Thinking science chapter 4

The Door swing between self and the symbolic 

©By Abdel Hernández San Juan

Written in english and translated to english by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

"When the subject is constituted in the mind under the effect of principles, the mind apprehends itself as a self, for it has being qualified. But the problem is this: if the subject is constituted only inside the collection of ideas, how can the collection of ideas be apprehended as a self, how can I say “I”, under the influence of those same principles?. We do not really understand how can we move from dispositions to the self, or from the subject to the self. How can the subject and the mind, in the last analysis, be one and the same inside the self?. The self must be both a collection of ideas and a disposition, mind and subject. It is a synthesis, which is incomprehensible, since it ties together in its notion, without ever concealing them, origin and qualification"

Gilles Deleuze, The Problem of knowledge and of ethics, Empiricism and subjectivity

 

    Once time clear a way the relations between self and acervo –see my book on this title—with its three discussed levels, 1- the relation between the individual and the social, 2- the one between experience, memory and acervo and 3-the self-representation one, clear away too, after untangled the skein of presence plenum presence versus differed presences, thus as the concept sensibly mediation of subject and object, we are ready to return over my theorization of the self now to analyze how work not only the reflect of culture under the phenomenology of the individual self but also the symbolic and symbols in general to the self-interiorized idealizations in regard to the phenomenological genesis of sign and its social exteriorization.

  Ïn fact, I think that the universe of idealization interiority we will focus in this essay is a universe of symbols more than of signs something required to a differenced distinction between symbols and signs occupied the attention of several semiologists before us.

  Differently to signs even after the enlarged of the domains of sign to cover analogic and digital signs in visual levels such as the iconic, signs are usually cutted between the material side of the sign from which denotation arises and the object beyond, no matter if we are speaking on clues, indicial signs and or icons through conventions as it happen in alphabetic language, agreements of prestablished meanings differently even to the relation between name and naming in signs, and considered at the level of the sign seem in derridean terms, as the first form of apparition of us in front of us, an exteriorized mark of our conscience, symbols are not cutted between something and another thing it have taked its place, nor between form and reference, language and referentiality, form and denotation. 

    Before well seen from the hermeneusis culture is itself we recognize that taking distance of signs by isolating form, reference and code as something itself, is far to understand how the signs are integrated in the general hermeneusis of culture, and only through this recognition we arrive progresibly to the universe of symbols identifying as just a moment of general symbolism defined by more general relations between language and society, language and culture, culture and nature. 

   This is about connotative relations of meaning and meaningfulness, sintagms and paradigms and less on clues, references, denotations and codes, meaning, that the semantic relations between form and content are more openness and less prestablished in between forms and objects.

   But we will not have to extend us much on this distinction of semiotic but instead to stablish the universe of the self to understand how everything corresponding to signs is diluted and or disseminated under a more general symbolism.

    Now well, the analysis of this relation between symbolism and the self-bring us to necessarily survey another  zones of the symbolic in front of which symbolism and the self as a relation itself might be cutted as specific to it, meaning distinguishing the autonomy of this relation on the background of other kind of exchanges and traffics of the symbolic in culture unrelated with the self-such as on the one hand, intersubjectivity, on the other, symbols seen as socially exteriorized objectivity as well as symbols considered under the general pragmatic of communication defined by emissary, message, envoy and reception, whence the universe of the self and symbolism constitute an specific area separated from such another dimensions.

  This idea of cutting the zone and or areas of the self-relation with symbolism is not as much related with my usual concept of cutting since cutting as I use to conceive this notion presuppose cutting in culture things according to parameters stablished by us, in this case the cutting activity is just recognizing something already cutted in the nature of that relation beyond our methodological purposiveness while to a certain point we must identify thus that if we don’t establish in anticipation the autonomy of this cut framed under a microsociology perspective instead of a macro it may also be diffused and or unledged and diffused outside the specific area correspond with a relation majorly and mainly defined by the concept and empirical domain of the individual person. 

  We are in fact speaking here only about individual persons seen as an isolated monad selfsameness separated from the any other thing in the biological, physical and social world as a single individuality, and considering this notion from two well defined western perspectives, the jean piaget concept of the individual development and learning process as based in process of progressive differentiation meaning that the autonomy of the self-individuation is highly evolutioned since it is differenced from society and the Helbet mead concept of the development of the individual as result of a highly richness relation between the individual self and the social. 

   We have here between the isolated single individual and the symbolic a relation between its self and his I that work in a micro level and creates a whole avenue and autonomous serie on how the symbols work. 

    First "the I" is alone with his self and the whole horizont which represent to "the I" the social world of the others had relish to be extrinsique and pass by to be intrinsique reflected under the idealization of the interior world of subjectivity phenomenology, the world of the others is here considered only as individuated image and such individuation has transformed that image.

   In the assure process of taking distance on himself "the I" and the self-envoy and receive in between a mutual enrichment and exchange within both, the self-envoy and receive images from "the I" and in reversal "the I" envoy and receive images from "the self" -inside the individual interior subjectivity according to how the self-had individuated  the image of the others  and created inside that interiority images on how seen himself as if seen by the others, this otherness however is already his own image of the image the others have on him according to how the individuation process processed that images, meaning, on the one hand, that ti is his own image idealized of the others inside his subjectivity as well as the fact that the self is being itself permeated by that relations stablishing the transformation of his alter ego within his self-stim in relation to the social, "the I" envoy to the self a memory image of his own coincidence with himself, meaning a kind of retained, conservated and memorized sense to seize his identity while the self-receive that image and processes it according to how being permeated by a current social environment of culture, the social and values, he has individuated constantly as it is transforming him as single individual meaning the process of becoming.

   But this interiority of the individual is fully made my symbols, let see that from the more diminute space understanding how in the process itself of the formation and taking shape of the interiority as result of the idealization process creates its flour the sense participates in defining it as a symbolism by quoting a Derrida paragraph on how the universe of senses participates symbolized in the taking shape of our inside interior subjectivity and its feelings. Derrida sustained:

        "On one part, the voice unifies the anthropological naturality of the natural sound to the psiquique-semiotique ideality, it articulates, thus, the philosophy of the sprit on the philosophy of nature, and, in the philosophy of the sprit its concept is thus the The Door swing between anthropology and psychology. Between these two sciences we know is inscribed phenomenology of the sprit or science of the experience of the conscience

   On the other part, this phonic relation between the sensible and the intelligible, the real and the ideal, is determined here as a relation of expressivity between an inside and an outside. 

   Keeping the inside in itself, even when is envoy to outside, it is by excellence what confers existence, presence, the dasein to the interior presentation, it made to exist, the concept, the meaning. But at the same time interiorize and temporalize the dasein, act of spatial sensible intuition, language exalt the existence itself, it set it in its true and produce thus a kind of promotion of presence. It made the pass by of the sensible existence into representative, intellectual existence of the concept, it is a pass by as this one what defines the moment of articulation transforms the sound in a voice noise in language

   It is in light, the neutral and abstract element of apparition, pure mean of phenomenality in general how nature is related with itself, in light nature is manifested, we can see it, it sees itself, in this first reflexive articulation, the opening of identity is at the same time the opening of subjectivity. light is the first ideality, the first autoafirmation of nature, in light nature become by first time subjectivity

     Correlatibly Sight is the ideal sense, the more ideal one, by definition and as well it indicate its name more than touching and taste

     We might also say that sight gives the sense to theory, it suspends the wishes, let thing to be in reserve or prohibit the consummation. The visible have in common with the sign what Hegel expressed that we can’t eat it

     However if sight is ideal the hearing is more ideal yet even considering the ideality of the light and of the gaze, the objects perceived by the eye, hearing is more ideal yet, it is the more sublime of the senses, as sight it is a part not of the practical’s but of the theoretical senses, but it is even more ideal that the sight, it is the first and more ideal manifestation of the soul, the sound corresponded to interior subjectivity as sound is itself more ideal than corporality which really exist, it renounce even to that ideal existence and become the expression of the interiority"

 

    

      Such a quite of Derrida discussion is highly extensive and encompass a discussion about how each one of the sense participates in the taking shape of the idealization process creates our interior subjectivity but following the whole discussion will exceed the focus of this paper task around the relation between the self and the symbols.

    Thus, we have symbols in the taking shape of the interiority of the self  from the moment what made its identity as single is in a narrow form related with the process of differentiation of himself in front of another singularities, here the concept of difference is not untangled yet in respect to the skeins of it, but assumed in the clear sense Piaget has regarded it under the analysis of the process of learning creates the evolutionary process of becoming self-defined, an individuality become each time more individualized as much as the flour of his interior world of subjectivity become differenced inside itself and regard to the others, this is what made the pivotal place of the self-inside the subject, the process of giving form to both the sameness of the self-identity with itself and the processing inside it of the others world.

   Whence, it is on the opposite site of how symbols work among intersubjectivity, in this case the symbols are envoys going and returning in the objective, external interaction of the subjects communication, there is of course a moment in which each individual process what he received as said from the other incorporating it to its sameness interiority, but even in this moment there is no time within intersubjective relation and communication as to process it depperly, intersubjective interactions are defined by the velocities of exteriorized processing’s, in this sense what each subject may do is remembering it later alone while no longer intersubjectibly interacting.

   Hence in this case such a memorized later interaction is again incorporated as an image into the idealization process creates the interiority of subjectivity and as such it turns again to be an image the subject creates seen himself as seen by the others or "as if" while through an already idealized image of the alterego, further, "the I" see himself as the self is providing to it a processed image of the interiorized externals interactions with others permeated his becoming, but this becoming are already again transformed from the internal subjectivity, we must probably at this point recognize that through the time usually available during intersubjective interactions, the individual subject fastly incorporates the sayings and reactions of the others, but without a response is required by the contingencies of the pragmatics of the interaction itself and by the way there is not time to the subject to elaborate its responses, within intersubjective communication the subject don’t have the sufficient time to process and interiorize the symbols among the universe of his individuation and this is the main reason to exclude effective intersubjectivity in the analysis of the well-defined zone characterize the relation between the self and the symbols.

  Within the self the subject is no longer interacting but alone with itself, he now have all the time needed to interiorize and process the memories of the permeability defined the pass by of the external through the strainer of his internal world, this is now a monologue instead of a dialogue and as such everything regarding others is already transformed in symbols and idealized ideals of the as if.

   Within intersubjective communication we have two external dotes, it is like in a ball game one shoot the ball the other one receive it and shoot it again but now with enuntiative sayings as sending and receiving symbols, it is also like in a phone call dialogue, one enunciate a sound and the other one have to response fastly, certainly there is a moment when each one have a certain time to elaborate while listening but as soon as the other silence appear an answer should be foreseen, so that the source, the rise, the genesis that phenomenologically process the symbols is completely different if we compare the time for processing that individuation provide to the subject already alone with his self, now all the experience is no longer interacting outside, but idealized within the interior world, everything regarding symbols start then to be processed under an autonomous avenue to the symbolic and as such the analysis of the weaves between symbolism and the self is required of an attentive focus in its unique phenomenology.

  Under this autonomous dimension symbols functions as self-intelligibility addressed toward the sameness of the self-meaning as readings of himself we use to call ways to know best our self or ways to go or visit our self as self-readings, trips, travels or internal journeys or more precisely as travecies or routes to the deep interiority and identity of the self, this work as a recognition by "the I" in front of the social something "the I" receive and process through the self as the self-contain the individuation process which both interiorized but also idealized and transform the permeability of the internal to the external, experience, acervo, backgrounds, social and cultural symbolized universe of the others, here symbols are routes, tours whose task is to attain ways to catch a glimpse, to make out dimly, to search, to discern, to scan, to  rummage, to scrutinize or examine carefully, to explore and unveil, something bring us to the relation between hermeneutic, self-psychoanalysis and archaeology.

   Hence the cultural contents of symbols through this autonomous zone of the weaves between the self and symbols, usually work in two similar but differentiated dimensions, one of this dimensions can be identified as immaterial from the moment we are not speaking on spell objects or images of the outer work such as for example affective objects, images or icons of affective relevance to the subject, but only with, like in alphabetic language, immaterial symbols of things, like words are, here the symbols are plenty in abstractions, transformed as idealized synthesis of their meanings by the effect of sound spectra’s and or memories of the visual, and usually accompanied by kinds of self-monologues narratives or narrative correlates creates a chain of the meaning associated to such symbols spectra’s, but there is not yet here the recurrence to outer objective objects and icons, perhaps and before well, routes of trips to the self-accompanied by the narrative chain of meanings spectra’s associated to certain symbols, this work similarly to daily soliloquies in remembering and memory, like for example, when the subject narrate to himself the main things done during the day at night in the bed reconstructing by fragments moments of what he said to others, what he hear or what he retained as well as the chain of things it activated within his subjectivity about his memories, experiences and certainties, while not as much reconstructing something but in a similar form revisiting by fragments the self.

    Another must be defined as objectual since now the trips are not made with the fancy or the general use of imagination, but in regard to concrete outer objects, each subject usually have a collection of objects, icons, and image he or she associate usually through self-narratives to his own experience, this collection of objects use to have specific affective values, this can happen with ordinary daily objects surround the subject habitat and life, this zone tend to be highly evolutioned and developed when the objects in question are no longer passive objects of a routine surround but mostly objects elaborated expresibly so that the so-called trip or travel to deeper moments of the self can be addressed and explored outside associating narratives of experience with highly elaborated objects, in this case instead of a relation between hermeneutic, archaeology and self-psychanalysis we have the major intervention of semiotic.

   From the moment the outer objects are not only related by the subject through self-narrative to his memories and collection but objective meanings under codes in a culture, the trip under the self ever characterized by the world of otherness filtered and transformed by the idealization process of individuation, might be defined as a semiotic trip which consist about relating the semantique levels of the objects, images and icons itself with the semantique levels such objects activates in a associative network with symbolisms of the self, at this point semiotic is encompassed and mixed with hermeneutic, archaeology and self-psychoanalysis in a form that remember ways explored outer by barthers earlier as for example, his analysis of hearing.

   Now as obvious we don’t have here a psychoanalyst as an objective person outside the individual person but the individual person itself become his own psychoanalyst, a semiological trip whose task is not about returning someone from a disease to a normal situation, but a normal sane subject with a good health who however is committed to do this travels in order to know himself better, to go in deep about his own symbolic universe, in a few words, a subject committed to be each time more a best person as possible.

   This issues I know by experience seems to be sometimes missunderstanded because the pragmatic sense of life contingencies seems to feel it as strange, why to go in deep if all we need as sane persons is to act according to the practical contingencies of our life, well, we believe, as critical subjects, that every person is a collection of experiences and this experiences cumulated during life are not available at the same time to the presence of the subject zone of operations in the pragmatic contingencies of life, in this sense, all that cumulated dimension use to be abandoned by the pragmatically incorporated operational subject and as much as this accumulation is abandoned as much as the subject become unconcient of his own deeper self, but overall the main importance of this exploration is given by the major fact that the self itself reflect a process of constant permeability according to be a subject constantly becoming another so that without this exploration the subject stay at the skin level unknowing himself each time less and less, here we have the ordinary common sense question, who I am?, who I am becoming?, I know myself ? which have as individualized correlate the more general question about who we are?.

  This unknown disatended and usually hidden zone to the subject appears in life as limitations of the person when in front of certain challenges he or she recognize to be limited and or uncapable, from interpersonal relations to social work and or situations, by this reason the subject use to be usually limited to comply himself, to have access, to comply this zone, the subject need a language, without a language which can only be obtained through quest the subject can’t indeed to comply it, and to made or take shape of that language there is a hard work to be done.

   We are speaking here on an area visited only by those who being persons committed with self superation through reading books and the idea of never stopping the commitment to study outside and beyond formal studies, recognize the necessity of knowing the self as part of life, maybe defined as usual between some kind of artists as those depperly committed with the richness and complexities of process while we can’t forget that it’s a zone that appear as major to any kind of subjects in certain moments of life, something about which there is today a whole literacy even highly commercial of self-help covering areas from how to be efficient regarding business and enterprises, to how to assume pregnancy and the education of our sons, this literature contain a lot of material on self-tripas.

   Near to our sense of biography, it is not however biography at all. 

   It is not in fact biography in the sense of a person collection of experiences organized according to a socially exteriorized list of things done in the social objective world or in terms of the facts of things done understanded as list of contiguities plus to plus collected or juxtaposed, neither biography in the sense  of a history of the individual in respect to social general history as a kind of history of the person, but before well as symbols through experience and acervo are constantly actualized  by the constant transformations  evolved in the taking shape of the self  and the permanent modification of the relations between the self and the social, something evolving a unique way of processing inside each single person understanded here synchronically each time again and again when biography appear a something to be gathered again, recollected,  retired again from the world, pick up each time again, to lock up, to take shelter, to call, in a few word to meet again with ourselves.

    Doubtless we indeed know in our highly pragmatized universe that an individual can experience his whole life stranger to his self, accepting a permanent so to speak ignorance of his self by living in the skin of his practical social interactions alike and in conformity, resigned so to speak with the highly typified world he or she share with others as contingencies in his life, without monological revisitations to his interiority avoiding to know him or herself, but even in this cases, we will ever attempt to identify any individual person defined by a monadic single universe from which his single isolated gaze take shape on his external universe, a self-sameness singularity belonging to his unique processing of symbols under the perspective on his isolated single condition.

   On the other side in a level less submerged in the flour of interiority, symbols also translate, far to only be tullfully to the tours through the several stratus and substrates of the self between the know, the unknown and the quest under it, symbols also translate to the self in its own individuated language the meanings implied and supposed to him by the alterity of the social world expressed and symbolized from such individuation.

   Here the usual image to us is that one of the mirror, in front of the mirror the individual acquires an image of himself he never has lonely, from his isolation alone the individual never have an image of his own body, he can’t see himself as the others seen him, in the mirror, even yet alone he has a first impression about how others seen him albeit this is nothing more than an illusion still hence he never attain to fully have a complete image of a full surrounding objetibly of his externality as others usually obtain it, seen by the others, he is an object between the objects, but he can’t attain such an image by himself on him,  it is always an idealization reflected in his interiority in the mode of an "as if", meaning "as if" seen by the others, but only seen by himself alone again, this is this what the mirror exteriorize to him as a symbolized dimension, and this is of course, before having an effective mirror in front just a teatralization of the others reflected in the self, something that start as a monologue but with time of individuation acquire a highly differentiated level of processing from which such a phenomenology is less an idealization of the other and becomes transformed by the self, here we have what the concept of interiorization mean when we say interiorizing the social world, something that frequently become provided by irrepetible and unique singularity and beside of renewed senses as soon as retuned now socialized under expressions as the products of internal languages elaborations.

   Now, when we see from outside exteriorized as socialized languages in the social world the effective objective presentation of such language sake by highly elaborated interiorization we lost in the form of expression—substance of expression—the clues to objectibly connect with precision how this language are exactly connected with such an interiority, it is already outside such an interiority and as such exposed to objective rules of decodification.  

  But the mirror is also paradoxically the confirmation to the idealized interiority of subjectivity that the coincidence with itself of the identity of the selfsameness monad of the individual and his or her self, is alone again with itself in all its objectivity nor only as confirmed by the isolation of the internal, besides, it is a repetition seen outside reflected in the mirror of exactly what happen regarding otherness as reflected inside internal subjectivity, a way to look to himself "as if seen" by the others, but as something already reflected in the fancy of his own isolation, this now confirmed also as objectivity as the mirror reflect not an immaterial ideal in conscience but a real reflection of the body as objective outside its own. 

   The more amazing paradox however is what happen outside when highly internalized social or cultural issues transformed inside from the self are back as socialized exteriorized response in front of the real others. Something allow us to say on this matter that the others are never capable to reconstruct and or have access to how such a visibly individuated way to elaborate objective symbols are connected to the internal processing of the individual self, we don’t have in fact a way to comply that inside by just objects, icons and signs outside exteriorized even when phenomenology is precisely the science we have to try it, we can, of course, do several things, we can take note of our own processing’s through the our own sense of the otherness idealized and internalized and as such made use of a certain sense of universality too, by comparition and thus inferences, use the seizes of the sense of symbols under conscience to imagine and figure out how another, which is now by this question reversed, the one who was an internal subjectivity now seen in outside language as otherness while we are the internals, might or must have to relate motivations, intentionality’s and wishes to say with ways of meaning and symbolize.

   We can also ask them as to have additional supplementary information on what is simply visually seen or hear in a language as well as we can solicit access to self-expressions and other forms of confidential materials, this is more easy for example through workshops cycles when the subjects in question establish an agreement to exchange speaking on their internals and or therapy sessions while difficult if we are constrained by the usual pragmatics of public and medias communications subjected to message, code, reception modes of semiological communication.

    This is in fact a dilemma, symbols on the one hand make sense to the self when reflected into the interiority without yet returning in expressive forms to the outer world, makes sense to the trips of the self through its own stratus and stratifications, but as soon as it is exteriorized as expressive forms as socialized languages to the universe of real others, it starts to be progresibly far to the internal universe sake it. Thus, under intersubjectivity as well as pragmatics of communication of message, code and reception, the symbols lost again that internal source disseminated within polysemy’s and multiple interpretations without a guaranty to be back on the reasons and motives creates it. 

    According to somes the only way to guaranty such a sense is through the so-called closed doors forms of communications more usual and frequent within settings of pedagogy without external observers, within certain kind of workshops in which the form of communication is stablished by consensus in agreements by each one of the participants prestablished rationality of communication, we say some kinds, because there is as we all well know semantical variations of the concepts as workshops and labs in which directors and or authorities addresses it toward purposiveness, objectives and forms of taking decisions, without agreements with the participants in nothing related with what the participant want, so only seldom through highly rare and unusual forms of communications such conditions of closed doors are really possible with basis in a real agreement between each one of the participants.

    But let just forget that by the moment and be back in the phenomenology of the self about which I am proposing the possibility of cultural analysis under individualized phenomenology’s.

    One of the major senses of symbols to the self are related with the affective dimensions of it overall if we understand affect from the perspective of fondness related with sentiments, feelings and emotions, something is affective individually speaking when love is the rule of it and when love is the main content evolved in it, the self identify symbols idealized through the inmaterialized form of imagination and according to the affective contents associated with senses and meanings the subject has assigned to it so that the external become interiorized under a certain choice and selective work which usually evolve the habits of the subject in a surrounding affective environment.

   In fact a meaningful number of the objects and environments surround the individual world pass by through the affective dimension to the self-phenomenology transformed inside it according to affects, nothing without affects use to be usually accepted by the individual flour of the interiority and we can attempt and attain to even demonstrate that as soon as affectibly identified by sympathy the self-transform everything in symbols, I will even say at this point that what transform it in symbols is precisely the affect.

   We must thus at this point made a distinction between my sense of the word affection constrained by relations of love and other uses of the semantical senses of this word.

   For example, the spinosa definition of affection is far to our understanding of it.

   Let remember by a moment spinosa well know definition of it

   "Wishes is the essence of man as much as conceived as determined to work something by any given affection in it

    Explanation: he expressed above at the escolio of proposition 9 that wishes is the appetite with the conscience of it and that appetite is the essence of main as much as determined to work what serves to it conservation

    By in the same escolio I foreseen that indeed I don’t recognize any difference between the human appetite and wishes. Thus more or less concient the man of its appetite, this appetite remain, however, one and the same, whence, to avoid tautology, I avoided to explain wishes by appetite, but defining it in a manner that all the struggles of human nature designed with the name of appetite, wishes, impulse and volunteer, comprehend both joining it together, I would might say, in effect, that wishes is the essence of man as much as conceived as determined to work something, but in this definition is not supposed as derived that the soul may be conscient of such wishes and appetite. Whence, with the purposiveness to include the sake of this conscience, I considered necessary to include an addition sentence, as much as determined by an affection given in it. Thus by affection of human essence I understand any disposition of this essence, well innate, well acquires, or by extension, referred to both wishes and appetite at the same time, I understand thus under the denomination of wishes all the struggles, appetites and volitions of man which according to the diverse disposition of man are diverse and seldom opposed in between, that man is drag and carry away and don’t know were is going"

   Nothing as far to my definition of affect than the spinosa one, to spinosa affect was considered in the sense of everything that affect man so affection was almost diluted by him under the idea of the external world incidence on man as everything affecting man and disseminated under wishes and appetite in regard to man human nature. 

   When we say affect in contrast to the former, we are meaning something radically different, we are meaning in agreement with Jacques derrida that affect is a selective activity defined by choices and or by preferences constrained and sake, determined and subjected to love, only there were the human being feel love that is transformed into affective and affection in general is nothing else than another name or the more general name we have to define all we choice to be in relation with between those things than mean love to us, anything nor evolving love to the subject is rejected by the self, "the self" is certainly not as selective as "the I" which really reject almost everything, but as belonging to the individual person interior subjectivity and as part of the whole defines the sameness of the person as much as specialized in translating the social world to the internal as much as choosing only what mean love to the subject.

   Back then to the former definition, only through affect the extrinsique is transformed into the intrinsique by the self and only through affects anything processed from the external world is possible to be transformed into symbols, internal symbolism in fact is nothing else but affection.

   This is not a way to say that I don’t have certain point of coincidences with spinosa, according to him man is carry away as man don’t know to where he is going as according to him dominated by wishes and appetite, this is out of doubt sustained since to spinosa man have to devote his love only to god and let it to god determinations the destine of man, while to me man is certainly wrong in giving so to his intentional and instrumental purposes, but instead of to let his destine in the hands of god, to be open to a plural listening remembering Barthes know phrase, a plural listening is needed when love instead of convenience and lineal purposes, regulates the horizonts of his wishes, in Spanish we have a best word to that which is wrong: voluntarism.

 When I recognizer an affective dimensions of symbols to the self I am considering the concept of affect distinguished between fondness and unfodness, affective is that to which we have a fondnesss something that by certain motives we want and is retained as agreeable, pleasant, acceptable, related with a sense of gratitude, something we don’t want to unfasten or to detach or untie as easier, something about which we return to it always with a feeling of love. 

   However, affect is not an intrinsique propriety of the objects and symbols themselves but before well a feeling of the subject something belong to the universe of  subjectivity thus for example let imagine a person not so familiarized with rock as music and culture, not to the rock symbols, faces, hears, dresses, body attitudes , images, words and texts to such kind of persons rock is identified with a chain of things unrelated with affect but all the contrary with unfasten, but to a young girl who thanks to rock culture learned from her earlier life to express herself against the restrains of conservative culture on her body and feeling expressions we might imagine the sense of affect that rock as culture means to her, it probably helped her to meet her first boyfriend and or even starting her sexual life, so that even if later in her life she have take distance from rock environments it will ever be a symbol of affect in her life.

  Here we have a clear example about we can’t adjudicate affect to certain things instead of another, affect belong to the subject not to symbols and objects as much.

  Another example, to a certain individual the cutted hair of another person seen for example in the flour of a cutting hair shop might have connotative escatological things of bad taste or a sensation of superstition but to another person to which the hair belongs as a memory of the cutted hair when he or she was a child or as the hair of his or her grandmother hair it have an affective content an is provided by a sense of love and fodnees.

   We must then extend this to many things from our surrounding environments of life and habitat in which multisensoriality, liveness and experience are evolved, like in the rock example whole even by more reasons things such as television and medias accompanying our everyday life at home such as the internet become symbolized with a sense of affect to the idealization of the interior world subjectivity and its self-phenomenology, this is the case also to free market and publicities surrounds our everyday quotidian cities environments.

   Here we have the Bachelard analysis on the house, on the intimacy living room, on the noises of the city which the subject transform in affective symbols as soon as having to experience a convival with it for example during the sleeping moment the noise of the city from another perspective seen as strange become by repetition associated with affective senses of custom.

  We have stablishes in the former discussion the self of the individual person seen as a plenum individual and understanding it in piaget and mead sense while discussed how the idealized sense of the social as otherness entrance to isolated and selfsameness monadic interiority of the single subject, how the real others avoided through and transformed by imagination as an alter ego evolving to the self the subject self-esteem, but we must yet be deeper in discussing this sense of the liveness individual by remembering a beautiful definition of it by Hegel

Hegel said:

   "Live considered only as such a negative unity of its own objectivity and particularization is a life refereed only to itself, life exist by itself, meaning that it is itself a soul. With this life is essentially an individual who is referred to objectivity as his otherness, the original judgement of life consist hence in that life is separated as an individual subject in respect to the objective. Whence, life is a first place have to be considered as an alive individual which is itself a subjective totality or whole and which is presupposed as indifferent in front of an objectivity which is in front of him or her as indifferent too itself.

   In a second sense live is a vital process. In the taking shape of the alive individual itself it is already in tension against its originary presupposition and set itself as subject in front of such a presupposed objective world. The subject is an end in itself which have its means and subjective reality in objectivity, in this form it is constituted as the independent essential in front of the external world which have only to him a negative value which lack of independence. In its own sentiment about himself the liveness individual have the certitude of the nullity of this objective external existence itself since it lack of independence and as such it is to him an otherness in front of him

  His impulse is the necessity to the alive individual to eliminate such an otherness to give to himself the certitude of his own certainly, his independence. The individual as subject, its subjective process in itself from which he grow and the immediate objectivity he set as a natural mean adequate to its own concept, is mediated by the process referred to such an exteriority seen as an objective totality outside him as its otherness, an otherness which is joined with him, in coexistence with him and indifferent to him as much as he is indifferent to it

   This process start with the necessity, meaning with the moment from which the alive individual thus reference to an objectivity which is an otherness in front of him, this is the impulse to set by himself in that world another to him, to eliminate it and to objectify himself, this is the reason because his self-determination have the form of an external objectivity and by the fact that he is identical to himself at the same time.

   However, as such as this negative moment is realized in the form of his own objectivity particularity, meaning, as such as the essential moments of his own unity are realized by itself as a whole, his own independent totality, the concept become itself unfold thus in its absolute inequality with itself and because of the absolute division of this two things, the alive individual is thus by itself this unfold and have as its own sentiment this contradiction

   This division of the alive individual in itself is a sentiment interiorized in his sensibility. The identity which is in the impulse of his subjective certitude of himself according to which the alive individual reference to the external world as an indifferent existence, as an appearance or as another reality which is to him inessential and lack of concept. Such an external reality need to receive or acquire a concept that only can acquire in the subject as an immanent end, meaning, the indifference of the objective world in front of the immanent determination of the subject as subjective end

   This transformation of the process of the alive individuality constitute the return of such an external objectivity to itself by and only through subjects end and its own end by that reason the production of such a pass by to another the subject of the alive individual versus the objective reality become a reproduction in which the alive individual set himself as identical with itself, he give to himself the feeling and sentiment of himself, in fact, he set himself as what he is meaning as identical to himself being another and or an otherness to such an exteriority, so he set himself as indifferent to it, this is nothing but the unity of the negative of the negative 

  Through the realized process in relation with the presupposed world at the same time he set himself by itself as the negative unity of his being another, as the base of himself. The individual is thus the reality of the idea in a manner as such that now he produces himself from reality as before produced himself only from the concept, this source before given as presupposed is now transformed in its own production

  However, the further determination attained by the mean of eliminating the supposed to be opposition, is nothing more than to be a genre as identity with his previous being indifferent, this idea of the individual being such an identity is his particularization

  This division according to the totality from which he is originated, the duplicity of the individual, is itself the presupposition of an objectivity identical with him and is a reference to the alive individual itself, as to another alive individual. The identity with the other, the universality of the individual is whence only internal and subjective".

    A part of this symbolic universe is attended by psychoanalysis in the sense of Freud relating such symbolisms with sexuality even in the sense of Jung, but our attention here in not focused in that part of the affective dimension of symbols to the self.

   This is not a way to say that we negate the importance of sexuality in life and the affective universe of the individual and the self, in fact, we believe that sexuality is a major very important dimension of affective life as well as to the self-formation and development, we are just pointing that our focus on the issue is not sexological  as when sex is the object of analysis, our individual person in fact, we, any of us, me, you, he or her, is not here the object of a science studying him or her as an object, something more accurately related with psychology, our attention is focused instead on how the individual processing the social and cultural world through his or her idealized interiority take shapes of a self and in reverse, on how the self already formed as belonging to the individual, incorporate that world which permeate us from the social and cultural.

  I believe certainly that through such phenomenology as a micro perspective seen from the fully individual as totality culture and society are both intelligible, readable and interpretable.

    Thus as this sociological perspective evolve cultural analysis as something highly singularized through the individual phenomenology of the self I has called this self-ethnography.

   The concept of ethnography however as we well know is also polemic and susceptible of confusions by several reasons, a considerable part of what ethnography was and is was referred to other people and cultures considered from the evolutionist point of view and from our western perspective as primitives and tribals, in this sense ethnography was usually seen as a science of people and societies distinct to us or from another ways as a native ethnology, meaning an ethnology done by ethnologists on their own culture.

    My concept of ethnography is radically distant and separated from both senses and meanings of the concept both epistemologically and teleologically, as well as methodologically and ontologically in terms of its scientific basis. 

   First I am not speaking here on others and otherness considered as a matter of the stranger character of another culture to the culture of the author, nor about relations of otherness involving others defined as culturally differents or as relations between our western culture and nonwestern ones, but from a philosophical and sociological perspective I am speaking on the relation between the individual and the social in our own contemporary western culture in which to the individual any other in society is another and evolve symbolic otherness to the individual self, just like it is considered at the level of intersubjective communication, the one who enunciate is from his own gaze and self an I and the one who listen is another or an otherness to the first one and the same in reverse, the one who counter enunciate from his perspective is an I and a self and the one who first enunciated is now another involving symbolisms of otherness to the second one.

  Also as discussed in this chapter at the level of the idealized interiorizations of that social dimension seen from the individual as something reflected under the self-phenomenology the social mean to the self-individual subject a sense of otherness and is transformed by the internal individual self while reflected under it to the point that we can from a plenty individualized sense do cultural analysis on the self-formation and transformations, philosophically and a sociologically around both concrete individuals in the empirical field and abstract individuals as ideals types universalities of the internal phenomenology of the self, developing reflections around experience, acervos, backgrounds, memories and so on, etc.

   The individual is then here the I in a singular and a we in the plural universality contained in the I from the moment each individual is at the same time a single one identical with itself while separated from the social and a single of the plural at the social level of multiples ones, while as we well know the relation between the individual and the social discussed through the self-phenomenology is one about the mutual permeability of both sides the permeability of the self by the social and cultural and the socialization returns from the self to the social.

   Why self-ethnography then to define a form of cultural analysis that is about ourselves in our own western culture?, instead of a native ethnology as the former mentioned above?, because the so-called native ethnology is about a culture considered as an ethnologically and ethnic constituted collective culture understanded outside of the individual or seen the individual as determined by such ethnological composition of a culture collectively, so from parameters completely outside of the individual.

   A self-ethnography as I has defined instead of that it is not about a culture considered as the culture to which natives pertain, but culture is analyzed and discussed only through, from, cutted, framed, theorized, studied and comprehended inside the individual self-phenomenology and concerning only from what is reflected at this level.

   This concept of ethnography is then accompanied here by the suffix self not as a native ethnology in regard to a collective culture to which that self-pertain, but from the perspective of the philosophical classical discussion on universal parameters of individuality, one and multiple, being and becoming, self and the social, in this sense we might sustain that here the concept of ethnography is recalled, redefined and retheorized from a discussion in philosophy that relocates epistemologically philosophical anthropology, as discussed in the previous chapter.

   It is in fact, a concept belong to philosophical anthropology and as such incorporated into phenomenological sociology, instead of calling ethnomethodology from the tradition of western nonwestern cultures traditional ethnography, instead of incorporating symbolic interactionism of sociology under the inquiries and questions of ethnography in such a tradition referred above I am proposing exactly the opposite, the incorporation of ethnography retheorized from epistemology into ethnometology in contemporary, modern sociology which is in fact phenomenological sociology considering the whole chain of related notions, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and so on.

   With all this say we understand the objection evolved in the question, if you are practicing phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology in the autonomous disciplinary tradition of sociology as a science on ourself as contemporary western culture, why to use the concept of ethnography instead of just saying ethnomethodology? 

   Well, I think that this an strong argument to be considered because it is without doubt a true, however, I have a series of questions in regard to this objection. 

   How to resolve the true that we don’t have in the tradition of phenomenological sociology –including ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism seen from the very autonomy of sociology as science cultural analysis and as soon as e are committed to include cultural analysis under the epistemological parameters of phenomenological sociology how to define and name what results from that?

   I don’t have by now another answer to this question than defining it as self-ethnography, if I find in the future a better way less susceptible to semantique confusions about a concept, than this one, I will for sure let know about it to my readers. 

   By which I mean excluding mixings resulted from the opposite sort of move when ethnomethodology from sociology is incorporated by from and into the kind of ethnography mentioned above since such mixings at the level of this regard on disciplines autonomies might creates a confused image of what ethnomethodology was and is itself seen from and how it born and grow in sociology autonomy before being incorporated into ethnography.  

  Can we do however re-incorporations might be then the next logical question? by which I mean now asking if can we from phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology at sociology disciplinary autonomy since exploring cultural analysis as something new in this tradition in sociology, re-incorporate into our research references to forms of ethnography that from the old sense of ethnography discussed above had incorporated into it ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism from sociology?. Well the answer to this question must be considered as a matter of both choosing it with pincers when pertinently needed in empirical cases of cultural analysis and considering specific cases epistemologically evaluated from the rules of sociology autonomy.

 

Bibliography

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Derrida Jacques, Introducción a la semiología de Hegel, Márgenes de la Filosofía, Catedra

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Hegel. Lógica del concepto, ciencia de la lógica, hachete