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.
r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32www.palgrave-journals.com/sub/
‘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
13r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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)
Schraube
14 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
First-person perspective
15r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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’,
Schraube
16 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
First-person perspective
17r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
Schraube
18 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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.
First-person perspective
19r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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.
Schraube
20 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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).
First-person perspective
21r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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,
Schraube
22 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
First-person perspective
23r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
Schraube
24 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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.
First-person perspective
25r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
Schraube
26 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
First-person perspective
27r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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
Schraube
28 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
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.
References
Ashworth, P. (2008) Conceptual foundations of qualitative psychology. In: J.A. Smith (ed.)Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods. London: Sage,pp. 4–23.
Baker, L.R. (1998) The first-person perspective: A test for naturalism. AmericanPhilosophical Quarterly 35(4): 327–348.
First-person perspective
29r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
Blackman, L., Cromby, J., Hook, D., Papadopoulos, D. and Walkerdine, V. (2008)Creating subjectivities. Subjectivity 22: 1–27.
Bloor, D. (1991) Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Callon, M. and Latour, B. (1992) Don’t throw the baby out with the bath school! A reply toCollins and Yearly. In: A. Pickering (ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, pp. 343–368.
Carr, D. (1999) The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition.New York: Oxford University Press.
Dreier, O. (2003) Subjectivity and Social Practice. Aarhus: University of Aarhus.
Dreier, O. (2008) Psychotherapy in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Cambridge UniversityPress.
Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: HoughtonMifflin.
Giorgi, A. (2009) The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A ModifiedHusserlian Approach. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Haraway, D.J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. NewYork: Routledge.
Heidegger, M. (1999) Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 56/57.Frankfurt/M: Vittorio Klostermann.
Højgaard, L. and Søndergaard, D.M. (2011) Theorizing the complexities of discursiveand material subjectivity: Agential realism and poststructural analyses. Theory &Psychology 21(3): 338–354.
Højholt, C. (2006) Knowledge and professionalism: From the perspectives of children?Critical Psychology 19: 81–160.
Holzkamp, K. (1983) Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt/M: Campus.
Holzkamp, K. (1991) Experience of the self and scientific objectivity. In: C.W. Tolman andW. Maiers (eds.) Critical Psychology. Contributions to an Historical Science of theSubject. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 65–80.
Holzkamp, K. (2013) Psychology: Social self-understanding on the reasons for action in theconduct of everyday life. In: E. Schraube and U. Osterkamp (eds.) Psychology from theStandpoint of the Subject: Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, pp. 233–341.
Huniche, L. (2009) Existential concerns in families with Huntington’s disease: Towards anunderstanding of the person in social practice. Theory & Psychology 19(1): 93–113.
Husserl, E. (1913) Logische Untersuchungen. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Tubingen:Niemeyer.
Husserl, E. (1968) Phanomenologische Psychologie. Husserliana IX. Den Haag: MartinusNijhoff.
Latour, B. (1993) We have Never been Modern. London: Prentice Hall.
Latour, B. (1999) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory.New York: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83(3): 435–450.
Nissen, M. (2012) The Subjectivity of Participation: Articulating Social Work Practice withYouth in Copenhagen. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schraube
30 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
Nye, D.E. (2007) Technology Matters: Questions to Live with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Osterkamp, U. (2009) Knowledge and practice in critical psychology. Theory &Psychology 19(2): 167–191.
Politzer, G. (1994) Critique of the Foundations of Psychology: The Psychology ofPsychoanalysis, Translated by M. Apprey. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Schraube, E. (1998) Auf den Spuren der Dinge. Psychologie in einer Welt der Technik.Hamburg: Argument.
Schraube, E. (2003) The politics of TechKnowledge: An experimental moment inpsychology. In: N. Stephenson, H.L. Radtke, R. Jorna and H.J. Stam (eds.) TheoreticalPsychology: Critical Contributions. Toronto: Captus University Publications,pp. 39–45.
Schraube, E. (2009) Technology as materialized action and its ambivalences. Theory &Psychology 19(2): 296–312.
Schraube, E. and Osterkamp, U. (eds.) (2013) Psychology from the Standpoint of theSubject: Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Searle, J.R. (1992) The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Searle, J.R. (1999) Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. New York:Basic Books.
Searle, J.R. (2002) Consciousness and Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress.
Shoemaker, S. (1996) The First-Person Perspective and other Essays. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press.
Smith, M.R. and Marx, L. (1994) Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma ofTechnological Determinism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stephenson, N. and Papadopoulos, D. (2006) Analysing Everyday Experience: SocialResearch and Political Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stern, W. (1900) Die psychologische Arbeit des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, insbesonderein Deutschland. Zeitschrift fur Padagogische Psychologie und Pathologie 2(6):413–436.
Teo, T. (2005) The Critique of Psychology. From Kant to Postcolonial Theory. New York:Springer.
Theunissen, M. (1984) The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger,Sartre, and Buber, Translated by Christopher Macann. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Turkle, S. (1978) Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud’s French Revolution. New York: BasicBooks.
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and reconstructions of self in virtual reality: Playing in theMUDs. Mind, Culture, and Activity 1(3): 158–167.
Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon& Schuster.
Turkle, S. (2005) the Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.
Turkle, S. (2011) Alone Together: Why we Expect More from Technology and Less fromEach Other. New York: Basic Books.
Vygotzky, L.S. (1987) Thinking and speech. In: R.W. Rieber and A.S. Carton (eds.)The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1. Problems of General Psychology,Translated by N. Minick. New York: Plemum Press, pp. 37–285.
First-person perspective
31r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
Winner, L. (1989) The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of HighTechnology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Winner, L. (1993) Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: Social constructivismand the philosophy of technology. Science, Technology & Human Values 18(3):362–378.
Wundt, W. (1897) Outlines of Psychology, Translated by C.H. Judd. New York: Stechert.
Zahavi, D. (2008) Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schraube
32 r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 12–32
Top Related