these evoke certain relations, everyday practices and

ways of thinking.

It is interesting, that, although Turkle’s empirical exploration focuses

systematically on subjectivity and the subjective dimension of technology,

there is no engagement with the theory of subjectivity. Besides mentioning

psychoanalytic theory, her approach does not explicitly build on or contribute

to the development of a conceptual language of subjectivity. Nevertheless, by

including the subjective dimension and immersing herself in the world of the

subjects, Turkle can develop a wealth of essential insights and significantly

contribute to a social self-understanding of the meaning of digital technologies

in people’s everyday life.

However, Turkle’s practice of decentering the subject does not go far enough.

Just as the text itself is no longer present in some reception analyses, so

technology itself is not really present in Turkle’s analyses. Although she points

out that the concern cannot merely be to investigate ‘what computers do for us’,

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but also ‘what they do to us’ (1995, p. 22), her research only deals with the

meaning of things in their subjective form, as read by the recipients – and this

points to a limitation in her approach. Turkle decenters the subject by seeking to

understand it in its relations to objects, and asking what the objects evoke in the

subjects. However, this leaves aside the analysis of the objects themselves and

the systematic investigation of the meaning of the materiality of things. For this

reason, her approach remains fragmented, to a certain extent one-sided

and subjectivist. The inner connection between the subject and the thing, the

two-sidedness of the relationship does not fully appear. As a result, the concern

of contributing to the social self-understanding of people’s problems in material

relations can only be partially achieved. At this particular point, actor-network

theory (ANT) goes a step further by not only systematically considering people’s

actions, but also the actions inscribed in the things.

Symmetric inquiry into human-nonhuman action

ANT represents another influential school of thought within STS dealing with

the intimate relationship between humans and technology. Its knowledge

interest centers on developing an understanding of the course of human action

and the making of the social. For realizing this, ANT generates – especially in

the works of Bruno Latour – a sophisticated epistemological framework. This

framework expands approaches that explore human action and the social solely

within the realm of social and societal relations, and systematically includes into

the research perspective the multiplicity of actors involved in the field. ‘To

follow the actors themselves’ (for example, Latour, 2005, p. 12), constitutes the

basic methodological principle of ANT. Therefore the essential analytical task is

not just to follow human action, but also to explore in detail the action of non-

human entities and of the things themselves.

ANT’s epistemological research framework builds on the principle of

generalized symmetry (Latour, 1993, p. 94ff). Drawing on the sociology of

knowledge’s symmetry concept, which argues for treating the error and truth

of scientific accounts on the same conceptual ground (Bloor, 1991), this

principle suggests to apply a meta-language in the empirical analysis, which

grasps the different actors in the field on the basis of the same terms. ANT is

founded on a ‘symmetric meta-language’, Callon and Latour (1992, p. 354)

explain and on the decision that ‘whichever term is used for humans, we will use

it for nonhumans as well y. By doing this criss-crossing of the divide, we hope

to overcome the difficulty of siding with one, and only one, of the camps’. The

expression ‘using the same terms for humans and non-humans’ is slightly

misleading, as it neither entails treating humans in the same way as things or

things as humans, nor does it imply that there is no conceptual differentiation

between humans and non-humans. ‘Humans and objects are clearly distinct’,

Latour (2005, p. 76) notes, ‘but a difference is not a divide’. The point of a



symmetric research language is to avoid reproducing a divide between human

and non-human, sociality and materiality. It therefore suggests an openness in

analyzing the various actors involved in the making of the social and not

prioritizing in advance any of those various actors. ‘To be symmetric’, Latour

writes, ‘simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among

human intentional action and a material world of causal relations’ (ibid.).

The idea of a symmetric language becomes apparent in ANT’s use of the

terms ‘actor’, ‘agency’ and ‘action’. If the terms are – as usual – only used for

human intentional and meaningful action, the researcher is blinded to the

importance of material artifacts. What things do can’t really come into view.

As a result, ‘action’ in ANT is not a priori reserved for human action, but to

everything, which makes a difference in the course of some agent’s action.

As Latour puts it: ‘Any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a

difference is an actor’ (ibid, p. 71).

To follow the various actors in the field of study and to explore who and

what participates in the action, ANT builds – in a similar way to Turkle and

subject-orientated STS – on ethnographic methods and fieldwork. However, in

contrast to Turkle, ANT does not only enter into a conversation with human

subjects, but also tries to make things to talk. Yet, given that the action of things

is not directly visible, ANT realizes just how difficult this task is. Consequently,

it is directed to developing methodological strategies for getting things to talk

and analyzing their actions (ibid, p. 79ff). The idea of symmetry also sharpens

ANT’s understanding of the human-human relation in its methodological

approach. Against the common ‘bird’s eye view’ (ibid, 2005, p. 33) and the idea

of the researcher, floating above the scene and analyzing the field from an

external perspective, Latour suggests a ‘fundamental equality’ (ibid, p. 34)

between the researcher and the research subjects. ‘Actors and scholars’ he

explains, ‘remain in the same boat all along’, the researchers ‘are on par with

those they study, doing exactly the same job and participating in the same tasks

of tracing social bonds, albeit with different instruments and for different

professional callings’ (ibid.).

Latour’s (1999, p. 186ff) description of the ‘sleeping policeman’ can be taken

here as a simple example . In analyzing speed bumps in traffic-calming areas of a

University campus, Latour shows how human action is transferred and

‘delegated’ from human actors to various non-human actors. In a process

Latour describes as ‘inscription’, the action of a police officer signaling to car

drivers to slow down can be delegated to things in a variety of steps: for

example, as a dummy police officer set to automatically flag vehicles down,

or as a 30-km/hour speed-limit sign. Speed bumps however, transform the

negotiable signs to non-negotiable artifacts and, in this way, the action of

getting car drivers to reduce their speed is inscribed in them even more

effectively. By tracing the rather powerful action inscribed in the sleeping

policeman, Latour also critically traces the displacements and transformations

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of the car drivers’ action. From an observer’s point of view the cars are just

slowing down, but for the car driver there is a basic shift of his premises of

action from ‘slow down so as not to endanger students’ to ‘slow down and

protect your car’s suspension’.

ANT’s essential achievement is to show in detail the importance of material

artifacts in understanding the social and to develop an epistemological approach

for such an analysis, which includes reflections on how to get things to talk. By

focusing on human action and agency and integrating through dialogue the

perspectives and engagements of humans into the analysis, ANT systematically

involves subjectivity and the perspectives of the subjects in its approach.

The symmetry principle crystallizes a radical practice of decentering in

which the origins and trajectories of human action and the understanding of

the social are traced on an equal level within the realm of the human and

non-human. A radical form of decentering in the analysis can be also found in

the claim for fundamental equality between researcher and research subject, a

claim maintained even in the interpretation of the research phenomena. ANT

has something to offer, but the approach also embodies specific sidings and

I want to emphasize here just two limitations, which, in my view, need to be

overcome.

1. As well as the claim to ‘follow the actors themselves’ is realized concerning

non-human actors, the course and trajectory of human action is only

conceptualized and traced in a reluctant and truncated way. Although the

human participants in the field are heard and their actions appear, the

concrete experiences, perspectives, standpoints, thoughts and engagements

of human subjectivity and inter-subjectivity have a remarkably minor role

in the approach. It seems as if the subjects disappear in the relations and

actor networks. The research perspective does not really include a detailed

following and tracing of the reasons for the human subjects’ actions, (which

would refer to the world of humans and non-humans), nor does it explore

the dilemmas and ambivalences the subjects see themselves confronted

with (Winner, 1993), or examine the possibilities of relating to things, and

the intervening, resistant, expansive actions of subjects. In this sense, we

find here a movement toward a one-sided, objectivist practice of decentering,

and ANT’s claim to ‘to follow the natives’ (Latour, 2005, p. 62) is only

realized in a rudimentary description of the behavior and action of human

subjects.

2. Although ANT is explicitly involved in contributing to a theory of action

(Latour, 2005, p. 43ff; p. 70), the theoretical work – similarly to Turkle – is

not much engaged in developing terms, concepts and categories to work with

in the analysis. Actually, ANT does not offer a genuine theory of the actor

network or a conceptual metalanguage for grasping distinctive features

of the human or non-human, of human action, agency or subjectivity.



Such reluctance might be rooted in the idea of approaching the phenomena

with an open mind, unbiased, without imposing a theory on them before

doing the research. As Latour writes: ‘The task of defining and ordering the

social should be left to the actors themselves’ (ibid, p. 23). However, we

cannot approach the world without theory. Any research activity draws on a

theoretical language. Moreover, if the researcher cannot draw on critically

reflected terms and concepts, s/he just has to draw on their everyday

life theory. Latour realizes the importance of metatheory for the research

subject: ‘Actors y have their own meta-theory about how agency acts’

(ibid, p. 57). In the same way, the researcher as well cannot avoid

working with metatheory. Yet, if the researcher just draws on his or her

everyday metatheory, the approach remains trapped in arbitrary, common-

sense understandings and finally turns out to be subjectivist – exactly what

ANT tries to avoid. The terms and concepts used in the analysis are ‘actors’

as well, intervening in the way the analyst sees the phenomena and thus also

in the world-making process of the research itself. To overcome such one-

sidedness and subjectivism therefore entails elaborating critical theoretical

concepts that facilitate a more generalized perspective on and analytical

engagement with the field of study. To re-formulate Latour: Not only

‘controversies’, but also theories ‘provide the analyst with an essential

resource to render the social connections traceable’ (ibid, p. 30).

To overcome the dichotomy between humans and technology, STS research

includes the subjective dimension. However, as yet such efforts are still in their

beginnings, fragmented and partial, with approaches tending either to a

subjectivist or an objectivist contortion. Furthermore, there is a reluctance to

engage in theory and to clarify and polish the categories and terms used in the

analysis, especially when it comes to conceptualizing the subjective dimension

of the human-technology relation. To suggest a way of advancing here, I now

turn to theories of subjectivity1 focusing on a central concept: the first-person

perspective. To begin with, I will introduce the concept and then reflect on its

epistemological implications for the social studies of technology.

First-Person Perspective, Intersubjective Symmetry and its SociomaterialMediation

If we look at human subjectivity more closely, it becomes apparent that its

psychological dimensions, such as experience, emotionality, thought and action,

are present in a specific form of existence – the first-person mode. On the one hand

human experiencing, feeling, thinking, acting with and in the world are always

sociomaterially mediated processes (through language, others and the social and

technological world); on the other hand they are always someone’s processes.

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They exist only from the point of view of a subject that has them, and in this

sense they always exist in a perspectival mode and therefore in the first-person

perspective. This insight is based on the distinction between ontological

subjectivity and objectivity. Some givens have a subjective form of existence,

whereas others have an objective form. The emotion of fear, for example, is

ontologically subjective in the sense that it only exists because it is experienced

by an ‘I’, that is to say in a first-person mode. Without the concrete experience

of fear of an ‘I’ there is no fear. Accordingly, all psychological processes are

ontologically subjective and in the first-person mode because they have to be

experienced by a human being to exist. In this respect, mental givens are

different from, for example, nerve tracts, flowers, mobile phones or atomic

power plants. Since these do not need to be experienced by people to exist, their

reality has an objective existential form.

However, this does not mean that human subjectivity and mental givens

would only represent some kind of arbitrary subjective attitudes, beliefs or

opinions. The fear experienced by an individual really exists and, in this sense, is

an objective fact; though an objective fact accessed in a subjective form. Owing

to the subjective form of objective mental facts, they are – in contrast to givens

in objective forms of existence – only perceptible and discernible for others

indirectly, through reports and the subject’s linguistic (or bodily and

symbolically mediated) expression. The indirectness and invisibility of mental

facts in the first-person mode mean that they are easy for others (though also for

oneself) to ignore and disregard in everyday life, in classical psychology, or in

the social studies of technology.

Within the history of psychology, the first-person perspective has not yet had

a major role although leading scholars have called for the integration of the

subjective dimension of human life into psychology’s theory and research

practice from the very beginning of the institutionalization of psychology as an

independent discipline. The problem here is that the dominant traditions

of 20th century psychology until today are captured by a deterministic and

causal vocabulary in the analyses. On the basis of theoretical languages and

experimental-statistical methodologies imported from the natural sciences, these

lines of thought reduce psychological phenomena to causal if-then relations,

which enable solely to focus on the world as a stimulus for and effect on the

individual. Such a structural effect perspective radically foreshortens human

subjectivity. The human being appears solely as dependent on external factors, as

responding to stimuli: it is reified and perceived as if it were an object or a thing. It

excludes the subjective dimension, the perspective of the acting individual, the

complexity of experience, conflicts and contradictions in everyday practice, the

considerations of what one would like to do or not to do, any comprehensive

understanding of the human ‘I’ and ‘we’ and her/his/our access to self, others and

the world (which actually should be the central topic of psychology) (Schraube,

2003; Teo, 2005; Holzkamp, 2013).



However, a closer look into the history of psychology reveals that the

first-person perspective was at least implicitly integrated from the very start in

psychology’s identity as a scholarly discipline and in its theoretical and

methodological conceptions. When Wilhelm Wundt (1897, p. 3), for instance,

talks of the ‘acting subject’ and ‘immediate experience’ as the topic of

psychology, he is referring to the first-person perspective, though without

explicitly naming it as such. In all the various ‘subject psychological’ approaches

already distinguishable from ‘object psychological’ approaches in the 19th

century (Stern, 1900, p. 431), the I-perspective is a central issue. Freud’s

psychoanalysis represents the first systematic and comprehensive approach

based on the I-perspective (though still without naming the first-person

perspective as such). Freud’s analyses started from his patients’ reports on their

own experience of themselves, others and the world, and sought to develop

psychoanalytical theories, which help to illuminate and get to the heart of the

conflicts in their real world contexts.

George Politzer (1994, p. 28) was one of the first who expressly talked of the

first-person ontology of mental givens. In 1928, he stressed that the ‘character

of the psychological facts is that of being “in the first person,”’ arguing for

psychology as a ‘science of the first person’ (ibid, p. 29). Aside from individual

voices such as Politzer, whose work was largely forgotten after his early death

(he was shot by the Nazis in 1942), there are three schools of thought still

influential in the present day that explicitly start from the first-person givenness

of human subjectivity: phenomenology, analytical philosophy and critical

psychology. How do these approaches establish the first-person givenness of

mental phenomena and what arguments do they put forward to support

their view?

Phenomenology shows how lived human experience fundamentally takes

place in the first-person perspective. In phenomenology, experience has a central

role because it is only through experience that the various phenomena in human

life are accessible. Husserl (1968, p. 223) emphasized that experiences are

essentially ‘my experiences’ (Heidegger, 1999, p. 69; Ashworth, 2008, p. 12).

Without its first-person givenness, experience ceases to be experience. As David

Carr explains (1999, p. 77), Husserl’s phenomenology ‘is not just about

experiences, or even about experiences and their objects, but about the first-

person standpoint itself’.

Following Husserl, Dan Zahavi (2008, p. 124) points to ‘mineness’ as the

central characteristic of first-person experience. In using the term ‘mineness’,

he highlights the fact that for each individual subject, present experience is

unequivocally ‘mine’. If I am happy, there can be no doubt about who the

subject of this experience is and it makes no sense to ask whether I am really

sure that I am the one who actually feels happy. As Dan Zahavi (2008, p. 124)

wrote, ‘When I am aware of an occurrent pain, perception, or thought from

the first-person perspective, the experience in question is given immediately,

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noninferentially and noncritically as mine y The particular first-personal

givenness of the experiences makes it mine and distinguishes it for me from

whatever experiences others might have’.

From the perspective of phenomenology, the mineness and first-person

givenness of human experience do not only apply to mental phenomena such as

the experience of happiness, fear or hunger, but – simply because experience is

fundamentally in the first-person mode – they also apply to our experience of

the objects of the world. ‘Every givenness’, Dan Zahavi (2008, p. 123f)

emphasizes, ‘be it the givenness of mental states or the givenness of physical

objects, involves a first-person perspective. There is no pure third-person

perspective, just as there is no view from nowhere. To believe in the existence of

such a pure third-person perspective is to succumb to an objectivist illusion.

This is, of course not to say that there is no third-person perspective, but merely

that such a perspective is precisely a perspective from somewhere. It is a view we

can adopt on the world. It is a perspective founded upon a first-person

perspective’.

In analytical philosophy too, the first-person perspective has a key role,

although here the focus is on consciousness (Nagel, 1974; Shoemaker, 1996;

Baker, 1998). John Searle, one of the leading advocates of this philosophical

tradition who argues for the first-person perspective, emphasized: ‘Conscious

states have a first-person mode of existence’ (1992, p. 95). Searle expressly takes

a stance against the prevailing psychological and philosophical approaches

that regard consciousness as an ontologically objective given. ‘It would be

difficult’, he commented (1999, p. 42), ‘to exaggerate the disastrous effects that

the failure to come to terms with the subjectivity of consciousness has had on

the philosophical and psychological work of the past half century’ . In contrast,

he emphasizes that states of consciousness represent ontologically subjective

givens because they exist exclusively when they are being experienced by a

subject. ‘The most important feature of consciousness y is ontological

subjectivity’ (Searle, 1999, p. 73), ‘each of my conscious states exists only as

the state it is because it is experienced by me, the subject’ (ibid, p. 42). To give

an example to make this clear: if I say ‘I have a pain in the lower part of my

back’, this is an objective statement in the sense that it rests on the existence

of a present fact independent of the observer’s attitude or opinion. However, the

phenomenon itself, the pain currently experienced, is given in the subjective

mode of existence; pain is always someone’s pain and, in this sense, its mode

of existence is in the first person. What applies to pain, also applies to states

of consciousness in general: ‘Because conscious states are subjective’, Searle

(2002, p. 41) explains, ‘they have what I call a first-person ontology, as opposed

to the third-person ontology of mountains and molecules, which can exist

even if no living creatures exist. Subjective conscious states have a first-person

ontology (“ontology” here means mode of existence) because they exist

only when they are experienced by some human or animal agent. They are



experienced by some “I” that has the experience, and it is in that sense they have

a first-person ontology’.

Critical psychology is another tradition of thought that starts from the first-

person givenness of the various activities of human subjectivity. This approach

also recognizes that experience and consciousness are given in the first-person

mode (for example, Holzkamp, 1991, p. 76), but this insight is more precisely

defined by highlighting the first-person ontology of human reasons for action

(Dreier, 2003; Højholt, 2006; Huniche, 2009; Osterkamp, 2009). As Holzkamp

(2013, p. 285) emphasized, ‘Reasons for action are y always in the “first-

person”. They are, in each case, “my” reasons, i.e., reasons from my standpoint

and my perspective. When I ask anyone else about the reasons for her/his

actions, I am asking about reasons from her/his standpoint and perspective’. In

critical psychology’s view, human agency and the capacity to act represents

psychology’s fundamental basic category – simply because agency is the decisive

feature of human subjectivity. Other living beings experience the world, act and

have states of consciousness, but only the human being possesses the capacity of

agency. Here, agency is not merely meant in the sense of the human being’s

ability to consciously relate to her/himself, others and the world, but that

human agency enables, on one hand, a joint creation of the societal world in and

through which we conduct our lives and, on the other hand, it is solely through

agency that the human being has the possibility to appropriate and change the

created world. Moreover, since agency also unites the diverse mental capacities

such as experience, perception, emotionality, thought, consciousness, it can be

regarded as the capacity that constitutes human subjectivity. For this reason,

critical psychology focuses specifically on agency and the first-person ontology

of the reasons for action.

At this point, though, someone might object that the argument for the first-

person perspective here supports a radical one-sided, subjectivist and individualist-

egocentric approach – and doesn’t that cement precisely the divide between the

human subject and the technological world, which was supposed to be overcome?

However, in discussing the human being as a subject and her/his I-perspective,

I am not referring to the idea of a worldless, solipsistic or Cartesian subject.

No subject just exists for itself, detached from the world in a social and societal

vacuum – such an idea of a ‘pure’ first-person perspective would have very little

to do with the reality of human life. The experiencing, acting subject, equipped

with the possibility of consciousness, represents a sociomaterially situated

being. It certainly experiences subjective givens, such as pain, in the first-person

mode, yet the process of experience (such as the process of developing

consciousness or reasons for actions) is mediated by others and by the particular

socio-historical conditions (with their social, cultural, technological or

linguistic-discursive dimensions) in which the subject conducts her/his life. All

of these three traditions of thought that argue so cogently for the first-person

perspective are based on a profound understanding of the individual subject’s

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sociality. There can be no doubt that the subject’s ‘being-in-the-world’ is a key

aspect of phenomenology, from Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to

today’s approaches (for example, Zahavi, 2008; Giorgi, 2009). Searle (1992,

p. 248; 1999, p. 85ff) underlines the ‘social character of the mind’, and this has

been painstakingly elaborated in critical psychology and especially the work of

Klaus Holzkamp, which offers a detailed analysis of the societal mediation of

individual existence (for instance, Holzkamp, 1983; Dreier, 2008; Nissen, 2012;

Schraube and Osterkamp, 2013, especially Chapter 3).

The concept of the first-person perspective allows two important clarifica-

tions in the understanding of the sociality of human subjectivity.

1. When experiences, consciousness, reasons for action and so on are given in

the first-person mode, this means that in human relations the other has no

direct access to any first-person mental phenomena except her/his own. Only

I can know what I experience, think, feel, or why I have acted or act in such

and such a way. From this epistemic asymmetry, as it is usually characterized,

(for example, Zahavi, 2008, p. 122), it follows that there is a fundamental

ontological symmetry in human relations. As I experience myself and the

world from my perspective, and act in the world from my perspective and

standpoint, then logically the other also experiences her/himself and the

world from her/his perspective and acts from her/his perspective and

standpoint in the world. This reflexive reciprocity of the subjects’ first-

person perspectives in human relations can be characterized as a symmetrical

reciprocity of the first-person perspective or as intersubjective symmetry and

is a fundamental distinguishing feature of human sociality. Human sociality

builds on intersubjective symmetry and the reciprocal recognition of the

other’s first-person perspective. Social thought is therefore actually

symmetrical thought and has to be based on an understanding of the other

as coequal center of intentionality and origin of her/his agency and on an

inclusion of the other’s interests, perspectives and standpoint.

This does not mean of course that the first-person perspective cannot be

ignored. In fact, as discussed above, it can easily be neglected even in

radically situated approaches as STS. Moreover, it can be also part of

common practice in everyday life to remove the other’s perspective from

view. However, ignoring the other’s first-person perspective means her/his

‘a-social’ isolation, a disregard of her/his person and subjectivity, which is

synonymous with human suffering. Hence, clearly, it is not taking on the

first-person perspective that cements an individualistic, subjectivist and one-

sided-centrist social practice but, on the contrary, removing the first-person

perspective from view; only the systematic and conceptual inclusion of the

subject and her/his I-perspective can facilitate a decentered, intersubjective

symmetrical understanding of human sociality based on the multiplicity and

reciprocity of perspectives and standpoints.



Naturally, this is not to say that each individual I-perspective represents the

‘ultimate truth’. Perspectives are inevitably limited and of course, experiences

can deceive, thoughts are unavoidably entangled in prejudices and realities can

be played down or denied. Yet, precisely because the subject and her/his first-

person perspective is socially and societally mediated, and constituted through

the thinking, talking and acting with others (Holzkamp, 1983; Theunissen,

1984; Vygotzky, 1987), it is also caught in the contradictions of social

discourses, ideologies and mentalities. There is therefore a permanent need for

critique and self-critique and for a dialogue between the ‘I’ and the other about

each-me and my/our situation, in short: for a dialogue between the first-person

and the second-person perspective. However, despite the fundamental

importance of the other and the second-person perspective for the self-

understanding of the subject, it is ultimately only the subject her/himself,

which can decide whether the ‘subjective facts’ actually hold true or not.

2. The sociality and societability of human subjectivity and the first-person

perspective does not only mean that people live a social life, in common with

others, but also live in the sociomaterial world created by human beings and

conduct a life mediated by it. Therefore, the concept of the first-person

perspective’s symmetrical reciprocity cannot only relate to the direct social

co-existence of human beings and the relationship between the ‘I’ and the

other, but also has to encompass the created sociomaterial world by means of

which they conduct their lives. Accordingly, a social approach not only

involves giving proper space to others and their interests, perspectives and

standpoints in the immediate intersubjective as well as societal contexts of

action, but also regarding others and their interests, perspectives and

standpoints in technological mediation. This means that, in the process of

producing and appropriating technological artifacts, an essential dimension

in social thought consists in recognizing the subjectivity of the other through

the materiality of things.

What epistemological consequences can we now obtain for the social studies

of technology from these ontological considerations of human subjectivity

and the connection between subject and technology? On the basis of the first-

person perspective’s symmetrical reciprocity and the insight into its socio-

material mediation, what would be a suitable approach to explore the

relationship between human beings and technology?

Studying Technology from the Generalized Subject Standpoint

Although STS’ contextual and situated epistemologies enable to take the

perspectives of human beings as well as sociality and materiality seriously, they

are still captured by either a subjectivist or an objectivist one-sidedness and a

reluctance to systematically take human subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the

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first-person givenness of human experience, thought and action into account. To

overcome the abstract opposition between human subjects and the technolo-

gical world and to transcend the external perspective and ‘bird’s eye view’ of

classical research requires therefore a slight epistemological shift. A shift toward

a critical approach, which roots its inquiry in the standpoints, perspectives

and engagements of the ‘I’ and ‘we’ and explores through the subjective

experiences what the technological world means for the human subjects and

their possibilities and necessities to act. In this final paragraph I would like to

give some ideas how to do such a social study of technology from the standpoint

of the subject and discuss some questions, which turn up in such an approach.

Since, as shown above, technological objects (as all other objects) are only

accessible to human subjectivity through the subjective first-person experience,

subjective experience provides the starting point and irreducible foundation of

the methodological approach in the study of technology from the subject

standpoint. A thorough and detailed phenographic description of the subjects’

experiences and engagements with things facilitates essential insights into the

meaning these things have. If the subjective dimension is not included, social

studies of technology remain discrete and cannot really overcome the dichotomy

between human being and technology. Only the inclusion of the first-person

perspective enables an access to people’s actual experiences, thoughts and

agency with things. Hence, a description of the subjective practice is a key step

in the methodological approach (Stephenson and Papadopoulos, 2006); without

it, the study of technology would not be connected to people’s reality of

everyday life and would merely hang abstractly in the air.

However, this access is not sufficient by itself. Studying technology from

the subject standpoint cannot merely comprise descriptions of first-person

experiences, engagements and ways of dealing with things. This would be a one-

sided ‘psychologism’ (a problem already identified and critically discussed by

(Husserl, 1913, p. 50ff; see also Holzkamp, 2013, p. 259ff), which does not

distinguish between the subject and technology and thinks it can solely explain

the world psychologically. Material things also exist independently of the

subject. We are born into a world of technology that already existed before us,

created by people with certain intentions and ideas, and whose movement is

based on independent laws and principles of development. The contradictions

of things and their possibilities and limitations are certainly apparent in

subjective experience and action; however, an inclusive understanding of the

contradictions and dilemmas in subjective experience and action also requires

an analysis of the things themselves.

How could technology be conceptualized in such an analysis of things? – In

everyday thought but also in academic discussion, technology is still often

conceptualized as ‘a means to an end’. A mobile phone, for instance, is

understood as a ‘means’ to the ‘end’ of ringing someone up. In this account, the

thing itself appears to be a neutral object; the decisive factor seems to be the



social and societal context of the artifact and what it is being used for. When

Holzkamp (2013, p. 279ff) talks of sociomaterial meanings as ‘possibilities to

act’, then this concept appears to be founded in such an instrumental notion of

technology. The idea of technological things as ‘possibilities to act’ correctly

points to the fact that products are not causal ‘stimuli’ but ‘meanings’ which, for

the subject, are not determinants of action but possibilities to act. To return to

the example, a telephone ringing is not a stimulus causally producing a response

in the subject, but a meaning the subject actively relates to against the

background of her/his current affectivity and situation. S/he can take the call or

ignore the ringing, switch off the device entirely or ask someone else to take the

call. It is quite correct to talk of the meaning of things as ‘possibilities to act’ to

underline that people are not causally determined by technological artifacts, but

can in principle relate to them and, in this sense, are in a relation of possibility

to the things. However, the concept is misleading or insufficient as it does

not explicitly articulate the power and efficacy of the things themselves.

As discussed above, it is not only people who do something with the things, the

things produced also do something with people, changing them and their social

and societal world. Things are, in ANT’s words, actors too, and for this reason,

this second aspect – the transformative dimension of things – has to be included

in the conceptualization as well.

James Gibson’s (1979, p. 127) frequently employed concept of ‘affordances’

appears to overcome this limitation as it expresses a ‘doing’ of the things, namely,

‘affording’ us to perform an action. The ringing mobile phone, for example,

affords us to take the call or the TV remote affords us to use the TV. Gibson’s

concept is certainly a help in focusing on the objectified activity in things and,

hence, the double-sidedness and dialectic nature of the relations. However, this

concept does not go far enough either. Today’s technological actors ‘do’ more

than just ‘afford’. They are complex and powerful ‘forms of life’, as Langdon

Winner (1989, p. 3) explains, socio-political structures creating new constella-

tions of reality and they not only expand and enrich human subjectivity and

agency, but also embody constraints, violence and destruction – a profoundly

contradictory ‘materialized action’ (Schraube, 2009, p. 300ff).

Therefore the study of technology based on the first-person perspective has to

be expanded to an approach that systematically explores the objective meaning

of material artifacts as well (for example, as ANT suggests, by tracing the

sociomaterial making of artifacts and how, when, why and so on they are

produced; or by investigating how the material artifacts relate to other things or

to nature, or by exploring what kind of new social and societal constellations of

reality and action situations are created by the things), whereby the insights

gained here have to be referred back to the subjects’ first-person perspectives.

Studying technology from the subject standpoint is founded on such a two-sided

dialectical and dialogical approach, which on the one side includes the subjects’

first-person perspective and on the other side includes an analysis of the

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objective meaning of technological things. As the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’

meaning of things are two sides of the same coin, the subject and technology are

not facing one another unmediatedly, but instead the contradictory meanings of

the things go through the subject, showing themselves in partial, rudimentary

and overlapping forms in the subject’s experiences, consciousness and actions.

For this reason, research can start from the experience of the subject and the

concrete contradictions in everyday life, describing and analyzing them as

profoundly as possible, and then making the subjective practice in its contexts

comprehensible by analyzing the things themselves. Hence, the study of

technology from the standpoint of the subject cannot only mean analyzing

human subjects from the first-person perspective. Instead, starting from the

subjective everyday conduct of life and through researching and clarifying its

contradictions, the things are also to be analyzed to achieve a precise

understanding of what they really mean for the subject.

About the Author

Ernst Schraube is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of

Psychology and Educational Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark. In his

teaching and research he focuses on the social and political implications of

modern technologies in everyday life. He has published in critical psychology,

theory of psychology, social psychology of technology, and science and

technology studies. He is the author of Auf den Spuren der Dinge: Psychologie

in einer Welt der Technik (On the Track of Things: Psychology in a

World of Technology) (Argument), and co-editor of Challenges to Theoretical

Psychology (Captus University Press) and Psychology from the Standpoint of

the Subject: Writings of Klaus Holzkamp (Palgrave Macmillan). The 1998-99

academic year he spent as a visiting research scholar in the Department

of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,

New York, USA.

Note

1 A sophisticated discussion of contemporary theories of subjectivity can be found in Blackman et al,2008.

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