The Mind within the Voice

The scope of this article is to examine the topic of subjectivity from a practical and political (rather than epistemic) standpoint. The issue at stake consists in the attempt to reassign the subject within the realm of social practices. Such an issue entails an analysis of the relationship that links the subject to the community (to an « us »): a community which is, first of all, a community of language. Following the re-reading propounded by Stanley Cavell (The Claim of Reason) of Wittgenstein's philosophy, the article aims at sketching out the figure of a “subjective voice”, a subjectivity within language, which is, at the same time, self-expressive and capable of becoming public. This subjective voice, in the democratic sphere, claims simultaneously for itself and for the (political and linguistic) community. The concept of expressivity plays then a central role as far as it helps to understand the notion of a subjectivity which is no more defined through transparency, but rather through some inner opacity. It is at the level of expressivity that an “agreement” between the different subjects is made possible in the political sphere. This very concept of expressivity allows to go beyond the traditional and misleading alternatives such as private-public, or hidden-observable: those alternatives are not fit to explain the relationship (a relationship of continuity) between inner and outer. Thus gets renewed an ordinary language philosophy which cannot be reduced to any kind of anti-subjectivism. Rather, this renewed perspective shows the way to conceive a subject which is not an “ego”, as well as an interiority which does not presuppose any private mental sphere.