24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
Few terms are more ubiquitous in the contemporary [[human]] [[science]]s than the "[[subject]]," and few are more elusive.
It is typically used in work deriving from 'continental philosophy', the [[psychoanalysis]] of [[Lacan]] and the [[Marxism]] of [[Althusser]], and from all those descriptions of [[decentringdecentering]] tha tdisplace the source of meaning away from the indiviudal (often described as the "Cartesian subject") and towards structures, impersonal or unconscious processes and [[ideology]].
For most theories of the [[subject]], the 'individual' is a product rather than a source of meaning.
The goal of much wiritng on the [[subject]] is to subvert that sense of immediate identity.
When [[Kristeva]], for instance, writes (1973) of 'un sujet en procEs'' she is playing on the double meaning of ''en procEs'': the [[subject]] is both invovled in or produced by a process, and on trial.
The inherent ambiguity of the term goes some way to explaining its popularity and productivity.
It is both a grammatical term ('the subject of a sentence') and a political-egal category ('a British subject'), and at once active ('subject of') and passive ('subject' or 'subjected to').
The term 'the subject' is not used in the [[phenomoneologyphenomenology]] of [[Sartre]] (who uses it only in critical discussions of [[structuralism]], e.g. 1966) or [[Merleau-Ponty]], but nor is it a standard expression in all forms of [[structuralism]]; [[Levi-Strauss]] very rarely employs it.
---
<references/>
{{Encore}} : [[CategorySubjects|Subject]], 65, 69, 127, 136 :: [[analysis]] and, 11, 13, 16-17 ::Jacques Lacan[[analyst's discourse]]and, 16-17, 126 :: [[Categorycastration]] and, 7, 72, 77, 99 :Subject: [[cause]] and, 109 :: [[fantasy]] and, 88 :: [[hysteric's discourse]] and, 16-17 :: [[knowledge]]and, 16-17, 67, 126 :: [[Categorytime|logical time]] of, 142 :Terms: represented by a [[signifier]] to another [[signifier]], 49-50, 142 :: [[time|temporal status]], 142 :: [[Categorytopology]] of, 11 :Concepts: [[unconscious]]and, 21, 37, 96, 98,142 :: [[Categoryuniversity discourse]] and, 16-17 :Psychoanalysis: ''See also'' [[Bar]]red [[Subjects|subject]]
