Framing intelligibility, identity, and selfhood: a reconsideration of spatio-temporal models

The relationship between intelligibility and identity over the past thirty years has largely been approached through the linguistic construct of the subject. Proposing that our subjectivities be theoretically comprehended (made intelligible) as discursive effects is now common sense. Poststructuralism, following particularly Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, has ensured that "the subject" is a cardinal category of contemporary thought; in any number of disciplines, it is one of the first concepts we teach to our undergraduates. But are we best served by continuing to insist on the intellectual primacy of the "subject," formulated as it has been within the negative paradigm of subjectivity as subjection? Not only do we need to readdress the question of agency, a persistently vexed issue for many major postmodern theorists, we also need to strategically offer more positive models for making sense of ourselves in the world -- if you like -- for making identity intelligible.