The Trouble with

Subjects:
Feminism, Marxism
and the Questions
of Poststructuralism
ELEANOR MACDONALD
ntroduction A prominent theme of poststructuralist

I theory is that the "subject" is a problematic concept.

In taking this position, poststructuralism is not alone. 1
The status of the subject has long been at issue in Marxist
debates about ideology, agency, structure, interests, and rep-
resentation, to name only a few. Feminist theory, too, has
challenged the notion of the subject in its attention to ques-
tions of identity, gender, rationality, and individuality. In
the shared questioning of the subject, poststructuralist
theorists, Marxists, and feminists have occasionally dis-
covered affinity in their intellectual projects.
The common problematization of the subject, then,
provides an interesting opportunity to evaluate poststruc-
turalist theory in its relationship to feminist and Marxist
political concerns. On the one hand, feminism and Marxism
are motivated by a need to resolve certain theoretical ques-
tions concerning the subject in order to facilitate social
change. Poststructuralism, on the other hand, tends to be
cynical about the possibility of social change, or of any
link between theoretical understanding and change. But
poststructuralist theory is not monolithic either, and the dif-
ferent positions taken by such thinkers as Jacques Lacan,
Iulia Kriste'ia, Jacques Demda and Michel Foucault are

Studies in Political Economy 35, Summer 1991 43

Studies in Political Economy

useful in initiating discussion about the subject which may,

in turn, prove useful for feminism and Marxism.s
My intention here is to explore the problematization of
the subject by examining its implications for Marxist and
feminist theory and their relationship to poststructuralist
theory. In the first section of the paper, I schematically lay
out the reasons why the subject has always been problematic
for feminist and Marxist theorists. My concern in providing
a brief summation of some of the issues involved is not to
enter into the debates within Marxist or feminist theory
about the subject, rationality, or social change. Rather, my
point is simply to suggest the myriad ways in which the
subject has arisen as a concern within these theoretical
problematics. The second section of the paper is devoted
to explaining the way in which the subject has been
theorized by poststructuralists. I found it useful to make a
distinction between poststructuralist theories which base
their deconstruction of the subject on language (Lacan, Der-
rida, Kristeva have been chosen for examples), and the work
of Foucault, also a poststructuralist, whose ideas concerning
the subject are less concerned with the structure of language
than with his notions of discourse and his understanding of
power. The particular ways in which poststructuralism treats
the subject are instructive about the broader themes of
poststructuralist thought, and helpful for a discussion of the
relationship between poststructuralism and politics. In the
final section of the paper, I conclude by indicating some
parallel treatments of the subject by poststructuralist
theorists on the one hand, and Marxist and feminist theorists
on the other. I argue that the recovery of a "subject" in
some form is one aspect of all of these theories, but the
ways in which this is accomplished and grounded have im-
portant political implications which we would do well to
recognize.
The Subject in Question What is challenged in the
poststructuralist, feminist and Marxist critiques of subjec-
tivity is what is often called the "Cartesian subject." Des-
cartes, writing at a time in history when the grounding of
the subject in relation to God and Ie\igious\~ sanctioned

44
 MacDonald/Subjects

social hierarchies had lost its hold, sought to reestablish

the subject's self-certainty. He did this by asserting the
ability of subjects to reason their own existence. Out of
this arose a theory of the subject as unitary, autonomous,
individualist, and rational. The subject's use of reason, as
Descartes described it, presumed the possibility of an un-
problematic relationship between reality and its accurate
representation in thought. This reality was not a sensory
one, but one dependent upon logic. And Descartes' emphasis
on reason corresponded to the self-understanding of the new
political actor - the economic maximizer, the rational self-
interested choice-maker. As an autonomous and rational sub-
ject, this actor had control over and made the decisions
which shaped the political world. Within a liberal model
of politics, this view of the subject still prevails.
Outside the liberal problematic, the situation is different,
and this faith in the subject's autonomy, rationality, and
representation has been thrown into doubt. The history of
Marxist theory, for example, can be characterized as one
of internal debate over such issues as economic and struc-
tural determination versus class struggle and revolution, the
ideological mystification of commodities and capitalist rela-
tions against the scientific truth or critical reflexivity of
Marxist analysis, and mass struggle versus the need for a
vanguard party or "organic" intellectual leadership.
A cursory review of some of the debates within Marxism
is useful in revealing some of the implications of a non-
Cartesian view of the subject. Marxist theory, for example,
in its discussion of ideology, has thrown questions of rep-
resentation and rationality into doubt. Marx's analysis of
commodity fetishism, and of surplus labour, portrayed an
essential mystification between reality and appearance, be-
tween reality and its representation in thought} This dis-
tortion of representation, and the impossibility of disinterested
representation, contradicted faith in any unmediated relation-
ship between subjects and their world.f
Additionally, the individualism of the Cartesian subject
was undermined in Marx's ambivalent positing either of
class as the significant agent for social change, or of the
dynamics of capital as required for that change. The question

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Studies in Political Economy

of the subject's identity was initially understood as given

in Marxist analysis - the subject's class membership settled
the issue. But the reluctance of workers to assume the mantle
of a revolutionary class raised serious doubts about class
consciousness and its role in social change. So, too, did
the importance of a Marxist analysis for the Marxist project
suggest the importance of the party and of intellectuals in
leading revolutionary change. That is, in debates over class
consciousness, some theorists suggested that it did not arise
spontaneously, but only as a result of party formation, class
leadership, or the conscious creation by an enlightened cadre
of a successful "counter-hegemonic" position. Lenin's work
was seen to privilege some subjects, the revolutionary van-
guard, over others.s Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony
further developed the theorization of the subject. His dis-
cussion of "subjectivities" and of "organic" intellectuals pro-
blematized questions of common-sense, individual choice,
and individual coherence in the making of revolutionary
subjects.f More recently, Adam Przeworski has discussed
the significant role of the party in class formation, especially
in the weakening of class composition through the alliance
building and reformism of the welfare state,"
When the Frankfurt School attempted to synthesize
Freudian psychoanalysis with Marxist politics, new debates
emerged. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer despaired
of the possibility of a revolutionary subject, and turned in-
stead to theorizing the prospects for a type of reason which
could supplant the instrumental reason of the Enlighten-
ment.f Herbert Marcuse still fostered revolutionary dreams
but turned to student and Third World movements to find
his revolutionary subject.?
Louis Althusser adapted structuralism to the Marxist
project, theorizing the constitution of subjects through
ideological state apparatuses, and positing the relative
autonomy of the state from the economy in order to account
for the distinction between knowledge (which was ideologi-
cal) and reality. While Althusser's work apparently deprived
the subject-person of an important role in social change,
his ideas also transferred the ideal of the subject (its
rationality and agency) onto the social and economic struc-

46
 MacDonald/Subjects

tures.l? E.P. Thompson formulated a "humanist" rejoinder

to Althusser which returned agency and reason to the subject
(the working class), and which privileged experience and
activity as the sources from which a "truer" reason and
political action might emerge.U In each of these construc-
tions of the subject, and many others, some aspect of the
Cartesian subject is disputed, while belief in the Cartesian
subject is often explained as conducive to the maintenance
of capitalism.
Much feminist theory has also had occasion to question
Descartes' view of the subject. Descartes' subject, many
feminists point out, is a masculine one, both in his ability
to exercise an autonomy and individuality that were only
the prerogative of men, and in the values of superiority that
were assigned to those terms.12 Women's experience of
reality, according to a wide range of theorists, is more rela-
tional and "connected" than men's, and thus gives rise to
different values and politics.U Furthermore, since the Car-
tesian subject can only truly act according to the principles
of autonomy and reason in the public world, the affective
world of private life is denied or devalued, as are women's
lives, generally more embedded in the private sphere.
The contention that the Cartesian subject is an already
gendered subject has raised another issue of concern to
feminists. How do individuals become gendered, and how
has a hierarchy of values been assigned to those genders?
Not only is the devaluation of women and femininity op-
pressive, but so is gender itself, since it entails the assig-
nation of social relevance to sexual differences. The
problematization of an aspect of the subject's self-under-
standing at the very basic level of gender identity served
to undercut all Cartesian confidence in the subject's origin
as lying in herself and not in the world outside. Many
feminists have thus taken up a position against the Cartesian
subject, precisely because they have not been able to accept
the belief in the subject's conscious self-creation, nor the
idea that gender identity or gender attributes are grounded
in any sexually determined essence.l"
One of the most fruitful arenas in which feminism has
explored the constitution of gender and of the gendered

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subject has been psychoanalytic theory. Juliet Mitchell's at-

tempt to "save Freud for feminism" was based on a recog-
nition that Freud's theory of the unconscious provided a
useful description of the internalization (in the unconscious)
of misogyny, in both men and women, and the consequent
implications of that for feminism.P Nancy Chodorow's
work, modelled on the object relations school of psycho-
analysis, illustrates the ways in which the relations of
mothers to infants produce different types of subjects.
Women, according to Chodorow, experience the world more
in relational terms, as a result of the way in which they
were mothered.If They are less likely than men, she sug-
gests, to feel their identity as fixed or autonomous, and are
inclined to have a fluid, not wholly determined sense of
themselves. Carol Gilligan makes use of Chodorow's work
in order to show how the female subject, as a result of this
early formation, is predisposed to have ethical interpreta-
tions of the world and moral responses which are different
from those of men.l? Jessica Benjamin develops Chodorow's
ideas to explain how women are likely to become complicit
in, even possibly desirous of, their own oppression. IS
The issue of identity has also been important for feminist
theory as it grapples not only with its relation to class
politics, but also the politics of race, ethnicity, sexual orien-
tation, location, and so forth. To speak as a feminist has
sometimes been to privilege gender politics over other kinds
of politics, and has often, therefore, served to exclude other
identities.l? To speak as a "woman," on behalf of women,
has also been, in many cases to universalize what being a
woman is and - most often - to attempt to treat the white,
middle class, educated, North American woman as the
universal subject of feminist politics.
Feminist and Marxist debates about the subject thus
reveal the profoundly political implications of discarding
Descartes' assumptions about individualism, rationality,
autonomy and essential humanism. These theories, in
various ways, have problematized some aspects of the Car-
tesian subject. And yet, it is also plain that feminism and
Marxism are not willing to abandon the subject altogether.
The project of "putting the subject into question" has a

48
 MacDonald/SubJects

political purpose, which is often to empower the subject

through an increase in his or her ability to act, to reason,
to be aware of his or her creation, and therefore to increase
the subject's own capacity for self-creation. The criticism
of the Cartesian subject is spurred, in part, by a desire still
to be a subject, often with the recognition that the ability
to act as a subject, however deceptive that may be or has
been, is an ability which has rarely been exercised by the
majority of people. As radical, therefore, as this subject-
critique may be, the general impulse of Marxism and
feminism has been to retain some faith in agency, truth,
and the power of collective action. As Nancy Hartsock,
speaking from a socialist feminist position, has asked in a
trenchant critique of the poststructuralist theorization of the
subject,

Why is it, just at the moment in Westernhistory when previously

silenced populations have begun to speak for themselves and
on behalf of their subjectivities, that the concept of the subject
and the possibility of discovering/creating a liberating 'truth'
become suspect?20

Poststructuralism 1. The Subject in Language While

feminist and Marxist theorists debate the political
problematization of the subject, it is poststructuralist theory
which has become notorious for its depiction of the fractured
subject, the death of the subject, the dispersal of subjec-
tivities, the subject traversed by discourses and so forth.
The political impetus for these theorizations of the subject
is less apparent than in Marxist and feminist accounts, but
the determination of the analyses to destroy all faith in the
notion of the subject is clearly more intense.
Overwhelmingly, the direction of poststructuralist
thought has been to emphasize the "constituted" nature of
the subject - not merely of aspects of the subject (e.g. its
location at the individual level, its supposed autonomy, in-
tegrity, or rationality), but the very constitution of subjec-
tivity per se. In locating this process of constitution at the
level of language structure and acquisition, poststructuralist
theory indicates both the inevitability of experiencing "sub-
ject-ness" and also its equally unavoidable emptiness. This

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double problem of the subject can be seen in a consideration

of the poststructuralist theories of Lacan, Derrida and Kris-
teva, For each of these theorists, language is the point of
departure in the formation of the subject.
Lacan's reading of Freud is often credited with initiating
poststructuralism's recasting of the theory of subjectivity.
His work is an attempt to combine Freudian psychoanalysis
with Saussurian linguistics, locating the formation of the
unconscious in linguistic structures. According to Lacan,
the subject is inherently nonidentical with itself, and in a
chronic state of denying its own fractured and non-self-
identical existence. Subjectivity, he posits, is a fictional con-
struct of language, the result of two factors. First, the
immaturity of the human infant leads it, during its develop-
ment, to deny its dependence and incoherence by projecting
an image of itself onto others (and most specifically onto
the mother) whom it sees as being autonomous and com-
plete. This projection of the imagined coherence of the other
onto the self creates an "Ideal-I,' a "fictional" subject, and
in taking this inevitable step in human maturation, the child
enters into the realm which Lacan calls "the Imaginary."

This form would have to be called the Ideal-I if we wished to

incorporate it into our usual register, in the sense that it will
also be the source of secondary identifications, under which
term I would place the functions of libidinal normalization, But
the important point is that this form situates the agency of the
ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction,
which will always remain irreducible alone, or rather, which
will only rejoin the coming-into-being of the subject asymptoti-
cally, whatever the success of the dialectical synthesis by which
he must resolve as "I" his discordance with his own reality.21

This "imaginary" construction of itself and others is sup-

ported by structures of language, which reinforce the fiction
of the subject by denying the inherent and necessary split
in the linguistic representation of objects. That is, in using
language, it is always assumed that the word bears some
kind of direct relationship to its referent. This assumption
came under scrutiny in Saussurian linguistic theory, which
made distinctions among the signifier (the word) and the
signified (the concept, or the object of reference). The

50
 MacDonald/Subjects

child's "Ideal-I," or projection of an image onto itself lays

the ground for its acquisition of language, and the projection
of an ideal completion of the signified in the signifier.
Lacan calls the entry of the child into language the entry
into the Symbolic. The child represses the infantile Imagi-
nary, in which it is completely identified with the other,
and assumes its own subjectivity in the acquisition of lan-
guage. This shift to the Symbolic occurs because, despite
its original identification with the mother, the child cannot
help but experience its growing separation from her as a
lack. Speech is therefore, first, the expression of demand.
And because speech always falls short of what is needed,
(the signifier can never fully express the signified, the lack-
ing object), the lack persists. This continuous lack is desire.
And it is the cumulative effect of continued unsatisfied and
unsatisfiable desire that gives the self its continuity.22 The
subject is therefore split - it lacks the completion and sense
of wholeness it most wants - and yet it is this very lack,
and the continual reinforcement of this lack, which produces
something which we recognize as a subject. 23
The order of language, and especially its intrinsic dis-
simulation (the necessary presentation of words as if they
had an unproblematic and direct reference to their objects),
determine the structures of the child's unconscious. The
desire of the child to be whole and self-certain appears to
be accomplished in language (because of language's ability
to deny the split between the signifier and the signified)
but not without denying and repressing its own sense of a
loss of completeness. The project of Lacanian psycho-
analysis is not to establish the subject as a freer or less
neurotic person, but to recover a knowledge of the uncon-
trolled, pre-linguistic non-subject, that is the primary con-
dition of all humanity.24
Jacques Derrida's work has also deconstructed the subject
through an analysis of language. He differs from Lacan in
focussing not on the psychological processes of language
acquisition but rather on the dividing and dissembling nature
of language itself. According to Derrida, language depends
upon the very thing that its appearance of referentiality
denies, which he calls differance. Differance refers to what

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language depends upon - both the need to differentiate

among objects (to make distinctions), and the need to defer
temporally, across time. That is, language never actually
refers to objects or concepts, but can only arise because of
the differences among and between objects. Differences
among objects are what give them their meaning, and this
meaning is in constant flux because of the changing relation-
ships among objects over time and space. Language, how-
ever, can never capture differance, since it is constituted
as reference, as the reference of a word to an object.25
Derrida writes differance with an "a" (rather than
difference with an "e") because its distinctiveness as a term
is then one that can only be registered in writing and not
in pronunciation (phonetically). He makes this distinction
because he wishes to make a point about language generally,
that is that language has a tendency to privilege presence,
such as the presence of the speaking subject, over absence,
including historical absence or loss. The present speaker
gives an authenticity to language's referentiality which, he
claims, is diminished in writing, with the loss of certainty
as to authorship or audience. As well, language privileges
identity (the identification of the signifier with the signified,
and the identification of signifieds which have the same
signifier, i.e. members of a category) over non-identity or
differences - on which indeed the appearance of identity
depends.
The notion of the subject acts as a foundation in this
dissemblance of language concerning itself, its operations
and its origins. Subjects are constituted by language and in
their constitution as such, contribute to and continue in
language's mystification of differance. In writing about his
project of "grammatology" (the study of the history of the
gramme, or of differance), Derrida shows how his project
and its understanding of language is subversive of humanism,
scientific epistemology, and linear forms of rationality.
Differance, he hopes, will introduce new ways of thinking
that are "pluridimensional," "non-linear," and therefore
revolutionary in their concepts of humanity.

52
 MacDonald/Subjects

The access to pluridimensionality and to delinearized tem-

porality is not a simple regression toward the "mythogram"; on
the contrary, it makes all the rationality subjected to the linear
model appear as another form and another age of mythography.
The meta-rationality or the meta-scientificity which are thus
announced within the meditation upon writing can therefore be
no more shut up within a science of man than conform to the
traditional idea of science. In one and the same gesture they
leave man, science, and the line behind.26

Julia Kristeva also takes up the project of the subversion

of Western thought and of the Cartesian subject. In her writ-
ing, Kristeva attempts to link the analysis of language and
of signs to the biological drives discussed by Freud, and
the biological experiences (especially of being mothered)
in early childhood. To do so, she connects the divided sub-
ject (conscious/unconscious) of Freudian and Lacanian
psychoanalysis to the divided sign (signifier/signified) of
Saussurian linguistics. This connection allows her to suggest
that there is a possible interplay between unconscious,
biological drives and experiences, on the one hand, and
signifying operations (naming, providing meaning) on the
other hand. The determinant character of signification over
experience, in her analysis, precludes any kind of reciprocal,
mutual influence. "The point," she maintains, "is not to
replace the semiotics of signifying systems by considera-
tions on the biological code appropriate to those employing
them - a tautological exercise, after all, since the biological
code has been modelled on the language system."27
Nevertheless, the quality of biological drives, both in
their multiplicity and heterogeneity, and in their quest for
pleasure, indicate that they have the ability to disrupt the
dominant signifying system. Kristeva calls this system, after
Lacan, the Symbolic, and like Lacan, criticizes the subject
which has been constructed in it. But disruption of the Sym-
bolic is possible, she suggests, when the unconscious,
biological subject is expressed through other signifying
practices, such as rhythm, music, dance, and poetry, a realm
of expression which Kristeva calls the Semiotic. The origin
of the Semiotic is in the early pre-Oedipal attachment to
one's mother, re-experienced by the adult woman in her

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Studies in Political Economy

own desire to become a mother. This desire, Kristeva ex-

presses as "a whirl of words, a complete absence of meaning
and seeing; it is feeling, displacement, rhythm, sound,
flashes, and a fantasied clinging to the maternal body as a
screen against the plunge. "28
Kristeva's deconstruction of the Symbolic subject, and
her advocacy of a revolution in poetic language is proffered
in the hope that poetic language would put a heterogeneous
self in the place of the unitary subject.

It [poetic language] implicates a knowing subject within an

analytic relationship to language, within a constant questioning
of the symbolic and its subject, within a perpetual struggle with
no possible philosophical relaxation. Such a discourse an-
nounces what seems required by an eventual ideological
renewal: the awakening of subjects.29

The poststructuralist account of the subject's constitution

in language thus takes a variety of forms. There are, how-
ever, similarities to be found among all of these accounts.
For example, for each of these theorists, the perspective
from which the subject is deconstructed must be created
from a position outside that subjectivity. They are non-self-
reflexive about their ability to theorize outside of the limita-
tions on the subject which they present. Moreover, each
deconstructive perspective privileges one element of an "ex-
ternal" subjectivity, as it were, a subject position outside
of the recognized borders of the subject. For example, Lacan
calls upon a structural explanation, in which the structures
of the conscious/unconscious can be known and the ego's
subjectivity understood as a product of such structures.
Derrida's theory requires that we look at language itself as
a system which effaces its origins and the conditions of its
own sense. The logic of difRrance, or of the supplement,
as he calls it, calls us to partake in a rationality in which
our everyday reason, and our everyday subject-ness are im-
plicated. And Kristeva's 'deconstruction of the subject ul-
timately posits the priority of another subject - one which
is heterogeneous and creative, as well as being able to en-
compass language in its rhythmic, poetic state.

54
 MacDonald/Subjects

The ability of these theorists to speak from outside sub-

jectivity, from a superior rationality, or from alternative ex-
periences, is interesting on several counts. One problem with
these critiques of the subject is, ironically, that they may
not be able to withstand their own criticisms of "traditional"
theory, and so can themselves be subjected to a form of
immanent critique. For example, if Derrida's assertion of a
primary condition of language, which language denies, is
true, then surely this is also something which could be dis-
covered and demonstrated within the very form of logic
and rationality which he denounces (i.e. that of language).
He offers an interpretation of reality which he suggests is
an accurate account of reality, and therefore he leaves his
work open to the same type of critique he makes against
Cartesian rationality, that attempts to reflect reality in reason
are destined to failure. Similarly, Kristeva's critique of the
subject and symbolic meaning asserts that all meaning
belongs to the level of signification and the Symbolic.
Despite this, her valorization of the Semiotic depends on
treating as essential certain meanings in the pre-Oedipal
experience, meanings that can then be expressed through
non-symbolic forms such as music and dance. Lacanian
psychoanalysis provides a critique of the subject which, it
is hoped, will cause us to question our faith in an original
autonomous subject, present at birth. Lacan presents the
subject as fiction, the truth of language as a dissemblance
of desire - and yet persuades us of the critical necessity
of this revelation through traditional logic. This is a logic,
moreover, which speaks of the universality of the human
condition and its truths.
An additional disturbing feature of these critiques, there-
fore, is that their analysis of the subject is non-historical
and culturally non-specified. The type of subject which lan-
guage creates is inseparable from the fact of language itself,
even where it can be differently disguised in different lan-
guages. The problem which they are discussing then be-
comes an endemic feature of the human condition. Indeed,
it becomes as universalized, non-relational, and rationally
discoverable as the Cartesian subject itself, something which
their critiques of the subject do not reflect.

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The universalization of the Cartesian subject, and its

generalization across time has implications as well for the
subversive character of the poststructuralist theories which
denounce it. Their critiques are both privileged and of
dubious effectiveness. While Lacanian or Kristevan
psychoanalytic treatment might be capable of producing a
"heterogeneous self' who recognizes an inner capacity to
experience outside the symbolic, this is unlikely to become
a generalizable experience. Even less likely is the prospect
that we shall all embark upon Derridean textual deconstruc-
tions in order to reveal the production of meanings within
texts and the necessity of undermining their arbitrary boun-
daries.
These subversions of the subject are not only limited
because of a lack of access. They are also limited because
their very nature is reactive. Derrida can only deconstruct
texts, he cannot create them. Differance is always only a
play on existing texts, and a transformation of them which
reveals the "truths" of differance. Kristeva, too, knows that
once the heterogeneous biological impulses she postulates
are spoken of, they are lost for their radical moment. "As
soon as it [the semiotic] speaks about it [these biological
operations], it homogenizes the phenomenon, links it with
a system, loses hold of it. "30 The dominance of significa-
tions can be challenged, therefore, but it can never be
replaced. There is, outside of logic, no escape from existing
texts or existing psychic structures. For Lacan, the relation-
ship to others is given in its significance already. For Der-
rida, the relationships of difference among things, that
differance which language requires but never reveals, is also
already established and inaccessible to intervention or criti-
que.
Finally, what this suggests is that within the broader criti-
que of the subject, of Cartesian rationality, or of language,
no other distinctions can be made. As each text or symbol
is scrutinized for its participation in the larger system (and
there are unique contributions made on these counts) no
evaluation of the particular relationships among texts is at-
tempted. The subjectivity of, for example, a white, North
American, male who is head of a corporation is not under-

56
 MacDonald/SubJects

stood differently from the subjectivities of the immigrant

women of colour who are his employees, and who may
assert their subjectivity, their agency and rationality, in order
to organize for their own class, race, and gender interests
against their employer.
In the final section of the paper, I will be returning to
these critiques. Before doing so, it is useful to consider the
work of Michel Foucault, also a poststructuralist theorist
who has made unique contributions to the question of the
subject.
Poststructuralism 2: The Subject in Discourse Michel
Foucault's work stands slightly apart from that of the other
poststructuralists. For one thing, his work does theorize
about the production of different kinds of subjects, and he
discusses their production in historical terms. His ability to
do this is a result of his use of the concept "discourse," as
opposed to the emphasis of the other poststructuralist
theorists on language itself.
Foucault developed his notion of "discourse" first in his
earlier studies of psychology, madness, and health, studies
in which he describes his methodology as a form of "ar-
cheology." His intent was to suspend the kinds of questions
which had been asked about previous discourses, about their
truth-value, about scientific progress within them, or about
their hidden meanings. Instead, Foucault wanted simply to
present discourses as surface phenomena. He proposed dis-
cursive analysis as a way of studying how different state-
ments and practices produce different subjectivities. With
this aim, he catalogued a history of insanity in Madness
and Civilization,31 and a history of medical treatment in
The Birth of the Clinic.32 By the time he wrote The Order
of Things, he was prepared to argue that the discourses
which he was surveying could be grouped into three his-
torical epochs: the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and the
Modern Age. Each of these "epistemes," as he referred to
them, contained its own internal logic, and obeyed its own
rules in the production of discourses and therefore, in the
discursive production of subjects. The Renaissance Age was
characterized by a logic of resemblance, the Classical Age

57

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Studies in Political Economy

by a logic of representation, and the Modern age by the

logic surrounding "man," or the subject.
This last age, which Foucault dated from the French
Revolution, is one already characterized by the antinomies
highlighted in poststructuralist (and, as I argued in the early
section of this paper, Marxist and feminist) thought.

[Ethnology and psychoanalysis never] come near to a general

concept of man: at no moment do they come near to isolating
a quality in him that is specific, irreducible and uniformly valid
wherever he is given experience.... Not only are they able to
do without the concept of man, they are also unable to pass
through it, for they always address themselves to that which
constitutes his outer limits.... [S]ince Totem and Taboo, the
establishment of a common field for these two, the possibility
of a discourse that could move from one to the other without
discontinuity, the double articulation of the history of in-
dividuals upon the unconscious of culture, and of the historicity
of those cultures upon the unconscious of individuals, has
opened up, without doubt, the most general problems that can
be posed with regard to man .... [They show that] the signifying
chain by which the unique experience of the individual is con-
stituted is perpendicular to the formal system on the basis of
which the significations of a culture are constituted,33

The intention of The Order of Things was, however, to

delineate the rules of playing out these dilemmas of sub-
jectivity - the possible permutations and combinations of
the antinomies faced by the Modern Age. Foucault's attempt
to systematize discourses, in this book and in the Archeology
of Knowledge, was eventually abandoned. He left the search
for discursive regularities when he realized that he could
no longer maintain the stance of objectivity required in "ar-
cheological" work. He became aware that his perceptions
in examining historical discourses, his choice of statements,
or of fields for examination, always revealed a "motivated"
character. This was the case whether he was motivated in
Madness and Civilization to consider the systematic ex-
clusion of the "Other," or in the Order of Things, to privilege
the organization of knowledge.
Foucault then turned to the aspect of his work he called
"genealogical."34 In genealogy, he found a method which
CQuldjustify a ~~history of the present." That is, Foucault

58
 MacDonald/Subjects

used genealogy to observe the detailed occurrences and

practices of the past with a view to their productive moment,
to witness their effects in the present, without ascribing
intentionality to those practices.
The effect of this shift on Foucault's work was to bring
a new emphasis to considerations of power. He began to
theorize the close interrelationship of knowledge with power
in the succession of discourses which he had analyzed. In
Discipline and Punish, he described how punishment by
torture, proper to the Renaissance, involved a public display
of the power of the sovereign.35 While this was effective,
it also required frequent, even constant, reassertion. The
punishment of the Classical Age, by contrast, had the
prisoner on display, paying dues for the crime committed
in the form of public works which were appropriate to the
criminal act. This form of discipline involved the instate-
ment of the state's rationality throughout society. The im-
prisonment of the modern criminal, especially in the
Panopticon designed by Jeremy Bentham, is an even more
efficient and more pervasive practice of power. The prisoner,
unable to know at what moment the guard is on observation,
learns to practice a constant self-surveillance.
Self-surveillance, self-scrutiny, the incessant production
of knowledge about the internal thoughts, desires, fantasies
of the individual has been brought to new heights, according
to Foucault, in the contemporary discourses around sex. In
The History of Sexuality, VoU, Foucault revealed how
sexual self-knowledge, and the injunction to pursue it (in
order to know the truth of oneself) produce a subject con-
stantly engaged in the process of self-regulation and nor-
malization.Js The subject produces him or herself as a
normalized subject whose actions and desires are increas-
ingly knowable and predictable. This subject then becomes
ever more available to be used and controlled, thus facilitat-
ing the connection between knowledge and power.
This production of subjects, the encroachment of power
into ever more minute areas of the psyche and the body,
through discourses which enjoin the subject to participate
in his or her own subjection, is Foucault's major contribu-
tion to the theory of the subject. It is also a significant

59
Studies in Political Economy

feature of Foucault's intellectual enterprise that he was criti-

cal of the mechanisms and techniques of power, and that
he advocated resistance.
Yet this criticism, and the desire to find or produce
another form of subjectivity indicate several difficulties in
Foucault's work.37 One of these is the absence of any foun-
dation for an ethical resistance to the normalized subject.
Unlike the linguistic poststructuralists whose work calls
upon a truth that precedes language (either in the formation
of individual subjects or in the formation of language itself),
Foucault cannot search outside the truths about the produc-
tion of the subject which he has revealed for other, better,
more complete, or more essentially human subjects. He can-
not call the process of normalization a distortion, since he
is not able to assume that any form of the subject is anything
other than a discursive creation.
In addition to leaving his ethical criticisms of the modern
subject without a theoretical foundation, Foucault's work
on the subject also contains a number of practical difficul-
ties. The subject, as Foucault describes him or her, is
produced by discourses (including discursive practices).
These discourses would appear to respond to the mechanisms
of power - power which is constantly obeying its own internal
logic, a logic of increasingly efficient organization, and
regularized production of its activities. Within such a system
it is difficult to imagine how oppositional discourses could
gain any strength. Moreover, it would be hard to argue that
once they did, they would not also, of necessity, conform
to the very functioning of power which they were intending
to resist, thereby extending the normalizing and regulatory
function of power rather than escaping or destroying it.
Further to this, Foucault cannot explain where such resis-
tance would emerge, or how its discourses would themselves
be produced. There are a number of possibilities one can
reflect upon in this regard. One is that oppositional dis-
courses would emerge from some type of physical resistance
to the technologies enacted upon the body. This option
would necessitate theorizing an essential nature to human
embodiedness, something which Foucault, despite his inter-
est in the body, never does. Another possibility, apparent

60
 MacDonald/Su bj ects

in his description of "fields of power relations" is that there

would exist sites not yet traversed by the operations of
power, which would therefore still be resistant to its im-
position. Once again, however, this is problematic. If these
sites are not organized into any discourse, any set of mean-
ings or practices, then wherein lies the ability to resist? If
they are organized, then how are they, and according to
what logic - a previous and outmoded one, or spontaneous,
completely arbitrary one? It is not clear whether either of
these options are possible. And because Foucault's discourse
theory does not suggest that it is subjects or practices which
produce discourses, but rather the reverse, he cannot logi-
cally locate sites of resistance.
A related concern with Foucault's interpretation of the
subject in history, is his final depiction of the progress of
power in history. It appears that, although he originally
denied rational progress, his theory of power/knowledge
suggests an inevitable movement in history which the sub-
ject cannot alter or affect. This is a movement of increasing
rationalization, which differs from the Enlightenment view
of progressive reason in two respects. First, the subject has
no control over reason's progress, and secondly, the move-
ment of reason, rather than providing greater autonomy, in-
creasinglyrobs the subject of freedom. So, despite the
historical and differential production of subjects, which
makes Foucault's theory more appealing than, and different
from, those of the other poststructuralists, he ends up with
similar limits on what can be theorized, and similar restric-
tions on the effectiveness of theoretical understanding.
The Constituted/Constitutive Subject This examination of
the theory of the subject in poststructuralism should lend
a note of caution to any Marxist or feminist sense of affinity
with poststructuralism. The logics of poststructuralism so
prohibit the possibility of differently constituted subjec-
tivities, or of a subjectivity which is consciously self- and
world-constituting, that the work tends to produce a com-
plete pessimism concerning the possibility for social change.
Yet, leaving aside this charge of nihilism which is fre-
qu~ntly (and not unfairly) dlIected against the poststruc-

61
Studies in Political Economy

turalists, there are ways in which a consideration of

poststructuralist ideas can clarify the Marxist and feminist
debates about the subject. There are interesting parallels
between Marxist and feminist attempts to retheorize the sub-
ject in efforts to avoid the problems of the Cartesian subject,
and the similar tendencies within poststructuralist theory.
These can be roughly categorized into three approaches:
the attempt to reintroduce agency, but to accord it a "non-
human" or "supra-human" status; the desire to retrieve "non-
subjected" experience as an alternative subject model; and
the rational overcoming of the Cartesian subject through
new forms of logic or an anti-Enlightenment rationality.
Each of these approaches differently emphasizes the ques-
tion of the subject's constitution, and the concern with the
subject's ability to be constitutive of a changed reality.
Within each of these theoretical approaches as well, it is
apparent that the poststructuralist formulation of what the
subject is able to accomplish has a more restricted and limit-
ing view than either the Marxist or feminist retheorizations.
These different possibilities for rethinking the subject also
delineate some of the major debates within the different
theoretical paradigms: i.e. within Marxism, the struc-
ture/agency debate, or within feminism, the conflict over
models for social change. Each offers a particular perspec-
tive on re-theorizing the subject, some combination of which
may be necessary in order to move beyond the present im-
passe and questions about the subject.
1) Theorization of a type of "non-human subject" or "supra-
human" subject can be witnessed in the work of structuralist
Marxists, like Althusser or Godelier who locate agency in
the structures of economy and society, in the work of
Foucault which locates agency in an amorphous field of
power, and in Derrida's proposals which give "texts" a life
and determinacy of their own. Admittedly, the terms "non-
human subject" and "supra-human subject" border on the
oxymoronic. And yet what these theorists suggest is a trans-
fer of the kind of power and determination which Enlighten-
ment thought accorded to the subject onto another level of
dc\crmi\\ilc~. Further, those aspects of \he Cartesian subject

62
 MacDonald/Subjects

which are not attributed to the non-human subject, such as

self-consciousness, intentionality and responsibility, are also
shorn from humans in this theorization. Indeed, to a degree,
in reading Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, it is hard to avoid
seeing ascriptions of intentionality in their theorizations of
the text, language, or a monolithic "power."
These solutions to the problem of the subject have the
effect of splitting what is constitutive (the macro-subject)
from what is constituted (the micro-subject or various sub-
ject-positions). For structural Marxists, this split then re-
quires theorizing a macro-subject which has internal
tendencies toward revolutionary change; the movement of
history is both positive and determined outside of histori-
cally constituted subjectivities. For Foucault, the location
of agency in "power" itself, and in the constitutive discour-
ses which are shaped by power's demands, produce negative
results - a loss of individuality, and a concomitant increase
in the regularization and normalization of human subjects.
Derrida's work suggests that language and texts have an
independent existence prior to human engagement with
them, one which is determinate of human illusions, express-
ly the illusion of human agency.
If there is an advantage in this approach to the analysis
of subjectivity, it lies in its emphasis on exploring what is
constitutive of human subjects. While this focus has led to
charges of economism in Marxism, and of essentialism -
i.e. of power or language - in poststructuralist work the
attention to "macro-subjects" at least forces us to face the
need for close inquiry into those forces which have shaped
the human subject, and which have historical influence out-
side of human subjective control. However much control
and power we wish to locate in the subject, there is always
the aspect of history. which is not of our own making, and
which, indeed, makes us. A significant contribution of
poststructuralist theory in this regard has been to indicate
the degree to which the language we use and the meanings
which are prevalent in our lives, can determine our percep-
tions, our reasoning and our actions.

63
Studies in Political Economy

2) The desire to retrieve experience which has not been

framed by Cartesian rationality can be witnessed in
Kristeva's faith in the realm of the "semiotic." The em-
bodiedness of human beings, their experience of being
mothered and coming late into language, provide grounds
for "other" perceptions of the world, and for a subjectivity
which is fluid and changing, and non-rational. Similar fea-
tures can be found in the Lacanian portrayal of the subject,
which has little recourse to the Imaginary, and no recourse
to what is actually "real," but which seeks to retrieve,
through psychoanalysis, a sense of "pre-subjectivity." This
faith in repressed or oppressed experience has a parallel in
some feminist literature which finds women's experience
to be different from men's, either because of early relations
to the mother (i.e. Chodorow, Gilligan), or because of the
experience of being embodied as female (O'Brien, Irigaray,
Daly).
For Marxist theorists like Gramsci, B.P. Thompson, and
Raymond Williams, the experiences of an oppressed class
can also provide an alternative view of reality. Gramsci's
organic intellectuals have a special understanding of the
oppression of the working class. Thompson's recourse to
the "experience" of being workers occupies a similarly
privileged place in his theory. Raymond Williams' work is
particularly suggestive in this regard because of its con-
sideration of oppositional subjectivities, as he attempts to
theorize the origins of resistant practices in residual and
emergent cultures.38 In both the poststructuralist attention
to experience, and in Marxist and feminist corollaries, there
is a hope that the Cartesian subject, or Cartesian rationality,
can somehow be escaped. For the Marxists and feminists,
this escape would be in the form of a historical overcoming,
a movement beyond present patriarchal or capitalist struc-
tures which entrench certain views of the world, and certain
options for subjectivity. The forms of subjectivity which
they hope to instate are ones which are more ethical, more
accurate reflections of the human condition, and/or more
responsive to the differential constitutions of subjectivities.
For poststructuralists such as Kristeva and Lacan, how-
ever, the promise of an alternative is more transient; pre-

64
 MacDonald/Subjects

linguistic experience can be retrieved, but can never become

a substitute for the dominance of language. This model's
recourse to another subjectivity desires the restoration of a
"constituting" aspect for subjects, which, for Marxists and
feminists would become sufficiently powerful to overcome
the previously constituted subjectivities, and for poststruc-
turalists, would simply displace some of the assumptions
about the subject, without in fact ever being fully able to
displace that subject. Overwhelmingly, the emphasis of all
these theorists is on the creation of subjects through the
relationships (however biologically, economically, or
psychologically determined) between humans, and the latent
potential for recognition of undisclosed or unacknowledged
relations which could transform the subject, or at least the
subject's self-understanding.
3) A final parallel can be located between some poststruc-
turalist theorists and certain Marxist and feminist theorists,
who attempt to overcome the dilemma of constituted sub-
jectivity through the exercise of a new form of reason, which
nevertheless is discoverable through reason in its present
form. The development of an alternative rationality, such
as Derrida's logic of differance, or Adorno's negative dialec-
tics, or feminist critiques of instrumental reason, are all
representative of a hope to transcend the subject/object
relationship as it presently exists, and to accomplish that
transcendence through reason. A tension is maintained be-
tween the subject constituted by the existing form of reason,
and the ability of the subject through reason to surmount
his or her limitations and to constitute new forms of sub-
jectivity. Within critical theory's critique of instrumental
reason, this new rationality corresponds to an internalization
of a new ethical relation between subject and object. In
Derrida's work, however, the deconstructive impulse of his
logic is limited to the level of critique of existing texts.
Once again, the poststructuralist theorization offers a more
limited and pessimistic solution.
The re-theorization of the subject in these three dimen-
sions need not be reduced to a debate between the different
schools in question. In fact, what is useful about the dis-

65
Studies in Political Economy

tinctions that these categories permit us to make, is the

observation that an adequately theorized subject can only
be the result of attention to the problems which surface at
each of these levels. That is, the subject cannot be under-
stood without, first, observing the effects of macro-subjects
(such as structural determinants, prevailing discourses of
rationality, and meaning) upon it; and secondly, observing
the ways in which that constitution can either correspond
to, or be subverted by, the types of relationships within
which the subject is engaged or has been engaged as a sub-
ject. Finally, this focus on the conditioning of subjects and
their production, must include a recognition that the subjects
have an ability to observe themselves and reflect upon their
own relationship to the world, and that the process of in-
ternalising these reflections can also be part of the subjects'
self-transformation.
The success of such a re-theorization of the subject would
require that these approaches be combined in a multi-dimen-
sional analysis in which none would be accorded a fully
determinant status. Additionally, a large measure of atten-
tion would need to be given to the interaction of the different
dimensions. Critical questions to be asked include the fol-
lowing: in what ways do the variety of social relationships
frustrate or comply with existing structures of domination?
to what degree are alternative logics and perspectives avail-
able for reflecting on those relationships? how is the
dominant rationality reflected in institutional practices? and
so forth.
These questions would evidently demand historical and
contextual considerations of rationality, relationality and in-
stitutions which linguistic poststructuralism has not
developed. They would also need to be informed by the
kind of emancipatory values which discourse poststruc-
turalism has also largely avoided. And ideally, they would
be able to draw upon a sensitivity to difference, marginality,
and discourse which is developing in Third World, anti-
racist and feminist theories. It is to be hoped that ways can
be found to understand the trouble with subjects through
these dimensions, and through their interrelation.

66
 MacDonald/Subjects

Notes

For their extremely valuable assistance in commenting upon and editing

several drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Karen Dubinsky, Roberta
Hamilton, Jane Jenson, Catherine Kellogg, Colin Leys, Margaret Little,
Rianne Mahon, Christine Sypnowich, and Sandy Whitworth.
1. It is not unusual to find claims for poststructuralism's originality in
this regard. That is, poststructuralist theory is often described, by
its adherents and popularizers, in terms of its critique of Enlighten-
ment thinking, and not infrequently as if it held an exclusive claim
to this critique. In this way, it is often then conjoined with a more
expressly political critique, such as feminist theory, to create a
"postmodern feminism." (See, for example, Susan Hekman, Gender
and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism (polity Press,
1990); Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism
and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (University of Califor-
nia Press, 1990). A subtheme of this paper, however, is to consider
the poststructuralist critique of the subject as one among several
approaches to Enlightenment critique, and to distinguish the political
implications of these different approaches.
2. For the purposes of the comparisons I make, I have chosen to limit
my analysis to a few of the preeminent poststructuralist thinkers.
As suggested above, a large number of feminist thinkers have in-
itiated work that attempts to combine poststructuralist (or
postmodern) and feminist analysis. See for example, Flax, Thinking
Fragments ...; Hekman, Gender and Knowledge ...; Judith Butler,
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Rout-
ledge, 1990); Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism. Nature
and Difference (Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1989); Linda J.
Nicholson, (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (Routledge, 1990);
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worldi': Essays in Cultural
Politics (Methuen, 1987); and Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and
Poststructuralist Theory (Basil Blackwell, 1987). Fewer, but never-
theless a significant number of Marxist theorists have also attempted
a synthesis of the Marxist approach with post structuralism. See for
example Derek Attridge, Geoff Bennington and Robert Young (eds.),
Poststructuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge University
Press, 1987); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans.
by Winston Moore and Paul Cammack (London: Verso, 1984);
Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); and Barry Smart, Foucault,
Marxism and Critique (Routlege and Kegan Paul, 1983). I have ex-
plored the implications of "postmodern feminism" and "postmodern
Marxism" through looking at issues of consistency, self-reflexivity,
and concerns with power, knowledge and agency in my dissertation
"The Political Limitations of Postmodern Theory." Ph.D. diss., York
University, Department of Political Science, 1991.
3. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. ill (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1974),
pp. '.\9-45.

67
Studies in Political Economy

4. Several valuable studies have been written concerning the Marxist

concept of ideology. I recommend Jorge Larrain, The Concept of
Ideology (Hutchinson and Co., 1979); idem, Marxism and Ideology
(Macmillan Press, 1983); John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory
of Ideology (University of California Press, 1984); and Karl Kosik,
Dialectics of the Concrete (D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1976).
5. V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (International Publishers, 1971).
6. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and
trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (Lawrence and Wishart, 1971),
pp.3-43.
7. Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge
University Press, 1985).
8. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
ment, trans. by John Cumming (Continuum Publishing, 1982); Max
Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (Oxford University Press, 1947);
Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. by E.B. Ashton (Con-
tinuum Publishing, 1966).
9. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Vintage Books, 1962).
10. Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital (New Left
Books, 1970); Louis Althusser, "Note on the ISA's" Economy and
Society 12/4 (November 1982), pp. 455-65.
11. E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (Monthly
Review Press, 1978).
12. See, for example, Andrea Nye, Feminist Theory and the Philosophies
of Man (Routledge, 1988), pp. 103-5.
13. This argument is made especially within two groups of feminist
theory - radical feminism and pyschoanalytic feminism. Some ex-
amples of each are discussed below. For further examples of the
radical feminist position, see Mary Daly Gynlecology: The
Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon Press, 1978); Susan Griffin,
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (Harper and Row, 1978);
and Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a
Feminist Revolution (William Morrow, 1970). It should be noted
that, while this argument is most often associated with radical
feminism, similar claims are made by many who focus on the social
construction of gender in all models of feminist theory.
14. See, for example, Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on
the Political Economy of Sex" in Rayna R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an
Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975),
pp. 157-210. For an alternative view of gender, and one which
presents gender as a conscious choice, see Judith Butler's essay,
"Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, Foucault," in Seyla
Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (eds.), Feminism as Critique (Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 128-142. The different positions
taken on gender and gender acquisition in the breadth of feminist
writing suggest this field as an important focus for future work on
the subject and identity. Further clarification will need to be made,
however, among such concepts as gender identity, gender charac-
teristics, and gender roles.
15. Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (New York: Vintage
Books, 1914).

68
 MacDonald/Subjects

16. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (University of

California Press, 1978).
17. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press,1982).
18. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Feminism. Psychoanalysis
and Domination (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).
19. A body of feminist work has been written which addresses this prob-
lem, some of which has recently begun to engage with postmodern
theory. See Bell Hooks, Yearning: race. gender and cultural politics
(Boston: South End Press, 1990); Audre Lorde, Sister/Outsider (New
York: Crossing Press, 1984); Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and
Barbara Smith, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men.
But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (New York:
Feminist Press, 1982); Elizabeth Abel, "Race, Class and Pys-
choanalysis? Opening Questions," and Mary Childers and Bell
Hooks, "A Conversation about Race and Class" both in Marianne
Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (eds.), Conflicts in Feminism (New
York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1990).
20. Nancy Hartsock, "Rethinking Modernism: Minority vs, Majority
Theories," Cultural Critique 7, quoted in Christine di Stefano,
"Dilemmas of Difference" in Nicholson (ed.), FeminismiPostmoder-
nism p. 75.
21. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (New York: W.W. Norton and
Co., 1977), p.2.
22. The resemblance to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit here is striking.
23. Lacan, Ecrits pp. 174-5. I have left out of this discussion the complex
and important role of the "phallus" as the signifier of desire in
Lacan's construction of the subject. This construction is nevertheless
highly significant for feminist concerns about the role of gender in
the acquisition of identity. A sympathetic treatment of Lacan in this
respect, can be found in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose,
Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the ecole freudienne (New
York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1983); and Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, "Jac-
ques Lacan: Feminism and the Problem of Gender-Identity," Sub-
stance, 36Nol. 11/no.3. There are other writers who treat this aspect
of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory more critically. See for example,
Luce lrigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter
(Cornell University, 1985); Maggie Berg, "Luce Irigaray's
'Contradictions': Poststructuralism and Feminism," Signs,
(forthcoming); and Eleanor MacDonald, "The Subject(ed) Woman
in Lacanian Theories." Honours Paper, Carleton University, 1984.
24. For examples of Lacanian clinical psychoanalytic work, see Stuart
Schneiderman, Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the
School of Jacques Lacan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
25. "Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or
in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts,
by means of the systematic play of differences. Such a play,
differance, is thus no longer simply a concept, but rather the pos-
sibility of conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in
general. For the same reason, differance, which is not a concept, is
not simply a word, that is, what is generally represented as the calm,
vresen\\ &n<lllel{-te{etenua\ \11\i\'Y Q{ COl\ce"p\ and "phonic material .
... The difference of which Saussure speaks is itself, therefore, neither

69
Studies in Political Economy

a concept nor a word among others. The same can be said, a fortiori,
of differance .... In a language, in the system of language, there are
only differences ... What is written as differance, then, will be the
playing movement that 'produces' - by means of something that
is not simply an activity - these differences, these effects of dif-
ference ... differance is the non-full, non-simply, structured and dif-
ferentiating origin of differences," Jacques Derrida, "Differance,"
Margins of Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. II.
26. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1976), p. 87.
27. Julia Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986),
p.30.
28. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language (New York: Columbia, 1980),
p.238-9.
29. tsu., pp. 120-121.
30. The Kristeva Reader, p. 30.
31. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York: Random
House, 1981).
32. Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic (London: Pantheon, 1973).
Foucault's approach is most clearly proposed in the introduction
where he asks: "Is it not possible to make a structural analysis of
discourses that would evade the fate of commentary by supposing
no remainder, nothing in excess of what has been said, but only the
fact of its historical appearance? The facts of discourse would then
have to be treated not as autonomous nuclei of multiple significa-
tions, but as events and functional segments gradually coming
together to form a system," (p. xvii).
33. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House,
1970), pp. 379-80.
34. This shift in Foucault's work is evident first in his essay "Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History" in a collection of his essays, Language. Counter-
Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (New York: Cornell Press,
1977).
35. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Random House, New York,
1977).
36. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality. VoU (Random House, New
York, 1978).
37. After publishing the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Foucault did not
complete the subsequent volumes of this history as he had initially
intended. His plans for the study changed dramatically, and what
appeared six years after Volume I, in The Care of the Self and The
Use of Pleasure marks a new approach to the subject in his theory.
In these books, as well as in published interviews during the 1980's,
Foucault addresses many of the limitations of his earlier works,
through advocating an ethical basis for thought and action. The ethics
which he adopts reflect a desire for autonomous and free individuals
who act in self-reflective ways to assure a society in which mutual
interests are met, and structures of domination undermined. This
last stage of Foucault's thought bears some interesting resemblances
to Habermas, Because of this, and because, to a large degree, he
tGVGm:.I 1\,)\\\\:0 Q{ hil \:ol.tlietllt\l\lOsl.ls, it is difficult to include lhe
problems of this stage with a critique of his earlier and middle works,

70
 MacDonald/Su bj ects

I have left this aspect of his thought out of this study. Readers
interested in my criticisms are referred to my dissertation. See Mac-
Donald "The Political Limitations of Postmodem Theory."
38. Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural
Theory," New Left Review, 82 (Nov-Dec 1973), pp. 3-16.

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