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 [[decentering]] 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 concept of the subject is thus frequently invoked to undermine the notion that an innate sense of 'self' can provide a stable personal identity or be the focus of experience.
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 [[phenomenology]] 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.
---
[[Lacan]] refers to 'the subject' in his very first publications but when he refers in his thesis (1932) to 'the psychosis of our subject,' he is imply following the convnetional medical-psychiatric usage that speaks of 'the subject of an experiment' or of 'the subject under examination.'
In his other prewar writings [[Lacan]] refers to the [[analysand]], or the [[patient]] in [[analysis]], as 'the subject'; this too appears to be a variant on traditional usage.
It is in the 1950s that [[Lacan]] introduces the crucial distinction between [[ego]] and [[subject]] (1953).
The [[ego]] is now described as a product of the [[mirror stage]] and as belonging to the [[order]] of the [[imaginary]], whilst the [[subject]] is understood to mean "the subject of the unconscious."
In a typical display of wordplay, [[Lacan]] makes his point by stressing the homophony between the initial letter of the word ''sujet'' and the German ''Es'' (the [[id]]).
The true subject of human behavior is to be found, that is, in the [[unconscious]].
The entry of the [[subject]] into the dimension of the [[symbolic]] produces a further splitting or decentring of the [[subject]] by subordinating (subjecting) it to the laws of [[language]] and to the unavoidable difference between the [[subject]] of the utterance (EnoncE) and the [[subject]] of the [[enunciation]] (Enonciation): the "I" that speaks does not coincide with the "i" that appears in the message it sends.
--
[[Lacan]] uses the related expression "the subject who is suppose dto know" (''le sujet supposE savoir'') to describe an important dimension of the [[transference]] (1973).
thus it is the [[analysand]]'s supposition that the [[analyst]] knows the meaning of his words or has a privileged insight into his behavior that sets in motion the [[transference]].
--
[[Althusser]] uses '[[subject]]' in a broadly similar sense to [[Lacan]] in his theory of [[ideology]] and in his description of its fundamental mechanism of [[interpellation]] (1970); the [[subject]] does not exist prior to its [[interpellation]], but is summoned into being by it.
For [[Althusser]], the existence of 'over-determination' means that the social totality has no essence or single focus, and therefore no subject.
It follows that history is a process without subject and that individuals are no more than the 'supports' for a subjectless [[dialectic]].
----------------
A basic distinction in philosophy is the difference between subject and [[object]].
We recognize this distinction in our terms "objective" (dealing strictly with the knowledge derived from our observation) and "subjective" (reacting in a manner based on emotions and attitudes of an individual).
<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]]
