ABSTRACT
The central concern of this chapter is to theorise subjectivity as being constituted, socially and historically, out of collective experience. I theorise subjectivity not as a static or fixed entity but as a dynamic process during which individuals take up and change positions in discourses. I further propose that these discursive positions can be located in the collective history of the social group in question. Theorising subjectivity as a discursive process concurs with the epistemological commitments set out in Chapters 1 and 4. In particular, it enables us to transcend the dualism which has so far separated the individual and the social in psychological and social theory. I suggested that we need to start with viewing individuality as socially produced, while at the same time viewing sociality as produced within individual subjects. I also noted that earlier theorists developed the concept of subjectivity to bridge the theoretical divide between the individual and the social (Henriques et al 1984). In what follows, I develop this theory of subjectivity by exploring the social and historical production of the subjectivities of the black women who participated in the research process. In order to do this, I begin by outlining the social history and origins of black women in Britain, before going on to define what I mean by discourse and to derive the particular discourses positioning black women from this material. On a methodological note, it is worth mentioning that I began theorising subjectivity as discursive in the early stages of the research, while I was reading in the fields of ethnic, Caribbean and African studies and trying to see and conceptualise the ways in which history (in this case black history) features in people’s identities. In other words, I began to develop a way of using the concept of discourse as a heuristic device I could use to read people, to comprehend their subjectivities. Put at its simplest, I identified discourses that enabled me to see links between the history of colonial Africa and the Caribbean, present-day social relations and what my research participants were saying.
