Power, Nina. "Philosophy's Subjects." PARRHESIA 3 (2007).

This article begins with a systematic exposition of the permutations of (a) the term ‘subject’ itself and (b) the conceptual history and reception of the term in French philosophical and political thought in the early twentieth century. The importance of this exposition is threefold. The key elements of my argument here will demonstrate, first, how certain prevalent interpretations of the ‘subject’ operate at the level of their presentation and argumentation; second, how one particular way of conceptualising the modern subject (namely, the Cartesian, or rather, a certain construction of the Cartesian subject) has come to dominate both the dogmatic and critical contemporary discourses of the subject and third, to show that the mid-twentieth century controversy concerning ‘humanism’ in its Marxist, structuralist, humanist and antihumanist modes masked the more fundamental issue of the nature and necessity (or otherwise) of a concept of ‘the subject’ for philosophy and politics. The rest is here: http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia03/parrhesia03_power.pdf