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Show 18 1994), or an intricate web of relations (Bateson, 1972; Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, Latour, 2005/2007). This researcher advances a networked orientation. To realize the uses of this perspective, we must first return to Michel Foucault, since his work was specifically geared to the study of subjectivity. Foucault was also the first networked philosopher because he saw the world through its relations, rather than its representations. This researcher then defends the utility of a networked subject, as theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, to study the corporate subject. Michel Foucault's Erased Subject Foucault is foundational for thinking about the philosophical subject because he offers a route around the subject/object binary rooted in Enlightenment thinking and recognizes that as relations of power and other forces of production change, so do subjectivities. "It is certain that the mechanisms of subjection cannot be studied outside their relation to the mechanisms of exploitation and domination" (Foucault 1982/2003, p. 131). In an essay entitled, The Subject and Power, Foucault (1982/2003) says, "the human subject is placed in relations of production and of signification," and relations of power are the principal means for producing the subject (p. 127). Ultimately, the subjectas-agent is irrelevant since the subject is only capable of identifying oneself in relation to fields of knowledge unique to social complexes of power. In Discipline & Punish, Foucault (1975/1995) argues that subjects contribute to the production of fields of knowledge by their very identification with current relations of power. Consequently, subjects are defined in relation to structures of knowledge and power within social orders. Held accountable to generalized systems of knowledge and power, subjects are constituted by their relationship with the social order. They become |
