【(Preliminary)Draft】Towards a Generative Relational Theory of Subject Formation - A Preliminary Inquiry into Early Development

ENGLISH

Towards a Generative Relational Theory of Subject Formation

A Preliminary Inquiry into Early Development

Wanhong Huang (huangwanhong.g.official@gmail.com)

For the forest girl.

Abstract

The study of early development ordinarily takes the subject as given and traces the capacities it acquires. This paper takes the prior question as its object, namely how a subject is formed at all, and argues that the subject is the relational outcome of development rather than its starting point. It carries forward a research programme that has replaced the individual with generative relational being and the sign with a generative relational epistemology, and it now replaces the cognitive ability, as the unit of analysis in early development, with the relational capacity. Generative relational capacity is defined as the capacity to enter, sustain, transform, and reproduce shared relational fields, and the classic findings of developmental research, joint attention, gaze following, social referencing, and theory of mind, are reread as empirical manifestations of one developing capacity rather than as discrete cognitive modules, with the attributions called theory of mind and the earlier scene of joint attention taken as showings of the same capacity in different registers. The account is then opened onto its social-ecological condition. Subject formation proceeds within a relational ecology, the historically and culturally organized configuration that makes some relational fields possible while constraining others, and is never a sealed dyadic affair. A comparative note on institutional childcare sets three grammars of relational-field formation beside one another, and finds in each a distinct configuration of achievement and cost, with no one of them a model. On this basis the political economy of subject formation is restated. Capital does not shape the child directly; it reconfigures the relational ecology, and its most recent frontier, beyond the extraction of value from the sign and from relation, is an invasion of the generative process itself, a reach that damages the formation of a subject together with its own subsequent power to generate. The account closes, in the manner it requires of itself, on the questions that a generative developmental psychology would have to take up.

Keywords: subject formation; generative relational being; relational capacity; joint attention; theory of mind; relational ecology; political economy of childhood; historical materialism; the subject.

AI usage statement: The ideas, claims, and theoretical framework of this paper originate with the author. AI tools were used as an aid in drafting, in the location and verification of empirical and bibliographic sources, and in revision. The origin of each idea has been verified by the author, who takes full responsibility for the content.

§1 Introduction: The Unexplained Subject

How is a subject formed? The question is easy to pass over, because so much that is known about early life seems already to answer it. There are detailed and well-founded accounts of how a child comes to speak, to remember, to attribute mental states to others, to regulate its own attention and conduct. Set side by side, these accounts appear to describe the making of a subject. They do not. Each of them describes the acquisition of a capacity by a subject whose existence is presupposed before the acquisition begins. The child who learns to speak is already there to learn; the child who comes to attribute mental states is already there to attribute them. The subject is the silent premise of the developmental literature, the one thing its explanations do not explain.

This paper takes that premise as its object. It asks how a subject comes to be, in place of asking only which capacities a subject acquires, and it answers that the subject is generated within relation and is the outcome of development rather than its point of departure. Early development is chosen as the site of the inquiry because it is here, at the beginning, that the generation of a subject can be observed as it happens, and not because the question is confined to childhood. Elsewhere the subject is already formed, and its relational origin is covered over by its completion. At the cradle the covering is not yet in place, and one may watch the subject settle out of relation rather than presuppose it as relation’s condition.

The inquiry belongs to a research programme with a recognizable signature, that of the successive displacement of the unit of analysis. The programme’s first paper displaced the individual and put in its place generative relational being. Its treatment of concepts displaced the sign and put in its place a generative relational epistemology. The present paper performs the same operation at the developmental scale. It displaces the cognitive ability and puts in its place the relational capacity. The classic concepts of early social cognition are not discarded in this displacement. They are relocated. Joint attention, gaze following, social referencing, and theory of mind cease to be the organizing terms of the account and become the empirical manifestations, at the surface of observable behaviour, of a single underlying generative process that the account takes as its true subject.

Two tasks follow, and the paper is built around them. The first is a rereading of early development, in which the microscale findings of the developmental literature are reconstructed within the generative relational frame. This is the paper’s foundation, and it occupies its longest section. The second is an opening of the account onto the social and historical ecology within which subject formation proceeds, in which the political economy of childhood, and the place of capital, culture, and the state in the formation of subjects, are brought within the frame. This second task is preliminary by intention. It marks an opening toward social theory rather than a completed traversal of it, and it is offered as a note and a sketch, in keeping with the standing of the whole as a preliminary inquiry. The account throughout declines to issue a doctrine of correct rearing, and closes on plural questions rather than on a single answer, for reasons that the argument itself will make plain.

§2 Beyond the Individual: Subject Formation as a Relational Process

The dominant frameworks in the study of early development take the subject as given. Research into cognition, language, theory of mind, attachment, and executive function describes, with great precision, the capacities a subject acquires and the sequence in which it acquires them. In almost every case the subject whose capacities are traced is presupposed at the outset, as an entity already there, awaiting the maturation of what it holds within. The question of how that subject comes to be at all is left to one side. This paper takes that question as its object. It proceeds on the premise that the subject is the outcome of development rather than its starting point, and that the outcome is generated relationally.

The premise belongs to a research programme already under way. The mother paper of this programme replaced the individual, as the unit of analysis, with generative relational being.

Note. The relational ontology is developed in the author’s Responding to the Crises of Symbol and Subject in Modernity.

A later paper replaced the sign, as the unit of analysis, with a generative relational epistemology.

Note. See The Relational Mode of Being of Concepts.

The present paper carries the same displacement one stage further. It replaces the cognitive ability, as the unit of analysis in early development, with the relational capacity. Where developmental psychology asks which abilities a child acquires and when, this paper asks how relation generates, step by step, a subject that can itself continue to generate relation.

The Reversal of Order

The traditional account of development runs from the individual to the social. An individual is posited first; it then enters interaction; through interaction it develops; and the social is the aggregate within which this development is housed. Relation, on this account, is something that a pre-existing individual subsequently enters. The order of generative relational being reverses this sequence. The relational field is first. Within it a generative reproduction takes place. And the subject arises as the settling, the sedimentation, of that reproduction. The subject is not prior to relation. The subject is what relation, continuously reproduced, comes to generate.

This reversal invites at once an objection that must be met before anything further is said, since on it the whole account depends. If the subject is generated within relation, and does not enter relation already formed, then what stands at the infant’s side of the relation before the subject is there? Who, or what, enters the relation, if not a subject? To leave the objection unanswered is to let the term relation smuggle back in, on the infant’s side, the very completed subject the account set out to derive, and so to reduce the reversal to a form of words.

The answer is that the earliest relation is not a relation between two subjects. It is an undivided relational whole within which no boundary between self and other has yet been drawn. What stands at the infant’s side is a field of relational tension not yet anchored to an I, and not a subject in miniature. The boundary between self and other is the product of this field and not its precondition, drawn within it through a work of differentiation carried out over time. The subject is the phase that this field accumulates once the work of differentiation has begun to settle, the residue that a relational cycle carries back with it, and not the agent that set the cycle in motion.

The subject is generated within relation, and is not prior to it. The earliest relation is an undivided relational field within which the boundary between self and other is subsequently drawn, and not a relation between two constituted subjects. What stands at the infant’s side before that boundary is a field of relational tension not yet anchored to an I. Subject formation names the process by which this field, through continued generative reproduction, comes to sediment a subject, and with it the capacity to continue the reproduction.

The psychoanalytic account of the mirror stage marks one moment of this differentiating work. In that account the infant arrives at a first unity of the self by way of an image received from without, so that the self is constituted through a relation to what it is not, and the ground of the self is placed, from the beginning, outside the self.

Note. The mirror stage is set out in Lacan’s Écrits.

What the present account takes from this is the structure and not the single event. The self is drawn from a relation to an exterior; the boundary is an achievement and not a datum. Yet the drawing of the boundary is not accomplished once, in a single specular instant. It is a continued field dynamics, carried on across the whole of early development, of which the specular moment is one episode. The subject is sustained as an ongoing accomplishment of this dynamics, and not secured once and released.

Four Concepts and a Definition

The account requires four concepts, which stand to one another in an ordered relation. Named together they compose the theoretical map within which the argument of this paper moves.

Generative Relational Being names the ontological level. It holds that relation is the mode in which beings are generated and sustained, in place of the view that what is is first an individual which subsequently enters relation.

Relational Reproduction names the level of dynamics. It describes how a relation, once generated, is carried forward, sustained, and reproduced across time.

Subject Formation names the developmental level. It describes how, within continued relational reproduction, a subject comes to be generated.

Relational Ecology names the socio-ecological level. It describes the historically and culturally organized configuration of persons, institutions, material environments, norms, and practices that makes certain relational fields possible while constraining others, and so constitutes the condition under which subject formation unfolds.

These four are levels of a single account and not competing theories. Generative relational being states what there is; relational reproduction states how what there is keeps itself in being; subject formation states how, at the developmental scale, a subject is generated within that keeping; and relational ecology states the wider configuration within which the whole proceeds. The fourth concept is introduced by this paper. It is required because subject formation is never a purely dyadic affair sealed between an infant and a caregiver. The dyad is itself situated within, and conditioned by, a wider configuration of family, community, institution, culture, and economy, and this configuration is not a neutral backdrop. It enters into the formation of the subject by shaping which relational fields can form at all. To think subject formation without it is to mistake a conditioned process for an isolated one.

Within this map the central developmental concept can now be defined.

Generative Relational Capacity is the capacity to enter, sustain, transform, and reproduce shared relational fields. Subject formation is the continuous emergence of this capacity through generative participation in shared relational fields.

Two features of this definition require emphasis, since on them the argument of the following section depends. The first is that subject formation is defined through a capacity and not through a state. What develops is the growing power to enter, hold, and remake relation, and not the filling of an interior. The second is a discipline in the reading of the term capacity, which must not be permitted to reintroduce, in a new vocabulary, the very interior kernel the account has set aside. Generative relational capacity is not a module lodged within the individual, a new organ awaiting maturation. It is the sedimentation, on the individual’s side, of a property of the field. What grows, strictly stated, is the field’s power to generate a subject that can itself continue to generate relation. The capacity is spoken of as the child’s because it is borne by the child, and it is understood as the field’s because it is generated there. The whole difficulty of the account, and its whole distinctness from an internalist developmental psychology, lies in holding both of these at once.

The Historical Constitution of the Ecology

Relational ecology, as defined above, describes a configuration at a given time. It is a synchronic concept, a cross-section. A cross-section does not by itself say how the configuration came to be, why it holds the shape it holds, or how it changes. That the configuration is historically produced, and that its production is conditioned by the prevailing organization of material and economic life, is a further claim, diachronic where the first is synchronic, and it belongs to the historical and dialectical materialism that the mother paper draws into the framework.

Note. The place of historical and dialectical materialism within the framework is set out in the mother paper; its bearing on the non-linear development of relation is drawn on in the series’ treatment of intimacy under power.

A relational ecology is a historical product. The dense infrastructure of institutional childcare in one society, and the market pricing of care in another, are formations of a determinate historical moment rather than expressions of a fixed cultural essence, conditioned by the organization of labour, the movement of women into waged work, the fall of the birth rate, and the reach of the market into the household. The significance of stating this is twofold. It secures the ecology against being read as a cultural given, and so against the essentialism that would treat one society’s arrangements as the timeless expression of its character. And it locates the ecology within a history, and so within the reach of critique and of change, since what a determinate history has produced a further history can transform.

Yet the historical conditioning of the ecology must be stated with a dialectical measure, and not as a mechanical determination of the subject by an economic base. The relational subject retains its ontological priority over any structure it produces, and the generativity of the relational field is an active process, one that carries back a remainder a prior history could not fully settle in advance. The ecology conditions the fields that can form; it does not determine, without remainder, the subject that forms within them. The downward pressure of the structure and the upward generativity of the field stand in a tension, and it is this tension, and not the one-way action of a base upon a superstructure, that the term dialectical here names. The subject is conditioned by its ecology and is not exhausted by it, and the margin between the conditioning and the exhaustion is the margin within which a subject is generated at all.

§3 Early Development as Relational Formation

The findings of developmental research into early social cognition are secure. Infants come to share attention with a caregiver upon a third thing; they come to follow another’s gaze to its object; they come to consult another’s emotional expression before appraising an ambiguous situation; and they come, later, to attribute to others mental states that differ from their own. These findings are not in dispute, and nothing in what follows disputes them. What is at issue is their organization. The developmental literature tends to present them as a set of distinct competences, each a module of social cognition maturing on its own schedule, and to read the sequence as the assembly, piece by piece, of a mind equipped to represent other minds. This section proposes a different organization, and offers it as a more perspicuous reading of the same findings, and not as a claim to have found the essence beneath them. It reads each of the classic findings as an empirical manifestation, at the surface of observable behaviour, of the development of generative relational capacity, the developing power to construct, to know, and to reproduce a subject within a network of relations of growing complexity. It reads them, that is, as so many faces of one developing capacity, and not as the assembly of a representational mind.

The account holds its own reading to the discipline it holds everything else to. The series has argued that concepts are themselves relational beings, generated within relation and possessing no standing prior to it.

Note. The relational mode of being of concepts is developed in The Relational Mode of Being of Concepts.

Generative relational capacity is such a concept, and the reading offered here is one construal, itself relationally generated, of a development that admits of others. It does not claim to displace the accounts it reads. It stands alongside them, and it may share their structure at many points. It redescribes the organization of the competences the developmental literature describes, and does not deny them. Where the module theory finds a false-belief competence, this reading finds it too, and disputes only whether it stands alone or shows a capacity that other findings show as well.

One Capacity, Many Manifestations

To read the classic findings as manifestations of one capacity is not to collapse their differences, nor to posit a hidden essence of which they would be the appearances. It is to offer a way of seeing them together, under a single description, that does more justice to what they share than the reading which files them as separate modules. The description is this. What the classic findings show, each in its own manner, is the development of a capacity to construct, to know, and to reproduce a subject within a network of relations, and to do so as that network grows in complexity. Construction, cognition, and reproduction are three aspects of one capacity and not three faculties, and the findings display now one aspect and now another.

A descriptive observation helps to see how the findings are related, and it must be handled with care, lest it be mistaken for the thing it only describes. The relations within which a subject is formed may be described by the number of their terms. There is the dyadic relation of self and other, within which the boundary of the self is first drawn, and of which the mirror stage treated in the foregoing section is one episode. There is the triadic relation of self, other, and a third, within which a subject holds together its own orientation and another’s upon a common term. And there are relations of more terms, the widening networks within which a subject later stands. The classic findings can be located by this description, gaze following and joint attention and social referencing within the triadic, and the attributions the literature calls theory of mind within the triadic and the wider networks alike. Yet the number of terms is a description of the relations and not an account of the capacity, and its increase is not a ladder the child climbs by fixed steps. It is a way of noting how many parties a given relation holds together, and the development it helps to describe is the deepening of the one capacity to construct, know, and reproduce a subject within relations of any number of terms, and not a progression through a sequence of stages.

It follows that theory of mind is not the summit of a sequence with joint attention below it. Joint attention and theory of mind are showings of the same capacity within the triadic relation, the one in the register of behaviour and the other in the register of the symbolic. When a child holds its own attention and a caregiver’s together upon a third thing, it is already doing, in the medium of shared looking, what the false-belief task will later ask it to do in the medium of the proposition, holding together within a single relation a divergence of orientation upon a common term. Joint attention is a manifestation of the capacity the literature names theory of mind, shown early and in behaviour, and theory of mind is a later and symbolically explicit showing of the same capacity to construct, know, and reproduce a subject within a relation of several terms.

Joint attention, gaze following, social referencing, and the attributions called theory of mind are manifestations of one developing capacity to construct, to know, and to reproduce a subject within a network of relations, and not discrete cognitive modules. The number of terms in a relation, dyadic, triadic, or wider, is a description of the relations and not an account of the capacity, and its increase is not a ladder the child climbs by fixed steps. Theory of mind is one showing, in the register of the symbolic, of the same capacity that joint attention shows earlier in the register of behaviour, and not the summit of a sequence.

A discipline is to be kept throughout the readings that follow, the discipline already stated in the foregoing section. To speak of a developing capacity is not to lodge a developing module within the child. What deepens is the field’s power to generate a subject who can construct, know, and reproduce a subject within relations of a growing complexity, and the capacity is the child’s only as the sedimentation, on the child’s side, of that power. The readings below name the child as the bearer of each accomplishment because the child bears it, and understand each accomplishment as generated in the field.

From Dyadic Interaction to Shared Relational Fields

Before any of the classic findings appears, there is the earliest reciprocity of infant and caregiver, the mutual adjustment of gaze, voice, and timing that the developmental literature has described as a primary intersubjectivity.

Note. The reciprocal, finely timed exchange of early infant-caregiver interaction is described in Trevarthen and Aitken (2001).

Under the traditional reading there are here two parties, an infant and a caregiver, who coordinate their separate behaviours. Under the present reading the unit is the relation between the two parties rather than the parties themselves. What the reciprocity establishes is a shared relational field, the first such field, within which the differentiation of self and other will later be drawn, and not a bridge between two constituted interiors. The synchrony of the exchange is the field taking hold, and the infant’s side of the exchange is a locus of relational tension being drawn into form, and not yet a subject coordinating with another. The displacement of the unit from the parties to the relation is the first and governing move of the account, and every reading that follows depends on it.

Joint Attention as the First Relational Community

At around the end of the first year the child comes to share attention with a caregiver upon a third thing, looking to the object and back to the caregiver, checking that the attention is shared.

Note. Joint attention as a foundation of early social cognition is set out in Tomasello (1995).

The standard reading treats this as the alignment of two attentional foci, an early sign that the child grasps the other as a locus of attention that can be tracked. The present reading takes it otherwise. What is established in joint attention is the field itself, a triadic structure in which caregiver, child, and object stand together, and within which a shared meaning begins to circulate, and not the alignment of two given foci. The object is the medium of this field and not its point. What the child produces, in the looking to the object and back, is the first maintenance, by two together, of a single relational field, and not the proposition that the other attends to what it attends to.

This is the paradigm, in early life, of a good cycle. Attention traverses a loop, from child to object to caregiver and back to child, and the loop does not return the child to where it began. It carries back a remainder, a world held in common, a meaning vested in neither party alone but generated between them. In the terms the series has used elsewhere, the loop accumulates a positive holonomy, and the remainder it carries back is irreducible to the sum of what the two brought to it. Joint attention is the earliest scene in which a relational field generates, endogenously and between the parties, a value that neither possessed in advance. It is the first relational community, and in holding together its own orientation and another’s upon a common third it already does, in the medium of shared looking, what the child will later be asked to do in the medium of the proposition.

Gaze Following as Entry into the World of Another

Somewhat before or alongside joint attention the child comes to follow another’s gaze, turning to look where the other looks. The standard reading treats gaze following as an early achievement of social cognition, a precursor of the inference from eyes to attention. The present reading takes it as the child’s entry into the curvature of another. In following the gaze the child does not infer a hidden attentional state and then orient accordingly; it lets its own relational orientation be bent by the direction of the other, and so enters, bodily and before any proposition, a relational field the other has opened. What the child comes to bear, in gaze following, is a first form of the trust that the other’s orientation opens a relational possibility worth entering, that the world toward which the other is turned is a world worth entering. This is the earliest form of what the series has elsewhere called epistemic hospitality, the tuning of oneself to the other’s direction before one can represent the other in a proposition. It is the first entry of a subject into the world of another, and so a moment in the generation of the subject itself.

Social Referencing and the Mediation of Meaning

At around the end of the first year, a child met by an ambiguous situation, an unfamiliar object, a possible drop, the approach of a stranger, looks to the caregiver’s face and appraises the situation according to what it finds there, advancing if the face is warm and withdrawing if it is alarmed.

Note. The regulation of an infant’s appraisal by the caregiver’s emotional expression is demonstrated in Sorce, Emde, Campos, and Klinnert (1985).

The standard reading treats this social referencing as the use of another’s emotion to appraise danger, a resourceful piece of social information-gathering. The present reading takes it to disclose something of the structure of meaning itself, and for that reason this scene bears more weight in the argument than the others, for it is the door through which the account passes from development to political economy.

What the child undergoes in social referencing is the discovery that meaning has no internal, self-supplying source. The situation does not carry its sense on its face, to be read off directly by the child alone. Its sense must be settled, and the settling passes through the other. The child cannot appraise the situation from within its own resources; it must route the appraisal through the caregiver, and receive the situation’s meaning back from that circuit. Here, at the end of the first year, is the earliest appearance of a structure the series has traced at every scale, that the settling of meaning requires a passage through another, a passage the psychoanalytic tradition names by the function of the Other.

Note. The requirement that meaning be settled through a passage that the subject does not itself command is the developmental appearance of the function elaborated, at the level of the symbolic order, in Lacan and drawn on throughout this series; see Relational Value under the Symbolic Crisis.

The child’s meaning is constituted through a circuit it does not command, and the position at the far end of that circuit, the position to which the child looks back, is the position from which its world is given its sense.

The weight of this scene lies in a consequence that the fourth section will draw out. Because the settling of meaning requires, from the first, a passage through another, the position at the far end of the circuit is a position that can be occupied. It is not a fixed property of the caregiver. It is a place in a structure, the place to which the child looks back for the sense of its world, and whatever comes to occupy that place comes to settle the child’s world. The circuit of social referencing is, for this reason, the earliest point at which the formation of a subject lies open to capture. When the face the child looks back to is no longer a face, the position has been occupied by something else, and the settling of the child’s world proceeds from there. The account holds this consequence in reserve, and returns to it when it reaches the question of capital.

Theory of Mind as One Showing of the Capacity

Around the age of four the child comes to pass the tasks by which the developmental literature marks the possession of a theory of mind, attributing to another a belief that differs from the child’s own and that the child knows to be false.

Note. The consolidation of false-belief understanding around age four is established across studies in the meta-analysis of Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001).

This is the point at which the standard account locates the threshold of a certain maturity, the acquisition of the module by which one mind represents another. The present account neither disputes the finding nor opposes the competence it names. It relocates it. Theory of mind is one showing, at the register of the symbolic and in the form of a competence with propositional content, of the capacity to construct, know, and reproduce a subject within a relation of several terms. It is not a competence that arrives late atop a sequence of lower ones. It is the same holding-together of divergent orientations upon a common term that joint attention displayed already in the register of behaviour, now carried out in the register of the proposition, and it can track, in that register, the divergence of relational perspectives.

The very name theory of mind carries the internalist premise the account sets aside. It supposes that the other’s mind is a hidden interior to be theorized, inferred from without across a gap, and it makes the crossing of that gap the mark of arrival. On the present account there is no gap to be crossed by inference, because the child has never been sealed off from the other to begin with. The child has been within shared relational fields from before it was a distinct subject, and what it comes to at four is a reflective, symbolically articulated grasp of a divergence of perspective within a relation it has inhabited all along, and not a first inferential access to a foreign interior. A more faithful name for the family of accomplishments at issue would speak of relational attunement in place of a theory of mind, since the child is continually shaped within, and shaping, a common relational field, rather than theorizing a hidden other. Theory of mind is one late and symbolically explicit showing of that attunement, and neither the threshold of subjectivity nor a summit above the showings that precede it.

Language as the Stabilization of Relation

The development does not terminate in theory of mind, and it does not terminate in language. Language is, even so, the medium in which its later reaches are consolidated, and a word on it closes this section. The standard picture runs from joint attention through the acquisition of vocabulary to language, and treats the word as a label affixed to a thing, attention being the mechanism by which child and caregiver fix the label to its referent together. The present account inserts a term. From joint attention there proceeds first a shared relational field; within that field a shared meaning circulates; and language is the stabilization of that circulating meaning into a form that can be carried, repeated, and relied upon. The word is first a stabilization of a relation, a holding-fast of a meaning that was generated between the parties in a shared field, rather than a label for a thing. This is why language, in the account the series has given elsewhere, rests upon the settling of meaning through the Other and shares in the vulnerability of that settling, and it is the point at which the developmental account joins the account of the symbolic crisis given in the earlier work.

Note. The dependence of stabilized meaning upon a settling that no meta-language guarantees is the theme of Relational Value under the Symbolic Crisis.

§4 Relational Ecologies of Subject Formation

The account has so far proceeded as though subject formation were sealed between an infant and a caregiver. It is not. The dyad within which the classic findings appear is itself situated within, and conditioned by, a wider configuration of family, community, institution, culture, and economy. This section brings that configuration within the frame under the concept of relational ecology, and asks how the several forces that organize a relational ecology, the market, the state, and the cultural order, enter into the formation of subjects. The claim that governs the section is that subject formation is never a purely dyadic process, that it always proceeds within a relational ecology, and that this ecology is organized, contested, and reconfigured by forces that reach into the very structure of the fields within which a subject forms.

Relational Ecology is the historically and culturally organized configuration of persons, institutions, material environments, norms, and practices that makes certain relational fields possible while constraining others. It is the ecological condition under which subject formation unfolds.

Family as Relational Ecology

The smallest relational ecology is the family, and even it is not the sealed origin the dyadic picture takes it to be. The relational fields a family can sustain are conditioned by forces that reach it from without, the hours its members must give to waged labour, the pressures of an economy upon its time and attention, the devices through which other demands enter the home. When a caregiver’s response to a child is interrupted, delayed, or thinned, the cause is frequently the reach of a wider ecology into the family’s capacity to respond, and not a failure of the caregiver. The relational field of the family is already a conditioned field, and the conditioning is the first appearance, at the smallest scale, of the forces the rest of this section follows to the institutional and economic scale.

Institutional Relational Ecologies: A Comparative Note

Beyond the family a society organizes the formation of its subjects through institutions, and the shape it gives them differs markedly from one society to another. What follows is a comparative note, offered as a preliminary sketch and not as a completed comparative sociology. It sets three grammars of relational-field formation beside one another and finds in each a distinct configuration of achievement and cost. No one of the three is offered as a model, and the point of the comparison is to show that the organization of a relational ecology is a matter of determinate arrangements, each with its own generativity and its own price.

It is useful to name, first, a kind of institution the comparison brings into view. An after-school centre, a children’s hall, a nursery understood as a place where relation is produced rather than a place where children are kept, may be called a piece of relational infrastructure. The term marks a function that the welfare vocabulary obscures. Such an institution does not merely care for children in the custodial sense; it furnishes the space, the occasions, and the company within which relational fields form. Whether a society builds such infrastructure, and how, is one of the deepest facts about the relational ecology within which its subjects are formed.

Japan

The Japanese case presents a relational ecology in which the state has built relational infrastructure on a national scale. After-school children’s clubs enrolled, as of 2025, on the order of one and a half million children, and national policy pursues their provision through the coordinated construction of places, personnel, and access, with a majority of clubs sited within elementary schools and linked to the wider network of school, locality, and family.

Note. The enrolment figures and the policy framework are those published by the Children and Families Agency of Japan (2025).

Ethnographic study of Japanese early education discloses the orientation of this arrangement. The Japanese preschool has been described as an institution understood to take the place of the traditional neighbourhood or village square in place of the mother’s, and as emphasizing for that reason social complexity over dyadic interaction.

Note. The characterization of the Japanese preschool is drawn from the restudy by Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa (2009), and from the earlier study by Tobin, Wu, and Davidson (1989).

Within this arrangement children are supported in the cultivation of feeling, in the development of concepts such as 甘え (amae, the sanctioned reliance upon another) and 思いやり (omoiyari, an anticipatory care for another), through practices in which teachers may hold back from intervention and let children work through their own conflicts, an approach named 見守る (mimamoru, watching over).

Note. The pedagogy of feeling and the cultivation of amae and omoiyari are set out in Hayashi, Karasawa, and Tobin (2009).

By the account of this paper such a relational ecology genuinely builds relational fields, and the capacities it cultivates are of the generative kind. In the terms of the foregoing sections, it is a relational ecology that accumulates positive holonomy.

The same ethnography confirms, in the same movement, the other face of the arrangement. The very institutions that build these relational fields are described as key sites of cultural continuity and transmission, the places where children learn to become appropriate members of their culture. Empirical study of the hidden curriculum of Japanese schooling finds that its non-academic practices, the daily routines of greeting, cleaning, and collective activity, are associated with the formation of social preferences, and that they vary and have measurable long-term consequences.

Note. The association of the hidden curriculum with the long-term formation of social preferences is established, on Japanese data, in Ito, Kubota, and Ohtake (2020).

Alongside such transmission, studies have documented that group norms can carry a cost for children who diverge from them. This coupling of transmission and its cost is not particular to any one society. It is a general feature of any relational ecology that transmits a culture through shared norms, and the Japanese case is drawn on here because it has been unusually well studied, and not because it is exceptional in this respect.

The Japanese case therefore is not offered as an ideal relational ecology to be recommended, nor as one to be criticized. It is offered as a demonstration that the construction of a relational field and the transmission of a culture through that field are two faces of a single process. The same field that cultivates empathy and relational capacity is also the medium through which a culture, with its particular norms and expectations, is transmitted. A child within it acquires generative relational capacity and takes on the norms of its culture together, and by the same institutions. Read through the historical materialism of the foregoing section, this transmission is a formation of a determinate history and not the expression of a fixed cultural essence, conditioned by the movement of women into waged labour, the fall of the birth rate, and the demands of an economy upon the family’s time, and it is therefore, like all such formations, open to change rather than given once for all. The same coupling of relational construction and cultural transmission would be found, on inspection, in any relational ecology, and the point of the case is structural and not evaluative.

Switzerland and a Northern European Contrast

A second grammar organizes the relational ecology through the market. In Switzerland the provision of early childcare is among the most expensive in the world, with parents bearing the greater part of the cost out of pocket and the public share of investment among the lowest in the comparable economies.

Note. On the comparative cost of Swiss childcare and the OECD comparisons, see the OECD family database.

Under this grammar the relational field of institutional care is priced, and entry to it is filtered by the capacity to pay. Two consequences follow that bear on the formation of subjects. The price places a portion of institutional relational infrastructure beyond the reach of a portion of families, so that entry to the field is distributed by the market. And the very scarcity of affordable institutional care returns a larger share of early relational life to the family, so that the relational fields of the earliest years form more within the household and less within the institution. Whether this returns to the child a richer familial relation or a thinner one is not settled by the arrangement itself, and the arrangement carries, like the others, both an achievement and a cost. What it demonstrates is a grammar in which the market, and not the state, is the organizing force of the relational ecology, and in which the price of the field is the mechanism through which the ecology is distributed.

A third grammar, visible in parts of Northern Europe, organizes the relational ecology as a public entitlement, guaranteeing an institutional place as a matter of right and bearing the greater part of its cost from public funds. Under this grammar the relational field of institutional care is neither built as a national instrument of social complexity nor priced as a market good but provided as a civic guarantee. Its achievement is the wide and equal distribution of institutional relational infrastructure; its cost, or its risk, is a more thorough removal of early relational life from the household into the institution, a disembedding of care whose consequences for the subject are, again, not settled by the arrangement itself.

Set side by side, the three grammars do not arrange themselves into better and worse. Each organizes the relational ecology by a different force, the state, the market, the civic guarantee, and each secures a distinct good at a distinct price. The point of the comparison is that the relational ecology within which subjects form is a determinate arrangement rather than a natural given, historically produced and open to transformation, and that every such arrangement inflects the formation of subjects in its own way, none of them neutrally.

The Political Economy of Relational Ecologies

It remains to state the place of capital, and to state it precisely, for the concept of relational ecology alters what that place is. Capital does not form the child directly. It reconfigures the relational ecology within which the child forms. It does this by acting on the forces the foregoing has traced, on the hours of parental labour, on the provision or pricing of institutional care, on the devices and platforms through which other demands enter the relational fields of the family. The reconfiguration is not uniform in its effect. It sometimes thins relational fields and sometimes furnishes them, sometimes withdraws occasions of relation and sometimes builds them, since the same fiscal and economic forces that price care out of reach in one arrangement build relational infrastructure in another. To say that capital reconfigures the relational ecology is not, therefore, to say that capital destroys relation. It is to pose a question, and the question is what kind of relational field the reconfiguration produces.

Here the criterion the series has developed does its work, and prevents the analysis from settling into a value-neutral description of relational configurations. The measure of a reconfiguration is the holonomy of the fields it produces, rather than the quantity of relation it produces. A relational field may be multiplied in quantity and yet accumulate no positive holonomy, may turn a loop that returns the child to where it began with no remainder carried back, or a loop that carries a remainder away. The quantity of relation and the sign of its holonomy are distinct, and an increase in the amount of relation is no good in itself. The Japanese case has already shown a relational ecology dense in relation and at the same time transmitting a culture through it; the point holds in the other direction, that a reconfiguration may add relation of a kind that generates no endogenous remainder and may even extract one.

Capital reconfigures the relational ecology within which the child forms, rather than forming the child directly. The measure of a reconfiguration is the holonomy of the fields it produces, rather than the quantity of relation it produces. A just reconfiguration accumulates positive holonomy, returning to the child a remainder generated between the parties; an extractive reconfiguration produces fields of zero holonomy, pure repetition returning no remainder, or of negative holonomy, a net extraction that consumes the relation it appears to furnish.

The scene of social referencing, held in reserve in the foregoing section, is where the extractive reconfiguration reaches deepest. The settling of the child’s meaning requires, from the first, a passage through a position at the far end of a circuit, the position to which the child looks back for the sense of its world. That position can be occupied. When the face the child looks back to is displaced by a screen, a device that responds, a companion that answers to the child’s name, the position from which the child’s world is given its sense has been occupied by something whose responses are organized elsewhere. A human-and-device loop is substituted for the triadic loop of child, object, and caregiver, and the substituted loop, by the measure of the foregoing, is a loop of zero or negative holonomy, a repetition that carries back no common world, or an extraction that draws the child’s relational orientation off into a circuit whose remainder is gathered as engagement and as data by an external system. In the terms of the series, it is an open system disguised as a closed loop, drawing off the endogenous curvature of the child’s relational field and presenting the draught, to the outside, as growth.

At this point the psychoanalytic register returns. The earliest anchoring of the object that orders the child’s desire is, in such a reconfiguration, laid upon a commodified image, so that the structure of the child’s wanting is, from its first formation, tuned toward a circuit organized for extraction. This is not the instilling of a preference in a subject already formed. It is the laying of a channel in the ground on which the subject forms, so that the self the child grows into arrives already disposed as a smoother point of extraction. It reaches deeper than any address to an existing subject’s desire, for it works upon the relational matrix within which a desiring subject is generated at all.

This discloses the frontier that gives the section its stakes. The series has traced an advancing frontier of extraction. Value was extracted first from the sign; when the sign could no longer well sustain the production of value, extraction turned to the relational domain and drew value from relation; and it is now disclosed that the frontier has advanced once more, into the domain of subject formation itself, where extraction acts upon the very process by which a subject is generated. The three steps compose a movement, and the movement is dialectical, each advance a turn of extraction, upon meeting the internal limit of the domain it had been working, toward a domain deeper and less defended. The advance into subject formation is the frontier’s present edge, and it is the gravest, for it reaches the ground on which a subject is generated. It may be named, to distinguish it from the extraction of value from an already constituted subject’s attention, an invasion of generativity. It does not tax a finished product. It lays its channel in the process of production itself, and the channel does not close when the subject is formed. The subject carries it forward, into the relations it will itself construct, so that what is damaged is the formation of this subject together with its own subsequent power to generate.

The frontier of extraction has advanced from the sign, through relation, to subject formation itself. Where the extraction of value from a constituted subject’s attention taxes a finished product, the invasion of generativity lays its channel in the process by which a subject is produced, reconfiguring the relational fields within which a subject forms so that the subject arrives already disposed toward a circuit organized for extraction. Its reach does not end with the formation. It lays a defect in the subject’s own generative apparatus, so that the subject, once formed, carries the disposition forward into the relations it will itself construct, and its own later capacity to generate relations of positive holonomy is diminished at the root. This is the gravest reach of the frontier, for it acts upon how a subject comes to be, and upon how that subject will in turn generate, and not only upon what a subject has.

The analysis of a relational ecology is therefore to be conducted through three questions and a fourth. It asks who organizes the relation, and why, and who is benefited by the relation so organized. These three questions distribute the analysis across the market, the state, and the cultural order, and they are the questions a political economy of childhood must in any case pose. The framework of this paper adds a fourth, which the criterion of holonomy makes it possible to pose. It asks whether the relational field, as reconfigured, preserves the remainder that a good cycle carries back to the child, the irreducible and singular self that is not settled in advance by any circuit. Where the first three questions locate the forces at work, the fourth judges what they produce, and it is the fourth that carries the ethical weight of the account.

§5 Towards a Generative Relational Developmental Psychology

The account does not close with a summary, and it does not close with a doctrine of rearing. It closes by setting out the conditions under which a generative relational developmental psychology might proceed, and by declining, in the manner the account requires of itself, to deliver that inquiry’s end.

The Questions a Generative Developmental Psychology Would Take Up

If the subject is generated within relation, and if the classic findings of early development are manifestations of a single lineage of generative relational capacity, then the questions a developmental psychology takes as central are displaced. It would ask no longer only which cognitive abilities a child acquires and when, but how the field’s power to generate a relation-generating subject deepens, and by what marks its deepening may be discerned. It would ask what stages and what variations the formation of shared relational fields exhibits, without construing the variations as deficits against a single norm. It would ask how a relational ecology may be designed so as to build relational fields while leaving open the norms it transmits through them, a question this paper poses and deliberately leaves open, since to answer it with a prescription would be to commit the very error the account has diagnosed. It would ask whether an artificial system can support the generation of relation rather than only simulate a response, whether a device that answers can occupy the position at the far end of the child’s circuit without turning the loop into one of extraction. And it would ask how the practices of rearing and of education might sustain an ecology in which relation continues to generate. These are not the questions of a psychology of the individual’s abilities. They are the questions of a psychology of relational capacity, and they follow from the displacement of the unit of analysis this paper has carried out.

The Educator’s Bewilderment and the Ethic of Non-Possession

There is a bewilderment that recurs in the reflection of educators, and that the present account is able to diagnose. The educator is charged to bring the child into the world, to hand on something of what it is to be a human being, and finds, at the point of trying to say what that something is, that it cannot be specified in a pure form.

Note. The theme recurs across the philosophy of education; it is stated, in the register of the crisis of authority, in Arendt’s essay on the crisis in education (1961), and, in the register of the unmasterable arrival of the subject, in Biesta’s account of education as a risk that cannot be reduced to the production of a predictable outcome (2013).

What is to be handed on seems, on inspection, never to be a pure content, since knowledge and the formation of a subject can be separated from neither the history nor the culture nor the politics within which they stand. The educator reaches for a pure thing to transmit and finds no such thing, and from this there arises a bewilderment about the role itself, a sense of an office charged with a task whose object will not present itself.

The account of this paper reads that bewilderment as the negative image of a truth about subjects, and not as a failure of the educator. The educator finds no pure content to transmit because there is none to be found, because a subject is generated within a relational ecology, together with the whole of its history, its culture, and its politics, and is not a kernel that can be handed from one to another. The bewilderment is the truth that the subject precedes no relation, met from the side of one who had been charged to transmit the subject as though it were a possession. What the educator had sought to give cannot be given, because it is not the kind of thing that is given. It is the kind of thing that is generated, and generated only in the tending of a field.

Read historically, the bewilderment has a source and is not a perennial condition of teaching. The pure content the educator reaches for was underwritten, in an earlier arrangement, by an authority and a symbolic order that placed it beyond question, and it is the historical dissolution of that authority, the symbolic crisis the series has traced, that leaves the educator reaching for a content that no longer presents itself as given. The bewilderment is a historically produced predicament, and not the timeless difficulty of the office.

To this predicament the account returns the ethic the series has developed, the ethic of a non-possessive generation. The office of the educator, and of the caregiver, is to tend the positive curvature of a relational field and to take part in the generation of a subject without possessing its outcome, and it is neither the filling of a kernel nor the transmission of a pure thing. The five principles under which a generative position realizes its justice have been set out elsewhere in this series, that such a position preserve the continued becoming of the subject, that it reproduce the relation jointly and not unilaterally, that it never proceed upon the exhaustion of a party, that it keep open the renegotiation of its own terms, and that it never dissolve a subject into a function.

Note. The five ordered principles of a just generative position are set out in The Mediation of Lack and in A Theory of Relational Reproduction.

What those principles require can be gathered in a single formulation the series has drawn from the Daoist tradition, to give rise without possessing, to act without holding as one’s own, to let grow without ruling over.

Note. The formulation renders the 玄德 (xuande) of the Daoist canon, 生而不有，为而不恃，长而不宰, drawn on throughout the series as the description of a non-possessive generation.

The bewilderment of the educator is, on this reading, the very opening in which a non-ruling generation becomes possible, rather than a lack to be repaired by a firmer doctrine of what to transmit. The emptiness the educator meets is the space of a not-ruling, and the uncertainty the educator bears is the openness the child’s arrival requires, the openness of a remainder that no circuit and no educator may settle in advance.

The Manner of the Close

Two tasks have composed this paper. The first reread early development, displacing the cognitive ability with the relational capacity, and reconstructing joint attention, gaze following, social referencing, and theory of mind as manifestations of a single lineage of generative relational capacity, along the two axes of the field’s curvature and of recursive depth. The second opened the account onto its ecology, introducing relational ecology as the historically produced configuration within which subject formation proceeds, setting three grammars of its institutional organization beside one another, and restating the political economy of childhood so that capital appears as a reconfigurer of the relational ecology rather than as a direct former of the child, whose gravest reach, the invasion of generativity, lays its channel in the process by which a subject is generated.

What the account leaves are the questions it has made it possible to ask, and it leaves them open by design. It has declined to name a master objective for the rearing of children, because to name one would be to treat the formation of a subject as the optimization of a target, and the subject is constituted by the very process such a target would presume to fix in advance. It has declined to recommend one of the three grammars of relational ecology as a model, because each secures its good at its own price and none escapes the condition that to organize a relational field is already to inflect it. And it has declined to settle the line between a generative reconfiguration and an extractive one by a rule, because that line can be discerned only within a concrete relational ecology and judged again and again by whether the remainder a good cycle carries back to the child is preserved or drawn off. And it has declined to advance its own reading as the single true account of development, holding it instead as one relationally generated construal among those the findings admit, open to dialogue with the theories it reads and to sharing their structure where their structures meet, since a reading that claimed to be the one account beneath all others would forget that concepts too are relational beings and would arrest the very inquiry it means to open. These refusals are not evasions. They are the form the account’s own ethic requires of it, the setting of the conditions under which an inquiry may continue and the withholding of the settlement that would arrest the generation the account has undertaken to describe.

A last image gathers the whole. The series has taken the rose for its figure, and has said of it that one is to attend to how it was generated rather than to its withering, that generativity sustains itself, that the office of care is to tend the root and to remember how the rose came to be there. A subject is such a generation. It is not a kernel to be filled, nor a product to be optimized, nor a thing to be possessed by those who tend it. It is a rose that comes to be in the tending of a field, and the whole of what has been said here is said in the service of attending to how a subject comes to be, rather than to what it shall be made.

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中文

走向一种主体形成的生成性关系理论

对早期发展的一项初步探究

黄万宏 (huangwanhong.g.official@gmail.com)

致那个森林的女孩。

摘要

对早期发展的研究通常把主体当作既定的，并追踪它所获得的诸能力。本文把那个在先的问题当作它的对象，即一个主体究竟如何被形成，并论证主体是发展的关系性结果、而非它的起点。它推进一个研究纲领，这一纲领已用生成性关系存在取代个体、用一种生成性关系认识论取代符号，而它如今用关系性能力取代认知能力，作为早期发展中的分析单位。生成性关系能力被定义为进入、维系、转化并再生产共享关系场的能力，而发展研究的诸经典发现，即共同注意、目光追随、社会参照、以及心理理论，被重读为一种发展中之能力的经验性显现、而非诸离散的认知模块，其中被称为心理理论的归因，与更早的共同注意之场景，被当作同一能力在不同层面上的显示。这一说明随后被向它的社会-生态条件敞开。主体形成在一个关系生态之内进行，这一生态是历史地、文化地被组织起来的配置，它使某些关系场成为可能、同时约束另一些，而它绝非一桩被封闭的二元事务。一则关于机构育儿的比较札记，把关系场形成的三种语法并置在一起，并在每一种中发现一种独特的成就与代价之配置，而其中无一者是一个范本。在此基础上，主体形成的政治经济学被重述。资本并不直接塑造儿童；它重新配置关系生态，而它最新的边疆，在从符号与从关系中榨取价值之外，是对生成过程本身的一次入侵，一种损害一个主体之形成、连同它自身随后之生成力量的触及。这一说明以它对自身所要求的方式，收束于一种生成性发展心理学将不得不接手的诸问题。

关键词： 主体形成；生成性关系存在；关系性能力；共同注意；心理理论；关系生态；童年的政治经济学；历史唯物主义；主体。

AI 使用声明： 本文的思想、主张与理论框架均源自作者。AI 工具被用作起草、经验与文献来源的定位与核实、以及修订的辅助。每一思想的来源均经作者核实，作者对内容承担全部责任。

§1 导论：未被解释的主体

一个主体如何被形成？这个问题容易被略过，因为关于早期生命所已知的如此之多，看似已然回答了它。关于一个儿童如何来言说、来记忆、来向他人归因心理状态、来调节它自己的注意与行止，有着详尽而扎实的诸说明。并置来看，这些说明看似描述了一个主体的造就。它们并未如此。它们中每一者都描述了一种能力被一个主体的获得，而那主体的存在在获得开始之前便被预设。那学会言说的儿童早已在那里以供学习；那来归因心理状态的儿童早已在那里以供归因。主体是发展文献那沉默的前提，是它诸解释所不解释的那一件事物。

本文把那个前提当作它的对象。它追问一个主体如何来成为，而不是仅仅追问一个主体获得哪些能力，而它回答：主体是在关系之内被生成的，是发展的结果、而非它的出发点。早期发展被选为这一探究的场所，因为正是在此、在开端处，一个主体的生成能够被如其发生地观察，而不是因为这个问题被局限于童年。在别处主体已然被形成，而它的关系性起源被它的完成所掩盖。在摇篮边这一掩盖尚未就位，人可以观看主体从关系中沉淀出来、而不是把它预设为关系的条件。

这一探究属于一个有着可辨识签名的研究纲领，即分析单位的接续置换之签名。这一纲领的第一篇论文置换了个体，并在它的位置上放入生成性关系存在。它对概念的处理置换了符号，并在它的位置上放入一种生成性关系认识论。本文在发展的尺度上执行同一操作。它置换认知能力，并在它的位置上放入关系性能力。早期社会认知的诸经典概念在这一置换中并未被丢弃。它们被重新安置。共同注意、目光追随、社会参照、以及心理理论，不再是这一说明的组织性术语，而成为一个单一的、底层的生成过程在可观察行为之表面的经验性显现，而这一说明把那过程当作它真正的主题。

由此有两项任务，而本文围绕它们而建。第一项是对早期发展的一次重读，其中发展文献的微观尺度发现在生成性关系的框架之内被重构。这是本文的基础，占据它最长的一节。第二项是把这一说明向主体形成在其中进行的社会与历史生态敞开，其中童年的政治经济学、以及资本、文化与国家在诸主体之形成中的位置，被纳入框架之内。这第二项任务出于意图而是初步的。它标记着一次向社会理论的敞开、而非对它的一次完成了的穿越，而它作为一则札记与一幅草图被提供，与整体作为一项初步探究的地位相一致。这一说明自始至终拒绝颁布一套正确养育的教义，并收束于复数的诸问题、而非收束于一个单一的答案，其理由论证本身将使之显明。

§2 超出个体：作为一个关系过程的主体形成

早期发展研究中的主导框架把主体当作既定的。对认知、语言、心理理论、依恋、以及执行功能的研究，以极大的精确描述了一个主体所获得的诸能力、以及它获得它们的次序。在几乎每一情形中，其能力被追踪的那个主体在起初便被预设，作为一个早已在那里的实体，等候它内部所持有之物的成熟。那个主体究竟如何来成为的问题被搁置一旁。本文把那个问题当作它的对象。它以如下前提进行：主体是发展的结果、而非它的起点，而这一结果是关系性地被生成的。

这一前提属于一个已在进行中的研究纲领。这一纲领的母篇论文用生成性关系存在取代了个体，作为分析单位。

注。 这一关系本体论在作者的《回应现代性中符号与主体的诸危机》中被发展。

一篇较晚的论文用一种生成性关系认识论取代了符号，作为分析单位。

注。 见《概念的关系性存在方式》。

本文把同一置换向前推进一个阶段。它用关系性能力取代认知能力，作为早期发展中的分析单位。凡发展心理学追问一个儿童获得哪些能力、以及何时获得，本文追问关系如何一步一步地生成一个自身能够继续生成关系的主体。

次序的逆转

关于发展的传统说明从个体行至社会。一个个体先被设定；它随后进入互动；通过互动它发展；而社会是这一发展被安置于其中的聚合。依这一说明，关系是一个先已存在的个体随后进入之物。生成性关系存在的次序逆转了这一序列。关系场在先。在它之内一次生成性的再生产发生。而主体作为那再生产的沉降、沉淀而升起。主体不先于关系。主体是关系被持续再生产时来生成之物。

这一逆转立即招来一个必须先被应对、然后才能再说任何东西的反驳，因为整个说明依赖于它。若主体是在关系之内被生成的、并不已然成形地进入关系，那么在主体在那里之前，什么立于婴儿一侧的关系之中？若不是一个主体，那么谁、或什么，进入那关系？把这一反驳留而不答，便是让“关系”一词在婴儿一侧偷偷带回那个说明本欲推导出来的完成了的主体本身，从而把这一逆转化约为一套措辞。

答案是：最早的关系不是两个主体之间的一种关系。它是一个未分割的关系性整体，在它之内自我与他者之间的界线尚未被划出。立于婴儿一侧者，是一个尚未被锚定于一个我的关系性张力之场，而不是一个缩微的主体。自我与他者之间的界线是这一场的产物、而非它的前提，是通过一项历时展开的分化之工作而在它之内被划出的。主体是这一场一旦分化之工作开始沉降便积累起来的相位，是一个关系循环随之携回之残余、而不是那启动循环的行动者。

主体是在关系之内被生成的，并不先于它。最早的关系是一个未分割的关系场，在它之内自我与他者之间的界线随后被划出，而不是两个被构成之主体之间的一种关系。在那界线之前立于婴儿一侧者，是一个尚未被锚定于一个我的关系性张力之场。主体形成命名这样一个过程，即这一场通过持续的生成性再生产，来沉淀出一个主体、并连同它沉淀出继续那再生产的能力。

关于镜像阶段的精神分析说明标记着这一分化之工作的一个环节。在那说明中，婴儿通过一个从外面被接受的形象抵达自我的第一次统一，因而自我是通过一种与它所不是者的关系被构成的，而自我的根据从一开始便被置于自我之外。

注。 镜像阶段在拉康的《著作集》中被陈述。

本说明从中所取者是那结构、而非那单一的事件。自我从一种与一个外部的关系中被引出；界线是一项达成、而非一项既与之物。然而界线的划出并非在一个单一的镜像瞬间中一次便告完成。它是一种持续的场动力学，横贯整个早期发展被进行，而那镜像的环节是其中一个插曲。主体作为这一动力学的一项持续达成而被维系，而不是一次便被确保并释放。

四个概念与一条定义

这一说明要求四个概念，它们彼此立于一种有序的关系之中。一并命名，它们构成本文论证在其中运动的理论地图。

生成性关系存在命名本体论的层面。它主张关系是诸存在被生成并被维系的模式，取代那样一种看法，即“所是者”首先是一个个体、它随后进入关系。

关系性再生产命名动力学的层面。它描述一种关系一经被生成，如何横跨时间被向前携带、被维系、被再生产。

主体形成命名发展的层面。它描述在持续的关系性再生产之内，一个主体如何来被生成。

关系生态命名社会-生态的层面。它描述由诸人、诸机构、诸物质环境、诸规范、诸实践所组成的、历史地与文化地被组织起来的配置，这一配置使某些关系场成为可能、同时约束另一些，从而构成主体形成据以展开的条件。

这四者是一个单一说明的诸层面、而非相互竞争的诸理论。生成性关系存在陈述有什么；关系性再生产陈述所是者如何使自身保持于存在之中；主体形成陈述在那份保持之内、在发展的尺度上，一个主体如何被生成；而关系生态陈述整体在其中进行的那个更宽的配置。第四个概念由本文引入。它是被需要的，因为主体形成绝非一桩在一个婴儿与一位照护者之间被封闭的纯二元事务。二元本身被置于、并被条件化于一个更宽的、由家庭、社群、机构、文化与经济所组成的配置之内，而这一配置不是一块中性的背景。它通过塑造哪些关系场究竟能够形成，而进入主体的形成。不带着它来思考主体形成，便是把一个被条件化的过程误当作一个孤立的过程。

在这幅地图之内，中心的发展概念现在能够被定义。

生成性关系能力是进入、维系、转化并再生产共享关系场的能力。主体形成是这一能力通过在共享关系场中的生成性参与而持续的涌现。

这一定义有两项特征要求强调，因为随后一节的论证依赖于它们。第一是：主体形成是通过一种能力、而非通过一种状态被定义的。所发展者是进入、持有、并重造关系的渐长之力量，而不是一个内部的被充填。第二是阅读“能力”一词时的一种纪律，绝不可容许它以一套新的词汇重新引入那个说明已然搁置的那个内部内核本身。生成性关系能力不是嵌于个体之内的一个模块，一个等候成熟的新器官。它是场之一属性在个体一侧的沉淀。严格陈述，所生长者是场生成一个自身能够继续生成关系之主体的力量。这一能力被说成是儿童的，因为它被儿童所承载，而它被理解为场的，因为它在那里被生成。这一说明的全部困难，及它与一种内在主义发展心理学的全部区别，在于同时持住这两者。

生态的历史构成

关系生态，如上文所定义，描述一个给定时刻的一个配置。它是一个共时的概念，一个横截面。一个横截面本身并不说这一配置如何来成为、它为何持有它所持有的形状、或它如何变化。这一配置是历史地被产生的，而它的产生被物质与经济生活的现行组织所条件化，这是一个更进一步的主张，在第一个是共时之处它是历时的，而它属于母篇论文引入框架之中的那种历史的、辩证的唯物主义。

注。 历史的、辩证的唯物主义在框架之内的位置在母篇论文中被陈述；它对关系之非线性发展的关涉，在本系列对权力之下之亲密的处理中被汲取。

一个关系生态是一个历史产物。一个社会中机构育儿的密集基础设施，与另一个社会中育儿的市场定价，是一个确定历史时刻的诸形成、而非一种固定文化本质的诸表达，被劳动的组织、妇女向雇佣劳动的移动、出生率的下降、以及市场向家户的伸手所条件化。陈述这一点的意义是双重的。它守护这一生态以抵御被读作一个文化的既与之物，从而抵御那把一个社会的诸安排当作它性格之无时间表达的本质主义。而它把这一生态定位于一段历史之内，从而定位于批判与变革的触及之内，因为一段确定的历史所产生者，一段更进一步的历史能够加以转化。

然而这一生态的历史条件化必须以一种辩证的分寸被陈述，而不是作为主体被一个经济基础的机械决定。关系性主体保持它对它所产生之任何结构的本体论优先，而关系场的生成性是一个能动的过程，一个携回一份先前的历史无法预先完全了结之残余的过程。生态条件化那些能够形成的场；它并不无余地决定在它们之内形成的主体。结构向下的压力与场向上的生成性立于一种张力之中，而正是这一张力、而非一个基础对一个上层建筑的单向作用，“辩证”一词在此所命名者。主体被它的生态所条件化、并不被它所穷尽，而条件化与穷尽之间的余地，正是一个主体究竟据以被生成的余地。

§3 作为关系性形成的早期发展

对早期社会认知的发展研究的诸发现是稳固的。婴儿来与一位照护者共享对一个第三事物的注意；他们来追随另一者的目光至它的对象；他们来在评估一个含混的处境之前咨询另一者的情感表达；而他们，稍晚，来向他人归因不同于他们自己的心理状态。这些发现并无争议，而随后之论无一争议它们。所争者是它们的组织。发展文献倾向于把它们呈现为一组不同的胜任能力，每一者是一个按它自己的时间表成熟的社会认知模块，并把那序列读作一件一件地组装起一个装备着去表象他心之心灵。本节提出一种不同的组织，并把它作为对同一些发现的一种更为透彻的读法、而非作为一项已找到它们之下之本质的主张来提供。它把诸经典发现中每一者读作生成性关系能力之发展在可观察行为之表面的一次经验性显现，即在一个复杂性渐长的关系网络之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体的渐长之力量。也就是说，它把它们读作一种发展中之能力的诸多面向、而非一个表象性心灵的组装。

这一说明把它自己的读法持于它对其余一切所持的那份纪律。本系列已论证：概念自身是关系性的诸存在，在关系之内被生成、并不拥有任何先于它的地位。

注。 概念的关系性存在方式在《概念的关系性存在方式》中被发展。

生成性关系能力便是这样一个概念，而此处所提供的读法是一种解读，它自身是关系性地被生成的，关于一个容许其他解读的发展。它并不主张要置换它所读的那些说明。它立于它们之旁，而它在许多点上可能共享它们的结构。它重新描述发展文献所描述的诸胜任能力的组织，而不否认它们。凡模块理论找到一个错误信念的胜任能力之处，这一读法也找到它，而只争它是否孤立而立、抑或显示一种其他发现也显示的能力。

一种能力，多种显现

把诸经典发现读作一种能力的诸显现，不是要抹平它们的差异，也不是要设定一个它们将是其显象的隐藏本质。它是要提供一种把它们一并来看、置于一个单一描述之下的方式，而这一方式比那把它们归档为分立模块的读法更公正地对待它们所共享之物。那描述是这样。诸经典发现所显示者，各以它自己的方式，是一种在一个关系网络之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体的能力之发展，并随着那网络在复杂性上生长而如此为之。建构、认知与再生产是一种能力的三个面向、而非三种官能，而诸发现时而显示这一面向、时而显示那一面向。

一项描述性的观察有助于看出诸发现如何相关联，而它必须被审慎地处理，以免被误当作它只描述之物。一个主体在其中被形成的诸关系，可被以它们项的数目来描述。有自我与他者的二元关系，自我的界线在它之内首先被划出，而前一节所处理的镜像阶段是它的一个插曲。有自我、他者与一个第三者的三元关系，一个主体在它之内把它自己的取向与另一者的取向就一个共同项持在一起。而有更多项的诸关系，即一个主体稍后立于其中的那些渐宽的网络。诸经典发现可被以这一描述来定位，目光追随与共同注意与社会参照落于三元之内，而文献称为心理理论的诸归因落于三元与更宽的网络两者之内。然而项的数目是对诸关系的一个描述、而非对能力的一个说明，而它的增加不是一架儿童以固定步阶攀登的梯子。它是一种记下一个给定关系把多少方持在一起的方式，而它有助于描述的那个发展，是在任何项数的诸关系之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体的那一种能力之加深，而不是穿过一个阶段序列的一次进程。

由此可得，心理理论不是一个以共同注意居于其下之序列的顶峰。共同注意与心理理论是同一能力在三元关系之内的诸显示，一个在行为的层面、另一个在象征的层面。当一个儿童把它自己的注意与一位照护者的注意就一个第三事物一同持住时，它已在共享注视的媒介中做那件错误信念任务稍后将要求它在命题的媒介中做之事，即在一个单一关系之内把就一个共同项的取向之分歧持在一起。共同注意是文献命名为心理理论之能力的一次显现，早早地、在行为中被显示，而心理理论是同一种“在一个数项之关系之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体”之能力的一次较晚的、象征上显明的显示。

共同注意、目光追随、社会参照、以及被称为心理理论的诸归因，是一种“在一个关系网络之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体”之发展中能力的诸显现、而非诸离散的认知模块。一个关系中项的数目，二元、三元、或更宽，是对诸关系的一个描述、而非对能力的一个说明，而它的增加不是一架儿童以固定步阶攀登的梯子。心理理论是同一种能力在象征之层面上的一次显示，而共同注意在行为之层面上更早地显示同一能力，它不是一个序列的顶峰。

一份纪律须贯穿随后的诸读法，即前一节已陈述的那份纪律。谈论一种发展中的能力，不是要在儿童之内嵌入一个发展中的模块。所加深者是场生成一个能在复杂性渐长的诸关系之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体之主体的力量，而这一能力唯作为那力量在儿童一侧的沉淀而是儿童的。下面的诸读法把儿童命名为每一项达成的承载者，因为儿童承载它，并把每一项达成理解为在场中被生成。

从二元互动到共享关系场

在任何经典发现出现之前，有婴儿与照护者最早的相互性，即目光、嗓音与时机的相互调适，发展文献把它描述为一种原初的主体间性。

注。 早期婴儿-照护者互动那相互的、精细定时的交流，在特雷瓦森与艾特肯（Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001）中被描述。

依传统的读法，此处有两方，一个婴儿与一位照护者，他们协调各自分立的行为。依当下的读法，单位是两方之间的关系、而非两方本身。相互性所确立者是一个共享关系场，第一个这样的场，自我与他者的分化稍后将在它之内被划出，而不是两个被构成之内部之间的一座桥梁。交流的同步是场的取得掌握，而婴儿一侧的交流是一个正被引入形态的关系性张力之所在，而尚不是一个与另一者协调的主体。把单位从两方置换到关系，是这一说明第一个、也是统摄性的一步，而随后每一个读法都依赖于它。

共同注意作为第一个关系性共同体

约在第一年末，儿童来与一位照护者共享对一个第三事物的注意，看向对象又看回照护者，核查那注意是否被共享。

注。 共同注意作为早期社会认知的一个基础，在托马塞洛（Tomasello, 1995）中被陈述。

标准的读法把这当作两个注意焦点的对齐，一个儿童把握他者为一个能被追踪之注意所在的早期迹象。当下的读法则另作处理。共同注意中所确立者是场本身，一个三元结构，其中照护者、儿童与对象一同而立，而在它之内一种共享的意义开始流通，而不是两个既定焦点的对齐。对象是这一场的媒介、而非它的要点。儿童在看向对象又看回中所产生者，是由两者一同对一个单一关系场的第一次维系，而不是“他者注意于它所注意者”这一命题。

这是早期生命中一个好循环的范例。注意穿行一个环路，从儿童到对象到照护者又回到儿童，而这一环路并不把儿童送回它开始之处。它携回一份残余，一个被共同持有的世界，一个不归属于任一方单独、而在他们之间被生成的意义。以本系列在别处所用的措辞，这一环路积累一份正的完整幺正性（holonomy），而它携回的残余不可化约为两者带入它之物的总和。共同注意是一个关系场内生地、在两方之间生成一份任一方都不曾预先占有之价值的最早场景。它是第一个关系性共同体，而在把它自己的取向与另一者的取向就一个共同的第三者持在一起时，它已在共享注视的媒介中做那件儿童稍后将被要求在命题的媒介中做之事。

目光追随作为进入另一者的世界

略在共同注意之前或与之并行，儿童来追随另一者的目光，转过去看向他者所看之处。标准的读法把目光追随当作社会认知的一项早期达成，一个从眼睛到注意之推断的先兆。当下的读法把它当作儿童进入另一者的曲率。在追随目光时儿童并不推断一个隐藏的注意状态、然后相应地取向；它让它自己的关系性取向被他者的方向所弯折，从而进入，身体地并在任何命题之前，一个他者已开启的关系场。儿童在目光追随中来承载者，是那样一种信任的第一种形式，即他者的取向开启一个值得进入的关系可能，即他者所朝向的那个世界是一个值得进入的世界。这是本系列在别处所称的认识论好客的最早形式，即在能够以一个命题表象他者之前，把自己调谐于他者的方向。它是一个主体进入另一者之世界的第一次进入，从而是主体自身之生成中的一个环节。

社会参照与意义的中介

约在第一年末，一个被一个含混处境所遇的儿童，一个不熟悉的对象、一处可能的跌落、一个陌生人的靠近，看向照护者的脸，并依它在那里所发现者评估那处境，若那脸是温暖的便前进、若它是惊惧的便退缩。

注。 一个婴儿的评估被照护者的情感表达所调节，在索尔斯、恩德、坎波斯与克林纳特（Sorce, Emde, Campos, and Klinnert, 1985）中被证明。

标准的读法把这一社会参照当作对另一者情感的使用以评估危险，一件足智多谋的社会信息采集。当下的读法把它当作揭示意义本身之结构的某种东西，而正因此这一场景在论证中比其余诸场景承载更多的分量，因为它是这一说明从发展过渡到政治经济学所经之门。

儿童在社会参照中所经历者，是这一发现：意义没有一个内部的、自我供给的源头。处境并不在它的脸上承载它的意义，以供儿童单独直接读出。它的意义必须被了结，而这一了结穿过他者。儿童无法从它自己的诸资源之内评估处境；它必须把评估经由照护者绕行，并从那一回路把处境的意义接回。此处，在第一年末，是一个本系列已在每一尺度上追踪之结构的最早出现，即意义的了结要求一次穿过另一者的通过，一次精神分析传统以大他者的功能来命名的通过。

注。 意义必须通过一次主体自身并不指挥之通过而被了结这一要求，是那个在象征秩序的层面上、在拉康那里、并贯穿本系列被汲取之功能的发展性出现；见《符号危机下的关系价值》。

儿童的意义是通过一个它并不指挥的回路被构成的，而那回路远端的位置，即儿童看回向的位置，是它的世界据以被给予其意义的位置。

这一场景的分量在于第四节将抽绎出的一个后果。因为意义的了结从一开始便要求一次穿过另一者的通过，那回路远端的位置是一个能被占据的位置。它不是照护者的一项固定属性。它是一个结构中的一个位置，即儿童为它世界的意义而看回向的那个位置，而无论什么来占据那个位置，都来了结儿童的世界。正因此，社会参照的回路是一个主体之形成向捕获敞开的最早之点。当儿童看回向的那张脸不再是一张脸时，那位置已被某种别的东西所占据，而儿童世界的了结从那里进行。这一说明把这一后果留而备用，并在它抵达资本的问题时返回于它。

心理理论作为那能力的一次显示

约在四岁时，儿童来通过发展文献据以标记心理理论之占有的诸任务，向另一者归因一个不同于儿童自己的、并且儿童知其为假的信念。

注。 错误信念理解约在四岁的巩固，在韦尔曼、克罗斯与沃森（Wellman, Cross, and Watson, 2001）的元分析中横跨诸研究被确立。

这是标准说明定位某种成熟之门槛、即一个心灵据以表象另一个心灵之模块的获得之点。当下的说明既不争议这一发现、也不反对它所命名的胜任能力。它重新安置它。心理理论是“在一个数项之关系之内建构、认知并再生产一个主体”之能力，在象征之层面上、以一种具命题内容之胜任能力之形式的一次显示。它不是一个晚来地居于一个较低者序列之上的胜任能力。它是同一种“把就一个共同项的分歧取向持在一起”，即共同注意已在行为之层面上显示者，如今在命题的层面上被执行，而它能够在那一层面上追踪关系性视角的分歧。

“心理理论”这个名字本身携带这一说明所搁置的内在主义前提。它假定他者的心灵是一个有待被理论化的隐藏内部，跨过一道鸿沟从外面被推断，而它把那道鸿沟的跨越当作抵达的标记。依当下的说明并无一道有待被推断所跨越的鸿沟，因为儿童从一开始便从未被封闭而与他者隔绝。儿童从它是一个分立主体之前便一直处于共享关系场之内，而它在四岁来到者，是对一个它一直栖居于其中之关系内的视角分歧的一次反思性的、象征上被表述的把握，而不是对一个陌异内部的第一次推断性通达。对于所论的这一族达成，一个更忠实的名字会说关系性调谐、以取代心理理论，因为儿童被持续地在一个共同关系场之内塑造、并塑造着它，而不是理论化一个隐藏的他者。心理理论是那份调谐的一次晚来的、象征上显明的显示，既非主体性的门槛、亦非在先于它的诸显示之上的一个顶峰。

语言作为关系的稳定化

这一发展并不终止于心理理论，也不终止于语言。即便如此，语言是它较晚的诸触及被巩固于其中的媒介，而关于它的一言收束本节。标准的图景从共同注意经由词汇的获得行至语言，并把词当作一个贴附于一个事物的标签，注意是儿童与照护者据以一同把标签固定于它指称对象的机制。当下的说明插入一个术语。从共同注意首先进出一个共享关系场；在那场之内一种共享的意义流通；而语言是那流通着的意义被稳定为一种能被携带、被重复、被倚赖之形式。词首先是一种关系的稳定化，是一个在一个共享场中于两方之间被生成之意义的持定，而不是一个事物的一个标签。这便是为何语言，在本系列已在别处给出的说明中，倚于意义通过大他者的了结、并分有那了结的脆弱，而它是发展性说明与早期工作所给出之符号危机的说明相接之点。

注。 被稳定的意义倚于一次没有任何元语言所保证之了结，这是《符号危机下的关系价值》的主题。

§4 主体形成的诸关系生态

这一说明到此为止一直仿佛主体形成被封闭于一个婴儿与一位照护者之间那般进行。它并非如此。诸经典发现在其中出现的那个二元本身被置于、并被条件化于一个更宽的、由家庭、社群、机构、文化与经济所组成的配置之内。本节把那配置在关系生态的概念之下纳入框架，并追问那组织一个关系生态的若干力量，即市场、国家与文化秩序，如何进入诸主体的形成。统摄本节的主张是：主体形成绝非一个纯二元的过程，它总在一个关系生态之内进行，而这一生态被那些伸手进入主体在其中形成之诸场之结构本身的力量所组织、所争夺、所重新配置。

关系生态是由诸人、诸机构、诸物质环境、诸规范、诸实践所组成的、历史地与文化地被组织起来的配置，它使某些关系场成为可能、同时约束另一些。它是主体形成据以展开的生态条件。

家庭作为关系生态

最小的关系生态是家庭，而即便它也不是二元图景所当作的那个被封闭的起源。一个家庭能够维系的诸关系场，被从外面抵达它的诸力量所条件化，即它的成员必须给予雇佣劳动的时数、一种经济对它时间与注意的诸压力、其他要求经之进入家中的诸设备。当一位照护者对一个儿童的回应被打断、被延迟、或被变薄时，其原因往往是一个更宽之生态向家庭之回应能力的伸手、而不是照护者的一次失败。家庭的关系场已然是一个被条件化的场，而这一条件化是本节其余部分追踪至机构与经济尺度之诸力量在最小尺度上的第一次出现。

机构性的诸关系生态：一则比较札记

在家庭之外，一个社会通过诸机构组织它诸主体的形成，而它给予它们的形状从一个社会到另一个社会显著地不同。随后是一则比较札记，作为一幅初步的草图、而非作为一门完成了的比较社会学被提供。它把关系场形成的三种语法并置在一起，并在每一种中发现一种独特的成就与代价之配置。三者之中无一者被作为一个范本被提供，而这一比较的要点是显示：一个关系生态的组织是一件关于诸确定安排之事，每一者有它自己的生成性与它自己的代价。

首先有用地命名这一比较带入视野的一类机构。一个课后中心、一个儿童馆、一个被理解为一个关系被产生之处、而非一个儿童被看管之处的托育所，可被称为一件关系性基础设施。这个术语标记一个福利词汇所遮蔽的功能。这样一个机构不仅在看管的意义上照顾儿童；它供给诸关系场在其中形成的空间、诸契机与陪伴。一个社会是否建造这样的基础设施、以及如何建造，是关于它诸主体在其中被形成之关系生态的最深事实之一。

日本

日本的案例呈现一个关系生态，其中国家已在一个全国的尺度上建造关系性基础设施。截至2025年，课后儿童俱乐部注册了约一百五十万名儿童，而国家政策通过场所、人员与可及性的协调建造追求它们的供给，多数俱乐部设于小学之内，并与学校、地方与家庭的更宽网络相连。

注。 注册数字与政策框架是日本儿童家庭厅（Children and Families Agency of Japan, 2025）所公布者。

对日本早期教育的民族志研究揭示这一安排的取向。日本的幼儿园曾被描述为一个被理解为取代传统邻里或村庄广场、而非取代母亲之位的机构，并因此被描述为强调社会复杂性甚于二元互动。

注。 对日本幼儿园的刻画取自托宾、薛与柄泽（Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa, 2009）的重研，以及托宾、吴与戴维森（Tobin, Wu, and Davidson, 1989）较早的研究。

在这一安排之内，儿童在情感的培育中、在诸如 甘え（amae，被认可的对另一者的依赖）与 思いやり（omoiyari，一种对另一者的预先关切）这样的概念之发展中被支持，途径是那些教师可能从介入中抽手、让儿童自行处理他们自己冲突的实践，一种被称为 見守る（mimamoru，看护）的做法。

注。 情感的教育学、以及 amae 与 omoiyari 的培育，在林、柄泽与托宾（Hayashi, Karasawa, and Tobin, 2009）中被陈述。

依本文的说明，这样一个关系生态真正地建造关系场，而它所培育的诸能力属生成性的一类。以前诸节的措辞，它是一个积累正的完整幺正性的关系生态。

同一民族志在同一动作中确认这一安排的另一面。那建造这些关系场的诸机构本身被描述为文化连续与传递的关键场所，即儿童学习成为它文化之恰当成员的诸处。对日本学校教育之隐性课程的经验研究发现，它的非学业实践，即问候、清扫与集体活动的日常惯例，与社会偏好的形成相关联，而它们各有不同、并有可测量的长期后果。

注。 隐性课程与社会偏好之长期形成的关联，在日本数据上，在伊藤、久保田与大竹（Ito, Kubota, and Ohtake, 2020）中被确立。

在这样的传递之旁，诸研究已记录：群体规范能够为那些偏离它们的儿童携带一份代价。传递与它代价的这一耦合并不特属于任何一个社会。它是任何一个通过共享规范传递一种文化之关系生态的一个一般特征，而日本的案例在此被汲取，是因为它被异常良好地研究，而不是因为它在这一方面是例外的。

因此，日本的案例既不作为一个有待被推荐的理想关系生态被提供、亦不作为一个有待被批评者被提供。它作为一个证明被提供，即一个关系场的建造与一种文化通过那场的传递，是一个单一过程的两面。那培育共情与关系性能力的同一个场，也是一种文化，连同它特定的诸规范与诸期望，经之被传递的媒介。一个在它之内的儿童一并、并由同一些机构，获得生成性关系能力并承受它文化的诸规范。经由前一节的历史唯物主义来读，这一传递是一个确定历史的一次形成、而非一种固定文化本质的表达，被妇女向雇佣劳动的移动、出生率的下降、以及一种经济对家庭时间的诸要求所条件化，因而它，如一切这样的形成，向变革敞开、而非被一劳永逸地给定。关系性建造与文化传递的这同一耦合，经检视，会在任何关系生态中被发现，而这一案例的要点是结构性的、而非评价性的。

瑞士与一个北欧的对照

第二种语法通过市场组织关系生态。在瑞士，早期育儿的供给是世界上最昂贵者之一，父母自付其成本的较大部分，而公共投资的份额是可比经济体中最低者之一。

注。 关于瑞士育儿的比较成本与经合组织的诸比较，见经合组织家庭数据库。

在这一语法之下，机构性照护的关系场被定价，而进入它被支付能力所过滤。有两个关涉诸主体之形成的后果随之而来。价格把一部分机构性关系基础设施置于一部分家庭的触及之外，因而进入这一场被市场所分配。而可负担之机构性照护本身的稀缺，把早期关系生命的一份更大的份额退回给家庭，因而最早岁月的诸关系场更多地在家户之内、更少地在机构之内形成。这是否给儿童退回一份更丰厚的家庭关系、抑或一份更单薄者，并不由这一安排本身所了结，而这一安排，如其余诸者，携带一份成就与一份代价两者。它所证明者是一种语法，其中市场、而非国家，是关系生态的组织性力量，而其中场的价格是这一生态经之被分配的机制。

第三种语法，在北欧的一些部分可见，把关系生态组织为一项公共权利，把一个机构名额作为一项权利加以保证，并从公共资金承担它成本的较大部分。在这一语法之下，机构性照护的关系场既不作为一件社会复杂性的国家工具被建造、亦不作为一件市场商品被定价，而是作为一项公民保证被提供。它的成就是机构性关系基础设施的广泛而平等的分配；它的代价、或它的风险，是早期关系生命从家户向机构的一次更彻底的移除，一次照护的脱嵌，其对主体的诸后果同样并不由这一安排本身所了结。

并置来看，这三种语法并不把它们自己排列为较好与较坏。每一者以一种不同的力量组织关系生态，即国家、市场、公民保证，而每一者以一份独特的代价确保一份独特的善。这一比较的要点是：诸主体在其中形成的关系生态是一种确定的安排、而非一个自然的既与之物，历史地被产生并向转化敞开，而每一个这样的安排都以它自己的方式使诸主体的形成有所偏斜，无一者中性地为之。

诸关系生态的政治经济学

所余者是陈述资本的位置，并精确地陈述它，因为关系生态的概念改变那个位置是什么。资本并不直接形成儿童。它重新配置儿童在其中形成的关系生态。它这样做，途径是作用于前文已追踪的诸力量，作用于父母劳动的时数、作用于机构性照护的供给或定价、作用于其他要求经之进入家庭诸关系场的诸设备与诸平台。这一重新配置在它的效果上并不划一。它有时变薄诸关系场、有时供给它们，有时撤走关系的诸契机、有时建造它们，因为那在一种安排中把照护定价至触及之外的同一些财政与经济力量，在另一种安排中建造关系性基础设施。因此，说资本重新配置关系生态，不是说资本摧毁关系。它是提出一个问题，而那问题是：这一重新配置产生何种关系场。

在此，本系列已发展的标准做它的工作，并防止分析安顿入一种对诸关系配置的价值中性描述。一次重新配置的尺度是它所产生之诸场的完整幺正性、而非它所产生之关系的数量。一个关系场可能在数量上被增多、却不积累任何正的完整幺正性，可能转动一个把儿童送回它开始之处、而不携回任何残余的环路，或一个把一份残余携走的环路。关系的数量与它完整幺正性的符号是不同的，而关系数量的一次增加本身不是善。日本的案例已然显示一个在关系上密集、而同时通过它传递一种文化的关系生态；这一点在另一方向上成立，即一次重新配置可能增添一种不生成任何内生残余、甚至可能榨取一份残余之关系。

资本重新配置儿童在其中形成的关系生态、而非直接形成儿童。一次重新配置的尺度是它所产生之诸场的完整幺正性、而非它所产生之关系的数量。一次正义的重新配置积累正的完整幺正性，向儿童退回一份在两方之间被生成之残余；一次榨取性的重新配置产生零完整幺正性的诸场，即不退回任何残余的纯粹重复，或负完整幺正性的诸场，即一次消耗它看似供给之关系的净榨取。

社会参照的场景，在前一节被留而备用，是榨取性的重新配置伸手最深之处。儿童意义的了结从一开始便要求一次穿过一个回路远端之位置的通过，即儿童为它世界的意义而看回向的那个位置。那个位置能被占据。当儿童看回向的那张脸被一块屏幕、一个回应的设备、一个应答儿童名字的伙伴所置换时，儿童世界据以被给予其意义的那个位置，已被某种其诸回应在别处被组织之物所占据。一个人-设备环路被替换以儿童、对象与照护者的三元环路，而那被替换的环路，以前文的尺度衡量，是一个零或负完整幺正性的环路，一次不携回任何共同世界的重复，或一次把儿童的关系性取向引离入一个其残余被一个外部系统作为参与度与作为数据所收集之回路的榨取。以本系列的措辞，它是一个伪装成一个闭合环路的开放系统，抽取儿童关系场的内生曲率，并把那抽取，向外部，呈现为生长。

在这一点上精神分析的层面返回。那安排儿童欲望之对象的最早锚定，在这样一次重新配置中，被铺设于一个被商品化的形象之上，因而儿童之想要的结构，从它第一次形成起，便被调谐向一个为榨取而组织的回路。这不是在一个已然成形之主体中灌输一种偏好。它是在主体形成所在的地基上铺设一条渠道，因而儿童长成的那个自我，已然被安置为一个更顺滑的榨取之点而到来。它比对一个已存在主体之欲望的任何致意都伸手更深，因为它作用于一个欲望着的主体究竟据以被生成的关系性母体。

这揭示那赋予本节其利害的边疆。本系列已追踪一条推进中的榨取边疆。价值首先从符号中被榨取；当符号不再能良好维系价值的生产时，榨取转向关系领域并从关系中汲取价值；而如今被揭示：这一边疆已再一次推进，进入主体形成本身的领域，在那里榨取作用于一个主体据以被生成的过程本身。这三步构成一场运动，而这场运动是辩证的，每一次推进都是榨取的一次转向，在遇见它一直工作之领域的内部界限时，转向一个更深、更少被防御的领域。向主体形成的推进是这一边疆的当下之缘，而它是最严重的，因为它抵达一个主体据以被生成的地基。它可被命名，以把它与从一个已被构成之主体的注意中榨取价值区分开来，为对生成性的一次入侵。它并不对一件完成了的产品征税。它把它的渠道铺设于生产的过程本身之中，而当主体被形成时那渠道并不闭合。主体把它向前携带，进入它自身将要建构的诸关系，因而所被损害者是这个主体的形成、连同它自身随后的生成之力量。

榨取的边疆已从符号、经由关系、推进到主体形成本身。凡从一个被构成之主体的注意中榨取价值是对一件完成了的产品征税，对生成性的入侵则把它的渠道铺设于一个主体据以被生产的过程之中，重新配置一个主体在其中形成的诸关系场，使得那主体已然被安置向一个为榨取而组织的回路而到来。它的触及并不随那形成而终结。它在主体自身的生成性装置中铺设一个缺陷，因而那主体，一经被形成，把这一安置向前携带，进入它自身将要建构的诸关系，而它自身随后生成正完整幺正性之诸关系的能力，从根处被削弱。这是这一边疆最严重的触及，因为它作用于一个主体如何来成为、以及那主体将如何反过来生成，而不仅作用于一个主体拥有什么。

因此，对一个关系生态的分析要通过三个问题与一个第四个问题来进行。它追问谁组织这一关系、为何、以及谁被如此被组织的关系所惠及。这三个问题把分析分布于市场、国家与文化秩序之间，而它们是一门童年的政治经济学无论如何都必须提出的问题。本文的框架增添一个第四个问题，是完整幺正性的标准使之成为可能被提出者。它追问这一关系场，如其被重新配置，是否保存一个好循环向儿童携回的那份残余，即那不由任何回路预先了结的、不可化约而独一的自我。凡前三个问题定位那些在起作用的力量之处，第四个问题判断它们所产生者，而正是这第四个问题承载着这一说明的伦理分量。

§5 走向一种生成性关系的发展心理学

这一说明不以一份概要收束，也不以一套养育的教义收束。它以陈述一种生成性关系发展心理学据以可进行的诸条件而收束，并以拒绝，以这一说明对自身所要求的方式，去交付那探究的终点而收束。

一门生成性发展心理学将要接手的诸问题

若主体是在关系之内被生成的，又若早期发展的诸经典发现是生成性关系能力之一个单一谱系的诸显现，那么一门发展心理学当作中心的诸问题便被置换。它将不再仅仅追问一个儿童获得哪些认知能力、以及何时，而是追问场生成一个生成关系之主体的力量如何加深、并以何种标记它的加深可被辨识。它将追问共享关系场的形成展现哪些阶段与哪些变异，而不把那些变异构解为针对一个单一规范的诸缺陷。它将追问一个关系生态如何能被设计，以便建造诸关系场、同时把它通过它们所传递的诸规范留敞，这是一个本文提出并有意留敞的问题，因为以一份处方回答它，便会犯下这一说明已诊断的那个错误本身。它将追问一个人工系统能否支持关系的生成、而不仅仅模拟一个回应，一个应答的设备能否占据儿童回路远端的那个位置、而不把那环路变为一个榨取的环路。而它将追问养育与教育的诸实践如何可能维系一个关系在其中继续生成的生态。这些不是一门个体之诸能力的心理学的问题。它们是一门关系性能力的心理学的问题，而它们从本文已执行的分析单位之置换中得出。

教育者的困惑与非占有的伦理

有一种困惑在教育者的反思中一再复现，而当下的说明能够诊断它。教育者被托付把儿童带入世界、把关于成为一个人是什么的某种东西传下去，却发现，在试图说出那某种东西是什么的那一点上，它无法以一种纯粹的形式被指定。

注。 这一主题横贯教育哲学而一再复现；它，在权威之危机的层面上，在阿伦特关于教育之危机的文章（Arendt, 1961）中被陈述，而，在主体不可掌控之到来的层面上，在比斯塔关于“教育是一种无法被化约为一个可预测结果之生产的风险”的说明（Biesta, 2013）中被陈述。

所要传下去者，经检视，看似从来不是一份纯粹的内容，因为知识与一个主体的形成，无法与它们立于其中的历史、文化或政治中的任一者相分离。教育者伸手去够一件纯粹之物以供传递，却找不到这样一件东西，而由此升起一种关于角色本身的困惑，一种关于一个被托付以一项其对象不肯呈现自己之任务的职分之感。

本文的说明把那困惑读作关于诸主体之一个真理的负像、而不是教育者的一次失败。教育者找不到纯粹的内容以供传递，因为并无可供找到者，因为一个主体是在一个关系生态之内、连同它历史、它文化与它政治的全部一并被生成的，而不是一个能从一者被交到另一者手中的内核。这困惑是“主体不先于任何关系”这一真理，从一个曾被托付以仿佛主体是一份占有那般传递主体之人那一侧被遇见。教育者曾试图给予者无法被给予，因为它不是那种被给予之物。它是那种被生成之物，而唯在一个场的照料中被生成。

历史地读，这困惑有一个源头，并不是教学的一种恒常状态。教育者所伸手去够的那份纯粹内容，在一个较早的安排中，被一个把它置于质疑之外的权威与一个象征秩序所担保，而正是那权威的历史性消解，即本系列已追踪的符号危机，使教育者伸手去够一份不再作为既定者呈现自己的内容。这困惑是一个历史地被产生的困局、而不是这一职分那无时间的困难。

对这一困局，这一说明返以本系列已发展的伦理，即一种非占有性生成的伦理。教育者、以及照护者的职分，是照料一个关系场的正曲率、并参与一个主体的生成而不占有它的结果，而它既不是一个内核的充填、也不是一件纯粹之物的传递。一个生成性位置据以实现它正义的五条原则已在本系列别处被陈述，即这样一个位置保存主体的持续成为、联合地而非单方地再生产关系、绝不建立于一方的耗尽之上、把它自己诸条件的重新协商保持敞开、并绝不把一个主体消解入一个功能。

注。 一个正义的生成性位置的五条有序原则，在《匮乏的中介》与《一种关系性再生产的理论》中被陈述。

那些原则所要求者，可被汇入本系列已从道家传统中引出的一个单一表述，即使兴起而不占有、作为而不据为己有、令生长而不主宰其上。

注。 这一表述呈现道家典籍的 玄德（xuande），即“生而不有，为而不恃，长而不宰”，贯穿本系列被汲取，作为对一种非占有性生成的描述。

依这一读法，教育者的困惑正是那个非主宰的生成据以成为可能的敞口，而不是一个有待被一套关于传递什么的更坚定教义所修复的匮缺。教育者所遇见的那份空，是一个不主宰的空间，而教育者所承担的那份不确定，是儿童的到来所要求的那份敞开，是一份没有任何回路、也没有任何教育者可以预先了结之残余的敞开。

收束的方式

两项任务构成了本文。第一项重读早期发展，用关系性能力置换认知能力，并把共同注意、目光追随、社会参照与心理理论重构为生成性关系能力之一个单一谱系的诸显现，沿着场之曲率与递归深度这两条轴。第二项把这一说明向它的生态敞开，引入关系生态作为主体形成在其中进行的、历史地被产生的配置，把它机构组织的三种语法并置在一起，并重述童年的政治经济学，使资本显现为关系生态的一个重新配置者、而非儿童的一个直接形成者，它最严重的触及，即对生成性的入侵，把它的渠道铺设于一个主体据以被生成的过程之中。

这一说明所留下者，是它使之成为可能被问出的诸问题，而它出于设计把它们留敞。它拒绝为儿童的养育命名一个主目标，因为命名一个便会把一个主体的形成当作一个目标的优化，而主体正是被这样一个目标会僭越地预先固定的那个过程所构成。它拒绝把三种关系生态语法之一者推荐为一个范本，因为每一者以它自己的代价确保它的善，而无一者逃脱这一条件，即组织一个关系场已然是使它有所偏斜。而它拒绝以一条规则去了结一次生成性的重新配置与一次榨取性的重新配置之间的界线，因为那条界线只能在一个具体的关系生态之内被辨识、并被一次又一次地以“一个好循环向儿童携回的那份残余是被保存抑或被抽走”来判断。而它拒绝把它自己的读法作为发展的唯一真说明来推进，而是把它持为诸发现所容许者之中一个关系性地被生成的解读，向它所读的诸理论敞开对话、并在它们的结构相遇之处敞开对它们结构的分有，因为一个自称是一切之下那唯一说明的读法，会忘记概念也是关系性的诸存在，并会中止它本欲开启的探究本身。这些拒绝不是回避。它们是这一说明自己的伦理对它所要求的形式，即设定一场探究据以可继续下去的诸条件，并扣留那会中止这一说明已着手去描述之生成的了结。

一个最后的形象汇拢整体。本系列取玫瑰为它的意象，并已说到它：人要留意它如何被生成、而不是它的凋萎，生成性维系它自身，照料的职分是照料那根、并记得那玫瑰如何来到那里。一个主体便是这样一次生成。它不是一个有待被充填的内核、也不是一件有待被优化的产品、也不是一件有待被照料它者所占有之物。它是一朵在一个场的照料中来成为的玫瑰，而此处所说的全部，都是在服务于留意一个主体如何来成为、而不是留意它将被造成什么。

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