Exploration of the problematic subject: history of life, subjectivity, life experience

Abstract

Recent new agendas of lifelong learning has moved the policy discourse form (institutional) education to the individual and lifelong learning in all aspects of life. Simultaneously we can see in the academic and professional discourse a strong interest in concepts of the individual life. What are the questions the policy makers as well as researchers try to respond? A critical research into adult learning must theorize the learning conditions in a modernized capitalism. The individual subjects are becoming visible and significant in their plurality, while at the same time as knowledge and competence has become a societal phenomenon. In order to avoid to individualize the indvidual the article develops a conception of life history research on the basis of a notion of social experience and ambivalence, which sees the learning of the emerging/visible subject as dynamics of cultural and social meaning making, referring to a tradition of empirical cultural analysis a theoretical framework to understand the relation between social practice, language and learning. It is a framework based in psychoanalytical and critical social theory, and suggests that the individual learning biography can best be analyzed as a specific version of a societal situation for the individual subject.