Abstract
This chapter proposes a theory with which to understand motives and their re-/presentation. After having argued the usefulness of such “positive” theoretical propositions, I reconstruct the main points of Ute Osterkamp’s theory of motivation from 1976. Her concept of desire for agency, as participation in a general performance of collective anticipatory care, promises a way to overcome the dualism of functionalisms without being trapped by the pure negativity of anti-functionalism. But her theory was largely forgotten, because a lack of attention to the question of how subjects and activities are constituted, framed, and individuated, pushed her tradition into a phenomenological cul-de-sac. So the rest of the chapter unfolds an alternative theory of how care and desire for agency can be analyzed, taking off from those aspects. A dialectics of how We/Us and I/Me are constituted and individuate is proposed (as yet another ‘retake’ of the Hegelian dialectics of recognition). The concept of “liminal technology” is then borrowed from Paul Stenner, in dialogue with a row of theorists of technology (Stiegler, Latour, and others). The technology of text and its “re-/presentation” of activities and motives is highlighted as a fundamental kind. This approach helps us address in a materialist way how activities, participation and motives are formed as objects in such becomings, as well as how to understand transitional moments of (affective) indeterminacy. This finally leads to a section on aesthetics as a way of cultivating meta-motives, beyond function, with Rancière, Adorno, Groys, and others.
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Notes
- 1.
With reference to Derek Hook’s book on critical psychology (2004), I reconstructed in Nissen 2012b, 21 ff.) three versions of critical psychology: One that uses psychology to criticize unjust or unequal social realities; one that criticizes psychology to be itself complicit in such oppression (as ideology); and one that attempts to found a new psychology that is of better use in social transformation. I opted for the third version, since that could take account of the second critique to better achieve the first, yet I drew the conclusion that such a “new psychology” must be a trans-psychology that reflects the performativity of thus establishing “psychologies.” Later, in Nissen (2020), as in this book, I use the term post-psychology. Neither term is perfect—“trans” still connotes “leaving behind,” and “post” misleadingly connotes “after”—but the meaning is similar.
- 2.
Susanne Langer makes a similar argument in a quite different time and context: “The sort of generalization that merely substitutes “symbol-situation” for “denotation-or-connotation-or-signification-or-association-etc.” is scientifically useless; for the whole purpose of general concepts is to make the distinctions between special classes clear, to relate all subspecies to each other in definite ways; but if such general concepts are simply composite photographs of all known types of meaning, they can only blur, not clarify, the relations that obtain among specialized senses of the word” (Langer, 2009, 43).
- 3.
As Derrida (1978) pointed out in his discussion of Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, the argument is valid in the opposite direction as well: Any historization implies a trans-historical problematic—as Derrida claims, Foucault’s historization of madness cannot but also be a contribution to the ancient philosophical problem of reason.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Artefacts predate Homo sapiens sapiens by more than 5 million years.
- 7.
The determinations of psyche could be identified as already present in life as such, but only as a relatively unimportant aspect, until that aspect was—by historical accident—”taken up” and converted into a life function that was important enough to direct evolutionary selection/variation/mutation and develop further (cf. to this methodology, Holzkamp, 1983).
- 8.
Incidentally, these concepts of meaning, sign, and function are almost identical to those of Langer (2009, p. 46–47).
- 9.
Whereas the latter fuses individuals to become “organs” of the social mega-organism, the sociality based on learning implies a process of individuation, establishing the productive tension between socialization and individuality.
- 10.
It is likely that more recent ethological research provides many more instances of the proto-human. It is also possible that some of those findings may lead to revisions. Many animals are now found to be able to do more of what we used to think of as specifically human; some birds are found to be more advanced learners than many mammals, etc. But my recapitulation of Osterkamp’s theory is relevant to the extent that its general features stand the test of time.
- 11.
Osterkamp’s reconstruction of the emergence of artefacts and symbols begins from the proto-form of instrumental behavior (e.g., the ape using a twig to catch termites). It is quite possible that a parallel proto-form of symbols can be traced, with origins rather in play, and that objectified meaning arose as a fusion of those developments (cf. Langer, 2009, 126).
- 12.
Here, Osterkamp’s relatively limited reception of Marxist and post-Marxist social theory was part of the problem, and conversely, later theoretical developments, with theorists of power such as Foucault, Mouffe, Hall, Højrup, and Rancière (all building on Spinoza and Hegel), point a way forward.
- 13.
Probably even more so in some languages—such as Danish—than in others such as English.
- 14.
This latter point formed the basis of Osterkamp’s (1986) critique of Maslow’s famous “pyramid of needs.”
- 15.
Around 1980, a debate evolved in GNCP around how to conceptualize ideology. Osterkamp criticized heavily the work of a research group called “Projekt Ideologie Theorie” (PIT) for “economism” (Holzkamp-Osterkamp, 1983). This was rebutted scorchingly by Wolfgang Fritz Haug, who identified Osterkamp’s lack of attention to general social theory and her tendencies to oscillate between functionalism and moralism, but mostly argued that the PIT in fact based on assumptions Osterkamp criticized them for lacking, and actually praised her book on motivation (Haug, 1983). I propose to read the writings of both in an “affirmative” fashion, until the more important point of division, which comes at the point of Holzkamp’s phenomenological absolutization of the individual subject. See Sect. 3.3.
- 16.
In the German original: “des Menschen” ~ of the humans
- 17.
Of course, science fiction suggests that such separation may (perhaps dangerously) emerge at one point—e.g., famously the films “2001 – A Space Odyssey,” “Solaris,” or “The Matrix.” In “Her,” we encounter a charming computer software, who is a fully individuated subject, able to engage truly romantically with not only one, but thousands of lovers, simultaneously. But—the films asks—is her individuality really an illusion, so that she is really just an conglomerate of algorithmic standards customizable to thousands of “narcissistic egos”? If she is, what does that teach us about human singularity? Or does she redefine individuality and romance?
- 18.
Thus, the middle-class Danish housewife of the 1960s who (like my own mother), after three childbirths, first took up a full-time job and then studied law to become a professional, along the way struggling to establish a local pre-school childcare institution for her youngest (and for those of other mothers), not only changed her own identity but also formed part of a quite significant general transformation of gendered forms of individuality in Danish (Scandinavian, Nordic, European) cultures, which, in turn, constituted her also as feminist.
- 19.
Thus, someone who has taken the narrative path of an elite sportsperson, which requires a rather total commitment and the participation of her family, and is even sometimes a carefully managed commercial “brand,” may face a rather complex challenge when she reaches the age when her body no longer allows her to play the part (perhaps after an injury). Then the question is to what extent provisions for that transformation have been taken. Have social forms of retirement been cultivated? Has she (or her family) earned enough money to live on her capital? Will her skills at, e.g., gymnastics transform into the recognized capacities of a sports commentator or a business executive? Do these “identities” appear meaningful as transformations of the agency she has developed?
- 20.
And obviously, collectives and their power relations in academia should not be overlooked, any more than they should be psychologized.
- 21.
In more recent writings, these gendered castings are typically retained but then almost ritually denounced, e.g., in Stiegler, 2013b).
- 22.
In Nissen, 2012b (p. 120 ff.), I distinguish between intentional, intersubjective, and appropriational structures.
- 23.
Later, the sports section of the TV News goes on to represent only the substitution of a famous player, neglecting the game itself as of little interest: Perhaps huge sums of money were involved in contracting the player, and the results of the season were already established.
- 24.
Both Goffman’s theory and Leontiev’s theory of the structure of activity (1977) tempt to a simplistic reading of a hierarchical structure (e.g., as in the “theory of the structure of actions” proposed as work psychology by Hacker (1978) and others (cf. the critique in Haug, F., et al. 1980). But both theories should be read as pointing beyond the instrumental approach to activity. In Leontiev, despite his functionalism, we should acknowledge his developmental dialectics as partly contradicting this sociological instrumentalism.
- 25.
And footnotes, in turn, typically both expand and comment on the text.
- 26.
Taken as absolute, this would be a paradoxical (even self-refuting) claim: If the videos are unimportant, how does this demonstrate practical focus? But real activities are never pure and absolute, and such paradoxes actually abound.
- 27.
Wittgenstein (2010, § 618) argues that “wanting to want” is logically impossible within common sense language games, because “wanting” is not an object, but the wanting subject itself. If I say I want to want something, but I cannot want it, you may well suspect that I am, rather, ambivalent (cf. Sect. 4.2). However, turning the will into an object of psychology, of course, is a different game altogether, in so far as this psychology brackets the intersubjectivity that founds its relevance and posits the object with a boundary objectivity.
- 28.
In the communities of people who, around 2018, work creatively with video productions, the use of ‘Apple’ devices is so widespread that there is a real pressure toward constituting what we might call ‘Apple communities’. But often, IT-consultants (experts in information technologies) who work in public institutions (despite the relatively low wages they offer) struggle against the scenario of an ‘Apple monopoly’, even when Apple machines are in fact more handy for many immediate purposes, arguing that other technologies are more democratically accessible (not least shareware, open source, etc.). The clients and counsellors in our example were caught in the (liminal) crossfire of this struggle.
- 29.
In Marxian terminology, we could refer to this as the interplay of relations with forces of production.
- 30.
“Re-/presentation” roughly translates the Danish word “fremstilling” (literally: setting forth), which means both production and rendering and which has etymological roots in common with Heidegger’s “Gestell” (and thus with Darstellung, Vorstellung, Herstellung, Einstellung).
- 31.
Stenner’s distinction between presentation and representation is derived from Langer and Whitehead. It echoes in many ways the distinction between analogue and digital communication in Watzlawick et al. (1967). In my reading, while Watzlawick et al. usefully expand the “logical” meaning of that distinction into human interaction, Stenner, even more fruitfully, expands it further into artifact-mediated and historically situated activity (cf. Stenner, 2018a, b, p. 10). My reading of Stenner’s (reading of) the concept highlights the liminal, creative potential of presentation, rather than its formal logical characteristics, even if these are also important in aesthetics: the simultaneity of multiple meanings (e.g., in visual art) and the secondarity or lack of denotation (e.g., in music). It is possible that I have underestimated the importance of presentational symbolism, which may be said to live a “shadow life” carrying perpetually references to existential issues that remain beyond discursive semantics, but are continuously dealt with in religion and arts (cf. Langer, 2009).
- 32.
Q.e.d.: The word “object” is itself a thing that has been given different meanings as objects within different “social worlds.”
- 33.
Especially if we consider text in the light of this broad notion of artefacts that standardize meaning. Thus, as money evolved from easily exchangeable commodities that presented and standardized value, into tokens that re-/presented standard value, that token representation was always to an important extent—if never exclusively—textual in the sense of consisting of conventionally established symbols (letters, numbers, etc.), and its social function effected a standardization of exchange value (cf. Goody, 1986).
- 34.
Stiegler—as one in this tradition of critical theory—relevantly highlights the internal relations of this proletarianization with the increasingly imminent dangers of the climate crisis. And, as these lines are first written at a time when the threat of nuclear war has reappeared in public debate (with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022), one comes to think of Günther Anders’ warning that mindless technocracy can even lead to “a world without us” (Anders, 2002).
- 35.
This is probably why drugs such as cannabis can be both hallucinogenic and sedative, both boost and block creativity: this is perhaps their specific “pharmakon” quality.
- 36.
Stiegler, fond of Derrida’ean neologisms, refers to “penser/panser,” see, e.g., Stiegler (2018).
- 37.
- 38.
Which, incidentally, Vygotsky, too, took up in his theory. See Sect. 5.3.
- 39.
Artaud’s theater highlights affectivity and its relations to thingness in aesthetics. Part of why Artaud is often referenced in current Deleuzian social theories (e.g., Brown & Stenner, 2009) is that he cherished affectivity as opposed to (mimetically represented) emotions. He represents the movement toward the unspecific effect of liminality. The ruthless negativity of this move explains his use of normatively adverse terms such as “cruelty” (cf. Adorno, 1997, 50).
- 40.
One such critique is beautifully articulated in Ruben Östlund’s film The Square.
- 41.
Vygotsky noted in note [3] that “By a similar method Sigmund Freud re-created the psychology of humor in his book, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious” (ibid, 6). But in Vygotsky’s view, the similarity did not extend to art, since in Freud’s theory of art, the reduction to libidinal affectivity (child sexuality) led to inconsistent analysis and a disinterest in the form of art.
- 42.
It is possible that a similar rereading of Freud’s aesthetics could point to ways that his “other side,” his tendency to move beyond functionalism, also expressed themselves (see page 96).
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Nissen, M. (2023). Theoretical Reconceptalization: From Needs to Meta-motives. In: Rearticulating Motives. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43494-5_3
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