72 Chapter 1 subjectification aims to do exactly the opposite: to (re)connect, to heal and to engage. Wiede (2020) showed through a lengthy argument that subjectification is not necessarily intertwined with the ‘linear narrative of increasing selfexpression and self-regulation’ (p. 22) in histories that can be traced it back to the autonomous, self-reflexive subject of Descartes: New studies in sociology suggest that the most recent processes of subjectification go beyond the emancipated self-realization and economical self-optimalisation, but include also ideals of social conformity, submissiveness, obedience, or even the ‘comeback of authoritarianism’. (p. 22) In two articles on subject, subjectivity and subjectivation, Rebughini (2014, 2015) concluded that there is a need to ‘rise above a self-referential conceptualization of the modern autonomous subject’ of these issues (2015, pp. 3–4). In a time of ‘difference and pluralism’, there can be no room for the ‘monolithic, essentialist, self-referential and Eurocentric vision of the subject’ (Rebughini, 2014, p. 9). Rebughini (2014) perceived research in this regard to be going ‘in the direction of some sort of “light ontology” of the idea of the subject’ (p. 8), in which the subject is conceptualised as ‘able to take into account cultural and gender differences’ (p. 9) and subjectification is interpreted ‘in a relational way’ (Rebughini, 2015, p. 4). In the ‘struggle against alienation’, she perceived a need to strive for ‘a reconciliation between the subject and the world’, for which she found a strong motivation in Hannah Arendt’s (1977) ‘love for the world’ (Rebughini, 2015, pp. 3–4). Although Rebughini did not use the term subjectification, her desire for a light ontology of the subject seems to intend the same: to reconnect the alienated and atomised individual to society and, ultimately (ontologically), to the world as a whole. Taking subjectification as a movement that starts on the micro-level of the person, and invites that person to freely respond and connect to others, it can be applied to all levels of social life. It serves as a guiding principle in education to counterbalance the ongoing process of fragmentation. It requires a critical acceptance of both differences and plurality: people will always have widely different life conceptions, opinions, feelings and attitudes. It also leaves space for socialisation, maybe even more space than Biesta (2022) in his critical engagement with socialisation suggested. Good socialisation coheres with subjectification when it helps people (or, in the case of education, students) to form an integral part of their own social groups, to be social within them and to enjoy their meaningful support. Socialisation allows for good social bonds with the group and is helpful on the level of society and even the world when
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