| Alain Ehrenberg's project in L'Individu incertain is an examination---based in sociology yet reaching beyond its traditional theoretical and disciplinary limits----of the individual in contemporary French society and the uncertain connection this individual has to this larger public context. Ehrenberg's fundamental contention in this is that in recent decades subjectivity has become a collective question, that recent developments in pharmacology and in television point to the necessity of a new understanding of the relation of the subject to the collective, of the private to the public.; Noting historical French practice and public policy in the use of prescription drugs, illicit drugs, and alcohol, Ehrenberg traces shifts in the private and public roles these substances have played, the uses to which subjects and communities have put them and the social and subjective effects they have had. Outlining the development of---and interactions around---a contemporary television genre, reality TV, he similarly notes the modes of interaction this seemingly novel form has elicited and the relations it has put into play. In the case of drugs, which are here examined as variously (and non-exhaustively) agents of enhanced conviviality, social withdrawal and destruction, or personal performance enhancement, the subject using them calls his or her very subjectivity into question. Similarly, in the case of television and reality TV, the subject using or viewing it relies on novel and reworked notions of public and private, relations that increasingly require the public to bear witness to the private.; The present translation, The Uncertain Individual, renders Ehrenberg's exploration into English while registering both its distance from---and its potential contribution to---contemporary English-language cultural studies. |
