Laurens, Stéphane
The Division of the Subject by the Influence of Others: Roots of Dialogical Relations
- 2011.
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The individualistic approach, widely adopted by social psychology, treats influence as a relationship of domination. The target – the one that has been influenced – looses its very nature (is no longer autonomous, is not master of his choice…) and social psychology discovers a strange object: the individual influenced, a subjectum in agentic state.A dialogical perspective, rejecting both the unity of subject and its corollary the notion of individual (indivis), and assuming that the other also constitutes the subject, allows getting get out of this incredible paradox. The other is not the one that influences from outside a closed entity, but he offers his opinions, his perspective.Rather than speaking about the subject as being influenced, we need to assume that the subject and the other are in a dialogue, either real or imaginary. In this sense, the influence is not alienation, but simply a change in subjective position.