I trust (you) therefore I am! From trust to post-trust: Transforming social paradigms

Abstract

This paper challenges the conventional belief that trust is an essential component of social cohesion, for example, in the context of climate change denial and post-truth politics. It argues that simply increasing trust or distrust does not address the underlying issues of contemporary societal challenges. This is because these efforts presuppose a ‘trusting subject’ at the heart of the problem. The paper examines the process of subjectification, exploring forms of modern subjectification and how they relate to trust, and how individuals become trusting subjects in relation to and within certain social frameworks. Introducing a new typology, it categorises trust into subjectifying, counter-subjectifying and post-subjectifying forms, revealing how trust both influences and is influenced by social dynamics and power structures. The conclusion advocates a ‘post-trust’ approach, urging a reimagining of relationships with nature and others. This approach emphasises the interconnectedness of human and non-human actors and calls for new forms of relationality and sensitivity to address global challenges effectively.

Introduction

Analysts of contemporary life describe our era as not just post-truth but also post-trust, characterised by phenomena such as climate change and Covid-19 denial, all eroding trust in science and politics (see e.g. Jones, 2023; Kozinets et al., 2020). Solutions to such problems are usually sought in attempts ‘to boost trust in expertise, improve communication on scientific developments, and strengthen evidence-informed policy-making’ (Naja, 2018, p. 2). Implicit in such attempts is the assumption that trustfulness is a ‘trait of human collectivities’ and as such has ‘beneficial effects’ (Sztompka, 1998, pp. 20–23), and that without trust ‘societies really could not exist’ (Sasaki, 2019, p. 1), that trust is good and distrust ¹ is bad (see e.g. Hosking, 2019).

There are reasons to be critical of such an assessment. First, if we are indeed living in the age of post-truth, perhaps a healthy dose of scepticism and suspicion needs to be part of the solution to the problem. After all, there is no lack of trust in the sources that produce conspiracy narratives and alternative facts. The reason for overconfidence in trust may lie in a conceptual misunderstanding that conceptualises trust and distrust as opposing variables. Trust and distrust may not be a dichotomy, but rather two interdependent variables (Van De Walle & Six, 2014). Trust and distrust can occur simultaneously and in different aspects in different contexts and situations (Lewicki et al., 1998, p. 444; McKnight & Chervany, 2001, p. 29). In fact, modern democracies may even depend on a good dose of distrust, that is, ‘the democratic culture of trust is due precisely to the institutionalization of distrust’ (Sztompka, 1998, p. 26).

Secondly, it could be argued that the sole focus on levels of trust and distrust may not fully capture the complexity of the issue, as it assumes what needs to be explained. This type of research overlooks the processes involved in becoming a trusting and/or distrusting subject. This article problematises the idea that trust is a basic feature and prerequisite of social life. I will argue that trust is in itself the feature of specific social orders. By drawing on theories of subjectification I will focus on the question of what is required of individuals to become trusting subjects. What type of subjectivity is necessary for trust to serve as the social glue for social life? What are the characteristics of a trusting subject, and perhaps a trusting citizen? I will develop a typology of subjectifying forms of trust. ²

In the first part, I will analyse how social theories conceptualise trust, for example, the basis and prerequisites of social life; as a rational solution to an informational problem and as affective attachment. In the second part, I lay out a concept of subjectification that draws on theories of subjectification and individuation. Here, I also develop the concept of subjectification through trust, consequently differentiating three ideal types of subjectification and their relation to trust (and distrust). I will conclude this paper by showing why efforts to increase trust or distrust are not sufficient to solve the problems of our time. For example, scholars have linked the causes of the climate crisis to the form of subjectivity I refer to as the trusting subject. This subject perceives the natural world as something external, an object to be exploited for maximum benefit – extracted, transformed, consumed and discarded. If the impending climate catastrophe is indeed connected to this way of relating to the world, then a shift towards a new type of subjectivity – a post-subjectivity – and new ways of relating to the environment is essential. Thus, solutions to problems such as the current climate crisis cannot be found simply by increasing trust in the research of climate scientists. It requires a new relationship with nature and, consequently, overcoming a form of subjectivity that consists of or depends on trust. This necessitates a post-trust approach, albeit with a different meaning than what is typically associated with the term.

Trust in social theories

In social theories, trust is very often seen as the basis of social order, identifying it not only as a basic human need (Hosking, 2019, p. 77) but also as a prerequisite and the essential social glue of social life (Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam et al., 1993). In addition, it is considered to be universal, applying to all forms of social life, from communities to societies (Misztal, 1996). Derived from this is the idea that an increase of trust can equally solve central social problems (Baier, 1986; Govier, 1992). Subsequent discussions revolve around the lack of trust, the dissolution of the social bond and how to restore them.

Informational problems and rational trust

In a very prominent strand of social theory, trust is commonly seen as a rational solution to an informational problem. For instance, Georg Simmel specified the informational, reflexive and cognitive character of ‘modern’ trust which he defined as ‘the hypothesis of future conduct, which is sure enough to become the basis of practical action, [it] is, as a hypothesis, a mediate condition between knowing and not knowing another person. The possession of full knowledge does away with the need of trusting, while complete absence of knowledge makes trust evidently impossible’ (Simmel, 1906, p. 450). According to Simmel, informational asymmetries can be found in different social situations, ranging from friendships and relationships between parents and their children (Lahno, 2020), to the ‘cold calculation [of a] group of oligarchs arranging to price-fix’ (Simpson, 2012, p. 552). Wherever symmetrical relations such as cooperation are required, trust is seen as a convenient mechanism to overcome this asymmetry. Here, trust becomes a mechanism for instrumental and functional explanations, in which trust solves certain problems, for example, the problem of cooperation (Simpson, 2012, p. 551).

Similarly for systems theory, Niklas Luhmann has approached trust as a rational solution to an informational problem, ‘as a gamble, a risky investment’ (Luhmann, 1979, p. 24). Decisions become a gamble when ‘at any given time people are able to choose freely between very different actions’ (Luhmann, 1979, p. 24). When individuals are free to decide it becomes increasingly impossible to make predictions about their decisions, because there is never enough information and time to rationally assess them. Thus, humans need to reduce complexity, and they might do so through trust: ‘By means of trust, the truster unburdens himself of complexity which he cannot sustain’ (Luhmann, 1979, p. 63).

Similarly, scholars of rational choice and game theory admit the importance of trust. In order to establish relations of cooperation, problems associated with incomplete information and asymmetrical distribution of information need to be overcome. If two (or more) parties decide to cooperate because it promises to benefit both (or all) of them, the actions involved in this cooperation are not under each individual's control; at least one of them depends on the actions of the other: ‘Cooperation requires trust in the sense that dependent parties need some degree of assurance that non-dependent parties will not defect’ (Williams, 1988, p. 8). I will return to game theory and single out this approach because in it (at least in one of its very prominent strands) the transition from the personal and interpersonal to the level of institutions and societies relies heavily on trust.

In sum, all of these social theories define trust as the rational solution to an informational problem. When we lack complete information, the most rational decision is to trust the other party. Theories of rational trust can be differentiated from theories of affective and emotional trust that emphasise the non-rational element in many varieties of trust.

Normative and affective attitudes of trust

A comprehensive account can be found by the moral philosopher Karen Jones, who has worked extensively on trust (Jones, 1996, 2012a, 2012b). She points out that trust ‘has two elements, one cognitive and one affective’ (Jones, 1996, p. 5). Situations of incomplete information require the rational ‘expectation that the one trusted will be directly and favourably moved by the thought that you are counting on them’ but they also require ‘an affective attitude of optimism about the goodwill and competence of another’ (Jones, 1996, p. 11). Jones emphasises that cognition and affects are not mutually exclusive but that they mutually influence each other. The affective attitude of trust frames cognitive processes and shapes interpretations.

Her example is a dialogue from Shakespeare's Othello where Iago, his trusted adviser, tries to deceive and destroy Othello. Iago gains Othello's trust by affirming his own loyalty to the latter. This loyalty not only makes Othello trust Iago but also leads him to kill his own innocent wife. Jones focusses on a scene where Othello expresses his rather misplaced trust in Iago: ‘Iago: My lord, you know I love you / Othello: I think thou dost. And, for I know thou'rt full of love and honesty’ (Jones, 1996, p. 11). For Jones, it is an affective attitude of optimism that leads Othello to trust his standard-bearer where he shouldn’t have: ‘Trusting thus opens one up to harm, for it gives rise to selective interpretation, which means that one can be fooled, that the truth might lie, as it were, outside one's gaze’ (Jones, 1996, p. 12).

Jones’ affective attitude of optimism also emphasises the normative element, where trust is not simply a solution to an informational asymmetry but rather the foundation of (a specific type of) social order. In such normative theories, trust is not just the solution to an informational problem but rather a normative act of ‘active not-knowing or not-wanting-to-know [which] is constitutive for such practices, whereas wanting-to-know threatens, if not destroys, their social and normative content’ (Wehling, 2015, p. 26 [my translation]).

Compared to the rational approaches mentioned earlier, normative theories incorporate both rational and emotional aspects in their explanation of trust. Curiously, however, the more we move from theories that emphasise the rational aspect of trust and theories that combine rational and emotional elements to theories that see emotions and affects as the central element of social life, trust seems to play a less important role. For instance, the concept of trust seems to be mostly irrelevant (or to only play a minor role) in one approach that should be specifically qualified to analyse trust, namely affect theory and affect studies.

The absence of trust in affect theory and affect studies

Affect theory's emphasis on the a-rationality of affect, on its pre-cognitive nature (Thrift, 2008, p. 7), and on the autonomy of affect from rational calculation (Massumi, 1995) should make it especially pertinent for the analysis of trust. Without being able to give a comprehensive overview of the literature, ³ it is safe to say that central texts of affect theory (e.g. Spinoza, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Brian Massumi, Manuel DeLanda, Patricia Clough et al.) do not focus on trust. None of these authors analyse what one might call the affective attachment or the affective attitude of trust.

Why do scholars of affect theory ignore the concept of trust? After all, trust is one of the rare non-rational phenomena that even scholars working within the paradigm of rational choice seem to accept as a valid mechanism in the creation of social cooperation. It seems the ideal candidate for an integrative paradigm that can unite very heterogeneous approaches, such as combining rational (choice) and affect theories. Thus, it could have the potential to bridge an important divide in social sciences and the humanities, that is, either analysing the social through rational calculations of humans or studying it through affective and emotional configurations.

If we accept rational choice theory's suggestion that trust is an element necessary to establish cooperation, we might understand why affect theory might not be very interested in the concept of trust. Speaking very generally and in direct contradiction to rational choice theory, affect theory does not consider cooperation as something that needs to be explained. For instance, the concept of cooperation is the solution to a specific theoretical problem, a solution for theories operating with a notion of individuals that consider the world external to themselves and whose orientation is geared towards maximising their self-interest. Broadly speaking, theoretical approaches that do not accept this assumption won’t rely on the concept of trust to explain cooperation. Instead of being the solution to a problem, cooperation and collaboration might be accepted as the norm and taken for granted.

In order to elucidate this position, I will draw on Gilles Deleuze's reading of David Hume. ⁴ Deleuze draws on Hume's theory of sympathy in order to criticise the assumption that social life is comprised of individuals maximising their interests: ‘The truth is that an individual always belongs to a clan or a community. Before being the types of community that Tönnies described, family, friendship, and neighborliness are, in Hume's work, the natural determinants of sympathy’ (Deleuze, 1991, pp. 38–39). In other words, sympathy and not the maximisation of individual interests is the decisive characteristic of communities. ⁵ Consequently, the problem of societies is not related to the production of cooperation between egoistic individuals, the problems societies need to solve do not stem from egoism but from the partiality among group members:

‘[S]ociety finds its obstacle in sympathies rather than in egoism. Without doubt, society is in the beginning a collection of families; but a collection of families is not family reunion. Of course, families are social units; but the character of these units is that they are not added to one another. Rather, they exclude one another; they are partial (partiales) rather than made up of parts (partielles). The parents of one family are always the strangers of other families. Consequently, a contradiction explodes inside nature. The problem of society, in this sense, is not a problem of limitation, but rather a problem of integration’ (Deleuze, 1991, p. 39).

In other words, the transition from communities to societies poses the problem of overcoming partial relations in communities.

For Deleuze, Hume finds the solution to this problem in the creation of social institutions. He defines institutions in a very specific way. As such, institutions have three crucial characteristics. An institution (1) expands and extends social orders by means of integration (e.g. by transforming communal types of social life that depend on familiarity into societal types of social life that rely on trust); (2) is a ‘positive model of action’ (Deleuze, 2004a, p. 19) that ‘foster[s] active participation’ and allows for a certain degree of deviation (Fadini, 2019, p. 534). An institutional order is therefore not a completely fixed and structured one, but rather a programme of action (Akrich & Latour, 1992, pp. 260–261). Institutions are neither Max Weber's iron cages nor are they Émile Durkheim's ‘moulds into which we are forced to cast our actions’ (Durkheim, 1982, p. 70). Rather than iron cages and moulded forms of action, (3) institutions create a duration that allows for ‘variability, some sort of elasticity/plasticity’ (Fadini, 2019, p. 523).

Interpersonal trust is one of these social institutions. It is neither the defining feature of all communities nor is it the basis of all social orders. According to Deleuze (and his reading of Hume), trust is neither sympathy nor law, but an institution that is specific to social orders that are made to depend on it. Relations of trust become necessary when certain types of social (societal) relations emerge. Individuals only need to develop relationships of trust in specific social contexts, for example, in markets (Baker, 1984; Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1996). Trust provides a model of action and serves a specific problem of integration, that is, cooperation under conditions of mutual externality and individual maximisation of interests. Whether we encounter each other for the exchange of goods or promise to abstain from hostilities, such relations are ‘based on trust’ (Tönnies, 2019, p. 527 [my translation]). Thus, trust is an attitude of ‘homo commercium’, ⁶ which might be described using Smith's famous definition as having ‘the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another’ (Smith, 1981, p. 25). ⁷ Together with distrust, trust provides individuals with a model of action to navigate them through their lives without determining their actions. ⁸

However, we cannot stop by merely positing homo commercium as a trusting subject. Trust is not the pre-existing social glue that merely solves pre-existing problems of pre-existing individual subjects. What needs to be explained is the emergence of the trusting subject itself, the emergence of homo confidens (Bosshardt, 2001). Individuals do not simply resort to trust when they have no other choice. Rather, trust enacts a subject that cooperates with others and, as we will see, also cooperates with itself. In order to conceptualise this creation of subjects, I draw on theories of subjectification (Saar, 2002, 2013).

In what follows, I will give a brief introductory summary of the concepts of subjectivation and individuation, before going on to discuss the types of subjectivation through trust.

Subjectification

The process of subjectivation presupposes a process of individuation, which transforms a pre-individual field or a dividual into a singular entity, a one-ness, the individual. This process brings heterogeneous elements into a metastable relation (Deleuze, 1994, p. 246). This metastable relationship, which characterises processes of individuation and subjectivation, will be discussed in more detail below. A subject is the further differentiation of this metastable individual into a more specific entity with a set of personal and social characteristics (individual habits and a social identity). According to Louis Althusser, individuals are made into subjects, they are the product of power relations (Saar, 2013, p. 19). A subject is therefore the result of social differentiation, an effect of the social division of labour in which individuals have to fulfil specific social functions. In order for an individual to adopt its role within this social division of labour, to fulfil its function, it needs to become a subject: ‘It is ideology which performs the function of designating the subject (in general) that is to occupy this function: to that end, it must interpellate it as subject, providing it with the reasons-of-a-subject for assuming the function’ (Althusser, 2003, p. 51). In other words, individuals are turned into subjects, and it is this process of turning an individual into a subject that is crucial here.

‘[I]deology “acts” or “functions” in such a way as to “recruit” subjects among individuals (it recruits them all) or “transforms” individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing. It can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace, everyday hailing, by (or not by) the police: “Hey, you there!”’ (Althusser, 2014, p. 190).

Hailing refers simultaneously to two things. First, it is a process of singularisation: ‘one is “stopped” by the police and therefore singled out from a crowd or singularized in relation to a background. To be thus singled out is to be ascribed an identity’ (Montag, 2013, p. 137). At the same time, it is a process of recognition, because hailing involves the recognition by the individual to indeed be a subject, to be the hailed subject: ‘An individual […] turns around, believing-suspecting-knowing that he's the one – recognizing, in other words, that he “really is the person” the interpellation is aimed at’ (Althusser, 2014, p. 191). Thus, a process of subjectification involves (1) a process of singling out an individual in a crowd, and (2) a process of recognition, to recognise oneself as a subject, to be recognised as a subject by others, to recognise that the other recognises oneself as a subject, etc. In other words, the subject is made and makes itself (Saar, 2013, p. 22).

Drawing on Althusser, Michel Foucault has productively (or critically, depending on the specific interpretation of Foucault's texts) elaborated on this process of subjectification by showing how subjects internalise their own observations, for example, the observations by a prison officer. The process of hailing is replaced by the internalised gaze of the police officer (and others) (Foucault, 1990, p. 253).

Before I move on to specify the subjectification of trust, I would like to elaborate on the process of subjectification. Not only is this process repetitious but it is also metastable, where the elements within a subject remain constantly in contradiction with one another. With Gilbert Simondon we can call this metastable process of subjectification that constitutes, maintains and transforms a subject disparation. ⁹ Simondon develops the concept of disparation, among others, in the context of his theory of individuation (of subjects and groups) (Simondon, 1995). ¹⁰ The starting point is the criticism of an assumption, namely ‘a realized [substantialisé] individual faced with a world that is external to it’ (Simondon, 1992, p. 310). Simondon insists that such individuality needs to be explained rather than assumed. Each living being is (1) part of a pre-individual field, (2) itself a process of multiple and heterogeneous processes of individuation and (3) always also part of other multiple and heterogeneous processes of individuation external to it (Simondon, 1992, p. 306). This means individuation is not just psychological and subjective but, among others, also social and societal: ‘Individuation […] not only brings the individual to light but also the individual-milieu dyad’ (Simondon, 1992, p. 300). Aside from its participation in various other types of individuations, this relation between the individual and its world is also problematic because the elements that are involved in these heterogeneous processes are extremely disparate. But far from threatening individuation itself, this problematic situation is at the same time the precondition for any type of individuation (Hui, 2016, p. 84). The individual ‘resolves the disparation of its internal problematic insofar as it participates in the individuation of the collective’ (Simondon, 1995, p. 165). Thus, unlike the idea in which individuality emerges from an already individuated being ending up as a contradiction to the social and society, Simondon conceptualises it as the moment when (at least two) disparate processes of individuation start to relate to each other.

Simondon uses the example of human vision to illustrate how disparate elements are held together under tension in a disparate relationship. Each eye perceives a two-dimensional image. Because the left eye and the right eye are in different positions, the two images can never overlap. There is no third image that can be formed from this; the images are disparate (parallax). They are in contradiction, in tension with one another. The solution lies in the integration of these two two-dimensional images into an ‘integrated system of the two images, a system which, according to an axiomatic, exists at a higher level than that of each of the images, but does not contradict them’: a three-dimensional image. In doing so, the contradictoriness of the two two-dimensional images is not (dialectically) eliminated, rather it remains (disparate). Not only is the unity and integrity of the system taken into account (as in dialectic) but so are the difference and contradiction of the elements (Simondon, 1995, p. 206). ‘[D]isparate realities come together to form a system’ without the differences between these realities themselves being eliminated (Simondon, 1995, p. 29). The tension and the contradiction between the elements do not disappear, they are not dialectically abolished, but remain in a ‘metastable equilibrium’ throughout our lives (Simondon, 1995, p. 33).There is no primacy of the unity or of a system, nor a primacy of a structural order; a disparation constitutes an ‘equilibrium of metastability, not an equilibrium of stability’ (Simondon, 1995, p. 204). It is ‘a transitional state, rather than simple equilibrium’ (Hui, 2016, p. 84). Furthermore, individuation is not determined or dependent on the structure of this system, it ‘is never transitive to, or latent in, the logic of a system’ (Toscano, 2012, pp. 113–114). In its process of individuation, it undergoes constant phases of transformation, ‘destructuration, restructuration and the arrival of a new metastable status’ (Hui, 2016, p. 85). As I have said, each process of individuation and subjectification co-emerges, co-produces and is co-produced by the world it belongs to. It emerges as an ‘individual-milieu dyad’ (Simondon, 1992, p. 300).

In the following sections, I will apply this relational concept of individuation to the subjectification through trust. I will create a typology where I suggest differentiating between subjectifying, counter-subjectifying and post-subjectifying forms of trust. ¹¹ In principle, and this is a crucial point, it can be said that a society that depends on trust will co-emerge with trusting subjects and vice versa. The subject will depend on and have to trust its personal self as much as the social world it lives in (Deleuze, 1990, p. 18), and vice versa.

Subjectifying trust

In the most general sense, trusting another person is a relational constellation. It ‘is the formation of a one that is not a self but is the relation of a self to an other’ (Rancière, 1992, p. 60). As we have seen, such relations to others can vary, for example, in family relations, exchanges or contractual relations. Another type of relation has emerged in the discussion of Althusser's theory of subjectification, the process of recognition. Recognition is part of the process of subjectification through trust. Trusting an other has been understood as a process of recognition where trust creates the ultimate form of recognition, recognising the other as a person: ‘The first essential element of genuine trust is that we treat the trustee as a person’ (Lahno, 2020, p. 152). Recognition involves trust because it requires the acceptance of non-knowledge about the other, perhaps even an attitude of not-wanting-to-know (Wehling, 2015, p. 28). The moral philosopher Jay Bernstein goes so far as to understand trust as ‘the primary form through which we recognize one another as persons. Trust is the ethical substance of everyday life’ (Bernstein, 2011, p. 400).

However, as we have seen in Simondon, from a relational perspective, trusting another person is a double process of subjectification. This process not only brings the individual to light but also the individual-milieu dyad. First, trusting someone is a process of subjectification of the other, recognising the other as a person. While the enunciated subject is addressed as a person, the trust in another person is, secondly, also a moment of subjectification for the enunciating subject, a process of self-subjectification, recognising oneself as a person. Saying the words, I trust you! makes the enunciator a subject: I trust (you), therefore I am! Thus, the relation to another also has effects on the trusting subject.

We can elaborate on the nature of this process with reference to game theory. Game theory research conceptualises the reciprocal effects of trust, although it does not conceptualise this process as a form of subjectivation (or recognition). Cooperation is theorised as follows: Persons A and B trust each other because they have monitored each other's behaviour and/or may have had positive experiences from previous cooperation. One person's cooperative behaviour makes the other person's trust more likely, to the point of setting ‘off a spiral of dyadic cooperative behaviors that increases over time’ (Ferrin et al., 2007, p. 490).

While game theory might simply assume a somewhat stable and fixed subject – an individual faced with a world that is external to it, as Simondon calls it – a subject that increasingly invests more (or less) trust, theories of subjectification would conceptualise these increasing amounts of trust as a process of subjectification. What applies to the interaction – monitoring, trust and cooperation – also applies to the subject. This interaction does not only consist of (at least) two individuals who monitor, trust and cooperate with each other but also of two individuals who monitor and trust themselves and cooperate with themselves. The subject not only trusts the other person to fulfil its part of the obligation but it also has to trust that its future self will honour the promises it has made in the past. It has to monitor its own behaviour, for example, to remember to fulfil its part of the obligation. Thus, it can be said that a subject cooperates with its past and future self to fulfil its part of the interaction, a part that is just as important for the interaction to come about as that of the other.

With Deleuze and Guattari I call this double process of subjectification through trust, of the other (person) and the self, ‘a point of subjectification in the departure of a passional line’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 2005, p. 129).

However, this process of subjectification and becoming subjectified is not exclusively positive as some of the moral philosophers and game theorists hope. For instance, Jones’ affective attachment of optimism as linked to trust might also help to stabilise forms of subjectivity of a less optimistic and darker kind.

Counter-subjectifying trust

In Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant presents us with a different view of the relationship between trust and optimism. Here, trust is not related to the emergence of the subject as a person, but rather it is a prerequisite for forms of exploitation. Optimistic subjects trust the promises that have been made to them in social orders of trust, for example, in the social-democratic promises of the post-war period in the United States and Europe of ‘upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and lively, durable intimacy’ (Berlant, 2011, p. 3). By optimistically trusting these promises, individuals are subconsciously and continuously working on self-exploitative forms of subjectification. Berlant shows us how trust requires regimes of subjectification, the formation of a trusting subject. It is an essential, affective infrastructure of this society. Here, trust operates as an ‘in-kind reciprocity as a mirage [connected to a] whole infrastructure of trust in the world that merges the credit with the affectional economy and keeps people attached to optimism of a particular kind’ (Berlant, 2011, p. 42).

Berlant's account of trust allows us to reveal a darker twist in the processes of recognition. Coming back to the relationship between Othello and Iago, we find that Othello's trust was indeed misplaced, as Jones admits (Jones, 1996, p. 5). However, we can only fully understand this process if we include Iago's role. Iago's attempt to gain Othello's trust – My lord, you know I love you! – is the initial moment of subjectification through recognition, or rather a moment of counter-subjectification. It forces the other person to become a trusting subject. In this context, Iago's statement ‘I love you’ is not just an assurance of trust, but rather a persistent inquisition of trust: ‘Don't you trust me?!’. Its function is to extort reciprocal recognition by Othello, while (implicitly) threatening the relationship if Othello fails to affirmatively reciprocate. Such counter-subjectifying trust offers the enunciated individual three choices: Either you become a trusting subject – ‘Of course I trust you!’ –, admit that you don’t trust the other person, which destroys the relationship, or change the subject, which is equally damaging. Here, far from being an ethical substance of everyday life, trust is related to power and war. Instead of becoming a subject it is the forceful making of a subject in a power relation. Othello's affective attitude of optimism is in its effect the cruel optimism as described by Berlant.

It is this counter-subjectification through trust that simultaneously also enacts (or implies the existence of) the other side: distrust. Othello is an exemplary case in point, for this is not just a story about misplaced trust (by Othello to Iago) but also about an entire culture of distrust, for example, Iago's distrust of Othello and subsequently the distrust of Othello to his wife Desdemona. Consequently, and conceptually importantly for us, the processes of counter-subjectification might also enact a distrusting subject, perhaps turning Berlant's optimistic subject into a distrusting subject that develops obsessions with alternative facts and conspiracies (Hochschild, 2016).

Game theory conceptualises this scenario as what might be called the paradox of monitoring. On the one hand, monitoring is necessary in order to determine the trustworthiness of the other person. On the other hand, monitoring ‘may also signal low trust and thereby breed mistrust’ (Ferrin et al., 2007, p. 481). The pursuit of trust by person A may result in an increase in distrust by person B. Similar processes can be observed within the subject. In psychology, compulsive forms of self-monitoring are associated with doubt and a lack of confidence and an impairment of the decision-making process (Nestadt et al., 2016). If a subject monitors their own behaviour too closely, they may begin to doubt their ability to keep promises. The subject loses trust in itself and might become a pathological subject, that is, a subject that can neither trust itself nor the other. Such a distrusting subject differs from the process of ‘unbecoming’ a subject, which I will present in the next section. After describing processes of subjectification (becoming a subject) through processes of recognition (as a person) and counter-subjectification in power relations (making a trusting and distrusting subject), I will finish my typology of trust with the post-subjectifying processes of re-subjectification and unbecoming a subject.

Post-subjectifying trust

Post-subjectifying trust emerges from processes of de-subjectification. However, this process can take essentially two forms: re-subjectification or unbecoming a subject. Following Althusser, Judith Butler argues that social order and subjectivity are closely linked: ‘[S]ubjection is the paradoxical effect of a regime of power in which the very “conditions of existence”, the possibility of continuing as a recognizable social being, requires the formation and maintenance of the subject in subordination’ (Butler, 1997, p. 27). In societies that rely on intersubjective relationships individuals must encounter each other as ‘recognizable social beings’, that is, as subjects. Therefore, to exist as a social being means to be a subject. Thus, processes of de-subjectification are necessity followed by processes of re-subjectification. However, Butler also highlights the paradoxical nature of the subject. On the one hand, to have a social existence is to take the form of a subject. To be a subject is to have agency, and agency opens up the possibility of change, of de-subjectification, of being more than a subject. Thus, being a subject means constantly pushing against the ‘limits of subjectification’ (Butler, 1997, p. 29). Foucault has described a radical form, ‘the task of “tearing” the subject from itself in such a way that it is no longer the subject as such, or that it is completely “other” than itself so that it may arrive at its annihilation, its dissociation. It is this de-subjectifying undertaking, the idea of a “limit-experience” that tears the subject from itself’ (Foucault, 1991, pp. 31–32). However, ‘tearing the subject from itself’ is not primarily a destructive process but rather ‘the very motor of becoming, making the past and present not given but fundamentally ever-altering’ (Grosz, 2005, pp. 4–5). It is, as Deleuze has called it ‘the joy of difference’ (Deleuze, 2004b; p. 33 cited in Grosz, 2005, p. 1). The joy of difference and the joy of unbecoming a subject require a post-subjectifying trust, that is, a trust in the process of unbecoming a subject and a trust in relations with beings who are not (yet) recognised as social beings. In this process one may ‘have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 2005, p. 160).

Instead of leading to new forms of subjectification, this process might enable new forms of relationality that are not limited to forms of subjectification. These might include forms of interconnectedness with non-humans and more-than-humans (Bennett, 2010). Here, we return to the Hume-Deleuze idea of the primacy of community and the idea of sympathy, where the relationality to others has a primacy over the individuality of the subject. Such relationality does not negate individuality but contrary to any type of personology it pays attention to (1) the emergence of the subject and to the constitutive and fundamental relations to the outside of the person. Relations to the outside of the subject are potentially always what Deleuze and Guattari have called ‘becoming-animal’, a process of post-subjectification. The concept of becoming-animal emphasises transformations rather than the idea of an individual physically transforming into an animal at a specific point in the future. This process also extends beyond mere relations with animals, encompassing a wide range of potential transformations. It is neither about becoming an animal in the sense of imitating an animal, nor is it about becoming another subject. Rather, it is the process of unbecoming a subject and becoming a non-subject or more-than-a-subject. One becomes something that is not a subject or more than a subject by moving in the proximity (voisinage) of non-subjects or more-than-subjects, for example, in the proximity of animals (Deleuze & Guattari, 2005, p. 272). Proximity to non-subjects is not merely a matter of unbecoming a subject, of shedding one's subjectivity but opens up possibilities for new relationships with non-human entities and non-subjects. It is, above all, a transformative process of re-establishing relations outside of the subject, a process of re-relating. In this context, Max Scheler's notion of cosmovital affective attunement (Cosmovitale Einsfühlung) can be considered, as it highlights the relational dynamics between individuals and their environment rather than focusing on differences. If trust is a process of relating individuals who have previously been separated by processes of subjectification and thus encounter each other as external to each other, then unbecoming a subject is also a process of overcoming the mutual separation and externalisation that is typical of subjectification. Scheler describes a human individual as a ‘microcosms’, embodying the essence of existence and being cosmomorphic, which focusses on relations to rather than separations from other beings (Scheler, 1954, p. 105). He proposes an affective attunement that spans multiple dimensions and beings, which could be described as a heterological affective attunement (see e.g. Kwek & Seyfert, 2018). Such attunement allows a familiarity with the world that does not require the establishment of trusting relationships. These new social forms are not defined by a personal or social identity of the individual but are affective assemblages of heterogeneous elements, something I have also called affectif (Seyfert, 2012).

Conclusion

It is safe to say that many areas of our social life depend on both trust and distrust. We (should) trust people and experts to lead our daily lives. We (should) also distrust potentially corrupt, malevolent and exploitative actors. At the same time, our current societies also seem to be plagued by a lack of basic trust and excessive amounts of distrust. Uncertainty and insecurity seem to be met with ever extremer forms of trust or distrust, for example, Berlant's cruel optimism, or obsessions with alternative facts and conspiracies. Efforts to increase trust in scientific research and policy-making are undoubtedly necessary. However, these claims overestimate the effectiveness and universality of trust. They are based on the assumption that trust is the central social glue. This assumption has turned out to be only partially true. Any lament about a lack of trust or about excessive distrust needs to consider that both trust and distrust require and rely on the same kind of subjectivity, a subjectivity that is enacted through trust and distrust. Here, a subject is confronted with a world that is external to it. This subject is interested in maximising its interests, for which it has to cooperate with others. Because the maximisation of interests and the need to cooperate are constitutively linked to trust, calls to increase trust or reduce distrust are insufficient to solve problems such as climate change denial. Simply increasing trust in scientific researchers and political decision-makers will not solve this issue. Instead, they require new ways of relating to and trusting the world, a post-subjectifying trust. A post-subject has to go beyond an atomised individual, an individual faced with a world that is external to it. Instead, it needs to develop new relationships with the world and with others. I can only tentatively suggest what such a form of trust and re-relationship would entail, and I will do so by pointing to some current research. The relations of this post-subject would require new forms of sensitivity to others (Kwek, 2015), an awareness of interconnectedness with and dependence on them (Beasley & Bacchi, 2007). These relations cannot be limited to intersubjective, interpersonal and inter-human relations. In the light of recent developments, the need has arisen to include more-than-human-beings and -relations as recognisable social beings and relations. This development includes, among others, the Anthropocene and the current ecological crisis. Scholars have attributed the reasons for the climate crisis to the type of subjectivity I have called the trusting subject. For this subject, the natural world is seen as something external, as an object for the maximisation of interest, something to be extracted, productively transformed, consumed and disposed of. If the looming climate disaster is in fact related to the mode of relating of this subject then a new type of subjectivity and new types of relations to the world are in fact necessary. In other words, we need to create relations of familiarity with the world rather than relations of trust. These relations would have to resemble the relations to companions, human or otherwise (Haraway, 2004). Post-subjective relations with non-human and more-than-human companions are needed that are not extractive, optimising, productivising etc. (Latour & Schultz, 2022), but rather familiar and sympathetic.

Therefore, our analysis indicates that we are not currently in a post-trust era but rather we need to transition into a post-trust age. However, post-trust has a distinct meaning from the definitions mentioned earlier in this paper. It is characterised by post-subjective relations and forms of trust that do not rely on individual subjectivity.