Self and acervo

 

Self and Acervo

©By Abdel Hernandez San Juan

   Written in English and translated to English 

by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

      Of an importance without equal since the George Helbert Mead sociology, the self is not yet, however, sufficiently theorized in all its possibilities to the theory and research of subjectivity and culture. One of the reasons of this lack might be explained from the etymology of the word itself in terms of language.

     Many pivotal concepts and words are in one idioms but not in another’s, Hegel for example insisted on several cases about German words and Derrida too about France and several idioms words. When we analyze the semantique subtly senses of certain words an amazing feeling surprise us with the question about how a language might work without certain words. The self is one of this paradoxical words.

    It exists in english but not in Spanish. Its importance in english language is crucial and major while nothing in Spanish cover its senses and meanings while of course we can make an effort to explain its sense to a Spanish audience. Whence something about differences in terms of subjectivity and culture leads us to think on the reasons of the absence and emptiness of such major words in certain languages. 

   This essay is focused in letting know the main aspects of my theory of the self, my own one, developed as result of extensive years of analysis and theoretical writings around the self. Many of the things I will discuss further this time are new questions inside my own elaborations since I will recall my first writings on the self since my essays of Venezuela so as to mix it with my reflections on the self from the united states.

    Before discussing my analysis will be necessary to revisit the issue of the self as it appeared in sociology and at the same time to abound in its philosophical implications.

   Nothing in Spanish as a word or a relations of words as explained above explain the specific sense of the self. 

   To try to seize it in Spanish three relations of words are needed to be encompassed no one of which attain to enclose it, this words relations are first “it itself”, the translation in english already use a word self-included in a half but in Spanish nothing as it is included even in terms of sense, trying to translate back to english how “it itself” is said in Spanish we might say something as “it sameness”, the sameness seize the identical of it as the same but without the return to a core that the word “self” imply to a subjectivity, a monad, a one and overall the inside of an individual subject as the self-contains it, so that “it sameness”, even when the literal translation of the Spanish from english must be “it itself” back from english to Spanish in doing so we are avoiding the inexistence or the loss of the core of a subject that the Spanish evolve, we may translate “it itself” simply because we have the heló of the self in english which while evolving the inside core of a subject might be used too to the itself of anything beyond a subject but this is not how in Spanish the sense is solved, “it sameness” the true translation to Spanish without using the self the idiom don’t have, never include the core of a subject or an individual, it is only and always the it of any things and of objects without subject.

   The second word must be “one itself”, but again, as nothing as the self-exist in Spanish the literal translation should be “one sameness” or “one same” nothing as the core of a subjectivity or an individual is solved inside that, this time the “one" help to seize something but a one must be the one of anything, one house, one rice, one fruit. 

   And finally the last thirst relation of words must be “yo” which in Spanish is exactly than in english I, the I, however, as we well know, I is not the self, the self-encompass, includes and defines inside us a well-defined moment, zone or territory of our inside subjectivity and interiority different to that one of the I while of course related.

     The concept of self has as its main distinction or as its main implicit and constitutive issue in the pair of “the individual” and “the social”, while the self is located on the side of the individual and not on the side of the social, it means inside individual subjectivity the processing of the social, interiorization of the external and permeability of the internal and later the socialization of such interiorization. 

   The self and the social are in fact as the individual and the social, opposite pairs, otherness, alterity, in this sense saying self seems to be or mean almost like saying “the individual”, but the self is not the whole individual and as such it is a moment, an aspect or a level of the individual as the I, ego or alter ego, but well differenced inside as something itself from that.

   The pair of the social is not the self but the individual which are at the same time opposites and inclusives in between like the pair of the one and the multiple, the relation of the self and the social is then of the same kind, but with a major difference, the individual and the social are extrinseques in between, a radical exteriority mark the emptiness or the absent of a pass by in between. 

   The concept of the individual cutted in itself appear as a formation closed over itself without containing something to explain the permeability in between both. We know that the individual receives from the social, that from the moment a language is acquired the social as pregiven have an entrance with participate in the taking shape of it, but we don’t know how this entrance occur, by only the pair of the individual and the social nothing on how to solve the extrinsecation and exteriority in between is covered by the semantique of both concepts.

   All that we seize and comply to full the meaning of the how of such a permeability is nothing else than seizing that which the self-explain and contain, the self in fact is that which located inside us consist about the step and the procedure of that permeability.

   Without the self all we can do is a list of things without relations in between, we said that since acquiring a language the individual is socially formed as nothing in both notions contains semantically the sense of how to mediate in between that exteriority, all that pass by in between is listed as a contiguity of unrelated things one following the next, we know nothing thus on the phenomenological order of such a taking shape in both directions from the individual to the social and in reverse, the self is the part of us which is specialized in that translation and as such explaining the self is nothing else than explaining how that translation and processing of the taking shape in both direction made a whole area in us, a whole zone of our subjectivity and interiority. The self is then as the I a well-defined, cutted and located moment of us as relevant and major as the I while differenced from it. In a few worlds, the self explains the phenomenological constitution of such a pass by or translation and as such a well differenced phenomenological world itself.

   About the extrinsecation and exteriority between the internal and the external, the individual and the social I discussed a lot in my first book almost dedicated to it but now we must addition that beyond recognizing such exteriority and questioning it by proposing ways to avoid it we must understand how the passing by of one think into the other take shape, and the main purposiveness of this essay is focused in attempt to attain that such a pass by explain the consistency of the phenomenology of the self itself.

  We recognize again that the configuration of the individual take shape by interiorizations of the social world since language is acquired, habits and customs, we also recognize that the process of self-individuation and formation of the self of the person is related with a progressive differentiation of the individual over the social as Piaget sustained, but we don’t know yet how to go beyond a list of collected things participates in that process without understanding how those thing relates in between.

   All individual have a self and the self-belong only to individuals, nothing as a self must exist on the side of the social ontologically speaking, the ontological location of the self is on the side of the individual and only by the addition of autonomous individuals we must, like we do between the pair of one and multiple understand how the plural is supposed to be inclusive to the single by the similarities of all singles through universals abstracted principles. 

    Moreover, the individual and the social as concepts are limited and externals in between, nothing in the semantique of both concepts explain or contain in terms of sense the meanings of the permeability in between, each individual have a self as much as an I, the I must be defined as that which maintain a certain stability or permanence being one with itself and identical to itself ever, but the self-represent the opposite sort of thing, it reflect the permeability process by which the subject is again and again transformed and reconfigured by that constant relation, the relation itself include a duple level, on the one hand, the individuation process, consist about translating, processing and interiorizing the social so as transforming the extrinsique into something intrinsique to subjectivity while at the same time such an interiorized social is later socialized in the form of socialized former individuations.

   The work by which the subject made this dual or duple movement of going and returning, of translating the external into the internal as individuation and in reversal, is made exclusibly and only by the self-inside subjectivity, no one other concept such as the I, ego or alter ego, made this work inside our internal subjectivity, this is the exclusive zone and area of the self-work so it is necessary to understand that the self is not a subordinated or subsidiary instance which made only the work of intermediating between two concepts to which it is added, the individual and the social.

    Instead of that, the self-occupies an autonomous phenomenological area of work, this is not a bridge between two concepts, not an strainer which as the liquid give entrance of the social to the individual and in reverse, before well the self is itself an area of formation and elaboration which participate in the configurational process of both individuation and socialization in the form of creating the autonomy of that work as a phenomenological universe itself.

     On the one hand the self is what transform the extrinsique into an intrinsique phenomenology by fixing experience as a cumulative acervo, experience and acervo are in fact nothing else that one and the same with the self and if we can said that experiencing evolve the contingency of external things such as when we said “experiencing as experimenting something in the outer world”, it later constitute a fully internal phenomena inside subjectivity establishing an intrinsique memory created only by the self, this is the basis of what Derrida defined as the flour of our interiority, the self-transform the experience as extrinsique into something intrinsique, it constitute our experience and acervo as one and identical with ourselves.

   So we have here two clear areas of work to the self, first individuation and socialization which must be considered as the main processing areas of the self and second the relation between experience and acervo, the first one work in the form of a translation process translating the external into the internal by the pass of the social into individuation and in return the socialization of individuated symbols, the second one transform the extrinsique into the intrinsique by a process of memory, a taking shape of retentions which establish the permeability of the mutual relation. 

    An individual is ever  the same one from his I, but is also at the same time always a new one or a becoming of something new as reflected in his self, if we may said, for example, that someone who migrated from a province or a rural village to a modern metropolis in a country is not the same one years after migrating as obvious when this individual visit his original culture it is just because this individual in the process of being permeated by the metropolitan culture transformed such an external experience into an intrinsique experience which is one with itself and by the way while seen from his I must be considered as the same one, seen from its self, this individual is transformed. 

     The same might be sustained without necessity of a migration example, such a process goes as such anywhere the individual experience its permeability with the social, in any case, the self will ever be at the fore front of becoming’s according to permeability’s of the internal and the external so as to stablish a permanent flux of translations with the I, the ego and the alter ego.

     In fact the pair in play is defined by opposites which are otherness in between, externals and extrinsiques, the individual and the social, the self-arrive there to mediate that relation qualifying it as well as eliminating the opposites, it transform the exclusive into the inclusive and phenomenologically offers to that relation the translation that permeate one into the other, the result is nothing else than the elimination of the pair since precisely through the formation of the self the contradiction of extrinsecation and externality is eliminated, but in this form the elements of the pair are no longer the same but located inside the individual in a permanent dialogue with the I, the ego and the alter ego.

   All individual through his or her life learn to incorporate a variety of knowledge’s but all individual return ever again and again to be affected by a continuum processing of interiorizations ---individuations—and socialization, this process never stop to the point that what made him or her one with itself  must be constantly adapted and readecuated to the self-processing of the new, its taking shape as individual will constantly include and be configured by this self-processing and formations and as such a  permeability between the internal and the external is transformed into an accumulation, so the self is a permanent area of work and of identity, it is something that return to be him or herself again and again participating in the phenomenology creates the world and universe of its own subjectivity.

   Experience and acervo are majors in the phenomenology of the self, it is a process of constantly adding new levels to the former ones, this level, the cumulative one is the one through which culture is reflected under the self-phenomenology.

   Although indeed we might say that in terms of the active side of the self, the process of individuation and socialization of individuated symbols define the main area of the self-translations and formations, instead, the cumulative one side of the self-defined by experience and acervo is the main one defines the pass by of culture into the self through the permeability process through which the self-turn the extrinsique to be intrinsique within its own phenomenology.

  We define here the concept of phenomenology in terms of the impressions to the body as to subjectivity, this is nothing else than what Derrida defined as the idealization process created in subjectivity the sense of an internal or interiority.

   Phenomenologically speaking this is nothing else than the feeling of a world or an universe, the world and universe is of course internal and individual but as such culture is reflected under as individuated. 

  Thus truly what happen at this level is that we recognize that the self-take shape not only at the two discussed levels but according to a thirst additional one we may define as self-representational, the self in fact suppose a return, a kind of presence of us in front of us like it happen with conscience and also with the sign as Derrida discussed the last one, according to Derrida the sign is nothing else than we in front of us exteriorized in language, there is in the self not only accumulation and translation, but also self-representation, auto-perception.

   This return is however different to the kind of self-perception we have in conscience. Certainly in conscience we seize the feel of perceiving ourselves and overall of perceiving ourselves perceiving as it is reflected in self-conscience, but the self-representational level of the self is distinct and unique, it is in fact less reflective than the conscience.

   Let then go in deep by discussing this thirst level of the self. Back to the main ontological issue of phenomenology since its origin in ancient and classical thought the issue of the feeling of something that must be itself without extrinsecations to it suppose that we are already there feeling and perceiving it and as such as subjects in from of it, so doing presence in front of us 

    This issue I have discussed several times is major to understand the self-perception of the self, in fact, the self is not like conscience a pure reflection or representation of the reflected separated as another thing in respect to what simply is, but something in between the immanence of that which simply is and the perceiving of it. We must at this point recognize, of course, that what is perceived as being is nothing else here than another moment of us.

    A self is a sameness of one-self, on the one hand, but on the other hand a self is something more, it is at the same time a process of individuation in the human being, one is ever oneself but from the moment we said that one is a self it is already not only a sameness but also something that already pass by from the external to the internal to be individuated, so it is not only the sameness of the oneself of any one but the oneself of an individual individuation.

  At the ontological level this principle leads us to some aspects of the concept of conscience, through conscience we represent ourselves, meaning that we return on ourselves in a representation, the self-have this same movement of return the conscience have, however, this return of the self over it self is different, although it is formed of certain aspects usual in the reflexivity and representational subjectivity of the internal system which leads us to the phenomenology of conscience the self is less representational than the conscience return one.

  Instead of something separated from sensible multiplicities as another reflected autonomous thing as conscience is, the self-encompass both things inside itself, on the one hand, something that is at the level of being without being yet  reflected as a separated dimension, and on the other, the moment of self-perceiving that identity as one with ourselves. 

   In conscience we simply represent our self and we perceive our self perceiving but this happen as a reflected dimension set side meaning far to the principle of our identity formation, conscience seems to occupy a reflected aside dimension like when for example we distinguish a language from a reference or a denoted thing or objects, or when we distinguish a perception from that which we perceive or a representation from that which we have represented, at the level of the self we can’t make this separation because what return to self-perception is at the same time the sameness of an identity in formation. 

   We self-represent only that which reconsoliate what we are as just a being with the certitude and assure of coincidence that self-represent it as an identity of ourselves with ourselves, this self-perception is not exactly an auto-perception, but a perception of that which made the self in us, that which we are and become.

   According to an epistemological principle similar in respect to the relation between a first essence of what is itself and a division of that essence in a concept, the form we self-represent the self-occupy at this levels of ontology a precise and well defined place that we must define as between immanence and exteriorization, a place by the way which was not included in that former classical representation of the issue.

    It is different precisely because  the self is in a medlee way between what is itself and what represent it, it is located in a medlee way between us when we simply are and us as we represent that we are, a medlee way between the extrinsique and the intrinsique, the self in fact consist in the translation, the strainer, the pass by, the intermedia dot between this two moments, the work of individuation and its socialization consist precisely in a way to bring to an interiority and translate it to an exteriority, internalizing and exteriorizing, in mediating what is itself and what is extrinseque to it.

  We are in fact this paradox, on the one side we are and on the other we represent that we are

   If we gaze to that which we simply are as If not taking distance to it, we might have a certain feeling about that just to be without taking distance to it evolves two dimensiones but as son as thinking in the self we will that we cant set side both dimensions as in concience.

   We experience an exteriorization but such exteriorization between us as subjects and that external to us in the case of the self is nothing but our identity in formación, our identity formation so that what we perceive is a moment of ourselves and must then recognize at the same time, on the one hand how it is one with ourselves and on the other how can we self-perceive it.

   Since the self-occupy such an intermedia place, we seize the sense of turning from something which is to something we consist in as a self-representing of it.

   We have thus already discussed the three main areas of the self, individuation and socialization, experience and acervo and self-perception.

    We have yet much more things to be discussed on the self but we have comply in plenty forms the objective of this chapter.

      This is not a way to said that the self is the same than being, not something equal to being while similar, it is not equal to being from the moment in the case of being yes we have the sense of something that simply is as being itself, but we don’t have in being the return to itself, we perceive being with another thing, external to it, subjectivity, conscience, the sense of concepts, etc, while in the self we perceive the self with the self.

  Differently to conscience, even if we need to cross conscience and use moments of it, the self is a dimension that simply is as in the case of being, but having also the perception of it as a dimension that the self includes by itself, the self is in this sense a principle of identity, like the I is, the I in fact, according to Hegel is nothing else but conscience, so that we perceive the I with the I, as such or in a similar way while less reflective, we perceive the self with the self since it have inside like the I a return, a self-perception

   The main proposal here as suggested above is to sustain that the theory of culture through the phenomenology of the self as a theory on what is already individuated and as what is reflected under experience and acervo, return the symbols to the plots of the Intramundane impossible to be separated from the ontological place the symbols play in that translations of the self between the internal and the external, by discussing culture within the self-phenomenology all the universe of culture is understanded as already transformed into something intrinsique instead of extrinsique to the subject and as such culture appear reflected  within the fine sense and meaning that the self has provided to it, so that the theory of culture as part and as reflected under the self-focus in the intrinsique relation between the individuated self and acervo 

Bibliography

Eagleton Terry, Phenomenology, hermeneutic and reception theory, Literary Theory: An Introduction, The university of Minnesota press

Habermas Junger, The Self and the Social; Mead, The Change of Paradigm, Pp, The Theory of Communicative Action, Beacon Press 

Habermas Junger, El Self y lo Social; Mead, El Cambio de Paradigmas, Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa, Taurus

Hernandez San Juan Abdel, The Intramundane Horizont, Complete Works, 98 Lab Books, USA

Hernandez San Juan Abdel, The Presentational Linguistic, Complete Works, 98 Labs Books, USA

Hernandez San Juan Abdel, The Intangible, Selected Essays, 98 Lab Books, USA

Hernandez San Juan Abdel, Being and Monad, Complete Works, 98 Lab Books, USA

Hernandez San Juan Abdel, The Given and the Ungiven, Complete Works, 98 Lab Books, USA

Hegel W G, La Ciencia de la Lógica, Hachete