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SubjectSubject, subject position: The social constructivist frame includes attention to “subject positions” in a heavily social understanding inspired by the work of L. Althusser, among others, and used to designate and theorize the student writer and his or her explicit or implicit integration into a text. According to Clifford (1991), Althusser proposed that individuals are constructed in and by discursive networks: we “permit” ourselves, not necessarily consciously, to be interpellated by the discourses that surround us. For Althusser, the “subject” is neither the person/personality of the text’s writer, nor the rhetorical persona, but “a composite of subject positions, simultaneously active in the reproduction of positions” (cited in Faigley, 1989, p. 403). The traditional conception of a unified self and its place in the social order are thus always imaginary. The student writer in learning situations is vulnerable because he does not see himself as “textual subject,” subject for whom the institution of education has prepared a place (as opposed to the student choosing that place) (Brodkey, 1989). Althusser’s thinking also dominated understanding of our relationship with dominant discourses and ideologies, always naming and positioning us even as we believe we are free agents acting by choice (Kavanaugh, 1995, p. 310), including in the texts we write or say in which we claim to present our authentic selves. |