The Prime of My Subjectivity

As I was sitting and pondering subjectivity -- a thing I often do -- I began to take a look around and critically examine how I look at the world. In doing this, I realized that the way I see the world now is close to the most positive that I'll ever see it. This surprised me, but I found a lot of evidence as to why this would be true.

When looking at the world (a world that is largely shaped by the media) it is easy to see why my outlook would be so rosy. Being a 21-year-old female in college, I represent many of the ideals of our culture: youth, opportunity, vitality, etc. The world is constructed to make it seem as if it were at my feet. Though this at times may be the case, I also came to realize how my positive subjectivity is most likely made to be that way through heavy interpellation.

The systems I am a part of have every reason to make me feel like I am in control. My college, for example, is always asking me my opinion of how it's doing by inviting me to dinners and meetings. They want me to feel as if I have a large stake in what happens to the system. This feeling of "mattering" gets even stronger when looking at the commercial world that is all about youth and being increasingly dominated by feminine culture. To be young is to be beautiful and many companies make my age group into the poster children of how everyone should be.

Youth on its own has so much control in our world. Young people are seen as the ones who can make a true difference in the world and we can do it better and more efficiently than anyone else. This is humorously paralleled by the popular Mac computer commercials that show youth as being synonymous with efficiency and great work. A plethora of other markets strive to point out this same angle.

While it may just be a side-effect of the systems I happen to be a part of, I truly feel that I'm sitting in the best position that the ideological world will allow. Interpellation and subjectivity work together to give people certain positions in the world, and as far as I can see, they are both heavily in my favor. I would hate to be a 48-year-old male in my world . . .