In Moments of Crisis

“However, one must be careful not to conflate subjectivity or consciousness with any particular subject or self. Human consciousness is never isomorphic with the things on which it fastens, the objects it makes it own, or the selves which it constructs. Consciousness is the natural state of human existence. But notions of subject and object, ego and alter, are not given, but made. They can, accordingly, be placed in parentheses, reshaped, and unmade. This is why subjectivity does not universally entail a notion of the subject or of selfhood as some skin-encapsulated, seamless monad possessed of conceptual unity and continuity. In fact, such a conception of the self is anthropologically atypical, and in those societies where such a conception is fostered and fetishized, a heavy price is paid. For in withholding or retracting intersubjectivity from human relations with material and natural things in the name of scientific rationality, ONE RISKS DISCARDING THOSE ANTHROPOMORPHIC CORRESPONDENCES THAT ENABLE PEOPLE, IN MOMENTS OF CRISIS, TO CROSS BETWEEN HUMAN AND EXTRAHUMAN WORLDS, AND THEREBY FEEL THAT THEY CAN IMAGINATIVELY IF NOT ACTUALLY CONTROL THE UNIVERSE AS A PARTICULAR EXTENSION OF THEIR SUBJECTIVITY, AS MUCH AS TOOLS ALLOW ONE TO MANIPULATE MATTER AS AN EXTENSION OF ONE'S BODY." Jackson, "Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project," 1998 (Capitalization added for emphasis).