Here's the contrarian, instinctively pouncing....

Though not really. I agree with those parts of your post that are susceptible to agreement vs disagreement.

In the spirit of the crowd, let's do away with 'subjectivities' -the term has so much baggage, it weighs the whole thing down. If subjectivity makes people think of 'consciousness' and leads people to confusedly attempt to suss out its meaning through the familiar subjective/objective divide - then why keep it around?

What is more antithetical to the spirit of the crowd and collective than a term that solicits confusion and division, basically guarantees it. In deleuzian/nietzschean terms, what does a term like 'subjectivity' do but necessitate a priestly class to explain?

I believe I understand the term, but why couch it in this kind of language, which keeps at bay 'the way that touching against other bodies loses its taboo.'

I guess it's drawing on a well of resources that are already there; a well that's public, explorable by others, extendable (and already extended) into other areas of interest. It's as much enabling as it is limiting. I'm here. We can talk about it.

That's fair. I'm thinking of it like this: The well is, in theory, public.It's never been easier to access 'high scripture.'

But what does the application of scripture to contemporary events look like in practice? I think we both recognize the bumpiness of it, and that's why you began your post with a series of disclaimers.

Now, one thing I've always respected about your usual approach is that you're comfortable jettisoning jargon in favor of straightforward explanations of concepts. Especially around continental figures. I think there's an instinctive sense that that's the right move to make because continental philosophy, tonally, looks like a manic figure. Outside its milieu - usually paris, sometimes heidelberg - it needs a pragmatic interpreter to distill the insights and separate them from the wild gesticulations. But there's also a weird hybrid-philosophy, that I associate with Butler & hardt/negri and similar figures. Thinkers with Continental influence, but who, page-by-page operate in a sober, almost analytic way. I think Foucault is the linchpin here. It's a weird mix because it reads almost like american philosophy, but with these compact terms that draw on an exotic french outside.

I think that's what 'subjectivity' is. It's a shared term for a lot of academics - a compact word that carries a lot of meaning, but once learned, can be treated drily in normal academic prose - but it's really confusing for people outside. It's inherently confusing, and will continue to be. Anyone can learn what t means with some effort, but ...analogically gyms are there, and anyone can run a marathon. But if a million people running a 5k is more valuable than a few running a marathon..

And that isn't even right, because I don't think 'subjectivity' is really that hard-phil. I think it can be translated very easily, without the baggage. Which is what you excel at doing! So why hold onto it? Why not start a post boldly with your own reflections and concepts? Especially if theyre more easily understood?

Partly its a weird dialectics of trust - I don't trust people to trust me (nor do I trust me) to not be another peddler of idiosyncratic theories. I can fall back on something. Partly it has to do with my limitations and training - I think best through engagement with literature - it's the material out of which I fashion things - I'd be lost without it. I jettison jargon so I can understand this stuff. Zizek says somewhere that unless he can translate Lacan into stupid pop culture, he's not satisfied that he understands it. Same.

But as for subjectivity - I also simply like the richness of this word. And my disclaimers aside, there's definitely an element of trying to reclaim the word too (in the way that people reclaim slurs). Orienting subjectivity toward doing instead of thinking has an interesting retroactive effect. It gives subjectivity a history, or at least participates in a history, which allows us to think of it in different ways. I mean, there's a way in which one might want to work consciousness 'back into' the account above (not forgetting that phenomenology, the whole study of 'what it is like', takes as it's starting point a cogito that can, and not 'just' a cogito that 'thinks') and enrich the one with the other.

And as for collective subjectivity in particular - that's new for me too. One of the things I've always struggled with in continental approaches to 'the subject' is a kind of 'who or what is the subject'. There's always this kind of uneasy tension between the various theoretical accounts of the subject, and exactly which 'entity' was supposed to take on or bear these theorized qualities. I've never felt easy about simply identifying the subject and the individual, and thinking about it in terms of collectivity allows me to think of subjectivity as a really open-ended process that can 'take' various entities or formations as its... subject ('what is the subject of the subject?'). So I'm working through that too.

So yeah I'm selfish like that too I guess. But then I also like Zizek somewhere else saying that there's simply got to be a space for unapologetic, shameless philosophizing. Self-recrimination is priestly too.

As Jodi Dean writes: "the primary characteristic of a crowd is its operation as a force of its own, like an organism. The crowd is more than an aggregate of individuals. It is individuals changed through the torsion of their aggregation, the force aggregation exerts back on them to do together what is impossible alone". — StreetlightX

Crowd: transitory, unorganised, social group consisting of people who have undergone deindividuation.

Deindividuation: loss of self (personal and social) identity and acquisition of anonymity, caused by sensitivity to circular interactions with others which affect the arousal system, and result in:

1) Intersubjective affect.
2) Disconnection of social norms.
3) Anti-normative collective action.

So the first place I'd balk at this, or at least want a lot of clarification, is that it seems like it's maybe realist about capacities as abstracts. That is, so that maybe you're not just talking about capacities as a manner of speaking about other sorts of ontological facts, but where you'd say that capacities are a real thing that people somehow have, a la talking about potentials as if they're some sort of real, abstract thing.

If, however, this simply amounts to saying that people can do (and not do) different things in different contexts (you can't go on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride in the middle of the ocean, but you can if you're at Disney World; you can't swim in the middle of the Sahara desert, etc.). And that you can have done to you (and not done to you) different things in different contexts (you can be given a surprise "backstage tour" of the Haunted Mansion if you're at Disney; you can't if you're in the middle of the Sahara). And that crowds can and can't do unique crowd things in different contexts (they can riot at a concert if they're at a concert, they can't build a new Haunted Mansion in the middle of the Sahara if it's a crowd of people who are all in a coma), etc.--and it seems like maybe that's the gist of this, then that's pretty noncontroversial. Talking about it in terms of "subjectivities" is going to be misleading, though, because it's a very novel usage of that term. You'd have to explain it every time you talk about it.

Crowd: transitory, unorganised, social group consisting of people who have undergone deindividuation.

Deindividuation: loss of self (personal and social) identity and acquisition of anonymity, caused by sensitivity to circular interactions with others which affect the arousal system, and result in:

1) Intersubjective affect.
2) Disconnection of social norms.
3) Anti-normative collective action. — Galuchat

Agree on the emphasis on deindividuation - the crowd has a flattening effect, a de-individuating force that is most strongly brought out when the crowd is masked, making every one indistinguishable from the other. But what I want to focus on is a kind of sublimation of individuation, where the subjectivity of each is sublimated or translated into the collective subjectivity (singular) of the crowd: an individuation of the crowd itself. Correlative to this I think it's important not to see such deindividuation as negative: the individual can gain something from this. Canetti again:

"In the crowd the individual feels that he is transcending the limits of his own person. He has a sense of relief, for the distances are removed which used to throw him back on himself and shut him in. With the lifting of these burdens of distance he feels free; his freedom is the crossing of these boundaries."

This is what I want to think of as the agency specific to the crowd, an agency not available to the individual on their own. This kind of agency tends to run counter to the predominant ways in which agency is often talked about as a capacity or possession of the individual. Crowd agency, the correlate of crowd subjectivity, tends then to pose a pretty massive threat to social orders where individual atomization (the predominant effect of modern neoliberal governance - "there is no such thing as society") is championed as the only kind of agency available.

Also, what did you mean by (3), 'Anti-normative collective action'?

"In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself, and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd". — StreetlightX

“Crowds and Power” is a great book. Nevertheless, it is not clear if Canetti’ insights
could be expanded to explain the social ineffectiveness of the public assemblies and demonstrations in the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the emergence of mass numbers of people in Tahrir Square in the winter of 2010, or the recent series of the yellow vest’ protests in Paris. As usual, masses have gathered in the significant, symbolic, and central locations; and protesters have probably experienced effects of the unity and regeneration, described by Canetti. But, differently from former successful protest movements, none of these movements have become a subject of change of an established political order or a cause of transformation of the symbolic foundation of legitimacy.
They could not convert
their anti-systemic potential into far-reaching social changes.

This kind of agency tends to run counter to the predominant ways in which agency is often talked about as a capacity or possession of the individual. Crowd agency, the correlate of crowd subjectivity, tends then to pose a pretty massive threat to social orders where individual atomization (the predominant effect of modern neoliberal governance - "there is no such thing as society") is championed as the only kind of agency available. — StreetlightX

Following the recent events, manifesting “crowd agency” in Canetti’s sense, it is reasonable to assume that this kind of collective subjectivity is not able to undermine the existing neoliberal order to produce the long-term irreversible social outcomes.

Canetti again:...
"In the crowd the individual feels that he is transcending the limits of his own person. He has a sense of relief, for the distances are removed which used to throw him back on himself and shut him in. With the lifting of these burdens of distance he feels free; his freedom is the crossing of these boundaries." — StreetlightX

Rather than a sublimation of individuation, I think a sense of empowerment and diffused responsibility are products of deindividuation.

"In the crowd the individual feels that he is transcending the limits of his own person. He has a sense of relief, for the distances are removed which used to throw him back on himself and shut him in. With the lifting of these burdens of distance he feels free; his freedom is the crossing of these boundaries." — StreetlightX

That's one of those extremely silly things where someone figures that everyone is going to feel, interpret, think about something in the same way. That's not actually what people are like. They don't all feel, interpret or think about anything the same way as each other.

"In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself, and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd". — StreetlightX

This sounds like happy hour with lots of drinking happening! It's true, too.

Crowd adopts a different personality from an individual. This was alluded to, or given an attention, by no other than JS Mill. No?

Also, what did you mean by (3), 'Anti-normative collective action'? — StreetlightX

The typical reaction of the individual members of a group to situational factors without consideration of societal norms.

I think it's fair that I give myself some vulnerability. Here's how I think of 'subjectivity' in the sense relevant to this thread. if it's flawed in a severe way, I have some work to do before pursuing my criticism.

There are a lot of ways in which the concept of subjectivity is similar to the concept of agency. Agents have certain capacities, and agents are constrained by their environments. But agency tends to go wrong in its focus on a universalagent. When we're talking agency, we tend to talk as if everyone, essentially, is a particular instantiation of the same universal 'agent', plunked down, or 'thrown', into a situation (Rawls + Heidegger?)

"Subjectivity", on the other hands,begins with specificity (deleuzian qualifier about 'specifiity' and the transportation of difference from a genus through division.) Subjects and their environments are always co-creating one another; subjectivities are always immanently generated. There is no platonic agent that, in descending to earth, becomes colored by this or that accidental feature, like a glass of water taking the color of an external dye.

Instead there is a constant generation of modes of living, and ways of being recognized, that we cannot help but occupy. Everything real is incredibly fine-grained and, consequently, any talk of 'agency' that doesn't understand people as evolved - and evolving - products of a fine-grained milieu is going to err severely. There is no way of being human that : (1)hasn't been formed, (2) is not currently being formed, and (3) won't continue to undergo deformation (reformation, etc.)

---
I think i understand what you're saying about the literature. I'm imagining a harbor that one can return to. What strikes me is the recapitulation, on another level, of recognition which, at least as far back as Kant, is:starting with a concept and recognizing it in the world. What I take you to be talking about isn't quite the same. For Kant, as you know, the inscrutable arts (or how does he put it?) of the schema are bracketed, and recognition functions smoothly. This is more like consolidating and solidifying the categories through fieldwork?

But isn't the purpose of philosophy to create concepts that will carry you forward into the world? Setting forth from the harbor to bring back confirmation versus setting forth with an conceptual tool kit that will let you cope with the encounter and, from that, create?

I agree that self-recrimnation is also priestly and I'll priestly self-recriminate and admit ive been shooting out bad affects (also like a priest.) But isn't the crush and push of the crowd the feeling of forward motion? The affective nature of your post felt partially celebratory, like something moving up up up, but the conceptual part felt like a recognitive replacing, stifling the participatory element through a removed conceptual mapping.

I'd add : no one worth trusting fully trusts themselves. That doesn't mean not trusting-yourself makes you trusttworthy, but it does mean you have the self-reflexivity to earn an occasional stretch. If you can't float a new concept on an anyone-can-sign-up-plus-we're-anonymous forum*, where can you float it? This seems like a prime venue to try out weird stuff. The worse thing that could happen is you misstep, which isn't a big deal at all. The harbor's still there.

---
*unless youre dumb enough to make your username your real name, like some of us

But, differently from former successful protest movements, none of these movements have become a subject of change of an established political order or a cause of transformation of the symbolic foundation of legitimacy

...Following the recent events, manifesting “crowd agency” in Canetti’s sense, it is reasonable to assume that this kind of collective subjectivity is not able to undermine the existing neoliberal order to produce the long-term irreversible social outcomes. — Number2018

This is true enough. Relatedly, my interest in this comes from reading Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party where she argues that the crowd represents a potential for political action, and that it's weakness lies in an inability to translate that potential into a sustained programme that has temporal and institutional consistency. To this end, she argues that what the left needs is a revival of the party form, and to get over its instinctive distrust of power. While I'm still a bit neither here nor there on the idea of the Party, I totally agree with her that institutionalization and organization is crucial to any possible left politics today. As far as the crowd goes, the need lies in harnessing its potential, in directing and putting it to work.

my interest in this comes from reading Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party where she argues that crowd represents a potential for political action, and that it's weakness lies in an inability to translate that potential into a sustained programme that has temporal and institutional consistency. To this end, she argues that what the left needs is a revival of the party form, and to get over its instinctive distrust of power. I totally agree with her that institutionalization and organization is crucial to any possible left politics today. — StreetlightX

The recent history has shown that institutionalization and hierarchization of a few prominent protest movements have involved them in the totalizing sphere of neoliberal politics. They have progressively lost their explosive potential and have been converted into the working parts of the existing system. Differently, in spite of The Occupy Movement’s failure, it had explored various unordinary activities. In addition to the attempts to experiment with the forms of direct democracy, there was the try to build in Zuccotti Park a kind of the self – sustaining community. Christopher Key, one of the founders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, writes: “For a truly transformative revolution to take place a parallel, alternative society must be created that is robust enough for the people to live their entire lives within it from the cradle to the grave.” However naïve and unrealistic this proposal may look, it could point at a way of rethinking the concept of “collective subjectivity” as well as its relation to the political agency. If Canetti’s “crowd collectivity” has lost its central role, we need to find another locus of the collective power.

"Now, of the various reasons why studying different subjectivities is important, chief among them are the political and ethical implications of these differing subjectivities: every kind of subject is bound, in some way or another, by the possibilities afforded by the environment of which that subject is (this is what it means to be a subject: to be subject-to-...): subjectivities, in other words, are contextual, and more than that, are produced by those very contexts in which they inhere. ".[/quote]

I will try to expand your attempt to take account of the ethical and political implications of different “subjectivities”. Retaking your example of the streetwalker: the existence of this subjectivity is not just about traversing a particular urban terrain. It involves the normative knowledge of specific semiotics and its immediate, automatic application. Ignorance and unwillingness to follow the rules are punishable. Learning and receptiveness are mandatory. Further, crossing a street is not a singular event: it is a routine, mass action; it cannot be related just to the specific context of where and when it is performed - it is a part of collective essential equipment, organizing and managing our lives; the subjectivity of the streetwalker is commonly shared and acts upon everybody, it is supported and maintained by the ensemble of various factors. “Subjectivities” are interrelated and interpenetrated, creating a totalizing network of the possible and recognizable. Have they replaced Cannetti’ collective subjectivities? A rupture, a complete break with causality, necessary for the crystallization of the protest potentialities, has become much more difficult. And, even if the ultimate rupture occurs, protesters still could be swiftly pulled back to their ordinary routine. That is why Christopher Key called for the creation of the alternate society.

The recent history has shown that institutionalization and hierarchization of a few prominent protest movements have involved them in the totalizing sphere of neoliberal politics.... . If Canetti’s “crowd collectivity” has lost its central role, we need to find another locus of the collective power. — Number2018

I'm not sold on the idea of parallel institutions. I think it's important as a strtegic peice of the puzzle, but as Zizek pointed out, such instiutions rely on, and owe thier very existence to their being embedded in the larger captialist orders: "the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left." (Resistence is Surrender)

I think the left needs to get over their automatic aversion to power as totalizing and authoritarian and whatever. It can't keep playing local games of collectivity and Sunday framers markets while nearly every lever of power that matters is in the hands of capitalists. It likes to speak of 'organization' while eschewing any and all oranizations. I think this is suicide.

Further, crossing a street is not a singular event: it is a routine, mass action; it cannot be related just to the specific context of where and when it is performed - it is a part of collective essential equipment, organizing and managing our lives; the subjectivity of the streetwalker is commonly shared and acts upon everybody, it is supported and maintained by the ensemble of various factors. “Subjectivities” are interrelated and interpenetrated, creating a totalizing network of the possible and recognizable. — Number2018

This is true. One interesting line of thought that this leads into is the question of urban organization. There's alot of really interesting work out there about the geography of cities, and with it, the geography of protests and crowds, and how certain organizations of urban space are more and less conductive to the exercise of crowd power. I'm only somewhat familiar with alot of the issues around this, but one big one that often seems to come to the fore is reassessing the relation between vehicles and pedestrians. There have been movements in alot of cities to displace the presence of cars in order to enable a larger pedestrian presence, and I think this is so worth paying attention to and encouraging. From Vox:

"Oslo, Norway, has effectively banned cars from its center. Last year, Spain’s capital, Madrid, announced plans to do much the same, banning non-resident automobiles in its core. Pontevedra, Spain, has entirely banned cars from its center and substantially reduced them outside it (and has subsequently seen its shrinking economy revitalized). London recently announced plans to make half the streets in its city center permanently car-free. Paris has banned cars from its center on the first Sunday of each month. Other cities are taking on cars with more comprehensive plans. Hamburg, Germany, has a plan to turn 40 percent of its land area over to connected, car-free green spaces. Montreal, Quebec, is building a whole network of car-free streets. Helsinki, Finland, has a plan to densify its suburbs and connect them with public transit ... etc" (source)

This sort of stuff is so vitally important to think about when thinking about crowd subjectivity. I'm glad you brought it up.

Crowd adopts a different personality from an individual. This was alluded to, or given an attention, by no other than JS Mill. No? — Caldwell

Mill was disparaging of the crowd - he was no friend of social thought and he was as much as intellectual progenitor to the atomization and destitution of society as any other liberal thinker.

Competent urban planning mitigates the effects of crowd behaviour.

What seems to be more at issue is whether or not crowd behaviour:
1) Is spontaneously destructive (physically and/or socially), and
2) May be directed toward a productive end.

If the latter, direction is provided by leadership, which is a result of organisation (whether egalitarian or hierarchical), whereby the crowd ceases to be a crowd by definition.

In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud concerns himself with explicating the collectivizing force binding the individual to the crowd:

“If the individuals in the group are combined into a unity, there must surely be something to unite them...”

“...[A] group is clearly held together by a power of some kind: and to what power could this feat be better ascribed than to Eros [libido], which holds together everything in the world.”

He hastens to identify ‘libido’ with Plato’s notion of Eros:

“We call by that name [libido] the energy...of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love’. The nucleus of what we mean by love naturally consists (and this is what is commonly called love, and what the poets sing of) in sexual love with sexual union as its aim. But we do not separate from this – what in any case has a share in the name ‘love’ – on the one hand, self-love, and on the other, love for parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general, and also a devotion to concrete objects and to abstract ideas.”

“In its origin, function, and relation to sexual love, the ‘Eros’ of the philosopher Plato coincides exactly with the love force, the libido, of psychoanalysis...”

As evidence, Freud points to the absence of narcissism characteristic of the individual submerged in a crowd:

“If therefore in groups narcissistic self-love is subject to limitations which do not operate outside them, that is cogent evidence that the essence of a group formation consists in a new kind of libidinal ties among the members of the group.”

What in your view is the collectivizing force binding the individual to the crowd?

Re: agency - I wouldn't say that agency is like a kind of 'not as good' way to speak of subjectivity. I would rather say something like: subjectivity structures agency; or, agency is shaped by subjectivity. I mean if subjectivity is a set of capacities (to act and be acted upon), then subjectivity is a way to think about agency (as distinct from, say, 'the will'). So I wouldn't want to give up agency. If anything, perhaps one of the main reasons I'm interested in collective subjectivity is because it allows me to think about agency in a different way: a way of 'accessing' a different mode of agency that is not really available to 'mere' individuals (this in turn allowing me to think about politics or political agency in a different way).

Anyway, so I'm not just being a dick about using a big fancy word where another one will do. It's true that I think 'subjectivity' does conceptual work that 'agency' does not, but not because one is 'better' than the other, but because I reckon they work better together, as compliments. And yes this is just me laying out the grammar of a language-game as I'd prefer it, and it's probably not the only configuration of grammar, but consider my spade turned at this point.

As for the the distinction between confirmation vs. encounter - I don't think there needs to be a choice. The one elaborates the other and they both push each other forward (less a harbour, more a snail's shell - you wear it on your back as you go). Another change in vocabulary might help: not confirmation but implication (remembering the Latin root, implicare, to fold, to entwine) - what are the implications of this way of thinking about things? And how can we implicate our encounters into our approaches? What do the encounters teach us? And what can we use of what we've learnt to inform our attempts to respond to the encounter. See my response to @Number2018 above. It's probably the main imperative I follow when I do philosophy: implicate!

'I am not sold on the idea of parallel institutions. I think it's important as a strtegic peice of the puzzle, but as Zizek pointed out, such instiutions rely on, and owe thier very existence to their being embedded in the larger captialist orders: "the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left." (Resistence is Surrender) — StreetlightX

Zizek wrote this essay before the events of 2011. The Occupy movement was able to create the real threat, much more dangerous than the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, Zizek made excellent points! Though, he has not explained how the neoliberal capitalism was able to convert a variety of protest movements into the working parts of the existing system; and how the neoliberal elite could appropriate the most progressive, humanist discourse, “leading” the struggle for various noblest aims.

my interest in this comes from reading Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party where she argues that the crowd represents a potential for political action, and that it's weakness lies in an inability to translate that potential into a sustained programme that has temporal and institutional consistency. To this end, she argues that what the left needs is a revival of the party form, and to get over its instinctive distrust of power. As far as the crowd goes, the need lies in harnessing its potential, in directing and putting it to work. — StreetlightX

I did not read Jodi Dean’s book, but I found that it was discussed in this review:

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/16161_assembly-by-michael-hardt-and-antonio-negri-reviewed-by-lewis-george-bloodworth/

The book was compared with Hardt and Negri' Assembly (unfortunately, I did not read it either). Probably, without reading the books, I should not take any position about Dean vs. Hardt and Negri. Yet, I think that any discussion of the political action should take into account the existence of subjectivities of a new kind as well as their relation to Canetti’s crowd subjectivities. If we accept that regularly repeated mass actions, subordinating, managing, and organizing individuals are political, we should include “the streetwalker’s subjectivity” in the (bio)-political field.
It seems that Hardt and Negri tackle the problem of collective subjectivities:
“Hardt and Negri conceptualize “machinic subjectivities,” which draws upon the Deleuzian assemblage: “a machinic assemblage … is a dynamic composition of heterogeneous elements that eschew identity but nonetheless function together, subjectively, socially, in cooperation”. The concept of the multitude draws on this logic of the machinic, as it is singularities which assemble, cooperate, and resist the diffuse nature of capital and biopolitical power.”
Can the Deleuzian assemblage help to explain “the streetwalker’s subjectivity” ?

Re: agency - I wouldn't say that agency is like a kind of 'not as good' way to speak of subjectivity. I would rather say something like: subjectivity structures agency; or, agency is shaped by subjectivity.I mean if subjectivity is a set of capacities (to act and be acted upon), then subjectivity is a way to think about agency (as distinct from, say, 'the will'). — StreetlightX

While it is quite customary to think the political in Canetti’s manner, conceptualization of the political dimension of the new “subjectivities” could be challenging. Compared with a situation where an individual is becoming a part of a crowd, we do not realize that we unintentionally obey, being involved in, acted upon, and operated by a hidden ensemble.
Yet, simultaneously, we amplify our agency. And, differently from Foucault’s panoptical disciplinary mechanisms, the newest subjectivation processes are substantially convenient, safe, miniaturized, and unrecognizable. Anyway, the non-crowd subjectivities have become
the unavoidable condition of any political action.

But what I'm having trouble discerning is precisely the implications of subjectivity when brought to bear on the phenomenon of crowds. That crowds have different capacities for action than individuals is, I think, a truism. What the snailshell ought to do, I'd imagine, is provide a novel & useful way of understanding crowds. We turn on the 'subjectivity' filter from our snailshell-cockpit and look out over the crowd and see patterns we wouldn't have, had we not turned that filter on. Or, if we're in the crowd, our understanding of subjectivity ought to give us some openness to possibilities of the crowd that others, without that understanding, might otherwise miss.

I don't see that something like this

"The primary characteristic of a crowd is its operation as a force of its own, like an organism. The crowd is more than an aggregate of individuals. It is individuals changed through the torsion of their aggregation, the force aggregation exerts back on them to do together what is impossible alone."

does that.

Doesn't this just say : when people are together in crowds, the fact of being together, changes them. Being together as a crowd lets them do things they couldn't do alone?

I don't think this is just a quibble about language. I think it's a symptom of conceptual exhaustion. It often feels like doing Midrash on Foucault in order to figure out why OwS didn't work.

A lot of people talk about how the Left has trouble moving from critique to the positive articulation of what it wants, which I think is very often true. But I think the biggest problem is that the left isn't to willing to look honestly at what it's willing to give up. That's the tough question and as long as it continues to remain unconfronted there will continue to be a lot of militant rhetoric divorced from action, a lot of very hazy but promising-sounding concepts (ala 'multiplicity') and a lot of asking the same questions (rhizomatic networks versus hierarchy?) in different ways.

What is wrong ?
What do we want instead?
What are we able to give up?
What are we willing to give up?

And only then:
How do we do this?

But what I'm having trouble discerning is precisely the implications of subjectivity when brought to bear on the phenomenon of crowds. That crowds have different capacities for action than individuals is, I think, a truism. What the snailshell ought to do, I'd imagine, is provide a novel & useful way of understanding crowds. We turn on the 'subjectivity' filter from our snailshell-cockpit and look out over the crowd and see patterns we wouldn't have, had we not turned that filter on. Or, if we're in the crowd, our understanding of subjectivity ought to give us some openness to possibilities of the crowd that others, without that understanding, might otherwise miss. — csalisbury

I've got a university degree in sociology (but am not doing anything with it and am out of touch with the mode of thinking, too), so I have litte trouble with "collective subjectivity". I don't remember anyone actually using the terms in just this way, but the topic is rather central to doing sociology. Early sociology was taking off from positivism, with Durkheim trying to explain suicide in terms of suicide rates, choosing the topic because it's been seen as a very personal topic and thus a topic for psychologists. Basically: sociology is positivist, and it's not about subjective experience, but it can still provide valuable insight into personal topics.

The need to distinguish sociology (as the younger discipline) from psychology remains. But at the same time getting rid of subjectivity altogether didn't appeal to everyone. So after Durkheim's positivist sociology, you get Weber's interpretative sociology. But Weber worked with ideal types: you don't need to reference each person as an individual: you just posit ideal types and see how close you get to what actually happens.

Take a transaction: You can't buy anything if nobody sells anything. Buying and selling are two actions that are intimately tied together. The meaning of the transaction translates, subjectively, into buying for one participant, and selling to the other participant. But it's really a single transaction, in which a "good" changes "owners". Once you're describing transactions like that, though, you're practically forced to separate the actions tied to such subjective positions from the actions tied to the people who fill the roles. Why? Because the more a society's structure differentiates, the more likely it becomes that at least one of the participants is a collective (even if represented by an individual).

Compare:

Private person buys from private person
Private person buys from family shop
Private person buys from corporate shop via shop assistant
Private person buys from vending machine

And so on (I didn't talk about the internet, about brokers, etc.)

You can play the same game for the other position (or "subjectivity" in terms of this thread) in the transaction; just think in terms of "sells to" rather than "buys from".

So, imagine you walk into a shop. You're taking a sandwich to the counter, but find you're one cent short. What happens?

You may be torn between asking to be granted a 1-cent reduction, pay the difference later (if you're "known to the shop"), or apologise and not buy the sandwich. Meanwhile, the shop assistent as a representative of the shop may not be able to grant you a reduction, but may do so as a person - entering into a responsibility relationship to the shop.

There's something here that needs a name, and I have no problem with "subjectivity", because it's actually about "taking the perspective of X", even if X is a set of abstract rules (either codified or understood).

Note that a vending machine will not be able to respond to your being one cent short. It'll simply wait for the final cent until you abort the transaction (or an internal clock says time's up and the machine aborts). In a way, you can think of a vending machine as an inherently stubborn shop assistent (because it has no consciousness and isn't capable of flexibility).

The biggest problem with using the term "subjectivity" for this sort of thing is that, if at any time you find you want to refer to a consciousness' outlook, too, the term "subjectivity" is no longer easily available: you'll either have to find a way to integrate a typology (e.g. personal vs. generalised subjectivity - which could be hard, or might not work as seamlessly as you'd hope), or you'll have to find another term (which could become an entry barrier for other people, when it comes to adopting the terminology).

But what I'm having trouble discerning is precisely the implications of subjectivity when brought to bear on the phenomenon of crowds. — csalisbury

My interest is 'two-way': what can thinking crowds in terms of subjectivity tell us about subjectivity itself? And what can it tell us about crowds? (put like an essay question: 'what can thinking about crowds and subjectivity together tell us about both?'). In terms of the latter question (your question): thinking about crowds as subjects allows us - me - to bring to bear upon crowds all the philosophical resources that have been developed for subjectivity. Like what? 'Historicity' for one: like, it's widely acknowledged today that subjects are historical, 'created' under these or those conditions: feudal subjects, neoliberal subjects, gendered subjects, medical subjects, each of these having a history shaped by institutions, cultures, events, etc.

So can we speak of crowds having histories in this way? Have there been transformations in how crowds have related to the world around them? Can we think of how the agency of the crowds has been shaped and changed under different conditions? I think the answer is yes, especially when one looks to things like techniques of crowd management, the changes in urban space, the mediums by which crowds are brought together, etc etc. Lots to be said here. But what else? What other resources from 'subjectivity' can we bring to bear? Another example might be Jodi Dean's uses of psychoanalytic resources: she follows Freud in talking about the crowd unconscious, about the libidinal bonds that form the crowd, about questions of identification and so on, and drawing out certain conclusions from this use. Won't go too far into it, but just another example.

And then there's the flip side - what can crowds teach us about subjectivity? Given that subjectivity has almost always been thought of in relation to the individual, crowd subjectivity really makes the concept super interesting to me. Dean, again, speaks about how subjectivity has continually been 'enclosed', both historically and philosophically, much in the same way in which the commons have been enclosed, linking the enclosure of the commons with the enclosure of the subject (in the individual, rather than the crowd), and in parallel, thinking about crowds in terms of the commons.

And this is important to me because I think this has a particularly important political valence: if subjectivity is a way of thinking about agency, and we can speak of a crowd subjectivity, then we can speak of the particular agency of the crowd. This is important to me because it's so hard today to think about agency in any other terms that that of the individual - there's been an 'enclosure' of agency in the individual just like there's been an enclosure of subjectivity in the individual too. To be blunt about it: how can we think through the freedom afforded to us by the crowd, as distinct from the only freedom anyone ever seems to talk about, the freedom of the individual? And in current conditions when shitty American politics saturates us and the freedom of the individual has basically colonized any talk of freedom, I find thinking of crowd subjectivity both refreshing and almost liberatory (this is the 'celebratory' note you detected previously).

So yeah, there's alot motivating and informing this particular crossing of concepts, and if all you get out of it is that 'being together changes people', well, I think you're being unfair.

...if subjectivity is a way of thinking about agency, and we can speak of a crowd subjectivity, then we can speak of the particular agency of the crowd. — StreetlightX

A line from Freud to Fromm:

Ours has been called the Age of Anxiety. Anxiety is unpleasant and in its extremity unbearable.

A crowd offers transcendence of primary narcissism by way of collective narcissism. The self-congratulatory bonds of collective narcissism offer the individual an escape from freedom, littleness and concomitant anxieties.

The collective subjectivity of a crowd (united at its highest pitch) consists in the ecstasy of a (fleeting) transcendence of anxiety. All other intentions of the collective subjectivity are secondary to this quest for transcendence and relief.

At its fanatic extremity the agency of the ingroup is directed toward evangelical transmutation of the outgroup. The fanatic crowd seeks to absorb or obliterate the outgroup; seeks to re-delineate the boundaries of the world.

I think that any discussion of the political action should take into account the existence of subjectivities of a new kind as well as their relation to Canetti’s crowd subjectivities. — Number2018

It's not the new kinds of subjectivities that need to be 'taken into account' per se - at this point I take it for granted that different kinds of subjectivities are produced in varying circumstances - so much as how they are produced. If fact, one wants to say that the question is not even so much to do with the production of certain subjectivities, but in looking to think about 'counter-productions' of subjectivity, 'our' productions against 'their' productions. This is what I find interesting about collective subjectivity - it runs against the dominant mode of subjectivity production today, which is atomistic and - in D&G's terms which you are familiar with - 'dividual'. Collective subjectivity is neither individual (the liberal subject of disciplinary society) nor dividual (the neo-liberal subject of 'control societies') but common (commune-ist?). A subject-to-come to use the lingo.

While it is quite customary to think the political in Canetti’s manner, conceptualization of the political dimension of the new “subjectivities” could be challenging. Compared with a situation where an individual is becoming a part of a crowd, we do not realize that we unintentionally obey, being involved in, acted upon, and operated by a hidden ensemble. Yet, simultaneously, we amplify our agency. And, differently from Foucault’s panoptical disciplinary mechanisms, the newest subjectivation processes are substantially convenient, safe, miniaturized, and unrecognizable. Anyway, the non-crowd subjectivities have become the unavoidable condition of any political action. — Number2018

One thing I'd like to stress - and this is something that Dean does, and which I quoted her saying in the OP - is a distinction between collective subjectivity and mere aggregates of individuals. In the age of big data we're accustomed to think of masses as individuals simply multiplied - as Deleuze wrote, the collective becomes "samples, data, or markets". What's missing in this latter approach to collectivity is solidarity, an acting together and with one another. Thinking in terms of masses you ironically end-up getting individualized solutions (don't use plastic bags, use a bamboo toothbrush, don't use plastic straws, etc, etc). This stuff doesn't take action-in-concert into account, which, to go by Hannah Arendt's criteria, is the only index of political life.

Religions often ritually reinforce group-melding. There's usually a single voice whose message is repeated with the same words, rhythm, and pitch by the group.

Imagine a commentator on the news or a youtube personality whose words and cadence are repeated by millions. Kind of the same thing.

The biggest problem with using the term "subjectivity" for this sort of thing is that, if at any time you find you want to refer to a consciousness' outlook, too, the term "subjectivity" is no longer easily available: you'll either have to find a way to integrate a typology (e.g. personal vs. generalised subjectivity - which could be hard, or might not work as seamlessly as you'd hope), or you'll have to find another term (which could become an entry barrier for other people, when it comes to adopting the terminology). — Dawnstorm

The shop is an organised social subgroup, having a culture (collective mindset) which predisposes its members to certain behaviours.

When the shop assistant agrees to grant me a 1-cent reduction, it is because he/she and I have a common understanding of the situation (intersubjectivity).

A crowd produces affective intersubjectivity among its constituents through the operation of many individual mirror neuron systems.

The term "Collective Subjectivity" (group, aggregate, or compound subjectivity?) confuses the distinction between social and cognitive psychology, whereas; "Intersubjectivity" (mutual subjectivity) seems better suited to bridge these domains.

Intersubjectivity overrides culture/social norms due to salience.