Going back to Frederick's earlier post on pronouns...

<snip>
"I" has feelings; "he" or "she" has meanings. And duties; all
ethical thought, conservative or critical, involves this transposition.
[FP]
<snip>

This is a distinction between the connotative and the denotative, between
intension and extension, more or less. However, I would also point to a line
of ethical thought which involves _recovering_ subjectivity in some way.
Think of Rousseau upon sovereignty v representation, for example, or Council
Communism, or *autonomism* in Italy.

As to political narrative, Nanni Balestrini, who is a poet, novelist and
visual artist, might be relevant: on the emblematic Turin Fiat strike of
1968 (*Vogliamo tutto* / *We Want It All*); on Italian political violence in
the late 1970s, plus (most probably) the 1980 Trani prison rebellion (*Gli
invisibili*; translated as *The Unseen*, though I'd call it *The
Disappeared*), and on the death of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, friend of
Pasternak and Che Guevara and subsequently amateur terrorist, in 1972
(*L'editore* / *The Publisher*).

All three novels present themselves in the first person and use (only?)
found material. (Eco said that Balestrini gave the impression of being one
of the laziest writers ever because he wrote not a single word.) *Vogliamo
tutto* conveys without overt commentary the politicization of those
migrating to Northern industrial plants, *Gli invisibili* (inter alia) the
split between *autonomism* and the sort of coercive violence represented by,
for example, the Red Brigades. However, the underlying material is reworked
into short, overlapping paragraphs involving some sharing of content, three
or so to a page, so that the effect, a sort of narrative voluntarism on
Balestrini's part, is that of _drift_, of being pulled rather than pushing,
with no settled point of view. And the inevitable, multiple ironies within
what's narrated by the speaking I serve to alienate the reader not from the
I's points of view but from any point of view which goes beyond those
individual points of view or which pretends to be overarching, comprehensive
or extensive, leaving a residue, a sort of pure, *individual* subjectivity
which struggles with the forms imposed by the *social* subjectivity of which
it forms a part but by which it is also constituted. If that makes any
sense...

Anyway here is Adorno: 'A concept doesn't exhaust the thing conceived of.'
And here is Luigi Malerba (the character is considering shooting a
villainous criminal/political Moriarty): 'The search for unity brought me
fatally into the territory of abstract individual definitions. No, I didnt't
want to become the concept of myself, I didn't have to give in to that
conceptual trap.'

... Should that makes things any clearer, which I doubt.

Balestrini, incidentally, was published by Feltrinelli, worked for
Feltrinelli was one of those who went into exile during Italy's *years of
lead*. And he's a good example of someone whose working methods (or what
appear to be his working methods) really do reflect his ethical perspective.

At any rate I shall stop.

CW
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'It was really only in spelling out the decrees of the high
command that we came to understand ourselves'
- Kafka