Recognizing motives: The dissensual self
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/ocps.v21i02.122692Keywords:
self, motives, aesthetics, motivation, counsellingAbstract
This article proposes to approach issues around the self and its derivate concepts such as motivation through a methodology of rearticulation. For this, we build on the idea developed in the (broadly) Vygotskian tradition of the self as mediated by cultural artifacts in activity, viewed as a transformative social process that reconfigures sense and meaning. We aim at suggesting these potentials by rearticulating activities in which people display (represent, avow, reflect, expose, externalize, etc.) their motives. Most contemporary ‘motivational technologies’ stage a pragmatic self-calculation. For some, these technologies confirm a common-sense, managerial self; others read them as a ‘poetics of practice’ that performs and produces new motives and selves in a liminal space of discursive creativity. These two readings are superseded as we – with art theory from Vygotsky through Brecht to Groys, Bourriaud and Rancière – consider drug counsellors’ experiments with aesthetic practices of self-display in which sense is reconfigured as dis-sensus, as meaning deferred. Aesthetics provide a lense through which we can appreciate how an artifact-mediation can be also a struggle for recognition that reconstitutes emerging selves, senses, and motives.
References
Agamben, G. (1993). The Coming Community. Minneapolis, US: University of Minnesota Press.
Althusser, L. (1994). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation). In: Mapping Ideology. S. Zizek. London, Verso: 100-140.
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Balibar, É. (2017). Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology. New York: Fordham University Press
Bank, M. & Nissen, M. (2017). Beyond spaces of counselling. Qualitative Social Work, 17(4), 509-536. DOI: 10.1177/1473325016680284.
Bateson, G. (1972). The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory of Alcoholism. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind (pp. 309-337). New York: Ballantine Books
Billig, M. (1999). Freudian repression: Conversation creating the unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups. London: Tavistock Publications.
Björk, A. (2014). Stabilizing a fluid intervention: The development of Motivational Interviewing, 1983–2013. Addiction Research & Theory 22(4), 313-324.
Bloch, E. (1995). The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, Mass, USA, MIT Pres.
Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational aesthetics. Dijon: Les presses du reel
Bowker, G. and S. L. Star (1999). Sorting Things Out. Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge, Mass./London, MIT Press.
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, Mass./ London, Harvard University Press.
Butler, J. (2005) Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University press.
Carr, E. S. (2013). Signs of sobriety: Rescripting American addiction counseling. In: E. G. Raekhel & W. Durham (Eds.) Addiction trajectories (pp. 160-187). London, Duke University Press
Carr, E. S. and Y. Smith (2014). The poetics of therapeutic practice: motivational interviewing and the powers of pauseCulture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 38(1), 83-114.
Cetina, K. K. (2009). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Davies, B., Dormer, S., Gannon, S., Laws, C., Rocco, S., Taguchi, H. L., & Mccann, H. (2001). Becoming Schoolgirls: The ambivalent project of subjecti cation. Gender and Education, 13(2), 167–182.
De Shazer, S. & Y. Dolan (2012). More than miracles: The state of the art of solution-focused brief therapy. Routledge
Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and Difference. London and New York: Routledge
Derrida, J. (1981). Plato’s Pharmacy. In: B. Johnson (Ed.). Dissemination (pp. 61-171). Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Derrida, J. (2005). The Politics of Friendship. London, Verso.
Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive Psychology. London: SAGE Publications Ltd
Esposito, R. (2010). Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Foucault, M. (1985). The History of Sexuality I-III New York, Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1994). Technologies of the Self. In: Ethics, edited by P Rabinow. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 223-251
Friis, T. (in review). An essay on performative experimentation: Participants and researcher navigating with ethical dilemmas in a medical museum. STS Encounters
Gergen, K. (1991). The Saturated Self. Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York, Basic Books
Gillies, V., Harden, A., Johnson, K., Reavey, P., Strange, V., & Willig, C. (2005). Painting pictures of embodied experience: The use of nonverbal data production for the study of embodiment. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2(3), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088705qp038oa
Goffman, E. (1956) The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburg, Social Sciences Research Centre Monographs, no. 2
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row
Greco, M. & Stenner, P. (2017). From paradox to pattern shift: Conceptualising liminal hotspots and their affective dynamics. Theory & Psychology, 27(2), 147-166
Groys, B. (2016). In the Flow. London: Verso Books.
Groys, B. (2008). Art power. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hacking, I. (1998). Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Harré, R. and G. Gillett (1994). The Discursive Mind. London, Sage.
Haug, F. (Ed.) (1987). Female Sexualization. A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso
Haug, F. (2002). Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Erinnerungsarbeit. The Duke Lectures. Hamburg, Argument Verlag.
Haug, F. (2012). Memory-work as a Method of Social Science Research: A Detailed Rendering of Memory-Work Method. February 2020: http://www.friggahaug.inkrit.de/documents/memorywork-researchguidei7.pdf
Haug, F. and U. Blankenburg (1980). Frauenformen. Frankfurt, Argument-Verlag.
Heidegger, M. (1963). Sein und Zeit (1927)
Høgsbro, K. K. & Nissen, M. (2014). Narrative, Substance, and Fiction. In: J. Reynolds & Z. Zontou (Eds.). Addiction and Performance (pp. 151-177). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Illouz, E. (2003). Oprah Winfrey and the glamour of misery. An essay on popular culture. Columbia University Press: New York.
Ilyenkov, E. V. (1977). The Concept of the Ideal. In: E. V. Ilyenkov (ed.). Problems of Dialectical Materialism. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Available (May 2017) at http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/ideal/ideal.htm.
Jameson, F. (1998). Brecht and method. London: Verso.
Jensen, U. J. (1998). Sygdomsbegreber i praksis – det kliniske arbejdes filosofi og videnskabsteori. København: Munksgaard
Jensen, U. J. (1999). Categories in Activity Theory: Marx' Philosophy Just-in-time. Activity Theory and Social Practice: Cultural-Historical Approaches S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard and U. J. Jensen. Aarhus, Aarhus: University Press: 79-99.
Keis, M. K., Nielsen, A. N. & Nissen, M. (2016). User-driven standards in a mutual help context: the co-emergence of subjects and standards. Theory & Psychology, 26(2), 243-262
Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Kousholt, K., et al., Eds. (2019). At skulle ville – om motivationens tilblivelse. København, Samfundslitteratur.
Lave, J. (2008). Epilogue: Situated Learning and Changing Practice. In A. Amin and J. Roberts (eds.). Community, Economic Creativity and Organization (pp. 283–96). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mattingly, C. (2010). The Paradox of Hope: Journeys Through a Clinical Borderland. Berkeley / London: University of California Press.
Miettinen, R. & Virkkunen, J. (2005). Epistemic objects, artefacts and organizational change. Organization 12(3), 437-456.
Miller, W.R & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing. Helping People Change. 3rd edition. London / New York: The Guilford Press.
Monk, G., et al. (1997). Narrative Therapy in Practice. The Archeology of Hope. San Fransisco, Jossey-Bass.
Nissen, M. (2008). The Place of a Positive Critique in Contemporary Critical Psychology. Outlines - Critical Social Studies, 10(1), 49-66.
Nissen, M. (2012 a). The Subjectivity of Participation. Articulating Social Work Practice with Youth in Copenhagen. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Nissen, M. (2012 b). Writing Drug Cultures. Culture & Psychology, 18(2), 198-218. 10.1177/1354067X11434838
Nissen, M. (2013 a). Recognising life: A study in the atheist micro-bio-politics of drugs. Subjectivity, 6, 193-211.
Nissen, M. (2013 b). Beyond Innocence and Cynicism: Concrete Utopia in Social Work With Drug Users. Critical Social Studies. Outlines, 14(2), 54-78.
Nissen, M. (2014). Could Life Be… Producing Subjectivity in Participation. In: A. Blunden (Ed.), Collaborative Projects (p. 69-84). London: Brill.
Nissen, M. and K. Barington (2016). Numbers: Manageable Nothingness or User- Driven Standards? In: Nothingness. J. W.-L. Bang, D.A., Information Age Publishing. 251-286
Nissen, M., & Sørensen, K. S. (2017). The emergence of motives in liminal hotspots. Theory & Psychology, 27(2), 249-269
Nissen, M. (2018). Standards of performance and aesthetics in counselling and beyond. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling: Published online. DOI: 10.1080/03069885.2018.1499868..
Nissen, M., Barington, K., Halberg, M. (2019). Deconstructing Therapy: Performing the Common Sense User. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 20(1), 20(1), Art. 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-20.1.2916.
Nissen, M. (2019). Remembering, Rewriting, Rearticulating, Resituating Motivation. Annual Review of Critical Psychology. Vol. 16, pp. 468-502 (https://thediscourseunit.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/0468.pdf)
Nissen, M. (2020). Critical Psychology: The most recent version (soon to be replaced), illustrated by the problem of motivation. Psychologie und Kritik. Formen der Psychologisierung nach 1945. L. Malich, V. Balz. Hamburg, Springer.
Osterkamp, U. (1976). Motivationsforschung 1–2 [Motivation research 1–2]. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus Verlag
Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy, U of Minnesota Press.
Ranciere, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group
Rancière, J. (2009). The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso
Rancière, J. (2014). Les Mots de l'histoire. Essai de poétique du savoir. Paris, Points.
Rose, N. (1996). Inventing Our Selves. Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Schüll, N. D. (2012). Addiction By Design. Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sève, L. (1978). Man in Marxist theory and the psychology of personality. Hassocks: Harvester Press.
Simondon, G. (1989). L'individuation psychique et collective à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel et métastabilité. Paris, Aubier.
Simovska, V., Lagermann, L., Abduljalil, H., Mørck, L., & Kousholt, D. (2019). Inside out: What we (don’t) talk about when we talk about research. Qualitative Research, 19(2), 113–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794117749165
Somekh, B., & Nissen, M. (2011). Introduction: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Action Research. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 18(2), 93-97
Stengers, I. (1997). Power and invention. Situating science. Minneapolis, USA, University of Minnesota Press
Stenner, P. (2016). Being in the Zone and Vital Subjectivity: On the liminal sources of sport and art. In: T. Jordan, K. Woodward & B. McClure (Eds.). Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity: Being in the Zone (pp. 10-31). Abingdon: Routledge
Stephenson, N. (2005). Living history, undoing linearity: Memory‐work as a research method in the social sciences. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000081645
Stiegler, B. (2010). Technics and time, 3: Cinematic time and the question of malaise, Stanford University Press.
Taylor, C. (1975). Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (1995). The Politics of Recognition. In: A. Gutman (Ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (pp. 25-73). New Jersey and West Sussex: Princeton University Press
Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. AldineTransaction
Von Trier, L. (1994) The Kingdom. Danmarks Radio
Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in Society. Boston, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Vygosky, L.S. (1974). The psychology of art. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Widerberg, K. (2011). Memory Work: Exploring Family Life and Expanding the Scope of Family Research. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 42(3), 329–337. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcfs.42.3.329
Wertch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the Mind. A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Wetherell, M. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London, California, New Dehli and Singapore: Sage Publications.
White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: W. W. Norton
Willis, P. (2001). Tekin' the Piss. In D.Holland & J. Lave (Eds.). History in Person. Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (pp. 171-216). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. London: Verso.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
From issue no. 1 2022 and onward, the journal uses the CC Attribution-NonCommercial- Share Alike 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) The authors retain the copyright to their articles.
The articles published in the previous 37 issues (From Vol. 1, no. 1, 1999 to Vol. 22, No. 1, 2021, are published according to Danish Copyright legislation. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish these articles. The journal retain the copyright of these articles. Authors can upload them in their institutional repositories as a part of a green open access policy.