ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the related concepts of subjectivity – how we become social subjects – and embodiment, which includes not just our physical presence in the world but also the relation of our minds to our brains and bodies. The evolution of ideas regarding personality, individuality, and the mind–body relation is the subject of the initial overview section. This chapter then focuses on three theorists whose work continues to shape how we understand these topics: Slavoj Žižek, who combines psychoanalysis, Marxism, and German idealist philosophy into a compelling albeit idiosyncratic method for analyzing society as a whole; Judith Butler, whose well-known theory of gender performativity here takes a backseat to her more recent ideas concerning narratives of the self, produced precarity, and mass performances of agency; and Catherine Malabou, who uses the concept of plasticity borrowed from neuroscience to reopen debates about the necessary incompletion of the self as well as to reflect on the history of philosophy and feminism. The engagements sections near the end of the chapter employ some of these ideas to undertake readings of novels by Daniel Defoe and Donna Tartt, as well as of the controversial BBC TV show The Fall.
