What remains of the intersubjective?: on the presencing of self and other

Abstract

Recent work in the social sciences has been concerned with how we understand the subject. This has entailed critiquing the ways the subject has traditionally been understood - as a mental entity existing prior to and so organizing our experience of the world. In its place a relational subject has been posited, one emerging through a combination of affective experiences, performative enunciations, and haunting absent presences. However, the implications of such critiques for how we understand intersubjective relations have not been discussed. What remains of intersubjectivity when any subject entering into a relation has already been decentred amid a more-than human ecology of affective relations? In response, this paper draws on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy in developing understandings of the socio-spatial constitution of subjectivity/intersubjectivity in terms of movements of presencing. Here the body-subject is always in approach to itself and others, but neither is actually reached, never (self) present, always already receding: a spacing at the heart of any relation. The discussion is interspersed with a series of narrative sections outlining an encounter between a street performer and their audience which draw attention to a number of key themes in any understanding of intersubjectivity and attempt to expose this inherent dis-position.