Paper short abstract:

This paper uses concepts from science and technology studies such as the materially heterogeneous network, enactment and the cyborg to explore, by means of a case study, the question of subjectivity in schizophrenia.

Paper long abstract:

Using a science and technology studies (STS) case study approach, this paper deploys Haraway's (1991) metaphor of the cyborg to explore subjectivity in schizophrenia. Following Moser and Law (1999), the person and their autobiographical narrative are conceived as partially connected but irreducible reciprocal extensions to each other. Using Mol's (2002) concept of enactment and drawing on the STS notion of the network the paper shows how partially connected materially heterogeneous networks enact both schizophrenia (treated as an object) and the 'schizophrenic' (treated as the subject). As the networks delineated are specific and located, the paper argues that specific networks enact specific subjectivities and offers an understanding of how passages between networks might also be passages between a 'schizophrenic' subjectivity and a subjectivity that is not 'schizophrenic'.

The paper goes further and, using Cussin's (1998) notion of ontological choreography, shows how a 'schizophrenic' subject allowed himself, or even actively sought, to be objectified in order to pursue a long term goal that is 'a life away from schizophrenia'.