Genealogy of the ‘I’ - Philosophy (in metaphysics) the subject or object of self-consciousness; the ego.
ORIGIN Old English , of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ik and German ich, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin ego and Greek egō (New Oxford American Dictionary).
We always see the ‘I’ as the point in which the world begins. It is always ‘my’ world or ‘I’ see the world. The ‘I’ is also self-reflexive, it can see itself and is the very engine of self-consciousness, the very idea of possession and property. Thus the very nature of the ‘I’ is coupled by its projection, possession of objects, its ability to reflect on itself. By operating this way the ‘I’ is in constant opposition/conflict to itself and to the part-objects of the world – to the ‘Other.’
The ‘I’ causes problems. It chains us in a perpetual friction with the ‘Other,’ in the hierarchical binary – friend/enemy, subject/object etc. How do I free myself from the ‘I’? How do I ease its friction?
Perhaps one way to unhinged this binary lock is to re-position the ‘I.’ In D & G’s A Thousand Plateaus, I = I = not you, is countered – repositioned with ‘… + y + z + a,’ which encompasses and synthesises the multiplicity of points of ‘Others’ and ‘Self,’ ‘without effacing their heterogeneity’ (p. xiii). In this sense, I am not the ‘closed vessel’ of the ‘I’ but rather its various leakages and points of contamination between other ’subjects,’ which in fact form a culmination of ‘Selves’ that the ‘I’ floats on. It seems the ‘I’ is simply not the ‘I’ or the ‘eye’ that stands gazing at the world, the ‘I’ is a an intersection between other points and more importantly a fluid movement of ‘Selves.’
