Conclusion: The Subject of Discourse

Abstract

By placing the problem of the subject in the center of their epistemological investigations, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida and Sollers made themselves the representatives of an anti-humanist moment in French intellectual life. Thus, in his ‘return to Freud,’ Lacan elaborates upon a split subject entangled in the pitfalls of the symbolic. For Althusser, taking up arms with Marx against humanism, individuals are hailed and recruited as the subjects of ideology. Foucault shows the historical limits of the figure of ‘Man,’ which he perceives as the product of a system of what can be said and thought. And by uncovering the aporias of living presence, Derrida formulates a critique of the idealist tradition, from Plato to Husserl.