Subjectivity in Psychology in the Era of Social Justice

Bethany Morris, Chase O'Gwin, Sebastienne Grant, Sakenya McDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367427542
• eBook ISBN: 9781000051049
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Medical Law
• Index: Law

The notion of social justice permeates much of current Western political and cultural discourse with a newfound urgency. What it means to be socially just is a question Morris et al investigate and interrogate, looking at psychology's contributions to the subject and considering the practicality of social justice in light of modern subjectivity.

The book begins by examining the lack of equity and inclusivity in education and the ways in which psychology has been complicit in the margninalization of oppressed groups. Drawing upon Lacanian theory, it goes on to discuss how diversity initiatives take on an obsessive-neurotic characteristic that can stifle those it claims to understand and promote .The authors investigate the anxiety around the performance of being socially just or "woke" and suggest how psychology can contribute to the development of socially just humans, more attuned to the needs of others, through the appreciation of interconnectivity and compassion.

An imperative text for scholars and students of philosophical and theoretical psychology, critical psychology, social psychology, psychoanalysis, social work, and education.

1
Introduction

The Era of Social Justice

It is our contention that we are in an era of social justice. By this we mean that social justice concerns, praxis, and ideology permeate much of the Western political and cultural discourse. This is not to say that social justice is a new phenomenon, as theorists and philosophers have been interrogating questions about what it means to be a just citizen in a just society since at least the ancient Greeks. However, the urgency around social justice issues, as well as some of the taken for granted assumptions about what constitutes social justice, seems to constitute much of the contemporary discourse. On the eve of another US presidential election, candidates are being asked to account for their views on diversity and inclusion, access to social services, and policies that have been identified as discriminatory or exclusive. It has also become standard to receive some sort of diversity and inclusion training at one’s place of work, not to mention that many job applications within academia require the applicant to explain how one accommodates issues of diversity and inclusion in the classroom. Universities are beginning to offer classes and degrees in social justice, and positions in a variety of contexts are opening to accommodate those specialties. Furthermore, the locus of much of the discourse around social justice seems to be taking place on the internet in forums, blogs, and social media via tweets, posts, memes, and emojis. This not only means that issues and ideas reach more people faster than ever, but that debates and tensions also increase more rapidly around said issues, sometimes before proper fact checking can be done.

Contemporary social justice movements claim that social justice means the removal of barriers for social mobility, social support, and an equitable distribution of wealth (Kitching, 2001). While the concern seems to still be focused on economic equality and access to social services, people advocating for social justice have also included concerns such as representation in media, access to abortion and other reproductive health issues, being referred to by one’s correct pronoun and gender identity in general, the disproportionate representation of minorities in the criminal justice system, and diversity within the workplace, to name only a very few. It would appear that social justice has become common parlance, and as a result the question about what it means to be socially just is a question psychologists must both investigate and interrogate. This book is an attempt to enter such discourse, with considerations about psychology’s contributions to notions of social justice, and to consider the practicality of social justice given certain factors of modern subjectivity.

What Is Social Justice?

Social justice has undergone a number of conceptual transitions and instantiations. Roemer (1996) suggests that the problem of the allocation of resources in an equitable manner has been a concern for at least two millennia, citing both Aristotle and Plato as well as the Talmud as taking up the concern. Ornstein (2017) identifies the notion of social justice as originating in Christian doctrine, predicated on the command to help the less fortunate. Miller (2001) claims that though such concerns were evident earlier, the concept of social justice as we recognize it today was not introduced into political thought until the late 19th century in reaction to growing economic disparity and the role of the state. In claiming this, he also provides a framework from which to consider social justice concerns and initiatives, especially within the field of psychology. He delineates three factors that must be identified in considering social justice. The first is that the social sphere in question must be bounded, with group membership determinant so that members of the community can readily identify themselves as belonging to the same group, which Miller argues is most aptly recognized in the nation state. Second, Miller suggested that there needs to be an institutional body which can identify and regulate ideals of justice. Miller (2003) suggests that such a task may fall to the social sciences, “which enable the impact of institutional changes on individuals’ life chances to be traced with a new-found precision and rigour” (as cited in Jackson, 2005, p. 357), an insight we will attempt to problematize with this book. Finally, it is assumed that the state has the agency to address and ameliorate inequitable conditions.

Ornstein (2017) claims that issues of social justice within the social sciences begins in the 1960s, with scientists and scholars attempting to consider issues of class and caste. This of course coincided with the various civil rights movements at the time, and soon social justice became associated with issues pertaining to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and physical and mental health. The problem with a notion of justice premised on group membership of course is that social justice concerns can be claimed by any members of a group who believe they are oppressed or relegated to the margins of society. Social psychology tells us that members belonging to a group with a high degree of entitativity tends to share not only a social identity but also a worldview (Hogg, Hohman, & Rivera, 2008). This is why the National Socialist Party of Germany and the National Fascist Party of Italy were able to claim that their socioeconomic and nationalist propositions were in the interest of social justice and unity among the people. Social justice, then, cannot be understood as a colloquialism but rather a signifier that holds a number of potential interpretations and agendas for praxis.

Psychology and Social Justice: Conjunctions and Contradictions

As psychologists, we are intimately concerned with the ways in which issues of oppression and inequality affect one another, while also being aware of the fundamental issues that arise in attempting to have concrete operational definitions. As Louis, Mavor, Macchia, and Amiot (2014) explain, psychology is not a discipline constituted by a unified understanding of its parameters and praxes, nor does social justice have a consensus on its meaning, either within psychology or outside of the discipline. They go on to demonstrate that psychologists, because of our group alliances, are susceptible to the changing tides of our distinct disciplines, and therefore our perspectives on social justice, and more broadly ethics, may also fluctuate.

In order to navigate this uncertain terrain, we propose that as psychologists, we need to return to the taken for granted assumptions about subjectivity, both within our discipline as well as the disparate fields within psychology. The concept of subjectivity is one which is implicit in psychological discourses but not always explicitly articulated. In considering the ways in which subjectivity is constructed, understood, and implicated, perhaps we can also then think through the ways in which social justice is construed in relation to those assumptions about subjectivity.

Subjectivity and Psychology

In attempting to return to notions of subjectivity, we are of course reminded that this term also has had both a long and contentious history in philosophy, particularly continental philosophy, and can be traced to the work of Descartes, Kant, and Hegel. For our purposes, we understand subjectivity as revolving around questions about the constitution of the individual and objectivity. To quote Hegel (1998), subjectivity can be understood as follows:

The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realized and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.

(para. 18)

For Hegel, a subject arises out of the structure of its own negation, its own alienation. In his own way, Freud took up this idea of subject-as-structure and would popularize the idea of the unconscious and a subject to whom parts of itself were alien and inaccessible (Freud, 2005). One notes the structuring point was speaking, as opposed to Gestalt (e.g., as elaborated by Merleau-Ponty (1967, 2002), leaving the unsayable, the unsaid, as its residues—hence the unconscious. However, the subject would interact with the world though the use of a specialized sub-function of the subject Freud dubbed Ich, often translated as Ego. This term would be picked up by popular psychology as a way to describe one’s sense of subjectivity and even by cognitive psychology as the seat of cognition (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2010).

The purpose of this book is to think through the ways in which subjectivity can be said to be constituted, affected, and penetrated by social discourses, with concerns for being socially just. It is the authors’ intention to consider subjectivity as a locus of these discourses through which to consider the implicit intersection of the individual and the social, where each constitutes the other. In order to do this, each chapter is helmed by an individual author, lending his or her expertise to questions pertaining to subjectivity and social justice.

In Chapter 2, Sakenya McDonald demonstrates the ways in which critical psychology can come to inform psychology about the role of subjectivity in social justice issues. She focuses specifically on the role psychology and education have had on the creation of apathetic subjectivities through hyper-competitiveness and emphasis on personal worth determined by capital. This chapter grounds our concerns as localized within neoliberal capitalism, asking how it implicitly produces problematic subjectivities. This allows Sebastienne Grant to further discuss in Chapter 3 the ways in which psychology has contributed to the construction of subjectivities that are resistant to or hinder social justice. She takes up the argument that the field of psychology unintentionally contributes to constructions of modern Western subjectivities that are largely incompatible with the ideals, values, and goals of social justice. She argues that psychology could promote social justice by mindfully contributing to the construction of more socially just subjectivities. This follows the work of psychologists such as Philip Cushman and David Loy, who have claimed that modern subjectivities are marked by a deep sense of emptiness, resulting in personally and socially harmful traits and behaviors (such as individualism, materialism, narcissism, territorialism, and greed) aimed at covering over or filling up their lacking interiors. She contends that with intention and effort, however, psychologists can address the issue of the empty self and promote socially just subjectivities.

In Chapter 4, Bethany Morris considers the responses to social justice concerns at the industrial and organizational level, looking specifically at diversity and inclusion initiatives. She argues that such initiatives are ultimately conceived of through a combination of cognitive psychology discourses and neoliberal capitalist demands and are thus problematic for those interested in social justice concerns. She uses a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective to explore the construction and relationship to the Other that is reified in both cognitive psychology and diversity initiatives. A Lacanian perspective also allows us to consider how we might confront, consider, and be compassionate in the face of alterity in ways that does not demand assimilation into an exploitative capitalist system.

In Chapter 5, Chase O’Gwin explores some of the problematic manifestations of social justice in popular culture as a way to explore social justice ideology and the symptoms that have arisen from it. This chapter will focus on two of the most prominent symptoms. The first goes by many names: the Tumblr Social Justice Warrior, the Facebook Activist, the call-out troll, and so forth, wherein social justice causes are seen as an opportunity for social performance rather than a chance for participating in actual activism. The second is the nature and status of being “woke.” He investigates how these present symptoms have arisen, particularly in an age where Baudrillard’s predictions of a reality as simulacrum have already come to pass or have come perilously close to doing so. Furthermore, he advances the implications this has on the current social justice movement, exploring the problematic nature of symptoms as part of a social/cultural ideological injunction of “justice for all” that is impossible to meet. Finally, through the theories of Emmanuel Levinas, he considers some possible solutions to this predicament in social justice initiatives in contemporary Western society.

References

• Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Friston, K. J. (2010). The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: A neurobiological account of Freudian ideas. Brain, 133(4), 1265–1283.
• Freud, S. (2005). The unconscious. London: Penguin Books.
• Hegel, G.W.F. (1998). Phenomenology of spirit. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
• Hogg, M. A., Hohman, Z. P., & Rivera, J. E. (2008). Why do people join groups? Three motivational accounts from social psychology. Social and Personality Compass, 2(3), 1269–1280.
• Jackson, B. (2005). The conceptual history of social justice. Political Studies Review, 3, 356–373.
• Kitching, G. M. (2001). Seeking social justice through globalization: Escaping a nationalist perspective. University Park, PA: Penn State University.
• Louis, W. R., Mavor, K. I., La Macchia, S. T., & Amiot, C. E. (2014). Social justice and psychology: What it is, and what should be. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34(1), 14–27.
• Merleau-Ponty, M. (1967). The Structure of Behavior. London: Beacon Press.
• Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
• Miller, D. (2001)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Systemic Apathy, Subjectivity, and Social Justice in Psychology and Education
• 3 Addressing the Empty Self: Toward Socially Just Subjectivities
• 4 Cognitive Science, Obsessionality, and Diversity and Inclusion
• 5 “I’m Just Not Woke Enough”
• Index