On the material supports of subjectivity: Mead,the self,and the new mastery of nature

Introduction

The prominence enjoyed by the idea of interaction in the theoretical framework of sociology is much indebted to George Herbert Mead’s pragmatist philosophy. His proposal of a socially developed individual self (Mead, 1903, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1922, 1925, 1967 [1934], 2011) has been taken by different approaches within the sociological discipline as an axis for the solution of the polarization between structure and agency. The communicative properties of interaction, which stand out in his discussions on social psychology, have been pivotal in this aspect. However, sociology has underexplored the fact that neither interaction nor the self is restricted to such properties in Mead’s work. Although not focused directly or systematically on the topic of the self, his theory of the act and his general discussion on the human perception of physical objects (Mead, 1912, 1926, 1932, 2011, especially Mead, 1972 [1938]) suggest that the material dimension of experience is elementary for the self’s constitution and performance. The overall goal of the present article is of metatheoretical nature, namely, to develop a Meadian-inspired sociological alternative to the concept of self which is not limited to its internal and external symbolic transactions, but which is also attentive to the material groundings of such interactions.

The first section of the text sets the problem of the sociological undervaluation of Mead’s concern with the material properties of the self. I analyze the form in which three specific authors, Herbert Blumer, Jürgen Habermas, and Axel Honneth, were central for the reduction of Mead’s complexity to his proposition of symbolically mediated intersubjectivity as the pillar of the dynamics of socialization. A fourth scholar, Hans Joas, partially departs from the problem, but still joins the others in a limiting view on the internal composition of the self which, due to the wide reach of their readings of Mead, became hegemonic in the social sciences. A counter-hegemonic understanding of the inner structure of the self is addressed in the following section, which presents an internal reconstruction of Mead that straightforwardly brings together his theories of the self and the act. It addresses the issue of materiality in the Meadian act based on Markell’s reading of the concepts of “I” and “me” (Markell, 2007) and puts into dialogue three different faces of Mead, which are not systematized in his own work due to its fragmented characteristic: the Jamesian, Deweyan, and Whiteheadian ones. The purpose behind this move is to seek in Mead’s own conceptual edifice the foundation for a conception of the self where the materiality of experience plays an active role in the construction of subjectivity.

The third and last section sets off seeking to empirically ground the previous conceptual work. The social sciences have recently faced epistemological challenges set by technological advancements in ventures such as biotechnology and geoengineering, which promote what Pellizzoni (2015) has named the new mastery of nature. Based on new forms of structural intervention in matter, these new technologies increasingly guide considerations about the relations between nature, capitalism, and risk toward an ontological dimension of analysis. They also set the stage for renewed reflections on the intersection between the material contact with the world and the production of subjectivity within contemporary modernity. Accordingly, I draw upon the aforementioned metatheoretical endeavor to tackle the vicissitudes of this new historical formation. My starting point for this task lies in considering that Mead’s pragmatism is as important to detail the engine moving the political ontology of this new relationship with nature as it is to build an inquiry critique based on practical consequences as the most adequate criterion for judgment. In a decisive point of this last section, I signal the need for a sociological interlocutor able to back up Mead’s material concerns, suggesting Francis Chateauraynaud’s pragmatic sociology, and specifically his discussion around the concept of grasps (prises), as fit for this purpose. I then settle my argument with a Meadian rendering of Chateauraynaud, advancing the idea of the individual self as composed by inner and outer grasps. By taking such a step, on one hand, the operationalization of elements such as conflict, asymmetry, and domination in Mead is enabled, whereas, on the other hand, Chateauraynaud’s sociology benefits from a valuable input for the construction of a pragmatics of interiority.

The neglect of Mead’s ecological view of the self in social theory and the hegemonic interpretation of the “I” and the “me”

Not a sociologist himself, Mead’s incorporation into the discipline often relied on the mediation of authors directly affiliated to sociology or with a wide margin of influence over its academic field. Throughout the 20th century, symbolic interactionism and critical theory provided decisive entry points for the “sociologization” of Mead, imprinting their marks on the form which sociologists absorbed his concepts (Silva, 2007; Huebner, 2014). In this section, I draw a critical appraisal of four interpretations of Mead made by different authors: Herbert Blumer (symbolic interactionism), Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth (critical theory), and Hans Joas (linked to both critical theory and Chicago’s sociological tradition). Notwithstanding notable differences among them, the first three authors converge on what can be deemed as a problematic understanding of Mead’s conception of self, which has as one of its outcomes the omission of the importance of materiality in his pragmatism. Joas, however, hints at the direction for the solution of this problem, but does not follow the path to the end, since he stands by the same limiting understanding of the Meadian concepts of “I” and “me” as that of the other three authors.

It is worth discussing briefly some of the most substantial elements of Mead’s thought about the social construction of the self and its communicative properties to understand the role the aforementioned authors reserve for him in their own respective works. By assuming an anti-Cartesian position, Mead does not consider the self as an anthropological starting point but conceives it as the outcome of ecologically contextualized communicative processes that evolve both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Two influences are central to him in this assertion: the integrating view that, by the late 19th century, Dewey (1896) launched over the concepts of stimulus and response in perception and the relevance proposed by Wundt of the interchange of gestures as a foundational factor of language (Mead, 1903, 1910, 1922). ¹ Mead locates the origins of the self in the conversation of gestures among two or more individuals belonging to a given species in the animal world. Such conversation sets stimuli and response circuits that coordinate the succession of acts in the behavior of those individuals. The distinctive feature of the conversation of gestures in human species lies on its qualitative remark supported by the development of a reflective intelligence, or reflective conscience, capable of giving meaning to the expression of attitudes through significant symbols (Mead, 1910: 178, 1922: 161, 1967 [1934]: 45ff, 90–100). A gesture brings along a significant symbol “[. . .] when it has the same effect on the individual making it that it has on the individual to whom it is addressed, or who explicitly responds to it [. . .]”. (Mead, 1967 [1934]: 46), whereas the origins of meaning lie on concrete interactions throughout the course of communicative experiences among individuals, when they mutually alter their responses by taking a specific goal as reference and reach a substantial degree of symbolic unity (Mead, 1967 [1934]: 77–80).

One of the most relevant consequences Mead extracts from his idea of reflective intelligence is that a gesture imprinted by an individual toward a companion of action, in other words, a stimulus to the other’s response, already carries along the projective anticipation of such a response, so that the uttering individual is also stimulated by its own gesture. The extension of this dynamics opens room for the continuous process of reciprocal modification of gestures that structures the collective coordination of behaviors. By acting this way, the individual continuously relies upon the attitudes that others address toward it in order to become an object for oneself. In its turn, this subjective movement implies that the individual also acts as the very subject of oneself by rebuilding its position within the social act in a manner attuned to information provided by the world around to it (Mead, 1913: 379–380, 1922: 160, 1925: 267, 1967 [1934]: 135ff). We can observe, at this point, the socialized nature of the self. It is constituted as a psychosocial structure with interactive characteristics that expresses itself as an inner conversation, or forum, where both its subjective and objective aspects take part in. It encompasses reminiscences acquired by the individual actor through the environments it has experienced and the people it has lived and communicated with, directly or indirectly, throughout its life. These elements work out as raw material for the construction of this actor’s own individuality.

Mead’s social-psychological outline sketched above was taken by Blumer as the main pillar of his symbolic interactionist approach. Blumer (1969) relies on Mead’s discussion of the relation between mind, reflective intelligence, and the significant symbol to suggest that society might be seen comprising by the interlinkage of symbolic and non-symbolic interactions among individuals, and that sociology’s main task is to develop its analytical work specifically focused on the former. This is so because, in his view, Mead’s major legacy to sociology would be to portray society as constructed characteristically out of the conscious organization of meanings found in the intersubjective relations of a plurality of selves. For Blumer (1969: 23ff), therefore, “the obdurate character of the empirical world” that repeatedly challenges the rigid models of the sociologist is marked by the contingency and fluidity of the interchange of meanings that forms the core of people’s social experiences.

Symbolic interactionism turned out to be a richly diversified sociological current, unrestricted to Blumer’s own ideas and with different degrees of proximity to Mead’s philosophy depending on each author (Joas, 1993: ch.1). However, it is notorious that over the years, Blumer acted not as an ordinary epigone, but as heir apparent and legitimate interpreter of Mead, adapting his philosophical work to the language and empirical methodology of sociology. His particular approach was key for the reception of Meadian concepts in the American social sciences (Huebner, 2014: 158ff).

Although critical theory’s first generation was quite skeptical about the validity of American pragmatism (Joas, 1993: ch.4), Mead’s social psychology was of great importance to the theoretical synthesis developed by Habermas, one of the leading figures of Frankfurt School’s second generation. Habermas found in Mead’s theoretical framework elements he believed were capable of restituting the emancipatory potential of the concept of reason within the universe of the German critique, since the pragmatist’s decentralized conception of conscience allowed him to wander about a consensual social dynamic based on cognitively and normatively justified actions. The Meadian concept of the generalized other was essential for Habermas to locate the construction of legitimacy within the communicative practices of the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld. In Mead’s work (1922: 161ff, 1925: 268ff, 1932: 87, 1967 [1934]: 154), the generalized other refers to the internalization of the structural organization of the attitudes of community by the individual. Akin to Blumer, but with structural inclinations, Habermas (1987 [1985]: 37–44) sees in this set of roles and expectations the key point of the production of norms, notwithstanding his conclusion that Mead, in his own work, shied away from a satisfactory solution to the problem of institutions.

Mead’s ideas are also an important reference for the architecture of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, which sought a new reformulation of Frankfurt’s critical tradition by introducing social conflict as the driving force of historical transformation. Honneth saw in the struggle for recognition the collectivized instance of the inner tensions of Mead’s self, the ones deriving from conversations or discussions between its two phases. In a very general way (to be further worked out shortly) we may define the “I” as the element which corresponds to the self’s subjective facet and the “me” as the one which is correlated with its objective facet (Mead, 1912, 1913, 1925, 1967 [1934], 2011). According to Honneth’s reasoning (Honneth, 2002: 502), by taking the reciprocity of recognition “[. . .] as the individual evolution of a “me” that consists in the consciousness of legitimate social expectations, then the “I” could perhaps be conceptualized as the source of continuous rebellion against established forms of recognition [. . .].” By resorting to Mead, Honneth (1995 [1992]: 84–85) saw an opportunity to fill the motivational gap in Hegel’s theory of recognition. The “I” would be a force behind demands for the extension of society’s structures of recognition in favor of causes hitherto not incorporated by them, since it would be a source of irradiation of individuals’ creativity that stands up to the conventionality of the “me.”

What has been discussed so far allows the realization that the form through which Blumer, Habermas, and Honneth imported Mead’s thought does not make justice to it, since they access his discussion on the self from only one of the angles available in his work, namely, a social psychology concerned with the symbolic properties of the formation of consciousness and communication. Hans Joas, another student of Habermas trained in the Frankfurtian lineage, but who also established strong bonds to the Chicago tradition, shined light on some consequences of this limited view of Mead’s thought. According to Joas (1993: 137), Habermas’ restriction (also observed in Blumer and Honneth) of the Meadian conception of social interaction at gestural language level is a “misunderstanding” that would, furthermore, explain the assessment that a satisfactory discussion about the institutionalized social order is absent in Mead. Not only would that be untrue (given Mead’s concerns about democracy and science – Joas, 1993: 137, also see 1985 [1980]: ch.9; Silva, 2008), but the same interpretation puts aside other extremely important objects of Mead’s philosophy.

As suggested by Joas, (1985 [1980]: 145ff), there was never a border in Mead’s writings between a world of action exclusively inhabited by humans and a world of non-human beings and inanimate objects fully excluded from linguistic exchanges. For the pragmatist philosopher, subjectivity and the production of meaning take place in complex milieus where human behavior is engaged with entities of plural constitutions. This feature evidences Mead’s connection to the strong naturalist profile spread over the pragmatist environment of Chicago during the passage from the 19th to the 20th century (Cefaï, 2001; Dewey et al., 1945). Reflecting on the ethical implications of this environmental characteristic of Mead, Brewster and Puddephatt (2016: 155) claim that his would be an “ecological view of the self,” which becomes “[. . .] more expansive both by being progressively more inclusive of diverse others [i.e. human and non-human] into our existing groups and communities and by progressively identifying with larger groups and communities [. . .].”

By stripping Brewster and Puddephatt’s proposition of its moral aspect (however relevant this is), we observe that an ecological view of the self also holds ontological and cognitive grounds in Mead’s thought. We may return to Joas (1985 [1980]: 159–161) for a relevant entry point to this argument when he recalls that, in Mead’s theory of the act (1932: 119–139, 1972 [1938], 2011), the construction of the physical object by a perceptive subject is socially mediated and linked to the apprehension of the unity of the subject’s own body as the likely object of its action. However, Joas (1996: 181–184) does not move forward to in-depth explore the questions this observation brings over the constitution and maintenance of the self, and rather remains bound to the discussion about the link between creativity and the formation of body image. By thinking both with and against Joas I argue that, if a truly ecological treatment to the self should not be limited to linguistic interchanges that substantiate human intersubjectivity, it must also not be narrowed down to the mere valuing of corporeal elements linked to the interactive experiences of individuals. It is essential investing in an integrative view between both aspects, so we may contemplate the inseparability of the material and symbolic dimensions in the continuous counterpoint between subjectivity and objectivity in the inner domains of each individual.

In addition to the point highlighted by Joas about Habermas, which is extensible to Blumer and Honneth, there are two deficiencies related to the form of appropriation of Mead which can be claimed common to all these four authors. The first one regards the conceptual selection they carried out in Mead’s work to integrate sections of it to their own respective synthesis. The absence of the notions of problem and inquiry (both central to pragmatism) in each of those four conceptual cores separates the theoretical analysis of the self from the practical context of its formation, as well as from the (re)constructive work of reflective intelligence in the course of continuous displacements between the worlds of matter and meaning. I shall explore the relevance of this pair of concepts for the reconstruction of Mead herein envisaged later (second section) in this article.

For now I will focus on the second common deficiency of the appropriation of Mead by the authors discussed in the current topic, which rests on the interpretative alternative that they followed regarding the inner structure of the self. It is implicit in Joas’ formulation that the maximum participation of materiality within the self occurs when the material world itself is taken as object for the self’s action during the process of consolidation of the bodily unity. Such a lack of consideration with the active role of materiality in human action and subjectivity results from the interpretation of relations between the Meadian concepts of “I” and “me” that was sanctioned by Joas and shared with Blumer, Habermas, and Honneth. Both the American and the German authors welcomed into their respective theoretical works a problematic definition which largely reduces the “I” to individual and the “me” to collective personifications within the self.

This specific approach to the roles of the “I” and the “me” in Mead’s self has been called into question by Markell (2007) in the wake of a critique to what he understands as a disabling feature of Honneth’s theory of recognition. The main line of his argument (Markell, 2007: 102–107) lies on the proposition that the definition of recognition as necessary crossing point for the transformation of personhood from something potential to actual means the submission of its self-realization to an external authority. According to Markell (2007: 112–114, 125–128), this problem derives from the reifying reading of the “I” and the “me” that Honneth made of Mead. Such an approach defines these two concepts as clearly different and counterposed agencies. On one hand, the “I” would encompass an irreducible individuality, with nature similar to the unconsciousness of psychoanalysis and whose contingency and creativity would represent the potential of renovation. On the other hand, the “me” would be formed by a collective force, a habitual agent that is transposed from the community to the individual to censor its “I.” Honneth would not be alone in this interpretation of the Meadian self, for both Habermas and Joas would share with him the idea that the “I” is “[. . .] something like a source or seat within the individual of creativity, novelty, spontaneity, or resistance to social norms” (Markell, 2007: 112–113, emphasis in original). ² As pointed out before, Blumer’s understanding on the matter is not distant to that of the Frankfurtians. While acknowledging an ambiguity in the form Mead used the two terms, the sociologist sees the “I” as that thing that brings into the self “[. . .] expression and release to organic impulse and tendency [. . .]” and the “me” as something that “[. . .] reflects the attitude of the community [. . .]” (Blumer, 2004: 65–66).

For the purposes of the present discussion, the main problem with relating the “I” and the “me” in this way is that it compromises the linkage between Mead’s social psychology and his reflections on perception and the human engagement with matter present in his theory of the act. The delimitation of the self to a symbolically mediated dialogue between a radically individual agency and an interiorized force representing society (in its minimal definition of a collective of individuals) rules out the incidence of the material dimension of human experience on the production of subjectivity. If, as stated by Mead (2011: 27), “the relations of the environment and the individuals is one of mutual influence,” it is necessary to recognize that the interpersonal relations of the self traverse and are traversed by constellations of physical entities. The expansion of the ecological view of Mead’s concept of self can contribute to a more complex and environmentally promising version of his idea of subjectivity.

The materiality of the “I” at the confluence of self and act

The self, pragmatic sociology, and the new mastery of nature

Different currents of contemporary social theory have recently converged to the appreciation of the ontological dimension of interactive partnerships between humans and other beings. References to an ontological politics (Mol, 1999) or to new materialisms (Coole and Frost, 2010), although quite different from each other, share as common orientation the understanding that definitions of reality are productions traversed by conflicts, disputes, and effective transformations. The current section argues that Mead’s pragmatism, mainly his theory of the self as herein reconstituted, offers relevant contribution to the discussion about the ontological twist in the forms of power in contemporary modernity. Furthermore, as announced in the introduction, the theoretical exercise developed throughout this article is aimed at an empirically grounded sociological concern which finds fertile soil for research and reflection in discussions about ontological power. Therefore, in addition to discussing the issue through a Meadian outlook, I will also seize the opportunity to explore in the following pages a new sociological alternative to be integrated into Mead’s conceptual perspective.

My starting point to deal with these ontological issues is the study by Pellizzoni (2015) about recent reconfigurations in the neoliberal mode of mastery over nature, where he expands previous reflections by Cooper (2008) about the entanglement of knowledge, biotechnology, and financial capital. ⁶ Pellizzoni describes a paradigmatic shift in the political and economic discourses of capitalism beginning in the 1970s. At that time, the sense of a natural limit to growth was progressively replaced by the proposition of the inexhaustibility of opportunities provided by nature. This new discourse appropriates diagnostics about the complexity of the biophysical world resulting from different sectors of the scientific community and from ecological movements to highlight certain features of environmental processes, such as indetermination and instability. It then generalizes these features in positive manner and depicts the unpredictability of environmental systems as a whole set of possibilities, rather than interdictions, for the fulfillment of human designs. The principle of precaution is then neutralized by the ontological reach of purposeful action, since the attitude to be taken toward risk is not its reduction, but the refinement of interventions in the biophysical world. The investment in the figure of indetermination in this new form of mastery over nature reinforces the imaginary of plasticity of reality (Papadopoulos, 2011), which is taken to its last consequences by technological fronts such as geoengineering and biotechnology.

Pellizzoni dialogues with Boltanski and Chiapello’s (1999) idea about a new moral foundation rising from the establishment of neoliberalism. These two authors suggest that capitalism has overcome the crisis of its industrial period by reconfiguring itself through the cooptation of an artistic critique. Present in several political and cultural movements at the late 1960s, this critical modality used to substantiate demands for mobility, adaptability, and, most of all, for flexibility. Once the principle of flexibility was integrated as resource in the entrepreneurial world, the critique that used to call for it was disarmed to a large extent. Pellizzoni (2015: 66) himself points out his affinity with this argument; however, I herein further explore this link by assuming his idea of a new mastery of nature as part of the new spirit of capitalism proposed by Boltanski and Chiapello. Thus, the definition of matter as undetermined source of possibilities, broadly flexible and responsive to human projects, seems to result from a surreptitious response from capitalism to critiques coming from both complexity theorists and ecological movements that, since the 1960s, have drawn attention to the irreducibility of nature to the economic, political and epistemological ventures of that regime. Hence, it can be stated that the capitalist reconfiguration promoted by neoliberalism relied not only on moral supports, as Boltanski and Chiapello have suggested. We find in it the articulation between conventional and material supports in the reformulation of a normativity about the relation between human activity and nature.

The ideological reorganization that has promoted this flexibilization of nature in the wake of the formation of a new spirit of capitalism brought to light a new object to human experience. As shown by Mead, this is not sustainable without concrete supports. The neutralization of ecological critique did not occur despite the complexity of nature claimed by scientists and activists, but it precisely resulted from its recognition, since it contributed to the perception about the limitations of the typically industrial form of exploration in face of environmental resistances imposed to human manipulation. The adherence to complexity in the neoliberal layout had the double effect of sophistication of economic interference in nature, on one hand, and the political emptying of critique (at least to some degree), on the other. Therefore, the development of the new technologies mentioned by Pellizzoni, which also include the ones related to carbon markets and human enhancement, did not happen simply throughout projections of pre-elaborated business models over the biophysical world. Their designers engaged in inquiries that sought analytical contact with the profusion of attributes composing the materials in the center of their attention. By manipulating these objects, they intended to reach their interiors, assume their perspectives and, thus, access the complexity of their constitutions. This means that they understood the ideas by authors such as Morin (2008: 5), about the relationship between knowledge and the environment, but they actively sought to neutralize the critical inclination of such theories in favor of elaborating more creative and efficient forms of extracting economic value from nature. In other words, they relied upon the manifold material supports of nature in order to master it.

Accordingly, material resistance has acted incisively in the perspectives either of critiques of the industrial mastery of nature and of its reformers. However, materiality does not express itself alone in symbolic mediated social relationships. The concept of complexity was the consummatory, representational form with which this resistance was consolidated as object. But, as we have seen, power relations have marked this adjustment of perspectives between the material world and human agencies. Clear asymmetry is established between these perspectives, because, even if the critical interpretation of complexity keeps on operating, its reformulated version as inexhaustible basis of economic exploitation has all the systemic, institutional, and moral support of the new spirit of capitalism.

Before I tackle the problem of asymmetries, I shall draw new, pragmatist bases for Pellizzoni’s critique to the new mastery of nature. Based on Heidegger, Pellizzoni (2015: 156-157) defends a fundamental split between being and “thinking,” ontology and epistemology, as the source of the singularity of human existence. Consequently, the new technologies approached by his reflection would be worrying not so much due to the results of their activities, but mainly because they would push the leveling between matter and knowledge. From this viewpoint, the corruption of the essence of the human as resident of the world is strengthened, and it leads up to an “[. . .] instrumentalization of everything [natural] as standing-reserve, governed by relations of efficient causality [. . .]” (Pellizzoni, 2015: 153).

Through pragmatist lenses, this line of reasoning is not satisfactory. In the first place because, as seen in the discussion about the symbolic and the material in Mead, for pragmatism both knowledge and matter belong to the domain of practice: thinking is itself a way of acting upon the world (Frega, 2006: 39). Second, because it reverses the order of construction of critique (Frega, 2006; MacGilvray, 2004: 104), since its justification is based on the non-contemplation of a principle, in this case, the anthropological proposition of discontinuity between humanity and nature. To repel this form of idealism, Dewey-inspired pragmatism, to which Mead was affiliated, emphasizes the need for critique to be experimentally constructed. Critical endeavor should be based on assessments of the consequences of a problem, since the very meaning of the critique’s object is dependent upon such consequences for its process of signification (Frega, 2006: 62–65).

The consequences of the new technologies must therefore be the aim of critiques directed to the new mastery of nature. Critical constructions should not aim from the beginning at one-size-fits-all considerations (such as Pellizzoni’s), but instead should proceed modestly in a path guided by inquiry work (Chateauraynaud, 2018). The literature on biotechnology and geoengineering points out some outcomes of such technologies which are relevant for a critical exercise that sticks to practical consequences as the starting point of judgment. Authors from different, albeit critical, theoretical affiliations (Cooper, 2008; Demeulenaere, 2014; Pellizzoni, 2015; Szerszynski et al., 2013), indicate that the progressive transfer of ontological control from ordinary entities (human or not) to the benefit of power systems that create and administer these technologies is one of the most prominent developments set in motion by both strands of innovation. Inspired by Mead and his Whiteheadian moment, by ontological control I mean the capacity an entity has to apprehend its own constitution as a being in relation to its consentient set and, in the case of humans, to actively inquire and evaluate objects, including one’s self. Intrinsically linked to the regeneration of the market that has emerged after the global crises of the 1970s, the new mastery of nature propels a gradual colonization of experience by the economy at ‘[. . .] the genetic, microbial, and cellular level, so that life becomes, literally, annexed within capitalist processes of accumulation.’ (Cooper, 2008: 19).

However, if Mead did not fully disregard the subject of power, it is true that his liberal normativity has limited his view to dialogical forms of conflict resolution (Silva, 2008: ch.15). Regarding this problem, it is essential extending to Mead the observation by MacGilvray (2004: ch.5) about the Hegelian “extrapragmatic roots” of Dewey’s political theory. Similarly to Dewey, Mead understands that the democratic dynamics of collective life is organized by the teleological harmonization of individual orientations, and that it takes place through communicative processes that integrate the multiple selves into their communities. There is insufficient room in his work to the discussion about inequality, violence, and domination, which comes about the reduction of autonomous space for the production of perspectives in favor of hegemonic apprehensions.

This characteristic of Mead’s thinking emphasizes the difference between his social philosophy and an empirically oriented sociological approach and casts light upon the value of endeavors made by the authors present in the first section of the article to remold the pragmatist’s conceptual force with sociological design. ⁷ As we have seen, however, those theoretical constructions suffer from problems which inhibit a satisfactory account of the self according to the ecological view guiding the present study. A final step in the reconstruction of Mead put forward by this article then lies in the task of finding a new base to synthetically house his perspective in the sociological discipline. After ruling out the most prominent options I suggest that a particular approach within contemporary pragmatic sociology, the one advanced by Francis Chateauraynaud, presents itself as a promising candidate. In addition to his participation in pragmatic sociology’s active claim of classical pragmatism’s legacy in the beginning of the 2000s (Chateauraynaud, 2004), Chateauraynaud’s theoretical work stands out for highlighting the intertwining between discursivity and materiality in the conduction of inquiries of both ordinary and expert profile.

To fill the Meadian gap on violence and domination, I shall introduce the concept of ascendancy (emprise) as understood by Chateauraynaud (2015, Chateauraynaud and Debaz, 2017), in the context of his approach to Foucauldian bio-power from the standpoint of pragmatic sociology. What Chateauraynaud defines as ascendancy is an intense form of asymmetry, non-hierarchical, diffused through networks, based on legitimacy and realized by the way of the biasing of actors’ perceptions (Chateauraynaud and Debaz, 2017: 235). An actor gains ascendancy over others by indirectly influencing their behavior, by conquering their “territories of experiences” (Chateauraynaud, 2015: 9), and, finally, by managing the conformation of problems that are elaborated there, as well as the flow of inquiries conducted to solve them. This discussion is substantiated by the concept of grasps (prises) observed throughout Chateauraynaud’s work. By drawing upon it, the author explores the ontoformative power of convergences between representations and material perception (Bessy and Chateauraynaud, 1995; Chateauraynaud and Debaz, 2017: 606–607). Grasps are products of human agency in its attempt to elaborate definitions over objects and processes in a universe that is as material as hermeneutical.

It is relevant to point out the proximity between the concepts of grasp and prehension, as well as the scarce presence of Whitehead in the work by Chateauraynaud, which also holds true regarding Mead (Mello, 2019: 173). ⁸ In the present article, I address the confluence among Mead, Whitehead, and Chateauraynaud to propose that the processes encompassed by the concept of prehension must be incorporated by the concept of grasp. This is, accordingly, the centerpiece of the synthetical movement bringing together Mead and Chateauraynaud. At this point of the article, I must introduce an analytical distinction between inner and outer grasps. ⁹ The basic difference between them is determined by the object of each one: in the former, internal affairs experienced by an actor are the main object, while in the latter the object lies outside the actor’s innerscape. In empirical reality, a clear distinction between inner and outer grasps is not possible. We may think of them as interchangeable and communicable analytical perspectives, one directed to the study of problems and inquiries within the courts of the self, the other focused on social and environmental problems which different selves take part in.

When it comes to human reflexivity, outer grasps are processes of ontological characterization of objects the actors interact with in their environments. Their existence implies the operation of inner grasps, because the same interaction promotes, at a greater or lesser degree, the reorganization of the self through the “me” and the “I,” which are responsible for conducting into interiority the material and conventional supports at stake in the resolution of the experienced problem and for the manifestation of the active element responsible for the personal mark in the subject’s response, respectively.

Inner grasps are in motion when the individual presents itself as its own object, when its own self occupies the center of the problems and inquiries it experiences at a given moment. On such occasions, the greatest test put to the self lies on coping with the problem rising within the “enduring pattern” shaping the individual, to grasp issues affecting its inmost sphere by the “lasting character of here and there, of now and then” built along its biographical trajectory. Referring back to the Jamesian Mead (1903; James, 1955 [1890]: 213ff), we may state that, by holding an inner grasp, a person is apprehending its scope of memories, expectations, ideas, emotions, perceptions, and actions, whether they are informed by material or conventional supports, in a specific perspectival conformity that maintains its sense of intimacy and inner correspondence along an ever-changing relational existence with itself and the environment. Not only grasps over external objects, that is, outer grasps, are compromised in contexts of ascendancy. Inner grasps are loosened, one’s ontological control over its own self is weakened, and an asymmetry is installed to favor other parties. Chateauraynaud’s sociology benefits from this procedure by accessing stronger terrain to deal with transactions between subjectivities and externalities sustaining generative existential processes. By taking this step we enable the concept of grasp to work as the existential pillar of a pragmatic sociology of interiority. ¹⁰

Two important topics must be addressed regarding this Meadian-inspired formulation of the inner grasp. The first one is related to the compatibility between synthesis and disruption in the work of the “I.” The “I” may act as a disruptive force as the individual sees itself from a new angle during the self-inquiry engaged by it in the context of a problematic experience. However, a synthetical movement still guides it, as it seeks to leave behind the existential discomfort set in place once a problem has been established. Thus, disruption has to do with the contrast between the contents mobilized in the course of self-inquiry and the initial frame of the problem one is experiencing. ¹¹

The second topic complements the first and resumes the issue of the tension between the “I” and the “me” as approached toward the end of the previous section. As stated at that moment, both phases strive to grasp each other in the context of inner problematic situations. Chateauraynaud’s pragmatic sociology brings substance to this discussion. With his version of the concept of tests (épreuves), pervasive in pragmatic sociology, Chateauraynaud (2004: 169) invites us to think that the disintegration caused by a problem cannot make disappear entirely the material and symbolic properties of beings involved in it. This reasoning is fully in line with Mead’s theory of the act. We may then assert that to conduct reconstruction and (re)gain an inner grasp, the “I” must deal with both cooperation and resistance offered by elements in the objective phase of the self. To grasp oneself, a person must go through tests whose content is linked to the configuration of the problematic experience. ¹² It is the result of these tests, in which the “I” and the “me” communicate more or less contentiously, which will determine the amount of permanence or transformation of the self. Like outer grasps on collective problems, inner grasps are also constantly put to the test by what one experiences in social situations.

Based on such an articulation, we have observed that the bias caused by asymmetric ascendancy produces its effects on the relations of the self with its own internal province and with its environment; its effects stretch down to the self’s very sense of reality developed in its interactions with the other selves and the world. The ontological politics found in the new mastery of nature projects itself over the territories of experience of different strata of the world population, not just as a new grammar of relations with the environment, but, equally, as an existential prescription that naturalizes flexibility as a principle for the orientation of the self. The dynamics between the “I” and the “me” pointed out in the second part of this text is fully connected to this process.

The internal components of the self are also coveted by this form of existential ascendancy, since its goal is to influence the behavior of social actors. To further assess this assertion, I must take the case of climatic change policies mentioned by Pellizzoni (2015: 4): according to him, the new approach toward nature becomes normative when, among other factors, it boosts the overlapping of the principle of adaptation to that of mitigation in these regulations. This process leads to the normalization of uncertainty and spreads the imperative of flexibility to adapt to new situations as a form of individual responsibility in face of risks. The emphasis on the concept of adaptation, as it was molded and disseminated by multi-lateral actors, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), shifts the focus of measures regarding risks from a paradigm of stability to that of adequacy to environmental instabilities (Jennings, 2011: 240). According to Grove (2014: 204), the adaptation discourse in contemporary climate-change and disaster policies heads toward the production of forms of life “appropriate” to contexts under risk, which are responsive to them and capable of forging their actions based on signs of threat. Just as assessed by Jennings (2011), the study by Grove suggests that, oftentimes, one of the consequences of implementing adaptation policies is the establishment of asymmetric relations between government and local populations that atomizes social responsibility for risks by transferring it from the state to the individual level. Once exposed to educational and qualification programs and to awareness initiatives, individuals are expected to engage in reviews of their own attitudes to make themselves pliable to the contingency of milieus (Grove, 2014: 203ff). An adaptable self is then vaunted, flexible enough to adequate to, and even to profit from, the unavoidable indeterminacy of nature and to be responsible enough to know that its fortune in this risky setting depends mainly on its individual behavior.

It is worth highlighting that such a critical consideration about the concept of adaptation refers to its hegemonic, contemporary version, which is consolidated in the official circles of the United Nations and national governments. The term presents a polysemic spectrum, and pragmatism itself houses a conception of adaptation related to its ecological interpretation of agency. The first generation of critical theory clung to a troublesome reduction of such an interpretation as a form of political conformism, when, by talking about adaptation, pragmatists actually “[. . .] never meant routine and loss of subjectivity but practical innovation, creative solutions to real problems” (Joas, 1985 [1980]: 83, emphasis in original). ¹³ Based on such logic, and besides the pragmatist difficult relation with conflict that I have herein tried to compensate, adaptation can represent either a way of accommodating to the status quo or to fully transform it. The current hegemonic conception of adaptation can nonetheless be interpreted as a feature to prevent transformation, especially if it is oriented toward a radical revision of risk production in capitalism. Many times, the non-publicized implication of a discourse that advocates for the promotion of empowerment of vulnerable communities, so they can develop their own ways of adaptation, is, in fact, the exclusion of anti-systemic alternatives of response.

The flexibilization of life as imperative linked to the new spirit of capitalism brings along a configuration where dealing with risks implies the continuous availability of cognitive and affective arrangements between people and environments. If the new mastery of nature sets a guideline that can lead local actors to lose their grasps over the milieu, it may also promote a forced malleability of life projects, desires, and dreams at the inner domains of their selves, which is justified by the need of adequacy to an always mobile horizon of hazards. Based on the conceptual articulation I have addressed earlier, I can talk about the chances of a varying loss not only of outer, but also inner grasps when individuals find themselves under the ascendancy of the hegemonic agenda of contemporary risk policies.

By replicating what happens in other neoliberal institutional coordinates (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999), to the extent that legitimate powers are successful in diffusing the principles of adaptation and flexibilization, it is possible that a tendency for the reduction of autonomous determination of the perspectives of local actors may develop. This is due mainly to the interference in their selves’ inquiry space. The “I” lies in the center of this dynamics of ascendancy, since it is necessary to encapsulate its singularizing activity within a behavioral program ruled by the ethos of flexibility and adaptability. However, due to the striking contingency of the “I,” the logic of adaptation opts for an indirect form of control. It reaches the objective phases (“me”) of its target audience, provides them with justifications for an individualized responsibility toward risk and diminishes the room for autonomous responses of the “I.” This “culture of safety” (Grove, 2014: 205) espoused by many risk reduction official managers, is entangled with the perspective of the ontological instability of the environment, result of material manipulations upon nature’s properties. As a result, the tests biasing these audiences’ inner grasps toward adaptable versions of their selves are sustained by both conventional and material supports. In the end, we observe that the depoliticizing outer grasps laid by the new mastery of nature upon its resistance to typical industrial exploration are mirrored by the exaltation of a flexibilizing model of inner grasp with the purpose of ascendancy.

Conclusion

The discussion about the contemporary ontological politics based on Mead’s philosophy stands out due to the sensibility of his naturalist pragmatism to the entanglement of the natural and the social. With the aid of his perspective, we observe that new forms of political coordination of nature derive from reciprocal modifications in perspectives between human communities and the biogeophysical world. With that in view, the integration of subjective processes of the self within a critical appreciation of society cannot dispense with the disclosure of the engines of mesological ascendancy that entertain human relations. Thus, the reassessment of risks as opportunities favors an asymmetric form of ontological flexibilization that affects life from its molecular level to the symbolic exchanges at social plan.

Throughout the article, Markell’s rescue of James and Dewey’s influence on Mead’s initial definition of the concepts of “I” and “me” have worked as the basis for the reinterpretation of the relationship between materiality and subjectivity in the final, Whiteheadian phase of his work, and it enabled a new outlook over the role of materiality in the composition of the self. This was the background for the articulation between Mead’s pragmatism and Chateauraynaud’s sociology, which proposed the former’s concept of self as the fundament for the pragmatics of interiority envisaged by the latter, rendering it a Meadian twist. By bringing together these two authors, I sought to contribute with an alternative to the hegemonic interpretation of the internal dynamics of the Meadian self in sociology, more sensible to the material contours of subjectivity. What has been developed in this article lays the foundations for this endeavor, which shall be further explored both theoretically and empirically in future occasions. The idea of self-inquiries as one’s attempt to grasp itself may be unfolded both internally, through the access of other regions in the works of its two central authors, or externally, by bringing into its synthesis other references converging to the general conception of self sketched throughout the text.