Sociological insights: subject and subjectivation in Walter Benjamin e Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The text presents a brief discussion about the insights that the works of Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin offer to the approach of the subject and the process of subjectivation that are common in sociological investigations. The argument is guided by the hypothesis that in both cases the reflections are based on a very specific understanding of social life and historical development, which is based on the contingent character of human action. In this sense, the categories “action” and “experience” are the core of the authors’ propositions. In the end, we conclude that although Arendt and Benjamin have pointed out the immense challenges that the material conditions and the modern mentality impose on the subject as a possibility for human existence,  both authors indicate that the free subject subsists not only as a value but also as a possible outcome, as the postulate that preserves man from being reduced to an object or a resource of power or pleasure.