User-driven standards in a mutual help context: The co-emergence of subjects and standards

Keis, Mille K. B.; Nielsen, Asger J. Nymann; Nissen, Morten

doi:10.1177/0959354316637982

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…The 'we' here, as in all NA texts, is plural; it refers to each and every NA addict, in this case each member of the group, who can only perform recovery as caring sponsor and audience for others, and by providing a role model through 'coming out'. But the symmetrical becoming is not reducible to individuals; what emerges is always you, me, and us (Keis, Nymann and Nissen 2016).…”

Section: The Namentioning

confidence: 99%

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The constitution and the singular identity of the collective: who, ‘we’?

Nissen

2018

Subjectivity

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Faced with problems of organizational belonging, it is necessary and relevant to approach singular collective identity: The 'who, we?' question as indexical. For this, approaches from social theory outside of the 'organization' field are employed in the analysis of three cases suggested as prototypical. First, the Narcotics Anonymous is seen to mystify its essential workings with a religious metaphor added to its appearance as a standardized civil society association. Second, a grassroots based collective of social youth work is viewed as struggling for recognition through a performative branding hidden behind a radically situated selfconception. Finally, a web-portal is modeled as co-authoring counselling with art and research and as reflecting itself as at once concrete and universal. This casts a new light on the issue of organizational belonging, which could not be sufficiently grasped in the dominant functionalist approaches, nor in the systemic, institutionalist, or post-structuralist theories that oppose them.

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Section: The Namentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous NA procedures and proverbs assert this humility. "An addict alone is in bad company" is one such motto; and providing the better company, within which the addict 'using' self is reborn as 'recovering', is NA's key to recoverythis is what "works" for those who "keep coming back" to "work it" (Keis, Nymann and Nissen 2016).…”

Section: The Namentioning

confidence: 99%

The constitution and the singular identity of the collective: who, ‘we’?

Nissen

2018

Subjectivity

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“…It is here that we must keep in mind the dialectical legacy that connects us through Hegel with Kierkegaard, Mead, Kojève, Lacan, Derrida, and others. Not least, it is indispensable when we approach the issue of addiction, for many reasons, including the world-wide prominence of the 12 step fellowships, which, directly opposing pragmatic psychotherapy, emphasize submission as the 'cure of the self' (Keis, Nielsen and Nissen, 2016).…”

Section: Outlinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognizing motives: The dissensual self

Nissen¹,

Friis²

2020

Outlines

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This article proposes to approach issues around the self and its derivate concepts such as motivation through a methodology of rearticulation. For this, we build on the idea developed in the (broadly) Vygotskian tradition of the self as mediated by cultural artifacts in activity, viewed as a transformative social process that reconfigures sense and meaning. We aim at suggesting these potentials by rearticulating activities in which people display (represent, avow, reflect, expose, externalize, etc.) their motives. Most contemporary ‘motivational technologies’ stage a pragmatic self-calculation. For some, these technologies confirm a common-sense, managerial self; others read them as a ‘poetics of practice’ that performs and produces new motives and selves in a liminal space of discursive creativity. These two readings are superseded as we – with art theory from Vygotsky through Brecht to Groys, Bourriaud and Rancière – consider drug counsellors’ experiments with aesthetic practices of self-display in which sense is reconfigured as dis-sensus, as meaning deferred. Aesthetics provide a lense through which we can appreciate how an artifact-mediation can be also a struggle for recognition that reconstitutes emerging selves, senses, and motives.

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“…Keis, Nymann Nielsen, and Nissen’s “User-Driven Standards in a Mutual Help Context” (2016) sets out to trace the co-emergence of standards and subjects in a special kind of place that defines a particular temporality: The 12-step fellowships. Addressing addictions as “diseases of the will,” these are known to highlight and radicalize the paradoxes inherent to the prevalent conception of subjectivity, starting from the idea of a freely chosen surrender in the face of an unmanageable life.…”

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confidence: 99%

A “post-psychological” curiosity about subjectivities and standards

Nissen

Staunæs

Bank

2016

Theory & Psychology

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This special issue is about standards. A standard is an abstract reproduction of certain aspects of practice and being, used across time and place to shape and regulate. Thus, standing opposed to human subjectivity, they are often viewed as external or even as such critiqued, consolidating a division between standardizing sciences and off-standard qualitative research. Yet, a “post-psychological curiosity” suggests a reflexive stance, admitting to complicity in the “intra-actions” of standards and subjectivity, in theoretical psychology as in practices such as management, counseling, or self-help. Objectifying values, standards can reach out to the image of infinity; even posited as immanent to practices, they can be seen as expressions of hope. They both shake and establish temporalities and spatial distributions that feed into affective economies and help or force us to focus and forget. We use them to govern ourselves and each other—or we suffer their suspension as “cranked subjects.”

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User-driven standards in a mutual help context: The co-emergence of subjects and standards

Cited by 6 publications

References 42 publications

The constitution and the singular identity of the collective: who, ‘we’?

The constitution and the singular identity of the collective: who, ‘we’?

Recognizing motives: The dissensual self

A “post-psychological” curiosity about subjectivities and standards

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