Individuation and the work of individuals

Kathya Araujo
Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (Chile)
Danilo Martuccelli
Universit de Lille 3 CeRIES (Francia)
Abstract
This article starts by recognizing the growing importance of the conception of the
Individual in order to understand contemporary societies, while it focuses on certain
impasses arising when socialization and subjectivation strategies are favoured to
approach this subject matter. After formulating some criticism to both of these
strategies, the article presents and develops the ways in which individuation allows
explaining, at the scale of the individual, the main trials in a specific society, and it
analyzes how individuals are able to build themselves as subjects within this
framework.
Keywords: Individuation Subject Trial Individual Socialization
Subjectivation.
Contact
Danilo Martuccelli
Universit de Lille 3 - CeRIES
Domaine Universitaire du "Pont de Bois"
BP 60149
59653 - Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex - FRANCE
[email protected]

The thesis that the individual is a relevant path to understand contemporary societies
has acquired growing importance in the social sciences (Martuccelli, Singly, 2009).
The current centrality of the individual in sociology originated in the crisis of the idea
of society, and it is a testimony of a deep transformation of our sensitivity
specifically, the fact that the individual is the threshold of our social perception. It is
in reference to the experiences of the individual that society may acquire meaning.
The central core of this process can be expressed simply. In the same way that, in
the past, the understanding of social life was organized from the notions of
civilization, history, society, nation, state or class, it now pertains to the individual to
occupy this central place of analytical conception. In this context, sociologys main
challenge is to explain societal main changes from an intelligence that places in its
1

horizon the individual and his or her experiences Nevertheless, even if the individual
needs to be placed at the apex of the analysis, that does not imply at all a reduction
of the sociological analysis at the level of the actor, but it appears instead as the
consequence of a societal transformation that sets the individual at the base of the
production of social life. In order to understand the new analytical role that is
presently conferred to the individual, we will discuss socialization and subjectivation
theories and see that they present an important set of insufficiencies that beckon us
to follow another strategy that, stemming from the individuation process, may be able
to describe the work of the individual in building himself or herself as a subject.
Let us clarify this point, as socialization has undoubtedly been given great
preeminence in the sociology of education. Socialization is not the only way in which
the formation of the individuals can be conceived. Along with socialization, at least
two other great strategies can be differentiated: subjectivation and individuaiton.
Schematically, socialization studies the social and psychological making of the
individual, while subjectivation considers, within sociology, the making of the subject
as the result of social and political emancipation. Individuation is interested, from a
social and historical perspective, in the in the type of individual structurally formed in
a society (Martuccellli, 2007). In this articled we shall defend the thesis that, in order
to extract all the promises contained in a sociology of the individual, it is essential to
favour individuation as the main strategy to reestablish a macrosociology.

I. Social character, socialization and the theory of society

For a long time, one of the great merits of sociology was its capacity to interpret an
important number of diverse social conducts and situations with the aid of almost a
single model. In effect, the true disciplinary unity of sociology, beyond schools and
theories, ultimately came from this common search, from the project to understand
personal experiences based on organized systems of social relations.

1. A classic model
No other model summarized this project better than the notion of social character
(Martuccelli, 2002). The social character does not only designate the engagement of
an individual in social situations, but to a much deeper level it refers to the will to

make his or her actions and experiences intangible, as a function of his or her social
position, in the form of statistical correlations or by means of an ethnographic
description of ways of life. In both cases socialization was given an important role,
and such perspective defined for a long time the actual sociological grammar of the
individual. Each individual occupies a position, which makes the individual both
unique and typical of the different social layers. The individual is submerged in social
spaces that generate conducts and experiences through a set of social forces (with
little regard to the notion used to describe this process, whether system, field or
configuration) (Parsons, 1951, 1964; Bourdieu, 1979; Elias, 1990). In short,
sociologys most venerable vocation lies in the tireless effort to turn the position
occupied by an actor into the main explanatory factor of his or her conducts.
This articulation between social position and actor type, thanks to the socialization
theory, was so successful that it centered for decades around an idea of society
conceived as an articulation of different levels of social reality, to the extent that actor
and system actually seemed to fuse, like two sides of a same coin. The triumph of
the idea of society that resulted from its functional articulation between systems and
fields or from the ultimate determination of culture by infrastructure and the
attached notion of social character did not mean at all the suppression of the
individual, but the hegemonic imposition of a single perspective. It was around this
pair that sociologys analytical core was forged.

2. The crisis of the model

This intellectual project became progressively in crisis throughout decades. The
model appeared less and less suitable as the notion of an integrated society fell
apart, loosely replaced by the representation of contemporary society under varying
names such as post-industrial, radical modernity, second modernity, post-modernity,
hyper-modernity marked by uncertainty and contingency.
The present situation is characterized by the growing crisis of the idea of the social
character in the precise sense of the term, i.e. the somewhat narrow homology
among a set of structural processes, a collective path (classist, generic or
generational) and a personal experience. Although many sociologists are still working
implicitly within the framework of this model, this elegant taxonomy of characters is
progressively revealing a growing number of anomalies and gaps. An ever growing

number of individuals are becoming singular, and this background movement

becomes independent from social positions, cutting across them and producing an
unexpected array of actors that conceive and conduct themselves as being more
and other than what their social position supposedly dictates. Individuals rebel
against sociological boxes, as shown even involuntarily by the study of one of its
foremost representatives (Bourdieu, 1993). The corruption of the general taxonomy
is manifestly a matter of degrees and never a matter of all or nothing. However, the
inflection is strong enough as to prompt us to question the will to understand
individuals, if not exclusively at least for the most part, from a strategy that grants a
predominant interpretative role to a set of social positions at the core of a particular
conception of social order and society.
Let us consider a simple illustration. Whereas sociology had long considered that
culture ensured the correspondence between society and personality (whether for
the interiorization of norms or for the incorporation of habits), thanks to socialization
the function of culture has become progressively more ambivalent. This confirmation
is not a novelty, but in the past most sociologists would only interpret deviations as
marginal anomalies. For sociologys mainstream, as manifestly embodied by
Durkheim, culture ensured, by means of a socialization process, the agreement
between personal expectations and objective possibilities. The process of individual
formation, thanks to the socialization operator, would lead except in rare cases to
the individuals progressive adjustment to society. Nowadays, as opposed to what
the classic school of thought held, culture appears as a machine that produces an
incredible inflation of individual expectations. The reason for this is not found, as
some have stated, in modernism (Bell, 1982), but it is a somewhat direct
consequence of the effect of the market on social life. The market creates a set of
ever growing expectations, generating a structural mismatch between our personal
aspirations and our goal opportunities.
This problem is obviously not new. This mismatch was called the anomie the
ailment of infinity by Durkheim (1995), that is, the fact that the actors structurally
have longings that society is unable to satisfy. But that which terrified Durkheim and
his contemporaries has become a fundamental element in our reality. Actors have
expectations that structurally exceed their realization possibilities, as Pierre
Bourdeau (1987) recognized in his last last great theoretical book. Culture creates

desires that the individuals perceive as expectations, causing a social distance and a
general frustration, as their desires cannot be satisfied by their social situations.
Culture in modern times is no longer just an integration factor between the individual
and society; it is also an active fission factor, increasingly frequent, between one and
the other.
The importance of this process is such that the need for new analytical distinctions
becomes manifest in specialized literature. Evidently, individuals are still being
socialized through cultural factors that shape their personality, but this socialization
operates in a social context in which culture plays an ever growing ambivalent role.
Culture is no longer the guarantee of a long-lasting agreement between actor and
society, as it was in culturally closed or isolated societies, but it appears instead as a
permanent agent of differentiation.
There is no clearer evidence of this inflexion than the progressive and often
surreptitious change of the analytical role given to socialization Through different
stages not only is the idea of the existence of a plurality of cultures at the core of a
single society acknowledged, but more importantly, due to the divergence of cultural
orientations socialization can no longer act as societys integrating pivot. A long
series of interpretations appeared over the last few decades: individuals, depending
on the groups they belong to, their subculture, generation or sex, do not interiorize
the same cultural models; all individuals, on the other hand, are not correctly
socialized; in a society there is a large number of possible conflicts of orientation
between purposes and the legitimate means. In sum, socialization is no longer an
exclusive integration principle, becoming a process that is subdued to social
antagonism.
A detailed presentation of this intellectual history would be very lengthy, but we shall
briefly evoke its analytical core: the growing exploration of socializations plural and
contradictory dimensions. In effect, whereas the acknowledgement of the diversity of
subcultures did not truly question the single nature of the socialization process, this
assumption has progressively been questioned. The true rupture was spurred by
Berger and Luckmann (1966) with their well-known distinction between primary
socialization (from early childhood) and the series of secondary socializations that all
individuals undergo throughout their lives. Socialization is no longer a single process
completed at the end of childhood, but an open and multiple reality instead. The time

variable, widely rejected or minimized in the previous view, acquires a decisive

importance. Let us stress that it is this acknowledgement of socializations diachronic
dimension and of a highly differentiated society that supports conflictual conceptions
of socialization, the studies on class neurosis (Gaulejac, 1987) or the recent
inflections of dispositionalism arising in France, especially as a heterogeneous set of
social habits with a strong interindividual variation (Kaufmann, 2001; Lahire, 1998). In
an extremely simplified outline we can state that, in contrast with the canonical
version of the social character, these sociological perspectives, especially when
centered on the individual, cannot but confirm numerous anomalies or
dissonances. Whether through strategies of statutory incongruities, normative
ambivalences, contradiction among habits, it becomes more and more evident that,
in a growing number of contexts, the individual no longer adjusts perfectly to a
specific situation. And as the actors main traits can no longer be attributed entirely to
a social position that is conceived in a single and homogeneous manner, sociologists
are forced to focus more on the individual.
Carried out in this manner, however, socialization studies undergo a substantial
analytical variation. In the past, socialization was conceived as one of the main
mechanisms for the integration of society (it was thanks to socialization that actor
and position were matched). Nowadays, socialization appears as a formidable fission
mechanism each individual is the product of an ever more contingent and diverse
series of socialization experiences. Facing this process, socialization readily appears
to be a dead end path and, deep inside, terribly tautological. Is there any novelty in
stating that a highly differentiated society is made up of plural individuals? But above
all, what can such a strategy for an in-depth study on the individuals teach us about
society?

II. Individuation primacy

The need to recognize the growing singularization of personal paths is progressively
imposed. The fact that actors have access to diverse experiences that tend to make
them singular, even when they occupy similar social positions, is more and more
acknowledged. But in order to understand this transformation we must not turn
socialization into the main vehicle of social theory. We need to focus on the
individuation process instead, as it is only from the individuation process that the

individual forming process may become the true axis of sociological analysis.
The reason for the individual to acquire such a centrality lies in the fact that his or her
forming process allows us to describe a new way in which society is formed. The true
reason for the existence of this process is the entry into a new period of history and
society. It is because of the crisis of the idea of society that it is necessary to explain
social processes by looking for sociologys unity at its base, starting from the
bottom, that is, from the individuals, aiming to show other dimensions behind the
purpose of totalizing systemic conceptions. The challenge actually has a double
dimension. On the one hand, against the supporters of the notion of social character,
we must agree with current socialization and the ever greater need of a certain
sociological perspective. But on the other hand, now against the supporters of a
certain sociology of the individual, it is imperative to understand that the present
situation cannot be interpreted exclusively from the inevitable plurality of individual
dispositions, reducing sociology to the level of the sheer individual, or actually, to
cultural transmission and incorporation processes.
The reasons stated above lead us to place the individuation strategy at the center of
the study of the individual forming process, making it independent from works on
socialization. In effect, in the light of the present changes, we need to be able to
explain the individual forming processes on new bases. In this process, sociological
adaptations of psychological categories, such as the use of pathologies of the soul to
describe the present period (Lasch, 1999; Ehrenberg, 1998), the increase in
reflexivity

actually,

in

instrumental

cognitive

competencies

(Beck,

Beck-

Gernsheim, 2001; Giddens, 1991) or the recent articulation between psychoanalysis

and sociology (iek, 2001; Elliott, 2003) suffer from a common insufficiency. These
versions do not quite manage to detach individuation form the socialization theory
(Dubet, 1994).
This insufficiency is not new. The reasoning followed by most authors that opted for
the individuation path was actually, deep inside, bicephalous. On the one hand, they
managed to show the extent to which the individual cannot be dissociated from a set
of structural processes that explain precisely his or her different historical profiles
(urbanization, monetization...). On the other hand, whenever they left behind the
macrosociological level and focused on the effective and more singularizing
mechanisms that form actors individually, they would do so by making use of

socialization theories.

From Simmel to Giddens, this was the true limit for

individuation theories (Martuccelli, 1999). How can this link be established on new
bases? As we shall propose, it can be established with a specific mechanism for the
study of individuation, through the notion of trial, with a specific version of the work
carried out by the individual to form into a subject.

1. The individuation process based on trials

Individuation is, therefore, a specific analytical perspective of study that inquires
about the type of individual that is structurally formed by a society in a given historical
period. But in order to describe this process we need to focus on a few great
structural factors or, as we shall propose in this study, on a set of structural trials that
all individuals are submitted to in a society, although from different positions. In this
sense, trials are historical challenges, socially produced, culturally represented,
unequally distributed, that individuals must face at the core of a structural process of
individuation (Martuccelli, 2006).
The notion of trial proposes an articulation between societal processes and personal
experiences, but the instances in which the socialization theory tries to establish
necessary links (and at times even to infer microsociological conclusions from
macrosociological considerations), the study of the individuation process based on
trials aims to leave this interrelation always open, and hence problematic. As we shall
see, this process bears decisive repercussions when describing each individuals
singular process in becoming a subject.
Trials have four great analytical characteristics (Martuccelli, 2006; 2007). Firstly, the
notion of trial is inseparable from a narrative dimension. It assumes the existence of
a perception mechanism from which actors experience and understand their lives as
submitted to a set of specific problems or challenges. Actors in these processes do
not face one decisive moment as in the heroic visions of antiquity, but they are
forced to confront a countless number of experiences in which they are constantly
tested. The description of trials implies, therefore, pulling from a specific narrative
structure from which life is understood as a permanent sequence of trials. This
narrative, following Simmel (1986) and Berman (2006), is peculiar to modernity and
because of it life is lived as a permanent adventure.
Secondly, trials suppose a type of individual that is forced, due to structural reasons,

to face such challenges. This conception is open enough as to allow operalizations

from different conceptualizations of the individual, even though attention must be
paid in all of them to what the individual perceives, not in order to allow access to the
individuals subjectivity, but because this aspect, and its perception at an individual
scale, explains a collective phenomenon from a different perspective. At any rate,
social life is more and more marked by a series of challenges (school, work,
relationships...) that constantly and structurally put individuals to test. These
experiences are so difficult as to be perceived as intrinsically personal.
Thirdly, trials are linked to evaluation processes. Trials imply the existence of a
system for selecting people which, without invalidating the weight of social positions
and the differing opportunities associated to them, leaves the final result of the
process open. This way, the notion of trial restores contingency to the peopleselecting process, avoiding excessive emphasis on the way in which actors
overcome or fail such challenges (as done in resilience studies). Selective trials are
of a different nature. Some of them are strongly formalized (regarding school or
work); others not to a great extent (urban or family related), while others may even
bear no formality (existential or intersubjective relations). But in each and every one
of them actors may evaluate themselves as 'passing' or failing, as succeeding or not.
Trials would thus explain the differential game linked to the different social
characteristics of the individuals (in terms of class, gender, age, health, material and
symbolic resources, etc). However, in the analytical application of the notion of trials,
it is not important to quantify the resources available to each actor, but to study in situ
and in action, according to the type of trials faced and the differing responses among
them, the specific modalities in the use of such resources.
Lastly, trials do not designate any type of life issue or challenge, but they
circumscribe a set of great structural challenges, particularly meaningful, within a
society. Therefore, in order to describe how individuation occurs in a society, we
need to identify a reduced and meaningful number of trials. In effect, even when it
may be possible to identify a great diversity of social mechanisms, the study must be
limited to a small number of trials, considered relevant for a specific social and
historical reality. On some occasions, depending on the type of society, trials of an
institutional nature shall be favored (school, work, family); on other occasions, trials
related to social bonds (the relationship to collectives, norms, and to others) will be

more relevant; but in all cases trials will have a specific, distinctive form for each
society. In sum, describing the standardized system of individuation trials is
equivalent to describing a historic society in its unity. An individuation process will
only exist insofar as it is alive in the trial system that creates it.
The study of individuation by means of a standardized set of trials allows building an
analysis strategy capable of describing a social and historical whole based on
coordinates other than those proposed by the idea of society, and especially by the
theory of systems (Luhmann, 1995). In these later versions, as it is known, society
may no longer be described in a unitary way, nor can individuals be described from it,
as society is but a juxtaposition of autopoiesys systems without a central principle.
On the contrary, the standardized set of trials tries to describe, at the scale of the
individual, a historical society.

2. The declination of trials

The notion of trials allows us to restore to society its elastic nature (Martuccelli, 2005),
so we can analyze the nonuniform diffraction of social lifes practices and phenomena,
thus

avoiding

the

direct

inference

of

microsocial

consequences

from

macrosociological vision. At this point, it is imperative to insist on the fact that a

narrow, unidirectional link among the various social levels no longer exists (Latour,
2006).
The fact that structural trials undergo a diffraction process means that not all actors
are equally exposed to these structural trials. Not all social actors are, for instance,
equally exposed to the hazards of globalization (Robertson, 1992; Held et al, 1999),
which implies a wide range of possible declinations that will vary according to the
society they live in (South and North societies), gender (differences between men and
women), social position (low-income sectors or middle-upper classes), work status
even within a same social position (self-employed or on salary, different work
contracts, etc). Although trials are common to all actors in a society, they are diffracted
according to their different life contexts.
What is more, trials at the core of every singular life vary through time, which implies
that individuals are forced to operate their lives differently through time, according to
the results obtained at each point in life, and thus among the growing set of trials they
have lived. The series of trials is not produced by surprise, being relatively

10

standardized in modern societies (especially in regard to the bonds school-workfamily). But at the individual level, the inscription under personalized sets of trials is
the fruit of a markedly singular life path: stages that combine errors and successes,
fate and fortune, opportunities and dominations, accidents and conditionings. In this
sense, once more, there is no direct flow among levels. On the one hand, we need to
recognize and respect what appears as contingent at the level of a personal life (the
result of trials for each actor in the singularity of his or her personal experience), and
on the other hand, take into account the standardized social-chronological profile of
the series of trials at the level of society. Its resolution at the individual level will define
his or her individuation process.
Thus conceived, the notion of trial allows us to singularize the sociological analysis
without breaking away from a broad structural view. Indeed, the notion of trial
becomes relevant as it considers the differential resulting from interpersonal
variations. This differential would explain the fact that individuals with same resources
and similar social positions, confront trials in very different ways (Sen, 1992). In an
opposite sense, actors that have disadvantaged social positions from an objective
point of view may manifest, in subjective terms, experiences of greater personal
realization or control as shown, for example, in some studies in Chile regarding
womens experience (Guzmn et al, 1999). In sum, trial-based individuation explains
individual paths in social contexts that are marked by diverging tendencies that
simultaneously cause homogenization and differentiation.

III. From individuation processes to the work of the individual

In order to reach a complete understanding of the singularization of paths, we need to
complement the trial-based analysis with a detailed study of the work leading from the
individual to the individual. The recognition of societys very consistency, its elasticity,
will allow us to approach this analytical space in all its complexity. In effect, an
interpretation of the individuation processes that acknowledges the plurality of social
diffraction phenomena raises a wide range of questions regarding the specific work
that the actor performs throughout the individuation process (such as the specific
ways in which a narrative is built, and the modalities in which resources are used to
confront them in a specific context of structural determinations). Thus understood, we
need to find out how to address what is played in the actor himself or herself, and

11

what that brings to the explanation of the actor's own path. More specifically, we face
the issue of finding out which analytical and conceptual tools will allow us to get closer
to the work of the individual, without psychologizing focusing on deepening our
studies on interiorization or inscription processes and without falling into a
normativism that applies notions produced for certain historical and social realities to
other realities e.g. turning personal autonomy and choice into a general model,, as
proposed in the individualization thesis (cf. for a review, Araujo, 2009a). In all cases, it
is imperative to break away from the sociological analysis tendency of leaving out of
the study the issue of the subject, in the precise sense of the term (Schimank,
Volkmann, 2007). How can we approach this dimension? How can we specifically
approach this work?

1. Subjectivation limits
The issue that we have presented is not new, having received special attention in
studies on the formation of the individual from different subjectivation perspectives.
Foucault (1975, 1976), for instance, emphasized that the subject is a product of power
mechanisms of institutional and discoursive nature. This production occurs by means
of various techniques, historically determined, that contribute to the main goal of
disciplination. Theoricists inspired in Lacans work (iek, 2001; Miller 2005) focused
on the transformations of the Symbolic, especially on its weakening, and on its effects
in the formation of subjects. As long as the subject is conceived as an effect of the
Symbolic (and maintained in the Symbolic, though stimulated by what is Real and
intertwined with the Imaginary), structural variations at this level are considered
directly responsible for the characteristics taken by subjectivities. Finally, the
contributions from a post-modern perspective or with a deconstructivist inspiration
(Butler 2001a, 2001b; Braidotti, 2000; Lyotard, 1979) have stressed on the nonidentical nature of the subject, conceived as a multiple flow in permanent movement,
responding with imitative processes to language games and identificatory offers. In
this view, the subjects movable and performing nature is highlighted.
In all the above important critical perspectives there is, however, a certain limitation.
For Foucault, the analysis is subordinated to an interpretation that assigns an
extremely broad power to historical-cultural production strategies in the formation of
subjectivities, generally placing the subject in a binary game frame, valid but extremely

12

limited, shaped by domination and emancipation. The issue of the subject is

excessively associated to the issue of subjection: the Weberian heritage is manifest
both in the pessimism of a new version of the iron cage and in a strongly individual
ethical and moral way out (Martuccelli, 1999; Schroer, 2000).
In the contributions of Lacanian psychoanalysis, this level of analysis of the subject is
excessively autonomized, which prevents the proper explanation of the subject's
historical and incarnated nature. Although the dimension of the contingency at the
level of the individual is at the core of its interprations (the vicissitudes in the
encounters with the Real, resulting in a pluralization of the modalities of
subjectivation), this contingent dimensiob disappears as the perspective is placed next
to the symbolic structure itself which precedes the subject. Expressed simply, if the
subject is conceived with a certain degree of malleability, the structure that forms and
contains the individual is conceived with a very high degree of homogeneity and
rigidity.
Finally, it has been difficult for post-modern and deconstructivist proposals to be
translated or to resist the contrast with the advance in social studies, particularly
proposals by those who work from the perspective of identity production, integration,
or the issue of the quality of the social link. On the one hand, the proposal of a smooth
flow and permanent movement of the subject stumbles upon the evidence of
constrictions and discoursive imperatives both institutional and social, which are
expressed in refined homogenization tendencies. On the other hand, the lack of a
minimal consistency in the subject leaves some questions open regarding the sense
of social action and the viability of political action.
There are three indications derived from this criticism for coming closer to the issue at
stake in the use of the notion of subject to understand the work of the individual,
namely: the restitution of the agency, the respect for the socially and historically
incarnated nature of the subject, and the incorporation of a certain stability intrinsic to
the subject.

2. The work of the individual to form into a subject

In order to advance beyond these impasses we need to recognize that the
intelligence of social action is never the result of a direct relation between the
individual and social and cultural determinations. It is, in all cases, a relation

13

mediated by a representation of the subject. Nevertheless, this subject can neither be

conceived as a purely normative effect of symbolic commands, mechanisms and
discourses , nor as the effect of pure contingency whether derivative or
interactional , but as a result of the permanent work performed by the individuals.
The work of the individual to build himself or herself into a subject, however, is not
the result of his or her conscious and autonomous will, but it is conditioned by the
simultaneous action of the social experience and the social ideal. In other words, it
does not derive from the individuals free will, from the project to heroically incarnate
a figure of the subject (Sartre 1943; Touraine, 1997), or to follow a political tradition
(Bellah, 1985), or to articulate his or her identity from various moral sources (Taylor,
1989). Instead, it is originated and developed in the crossroad (always contingent,
never completely at random) made up of ideals and social experience (Araujo,
2009c). The subject that each one can become is defined in the interreign formed by
the ideals that guide the individual and by the guidelines drawn from social
experience regarding advisable and efficient ways to conduct oneself in social life. In
this manner, far from a substantive view or a pure nomadic flow (Derrida, 1967;
Braidotti, 2000), the subject needs to be understood as a configuration. These
subject configurations perform in the individuals the function of guiding and
legitimizing his or her actions in the world, but we must insist that they are, at the
same time, the effect of theindividual's work and of the ways the individual responds
to the different trials he or she faces in a society (Araujo, 2009b).
We need to clarify that, when we mention the action of ideal in this work about
oneself onto himself or herself, we do not refer to the action of every or any ideal, but
to the ideals that have reached their inscription in the individual, as in
psychoanalytical proposals (Freud 1974a, 1974b; Lacan, 1980). Even in this case,
the process cannot be understood as direct or without mediation. Social ideals do not
act mechanically in the configuration and action of concrete individuals, which
explains the plural and unequal action of social ideals when they are considered from
the individual perspective. Hence, what is important at this level of study, is not to
analyze the big ideals (or figures of the subject) present in a society, but to trace the
effective ways in which some of these ideals have managed to be inscribed in
individual actors. In other words, and drawing from psychoanalytical terms, we need
to find in what way and under which modalities some of these big ideals are a part of

14

the idea of the Self of each actor, that is, of the place from which we look at
ourselves in a way that we find ourselves kind, worthy of love (iek, 1992: 147).
Now, just as we cannot assume a linear and mechanical relation between action and
social ideal, neither can we do so in regard to social experiences. Social experiences
deliver the basic supplies for guiding oneself in the world because they contribute to
the interpretative work of the situations, and even more so because they help to
reestablish the context of possibilities and impossibilities from which the individual
may confront the different trials. But not all experiences have a similar weight for the
individuals, nor is each experience enough to guide their actions. What takes part in
guiding individual action are not social actions, but the knowledge about what is
social that is decanted from them.
While for social ideals it is essential to consider their inscription as mediation, when it
comes to experiences we need to take into account the filtering process they are
submitted to. The orientations taken by individual actions are the effect of multiple
and varied experiences. However, and given the profusion of these experiences and
the diversity of their incorporation modes, both conscious and unconscious, it is
impossible to turn this process into the core of the study as dispositional studies on
socialization would propose. Strictly speaking, it is the decantation of these multiple
experiences that will produce a knowledge about what is social, but what must draw
our attention is not the sedimentation of dispositions (that is, the accumulative history
of interiorization or inscription processes, as proposed by socialization), but the work
that from them, and thanks to particular ideals, the individual will carry out to become
a subject.
This way, and aiming to describe the work by which each individual becomes a
subject by confronting trials, we need to account for the simultaneous action of the
inscribed ideal and the social experience decanted into knowledge. The configuration
of the subject is a product of social experiences and of the action of ideals. This
duality explains, on the one hand, the provisional nature of the individual because of
being forced, by social experiences and by variations in the inscription of ideal, to
produce and reproduce the configuration work as a subject, On the other hand, it
accounts for the 'family atmosphere' maintained throughout time -as the ideals
inscribed in the ideal of the individual Self and the sedimentation of the experience
aim at a relative stability. The configuration of the subject is not crystallized, but it is

15

not open either to infinite modifications. In spite of its malleability, we must consider
the resistance of the material, made up by the footprints of experiences and the
action of the ideal. The configurations of the subject are contingent but not at
random, modifiable but not volatile, kaleidoscopic but not formless.
Ideals appropriate consciousness completely and they are not the basic material in
the production of the subject, since experiences, developed in a social world of
elastic consistency, support the function of social reproduction but also act as a
barrier to it. Individuals do not act purely according to the ideal, although their acts
cannot be interpreted as an automatic effect of social experience either. Social
experiences are not enough to explain individual paths, as they are not conformed in
a void, but produced in the horizon of the ideals. Incorporating the variability of
ideals, insisting in the fact that their efficiency depends on their inscription, and
attributing a significant role to social experiences, we can consider this proposal as a
valid option to grasp the individual beyond a normative interpretation, and conceive
the work of the individual in the individuation process as woven by social and
historical reality.

IV. Two study strategies and a dialog

Facing the deadlocks of social theory and of subjectivation or socialization strategies,
the proposal presented in this article pretends, as a common horizon, to study
societies from the individuals, though emphasizing the individuation processes. On the
one hand, by starting out from trials, we need to understand the profile of a society
(thanks to the standardized set of trials). And on the other hand, we need to analyze
historically how individuals form themselves as they respond to them. It is a
conversation on two autonomous levels, though communicating with each other:
upward, a matter of making the individual relate to the societal register and allow
isolating the specific standardized set of trials for a society; downward, a matter of
opening the effective study by which the individual forms himself or herself as a
subject which demands considering this work as historized in a particular way by the
notion of trial.
The two levels focused on are not mutually excluding, but on the contrary, they open
possibilities to enrich the intelligence of the object that is studied. In a specific way, far
from the ambition to reach a combination of perspectives, what is at stake is the will to

16

reach a dialog procedure. A dialog that is possible and productive, which is worth
highlighting, in the framework of the simultaneous and concrete study of a same
process.
Historically, the adaptation between the individual's ordinary forming process and the
subject's normative horizon was analyzed essentially through the articulation among
various socialization and subjectivation theories. The best efforts in the twentieth
century were marked by this attraction (especially in the articulations between the
works of Marx and Freud, in the framework of the Frankfurt School, or more recently in
the renewal of the discussion between sociologists and psychologists around the
pragmatism and the work by G. H. Mead). Facing the hegemony of this association,
the individuation perspective was not able to propose a sufficiently autonomous and
solid alternative.
What is needed in the following years, and following the crisis of the idea of society, is
to make of individuation the true axis of macrosociology's study, and to describe its
framework, the personalized formation processes of individuals into subjects.

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Received on 27.08.09
Approved on 20.10.09

Kathya Araujo is psychoanalyst, Ph.D. in American Studies and professor at the

University Academy of Christian Humanism. It has been a guest lecturer in various
programs of Master and Doctorate, both in Chile and abroad.
Martuccelli Danilo has a PhD in Sociology, professor at the University of Lille 3 and
laboratory director at ECRI. It has been a guest professor at several French
universities and foreign.

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