Resilience and Crisis as Modalities of Subjectivity Across Its Trajectories

Małgorzata Stochmal

doi:10.18778/0208-600X.97.01

Authors

Małgorzata Stochmal University of Wrocław https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8385-2844

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-600X.97.01

Keywords:

resilient subjectivity, crisis subjectivity, agential powers, buffering resources, resilience pathways

Abstract

From the perspective of critical social realism, subjectivity is understood as an ontologically complex and emergent structure of agential potentialities that are actualised under the conditions of uncertainty and destabilisation. The article analyses resilience and crisis not as opposing states or enduring attributes of subjects, but as coexisting modal forms of the actualisation of agency. Both modalities are rooted in the same ontological structure of subjectivity and emerge relationally, depending on the resources available to subjects as well as on structural and cultural pressures. The article distinguishes three categories of potentialities that function as buffers of resilience: (1) relational-social, (2) cognitive-psychological, and (3) institutional-cultural. These emerge from the interactions among the subject, structure, and culture, and condition the possibility of the actualisation of agency in situations of disrupted social order. The proposed theoretical framework enables the capture of the dynamics of trajectories of subjectivity under the conditions of resilience and crisis while also explaining the mechanisms by which agential potentialities are temporarily reinforced, weakened, or blocked.

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