The Death of the Subject

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For a long time I have sporadically encountered texts which talk about things like 'the death of the subject', 'the end of individualism', 'the collapse of the bourgeois humanist subject'. There are many more variants and consequences that might be listed. In general the theme is that in the C20 the individual self became outmoded and disappeared.

This view is quite widely quoted and espoused. But it seems to me utter hokum. Of all the claims made by the Humanities, it appears to be the most evidently false. My own guess is: insofar as the human subject is an historical entity (rather than a universal or unchanging one), the 'Western' self has not yet ceased to become more individualized, more subjective, more conscious, self-conscious and self-obsessed. Nothing could be less convincing than the claim that it has been decentred or collectivized into oblivion.

It may be a problem to run too many things together. Perhaps there are many claims being made about the subject, some more plausible than others. Perhaps there are still different forms of subjectivity in different parts of the world, so generalization is fraught. It would be unhelpful to meet implausible claims with bombastic denials.

Nonetheless, insofar as any clarity and commonality is perceptible here, I can see very little in the Death Of The Subject case, and much more in quite the reverse. Do you? Why has it become so easy to parrot a claim that appears false?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:33 (twenty-two years ago)

In general the theme is that in the C20 the individual self became outmoded and disappeared.

i agree with pf in that this is nonsense. the c20 is the century in which the individual became the subject? a process i dont see slowing down in any way

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:46 (twenty-two years ago)

francis fukuyama, sort of, to thread.

did he pull some kind of baudrillardian intellectual gymnastics to get out of that one, or did he just fade away? i forget

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:49 (twenty-two years ago)

What, the end of history?

I'm not aware that that was a death-of-the-subject line as well. I would guess that his liberal-democratic vision (that may be a generous name for it) did involve unified subjects. But his recent work on the implications of genetics or whatever might lead elsewhere.

He's still around, all right, and seeking to guide US foreign policy.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Fukuyama is all about the dangers of bio-tech these days - ie the threat to mature democracies isn't communism but the potential of new technology.

I think the "Death of the Subject" is a piece of Marxist wishful thinking on par with the phrase "late capitalism".

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Fukuyama is a short sighted idiot. Gareth and PF OTM re death of the subject. It seems an utterly bogus postion to take given what happened in the latter part of the 20th century.

― RickyT (RickyT), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Nipper: Yes, but is it distinctive to Marxism?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:56 (twenty-two years ago)

so what evidence do these writers put forward for the death of the subject? i presume they have based these claims on something ... (or maybe just a reaction to post-modernism?)

― David_X (David_X), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 12:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I think you could amply title my essay on Hate Crime (to be published academically soon!) as 'The Birth of the Subject', reading along your lines PF. If I give into my base weakness and post again here then it'll be a post explaining what my essay says / argues.

― David. (Cozen), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought this would be about ILX threads.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Me too. In the good old days of ilx threads were better titled.

― Mooro (Mooro), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

What pinefox says about the 'Western' self is 100% true, however 'the Western self' is starting to consciously become an 'object' to a hell of a lot more people all the time, and not a very pleasant or desirable one at that

― dave q, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:26 (twenty-two years ago)

you read yer emily dickinson and i, my robert frost, and we note our ...

oh fuck it, call the twee police on me.

― doom-e, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Malcolm Bradbury satirised such academics discussing the 'human subject' being 'a conjunction of known variables' and 'a bourgeois construct' etc etc in 'The History Man' about 30 years ago. So as academic scams go it's not even a new scam.

― Will, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 13:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Once upon a time, I used to take this stuff seriously. Now, in regards to the difficulty and obscurity of much postmodern theory, I just say, "It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care."

― daria g (daria g), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:11 (twenty-two years ago)

There is the argument that death of the subject stance leads to de-politicization, as there is no person who can be harmed by anything, and it makes it hard to point out dynamics of power in an actorless universe.
It's like using passive voice in a meta-sense.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

i thought the "death of the subject" was referring to the idea that the self is no longer viewed as a unified rational whole but as split, conflicted etc.

― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Thursday, 31 July 2003 03:10 (twenty-two years ago)

which puts the dialog into the area of psychology, not power and politics

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 31 July 2003 03:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree with pf the whole idea of the 'death of the subject' is nonsense. I've always assumed it to be a rumour stemming from over-reactions for and against the arrival of 'theory' in universities in the 70s. i.e. you're an evil bourgeois liberal humanist vs. you're an evil marxist death of the subject type. Both proceed from gross over-simplifications. The theorists were never trying to annihilate or destroy subjectivity, merely call into question the assumption that subjectivity was somehow free and spontaneous. Of course none of the humanists had ever really claimed that it *was*. So once again shades of grey were polarised into black and white in order to generate much light and heat and advance some careers. V. similiar thing happens in the 80s with New Historicism. New Historicists set up some ridiculous straw men to attack in order to proclaim themselves New and Radical; traditionalists believe the hype, rather than reading between the lines, and attack the New Historicists polemically rather than on the grounds that nothing they say makes much sense.

― alext (alext), Thursday, 31 July 2003 09:10 (twenty-two years ago)

That all sounds like a lot of fun to me.

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 31 July 2003 09:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Fuck me it's Will McKenzie!

― RickyT (RickyT), Thursday, 31 July 2003 09:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I hope Lucy Lurex is right, I might stand a chance of understanding it then.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 31 July 2003 09:32 (twenty-two years ago)

What's bullshit is the idea that a unified subject ever existed in the first place. The idea that people's habits and personalities aren't contingent on their situations and the company they keep is a total fiction, and an object of nostalgia in a Clint Eastwoody kind of way, but the question is, it's a fiction in aid of what?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 31 July 2003 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean, "subjective, more conscious, self-conscious and self-obsessed" qualities point to, in my view, a person open to becoming someone else, to developing his sensibilities to include feelings previously unthinkable, to [1000 plateaus word alert] "lines of flight" away from whoever he is now. It's what scares Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer"—traveling to Chicago almost makes him break down in cold sweats, he can feel a different vibe there, trying to tug him in new directions. But getting tugged in new directions is what subjects have always been about. The idea that people were once internally consistent, the same person in public as in private, the same person with their lover as with their bosses, is the new thing, here. It's the disease which has befallen The Moviegoer. Think of the Clint Eastwood movies you've seen where the whole point is his diabolical consistency of character through thick and thin.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 31 July 2003 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

RickyT, I thought the same thing...WILL!!!!

― chris (chris), Thursday, 31 July 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Ricky T and chris = OTM.

― rosemary (rosemary), Thursday, 31 July 2003 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

It really depends on what kind of theory you are attaching Death of the Subject to.
I'm puzzled by it being referred to as a marxist concept: I associate it with post-structuralism and post-modernism, and see it as standing in opposition to marxism, because marxism is first and foremost a *material* theory that concerns itself with the workings of power. Although Rosemary Hennessey makes the argument that discourse can become material, this is the exception rather than the rule (see Hennessy, R. 1993 _Materialist feminism and the politics of discourse_)

I think the way this is talked about differs across fields: film theory vs. women's studies vs. cultural studies vs. sociology of culture vs. literary criticism etc etc.

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 31 July 2003 16:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I associate the phrase with Marxism mostly because of Freddie Parrotface Jameson, who wrote about how modernism (and romanticism) were "organically linked to the conception of a unique self and private identity" that in turn generates "its own unique vision of the world and [forges] its own unique, unmistakable style." I kind of think FJ is saying hats off to the end of all that bourgeois Great Man business.

I agree with Tracer about the incoherence of the subject across a variety of discourses - but, in a romantic, Rortean way, I see that incoherence as something to be ideally overcome by the attempt towards some kind of autonomy and self-authoring.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 31 July 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't see how that Jameson quote makes it marxist, though. It a feint away from marxism; away from class conflict. That's just the way I read it.

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 31 July 2003 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah tracer OTM

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 31 July 2003 19:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Speaking of Great Men, does anyone remember how one of the big citicisms of Clinton was that he "compartmentalized" things? I say: at least he had compartments.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 31 July 2003 19:30 (twenty-two years ago)

lincoln kept it all in the same wardrobe and had to keep the door shut with a broom jammed under the door-handle

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 31 July 2003 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Great to see Will is still lurking around. Just did a search and found up he popped up in June on some thread about Stratford too..

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 31 July 2003 22:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Tracer H: define 'unified'. I agree about contingency, diversity etc, but would still pragmatically say that we are as unified are we are non-unified.

I don't have time to say more right now.

― the pinefox, Friday, 1 August 2003 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm someone who takes people's accents and habits when I'm around them. I'm like a sponge. But I know people who aren't like this as much, they always seem themselves. I envy these people. It might be because they seem closer to being a "unified" subject than I am, but I'm not sure why this is good or why I should envy it.

I think Jerry's onto something with what he says about self-authoring. The power of many of Eastwood's performances comes from his visible effort to overcome the temptation to behave variably within a heavily fissured social landscape. You can see him steeling himself, determined to project a unified outlook and attitude. I imagine Clint gruffly arguing with a rattlesnake to get out of his way, in the exact same "make my day" voice. He would make such a BAD undercover cop.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 1 August 2003 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

It's also what makes Eastwood's on-screen "romances" so odd—he treats the ladies just like he treats the men!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 1 August 2003 20:38 (twenty-two years ago)

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