One of the best ways to understand the meaning of this term is to look at the glacial image of Rene Descartes‘ Cogito Ergo Sum. When Descartes triumphantly declared himself against the skeptics in his Reflections on Primary Philosophy, the Self that made this declaration questioned his own body and the world around him.
He also neglects the importance of language as a tool of thinking, as it is not just a tool of communication. Finally, Descartes identified this Self as a thinking subject and this thinking as fully conscious and transparent to itself.
As is usually accepted today, subjectivity is a name for the Self, which is seen as an embodied and situated Self, whose ability to think depends on language and whose consciousness is impaired and partial.
The subject is often used to draw attention to other characteristics of the Self. Such that would jeopardize the more traditional images of the human person.
First of all, the embodied subject (the Self, currently embodied in historical and cultural systems) is a rather problematic autonomous Self.
The cultural overdetermination of human action is so pronounced that it calls into question human freedom (or autonomy).
In this regard, the subject is used to emphasize our destiny as subject to historical and cultural forces and structures.
Finally, the reflexivity of the subject in a more traditional view is considered crucial. But here too there are differences:
In contemporary semiotic and poststructuralist developments on subjectivity, there is a delicate sensitivity to the fact that the ways in which we treat ourselves or expose ourselves are inextricably (though not obviously) related to the ways in which others treat us or introduce us.
After Freud, it is difficult to remain insensitive to the unconscious. Descartes did not have the opportunity to benefit from Freud’s theories, as he was born several centuries before him.
The unity and transparency of the cogito (the Self, defined by Descartes) have been replaced by a subject, in turn, divided into himself (conscious/unconscious) and largely incomprehensible to himself.
