The Subject of Black Subjectivity

1 Introduction

Problems arising from analyses regarding subjectivity come from a stubborn desire to discriminate between subject and thing in the extra-mental world. But what is the basis from which one posits this division? This foundation seems constituted prior to this distinction yet involves one (or both) of these parts. CLR James (1948) frames subjectivity as ‘this thing that is always producing contradictions, resolving them, and then finding new contradictions.’ This followed from James’ (1947) conception that to be human, ‘is the subject, that which is developing itself. The subject becomes more and more real, and therefore the truth about man becomes deeper and wider, more universal, more complex, more concrete.’ The problem of conceptualising a composite entity from its parts becomes a problem for the, ‘[d]octrine of the Notion [which] is Subjective Logic, the logic of Mind, of thought itself’ (1948). From assuming this division is primary, ‘is established the basic logical contradiction in the universal between concrete and abstract, between objective and subjective, between real and ideal, between content and form’ (1947). James’ focus was the Black subject, an entity both in the past and in current pessimist renditions programs were put in place to deny.

2 Scope

Traditionally, the subject is defined as the object of some mode of expression, usually construed as the object of another. However, our analysis diverges for it asks, what happens when the subject becomes the object of its own propositions? – a key question within consciousness and Black Cultural studies. Being the object of another system or subject’s claims about the world is an identity statement relevant within that system. It seems that a relationship between subjects is necessary to make objective claims, identity statements, about others and the world; a relationship where that normative determination can be shared and understood by the way it operates within that network of intersubjective relations. How that identity operates, especially if it’s the output of another, evidences the subject putting that object to use. Identity is evidence of a subject by virtue of its activity, hence subjectivity. Being the object of one’s own propositions renders subjectivity recursively, generatively. The object of that mode of expression becomes the mode itself, its operation an object of a function that can be described. A subject construed as the object of something else does not explain how the latter is the case, leading to a regress which we don’t have to entertain.

We’ll explore a model of subjectivity developed within the framework of Black Cultural studies. This distinction allows us to answer questions at the core of studies regarding subject formation, skirting issues from conflating ontogentic – categorical – with sociogenetic – emergent – principles. Their assumed interchangeability leads to emergent properties being indexed to certain populations as if those individuals were predisposed to behave in the ways society has categorized. Wynter (2013) a contemporary of CLR James, develops this sociogenic principle to explain how this identitarian determination affects our understanding of subjectivity by reducing subjects to objects within systems rather than explaining the mechanism by which those subjects are expressed and systems built. Despite their categorical determination, Black subjects seem to act outside the strict boundaries organising their environment. This ‘subjective character of experience’ – how features of an environment are encoded, the relationship between them indexed and projected into so as to organize future experience – is Wynter’s starting point. If the question of subjectivity is about the ‘psychophysical’ laws allowing individuals to re-cognize the indexed relations between features that determine the concepts that cohere in different phenomena across contexts, then Black subjectivity, due to its structural position understood within sociogenic principle, is key to understanding this phenomenon. Black-ness should be unable to exhibit subjectivity, only fulfil its identity in the apparatus determining what is of value within the network of norms and institutions organising what inputs to cognition get where and to whom (Wynter 2013, 35–36). Yet despite the above, Black subjects' capacity comes to the fore. Alongside philosophers of mind Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers – and following CLR James, Frantz Fanon, Hegel, and others – a model whereby we can describe what it is like to occupy that position, ‘what it would be like’ according to Wynter, proposing a principle for subjectivity. If we cannot or do not show that there is something that disproves that one has this capacity, then we cannot say that they do not have it. Blackness is no longer a limit case, but foundational.

3 Proposal

Why the above approach? Blackness is a good model to talk about subjectivity as it is a subject that has been codified as one whose identity overdetermines its output. Yet, it produces novel expressions, relevant, but not necessarily caused by a severely structured environment (Silva 2017). So how do we account for its ability to produce output at all, attending to the question of subjectivity at large? This seems contradictory to the sociogenic principle but key to CLR James’ formulation. The sociologist, Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding model proposes a mechanism by which a subject is oriented within their environment so that claims can be made about the world in which it’s embedded, licensing the becoming the object of its own and other’s propositions. If encoding/decoding consists of indexing a relationship between features of an environment under a concept, projecting that frame into subsequent contexts to decode and thereby organize that context in terms relevant to those resources, it’s not going too far to say that given that operation, that mechanism evinces the operation by which we come to understand subjectivity as a function of that operation. That process can be encoded and shared, i.e. re-encoded, in such a way that we can decode the process by which we come to know the object by way of its mode of expression.

Like the poet Keats’ concept of negative capability, a function can be described without having an object yet determines a relationship between its output and environment. A relationship between input and output acts as evidence that that function obtains. If a function determines a relation between an object in a larger set of conditions and another in a subset of those conditions, such that pair is the object of that relationship, then that function becomes an object of analysis. How that function operates across contexts explains ‘what it would be like’ for a subject given certain conditions yet would not define the subject by output alone for different inputs produce context relevant output. A subject can still be/act otherwise yet remain that subject, contributing to and thereby changing the conditions in which it operates. Future inputs come from past outputs and no subject is placed in an environment untouched by other processes and/or agents. Eventually, with enough output from itself and others, environmental shifts occur. Output from other subjects that’s unanticipated by the network of norms and institutions organizing local affairs finds its way into local conditions as that network is trained only on the prior outputs of the individuals it knows. Eventually, from the environmental features immediately accessible to what Stuart Hall (1973) formalized as an encoding/decoding process, non-local connections between subjects arise.

What constitutes an environment, then, is the output from applying encoded resources to the current context that feed back into that same process, realising what appears to be the somewhat stable environment in which subjects reside. The environment is a mapping of those features, a tapestry of feedback loops. This brings up the issue of whether it makes sense to speak about subjectivity outside of some intersubjective basis. For us, how does one come to a decision in a field, i.e. terminate one of those feedback loops? If an encoding is shared – i.e. similar output by virtue of functional-equivalences between encodings lead to similar orientations within that environment – then when that encoding, rather than a feature of the environment, becomes input, a way of navigating those affairs is the output. A relation between objects in the current context is made rather than between contexts and what appears as a decision procedure emerges. Intersubjectivity is the relationship that obtains within which objective determinations, identifications, are made; otherwise, we’re condemned to feedback loops. Hence the scope of the proposal to come. If an encoding/decoding process can be encoded then a subject’s operation becomes the object of a claim or environmental navigation, even if that object is the output of that very same subject. With access only to immediate surroundings, this process explains how non-local connections arise. Subjects would not have access to another’s priors, but current output is the result of those priors.

How does Black-ness assist in the understanding of subjectivity at all? If Black subjectivity, when analysing White-dominant society according to Wynter and James, is over/everywhere-determined – i.e. regardless of output, it’s understood as Black – then being a function of these historical conditions, a network of norms and institutions dictating future inputs to the process above means that Black-ness is construed as the zero of that function, a function defined prior to its application. A function that is completely determined for each of its factors – factors being the sum of the terms or in this case, possible ‘identities’ given the domain – is the zero of that function. The zero is how we evaluate the identities of that function, i.e. one of its factors, given the environment in which it operates. This is key for the zero of a function shows that function as an object of analysis. To evaluate it is to show that the identity of that object is its operation in addition to some factor given that object in those conditions. The subject becomes the object of a proposition in some domain which can be the domain in which the proposition is the subject itself.

Due to its socio-historical and political determination, it seems that Black-ness is primed for studies regarding subjectivity for it’s one in which its subjectivity comes into question. If its structural position is that which is overdetermined by the propositions of others, then the solution for a subject’s operation that expresses the dominant’s identity is the zero of that whose function is its operation within that structure – see Silva’s (2017) equation of value. Black-ness becomes the subject with which we can show its determinate within the very structure of that formula. From here, we say that if the object of the function of an identity is the subject of that proposition, when we ask the question of how a subject becomes the object of its own propositions, we no longer need to assume a dominant or subordinate position, only recognize that neither is possible without the function of the operation that expresses the appropriate factor of that formula given the environment in which it is operating.

4 The Model

How does Black subjectivity provide the solution of the factor that licenses dominant, universal, identity claims, and by doing so provide a model of the subjectivity at large? To be a subject is to become the object of a proposition. In the self-referential sense, it is to make the means of producing a proposition the object of another with which, if asked a question, one can formulate an answer regarding the object of the statement. This answer represents an explanation for why that self-proposition is situated or positioned in the statement indexing a world-view, i.e. model (Minsky 1965) That ‘world-view’ represents one’s frame of reference. In this case, self-reference entails that ‘I’ becomes the object of a proposition and, therefore, refers to the one issuing that statement. To get at the concept of subjectivity, then, is to formalise its means of expression. The distinction between subject and thing becomes secondary for that division presupposes a substrate upon which that distinction was formulated. Predeterminate distinctions are problematic because subjectivity is an operation, not a thing. Thus, what we seek is some abstract object that is subjectivity and that can be used, when asked about it, to explain what is the subject expressed by that operation.

It follows that subjectivity is expressed by the operation of an already composite entity. If we can only know from our position that some subject is present by virtue of formalising the function of its expression, then taking its expression, its identity, as primary means that either our theory will presuppose the object of study prior to analysis, confusing the terms used to explain that concept with the concept itself; or it will attempt a study of subjectivity (=subject + activity) that fails because its object cannot be ascertained from studying only one of its aspects within a frame focusing on what the analyst deemed its necessary features. These routes become even more problematic when we find that the same subject may appear under different identities or that the same identity may label multiple subjects. This issue only becomes discernible by considering the way in which subjects put those identities to use.

We will understand the term ‘function’ by way of there being a domain x and a sub/co-domain representing a range y whereby the pair (x, y) are elements of the function f. This formalizes the engine undergirding the proposal in Section 3. A function becomes some sort of abstract object. If that function has (x, y) and (x, y-successor) as elements, then y = y-successor before that function’s application. We can conceive of two functions being equivalent before their use, but express different properties when applied due to their different ranges. An identity, then, is expressed by way of some proposition projected from a domain of selection into contexts qua sub/co-domains representing that function’s range of appropriate applications. Intersubjectivity is prior to identity claims. In this way, functions become the abstract object we need to discuss subjectivity, a concept expressed by the operation of that function and its successive application into the contexts (=sub/co-domains) in which its projections apply. The content of identity-assertions, then, is functional.

We can conceive of an aspect of a subject by studying one of its components, possible factors, but our different studies do not necessarily add up to a complete theory of subjectivity. Much like a chemical reaction, the final product hardly resembles its parts and rarely can be decomposed back into its initial components. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, consciousness is the ability to hold two opposing ideas and still function. Consciousness, then, is represented by the capacity to hold seemingly conflicting objects of thought and choose none. Where these objects of thought, here functions, reside is the subject which is the substrate on which the composition of elements occur to project context appropriate identities. Suppose that we cannot be sure of a subject’s presence. If it is the case that subject, by definition, has actions available to it but chooses none, then given our subjectivity formula, subjectivity = (subject + activity), 0 + 0 = 0. However, if that subject’s mode of expression is the mode in which it inhabits the world, then the determinate of that mode, the zero of the function of its expression, when applied, can be evaluated as 0 + 1 = 1. A function’s ‘zero’ can be formulated as f(x) = x which is only the case when x = 0. Thus f instantiates an x in a particular context in which x is x. That function is present but does not appear in what it produces. By the determinate of a ‘function’, we obtain the concept of 0, which is not ‘absolute nothing’ for it determines a function from which some one is built within a domain whose range is itself. We can also formalise how various output arise from the same subject dependent upon the contexts in which that function is applied. Due to what input is available, that subject successively applies this function across contexts enumerating different instances of its participation therein.

The case wherein both subject and activity is obvious becomes trivial, for, in a Boolean sense, if 1 = yes and 0 = no, then BOOL(1 + 1) = 1. The function expressing subjectivity models a successor operation articulating that subject through recursive applications of the function by which it expresses itself. This operation (=activity) can be defined f(n+1) where n indexes the context in which the subject appears in a line of context-successors whose arc composes what we identify as the subject dependent upon our position with respect to that line of contexts. Each application cites its priors back to the initial determinate of its assertability conditions. For example: n, n-successor = n₁, n₁-sucessor = n₂, … so no matter where in that line one can trace back to the conditions indexing appropriate assertion, each instance, therefore, contains the function whereby this can be determined.

5 Subectivity as Mode of Expression

How are the expressed identities of a subject composed given that inter-subjectivity is required prior to identity claims? If subjects’ operations can be modelled, then functional composition, which is the concept indicative of the entity we sought in the first place, can be formalised as well. The determinate of a function as the object that articulates representations into contexts when appropriate can be modelled based on primitive recursive operations. Consider the sentence, ‘Amiri, formerly known as LeRoi, was the founder of the Black Arts Movement.’ Amiri started BAM, not LeRoi; however, the same subject projected LeRoi in one context and Amiri in another. How do we account for the reference shift, i.e. difference in cognitive significance between LeRoi’s and Amiri’s use? It is only the case that we can infer that LeRoi and Amiri represent the same subject. The composite of the functions projecting each name into their respective contexts enter another function that produces a singular output appropriate to the overall context in which ‘ … founder of BAM’ is the case. Names can be treated as ‘denuded definite descriptions’ (=predicates without definite articles) appearing in the object position of another predicate (Fara 2015).

Consider another sentence where “The Black” appears as the object of the sentence overall and dominates the subphrases in which Amiri and LeRoi appear, e.g. ‘The Black … founder of BAM’. When treated identity-wise, i.e. treating it as a categorisation that can be exchanged for either name, “Black” expresses something that doesn’t appear in the phrase itself but can be accounted for by its function across positions with respect to phrase structure, i.e. mapping its enabling conditions. We find what animates identity is this operation that occurs within and posits a function over positions (=contexts). Within our framework, a predicate as the object of another predicate functions to express a concept understood compositionally. Given our example, Black-ness’ subjectivity expresses different things as a function of its former position over a range of the appropriate available positions in which that object can be exchanged, and yet remains Black. For example, ‘… [The Black], formerly LeRoi… ’ versus ‘ … Amiri, formerly [The Black] …’. “The Black”’s referent, i.e. value within the reference frame indexed by the sentence, shifts yet remains Black.

In this and many cases, Black’s subjectivity, both in concept and historically, is a prime example to consider how a form of life is articulated from what is apparent and produces output that results from putting what’s apparent to alternative use in ways as yet to be seen in the contexts to which it was introduced. As the ‘functional-content’ of assertions are indexed to their determinate contexts (=clauses) of appropriate assertion, the composite of those contexts formalises a composite context to which it is indexed, allowing for this identity-wise relation to be understood inter-subjectively because the underlying structure holds. We model subjectivity compositionally using the values computed for various subjects by our formulation above. From their operations, a logic for the assertability conditions of identity (=representative projections) arise when considering the content of subject expression functionally.

CLR James’ program is useful to explain what would have to be the case in order to conceive of something that produces as simple a contradiction as being a non-member member of each context in which it asserts the identity by which it participates. Without this useful ‘contradiction’, there is no explanation for how those productions got there in the first place. Composite operations represent what sort of affairs obtain in the contexts in which these subjects participate. Union posits one entity or another’s participation in this state of affairs. Thus, there is some activity expressing something, rather than no one thing in particular. Conjunction formalises conditions such that both evaluations must be the case for their joint expression to obtain in these conditions. Two subjects can obtain an identity-wise relation in that state in which one is recognized by the other or vice versa. It follows that if we consider only a subject OR its identity, whereby we reduce one to the other, then that identity might be vacuous. However, a subject AND its identity paired in that context is conceivable. A subject does not intersect with its activity for it produces it, however, its union with what it produces indicates subjectivity at work. This is how we can account for changes in how that subject is identified over time: prior modes of projection do not necessarily go away but are recontextualized given the inputs available. Even if that identity is 0, then the pairing does not deny subjectivity, for the zero produced reveals the zero of the function expressing that subject. It only posits that subject is not identified within, that identity does not obtain, those conditions. This is why subjectivity = (subject + activity), for multiplicative conjunction implies union. It’s not you or identity but you and your identity, in that context. Subject acts are cumulative whereas acts identified by others are multiplicative – compared or paired for a subject to recognize an other is an act following an act of expression. Thus, they’re determinable with respect to some other subject; they entail a pair-wise relation. If the subject and activity were the case for an identity to obtain, we would either presuppose the subject as interchangeable with its identity or if it does nothing, then there would be no subject which implies the same for the subjectivity of the other or the possibility of being subject to others, leaving an explanation for what animates identity projection inexplicable. Finally, for something not the case to be negated makes it the case; to negate what is the case makes it not the case.

Different ‘subjects’ m, n constituted by their operations, now considered together and whereby one subject is known by the other by its actions, presents us with the OR-operation above (e.g. m + n: m + 0 = m; m + (n + 1) = (m + n) + 1). A subject paired with another representing the composite of their affairs is modelled after AND (e.g. m × n: m × 0 = 0; m × (n + 1) = (m × n) + 1). As such, we see how pairing is built up from the union (i.e. addition) of subject with activity. A model for how a subject appears differently dependent upon context presents us with an If/THEN ELSE-operation (e.g. r(n) = [g(n) × f(n)] + [h(n) × not-f(n)] where r(n): g(n) if f(n) > 0, else h(n)). This last operation combines the former two to model how one infers subject continuity by modelling a decision procedure (=model of thought) with respect to the applicability of different functions dependent upon the input available in some environment, i.e. values of n. Recall the environmental feedback loops above. The availability of functions dependent upon input implies that those functions were determined prior to identity projection and distinguished by the relation between expressions. It also reveals a substrate in/on which they reside/operate.

6 Poetic Computation

This intersubjective framework models how subjects take up an identity from a previous context and instantiate it via the successor function in the context in which it participates. Contextually, subject operations ‘halt’ on identities that fulfil a role within the framework it utilizes to organize its ‘experience,’ a position within the matrix of definitions it has accumulated over time. A halting problem emerges whereby it seems that a subject’s identity projection can be ‘overdetermined’ by another, its value predetermined prior to output for any contextual input – see Jongmin Jerome Baek on Culture and Computation (2017) The issue being that if a computation halts on an identity, where subject and activity are registered in frame, then there is a scenario wherein the subject is determined as the zero of a series of activity and that non-activity registers within frame, i.e. a subject registers prior to output making the case undecidable as to whether it’s the case that x[0 + 1] = 1 or x[0 = 1] = x[1/0] = recursive. The halting problem then is the problem of determining, from a description of a particular operation and input, whether or not that operation will register or continue.

From a list of combinations of recursive operations representing templates for possible composite functions, we find that the above can all be modelled computationally. The form of computation we speak of is, therefore, poetic. It moves from a domain of selection to one of composition, i.e. selects from what is available and puts it to use in different ways. The underlying structure of an operation can be interpreted as a representation of what inference, decision, or imagination possibly entail. It follows that a function that predetermines the scope of all possible articulations of a subject by virtue of an identity between it and a single position, i.e. category, will always be incomplete.

Suppose we enumerate a list of recursive operations indexed one-to-one with a list of the functions they compose, i.e. functions built up by those operations. Is there a function that enumerates all possible expressions and can account for itself by those same means? That would have to be a function (d) that evaluates any context (n) such that the function (f_n) quantifying an expression as relevant in that context and its successor (n + 1) is possible. Yet it itself, which should show up on that list, cannot be in that domain for it must quantify the next iteration as well (e.g. d(n) = (f_n(n) + 1): d is not equal to f_n). It follows that one cannot know the totality of a subject’s possible expressions while residing within the context in which it meets one of that subject’s identities. It seems that we would have to capture an infinity within some totality which cannot be explained in the domain it defines.

The contradictions laid out by CLR James that motivated this study can now be explained. It follows that if we can formalise the manner in which ‘infinite use of finite means’ is expressed by subjectivity, positing a domain that can be put into one-to-one correspondence with a segment of its self, i.e. its form of life, then we can infer a continuity of that subject based on its mode of articulation across various contexts. This ‘diagonalising’ function (d) claims to project a past determination into the future so another operation’s output fulfils that expectation. Isn’t this how racism works, projecting a predetermined category into the future and negating what does not fulfil what’s expected for the sake of the system employed? Recontexualising diagonalisation’s failing, since the subject is understood by a recursive function of expression prior to use, this result for subjectivity models how the subject composes an aspect of the future and actualises it presently. What shows up may be unexpected and yet is relevant to these conditions. Its underlying structure can be accounted for with the function by which this representation was constructed. So, when talking about ‘subjectivity’ what we are talking about is the concept of compositionality itself; a concept from which the notion of a subject emerges by way of the activities upon which we model the distinctions relevant to our interests at the time.^[1] It is not that the subject in itself is actually infinite, only that it cannot be reduced to merely one of its outputs.

7 Implications

What are the implications of the formalism above? If there is a relationship between a feature of a domain and a feature of some subdomain, then that relation, now function, is an object within that domain. Our functional conception of subjectivity follows this encoding/decoding process. If, for a different subsection and feature of that domain, there is a relationship between that initial and the current feature, then we’ve determined an extension of that function. The output (identity) of a subject is different across contexts but evinces, by way of that output’s relationship to or operation in that environment, the same subject. Thus, the output of a function could be the input for another function, producing output appropriate to both domains.

Let’s consider what we’ll call an ‘as/if circuit’ – from Kwame Appiah’s ‘molecules of thought’ proposal after McCulloch and Pitts (MP), ‘A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity’ (Appiah 2017, 28–34). We’ll use it to explain how one holds contradictions without negating one’s propositions, especially those of which they are the object. The MP neuron can be considered functionally, its operation clearly defined, making it an object in its own right. If decisions are the result of yes/no distinctions at different phases forming a path through some environment, then despite only producing Boolean results, the as/if circuit aggregates over inputs to produce an output relevant to the next step, namely, proceed or terminate. Some inputs cancel while others, based on their relevance given one’s experience, increase or decrease the possibility of proceeding to the next step. According to MP, the initial MP relevant output from environmental inputs feeds into the next MP phase which, if a certain threshold is met, gains the procedure access to different regions of the network of MPs constituting the subjectivity of that individual. This maps the environment in terms relevant to these nodes; output from one becoming input for the other. The overall output of this process orients that individual in a particular way to their environment, leading to alternative processes which in effect changes the environment because that subject is a part of that environment. We now have a psycho-physical model for what we introduced in Sections 3,4, and 5. Dependent upon their orientation, subjects interact with each other in different ways, taking each other’s output as input indicative of the former’s orientation to the world, leading to different socio-cultural and material formations.^[2]

From this process, different operations like summing or combining routes down a circuit can be derived. Different functions represent different routes through the mapping of the environment of inputs to this system. Different terminating outputs are different orientations to that environment, allowing or disallowing subsequent orientations thereby different sets of future inputs. It follows that given the environment in which this procedure occurs, different inputs are available licensing different yet definite sets of possible outcomes.

This is, however, an essay on subjectivity. Subjects are evidenced by a capacity, not just their being the object of some system, claim, or proposition. The latter inevitably fails to consider from where that system or some identifying claim was proposed or arises. Subjectivity as capacity asks us to consider how creativity comes into play. This is where Black cultural studies, particularly the work of Stuart Hall – whose interest in CLR James, Sylvia Wynter, and others – comes to the fore. In ‘Encoding/Decoding,’ (1973) Hall describes how an individual abstracts features of their environment and indexes (encodes) a relationship between them, projecting that encoding into subsequent contexts to test where, when, and the extent to which that encoding, now an idea or concept, coheres in the objects they find. By doing so, they’ve decoded that environment in terms relevant to them. If multiple individuals do this, and similar orientations to objects result, one can say there’s a functional-equivalence between the encodings they employ, i.e. a norm. Norms can be encoded as well, i.e. institutionalized, thereby allowing us to explain culture as a network or infrastructure of norms and institutions that organize human affairs by what inputs are made available where to individuals’ encoding/decoding capacity.

Taking subjectivity as this capacity to encode/decode environments with respect to the framed relationships between features that one possesses, Hall shows how intersubjectivity is required to make objective distinctions. A model or map indexing a particular orientation to the world in which determinations can be made, shared, and tested is the basis for objectivity. The move from individual to norms shows, socio-culturally, how an encoding process can be encoded and shared, and from the likes of Alan Turing, how this may apply to computational processes as well. Consider a program becoming the input of a process rather than a singular feature – recall our MPs above and poetic computation before that. This much can be gleaned from the functional definition we’ve employed: prior output becoming future input linking subjects to possibly non-local, seemingly ‘unconnected,’ environments and/or subjects.

For us, intersubjectivity entails that ways of navigating a structured domain based on the subjective capacity above are communicated as prior outputs become inputs to current affairs. These may outweigh options that would be derived directly by that individual, making for novel, unforeseen, yet relevant actions within an environment due to the only ‘instinctual’ component of this process, an ‘inborn creativity,’ according to James (1948, 116–17).

Examples abound. Consider studies of improvisation whereby the same sonic model, indexing a relation between tones producing timbre and rhythm, can sound differently dependent upon context, can be played in ‘different’ ways, and yet be understood as the same song – see LeRoi Jones (1963)-also known as Amiri Baraka – in Blues People regarding drums as encoding/decoding devices. In a field of organized noise, different routes towards completing a song may appear due to the output of others becoming inputs to navigate that domain towards a collaborative destination. As the others in the ensemble play, a member may actualize a route that gets to the destination but is not the most direct or one that hasn’t been played before, but noticed because of the reframing of that sonic domain, and despite being composed of prior materials. Actualising this alternative presently, the sum procedure still produces the intended song; we still know the output as that song despite it sounding different. Improvisation and call and response in song and with audiences are easily modelled through the framework above.

Improvisation and imagination are connected through this creative impulse. Collective imagination for philosopher Timothy Williamson (2024) formalizes this impulse as a ‘suppositional procedure,’ transforming encoded dispositions, as he calls them, and decoding them in terms relevant to the context when projected. When procedures are shared, the means of assessing these suppositions in such a way that objective determinations can be made is a key heuristic feature linking experience and the concepts derived from and organising future experience, particularly in scientific inquiry and experimental procedure.

In numerous studies, Hall analyses the emergence, transmission/translation, and evolution of sub/counter-culture whereby youth would possess an alternative world-view or orientation to dominant states of affairs. Presented only with what’s immediately available, it wasn’t just what clothing or music they consumed but how they moved, ‘articulated,’ and put together outfits, slogans, songs, networks of venues, etc. Navigating the world towards others similarly aligned evidenced a punk (Do-It-Yourself) attitude. Given what’s available, every punk does it in their way, yet each articulation remains very punk in alignment. Considering the formalism above, different but finite numbers of inputs will combine to produce output functionally-equivalent, i.e. fitting the same framed view, for the required relationship to one’s environment indexed under the punk concept. Mappings having the same connections between, despite different, aspects articulating that orientation serves as translations and/or evidence of the transmission of that concept in different dress across contexts.

This same feature is key to Simon DeDeo and Helena Miton’s study on the cultural transmission of tacit knowledge (2022) By showing that cultural practices have a ‘tacit dimension’ – obvious but not explicit, i.e. directly observable but exhibited through group formation and evolution – tacit knowledge is modelled in the same way as our encoding/decoding framework, as a ‘mental representation’ that is ‘combinatorially complex.’ This allows subjects to parse an environment utilising that encoding with features relevant to the current context based on the indexed set of relations that must obtain for it to be said that subject has taken on that practice. DeDeo and Miton use this model to computationally explore the above, differentiating imitation – use regardless of context – and learning – adaptability.

In sum, the above follows historically for humans rarely exist individually or in environments where others have not gone to work organising it in ways inspiring ‘human’ action. If there are no other subjects acting on that environment, then there is no basis for objective determinations. A subject becoming the object of its own propositions would make an objective determination subjective, subjectivity as capacity rather than identity. If a solipsistic universe is the case, the concept ‘human’ wouldn’t ever arise, which is part of Sylvia Wynter’s sociogenic principle. Logically, a subject that attempts to map the map of all routes through an environment, i.e. the map of all maps that aren’t maps themselves, is rendered to indecision – see Turing’s treatment of the Halting Problem and our discussion of poetic computation. A subject that makes that mapping procedure the object of its own procedure merely produces itself. And that’s the point.

8 Discussion

So, if there is a property by which the function of an object is that function, and if that object is the case, then there is a successor-context into which a representation of that object is projected, thus every representation of that object by way of the function of its expression has this property, indicating that object’s subjectivity. Blackness, then, is not just anything for it is expressed by way of a function over available positions within the contexts it emerges. As no one thing in particular, it cannot be reduced to a singular position. This does not deny its internal generative capacity but affirms that its integrity is retained across contexts because Blackness is this generative mechanism. Therefore, Blackness’ outputs are individual, because context-appropriate, but not mutually exclusive. Black identities show up in ways appropriate to context, but Blackness is not necessarily, although can be, caused by those conditions and, therefore, can show up in unexpected ways despite the alleged overdetermination. An unforeseen consequence of the above is that Blackness comes before its identity. This seemingly counterintuitive result goes away within the frame posited by CLR James. It is now clear, I hope, that subjectivity is prior to identity in order to account for identity assertion and composition. Thus, Blackness is its mode of expression; how it appears is a function of which operations do or don’t obtain given certain conditions. This is not an essentialist account for it is known that every subject, ‘human’ in this Jamesian framework, is encoded with the capacity to express every form of subjectivity. From a finite number of possible states – its finitude distinguishing a human-subject from others – we don’t need to know the total number of identities, for the recursive operation shown above shows every possible permutation from those means is within the capacity of each subject. What is expressed, however, is a function of both internal and external conditions. Thus, subjectivity is not just anything but produces output in excess of the sum of its components or some singular external determination.

Essentialism purports that this capacity can be reduced to a single expression and then projected over a population to determine who is or is not human, who does or doesn’t have subjectivity. But in doing so, this overdetermination cannot account for how this reduction is/was made save by choice. A decision that’s immaterial yet objective, the choice itself is not a thing but enacts ‘material’ consequences by how it organises other’s affairs.

9 Conclusions

Even if to be ‘subject of … ’ or ‘subject to … ’ propositions are our only options, the ‘subject’ of subjectivity analyses the process by which a subject composes a model of a ‘self’ in the ‘world.’ From what is apparent, subjects project that image into the world to test the extent to which it captures experience, bringing us back to the argument above. This is still an activity of a subject constituted prior to projection, an operation of concrete sensate cognition. In our study, we’ve composed a model of that model by which they and we can explain our position in that world. As a model of that world, the question of whether or not subjectivity is in the world doesn’t arise as the reason for its not being so cannot be made. Talk of creating an already constituted subject due to the advent of a system of knowledge in which it is incorporated into an ontological scheme via the dispossession of its output relies squarely in the realm of identity, of being ‘subject to.’ That route does not provide an explanation for how those ontological-categories were made or where what animates the properties indexed by those categories comes from. Thus, subjects create identities that become objects of the operations of others. That subject must be constituted as some finite yet open object prior to this process, however, the shape of the relationship between the identities it projects is constituted by the conditions to and through which it travels. The Ghanaian philosopher Wiredu (1980) would call this a genetic methodology. A ‘genotype’, inherited modes of expression, are mapped into context-dependent phenotypes, modes of experience, which are different because modes of expression only produce output if and when appropriate in and to the conditions in which the input is available that triggers their use, whereas others are barred or never actualized. This way the same subject can be expressed in different ways and yet retain subject continuity via this endowment. It is in this light that we talk of cognition, a subject constituted prior to identity projection but whose identity is a function of the conditions in which it inhabits at the time.

Whether it’s folk from across another continent taken to another place, or from different places crossing that ocean once more, descending upon another, Blackness always seems to be coming up ahead and yet actualized here, now. As such, it cannot be exhausted from a singular position. So, to study subjectivity’s operations is to study the subject for the subject is this compositional mechanism, not its output. The ‘type’ of subject, as each is expressed by composite operations, is dependent upon the contexts in which this mechanism functions and from which what is apparent now is expressed as a function of the conditions previously available to it. Like the count from 0 to 1, there is something that comes prior to identity. Fore fronting identity makes us miss what animates, articulates or enumerates, that identity in the first place. We would be left to puzzle over how we got 1 in the first place.