Subject and Agent

1. Subject and Agent Holdbein, The Ambassadors, (1533)

2. Subject 4 main meanings subject matter or topic: what a text, film etc. is about academic subject or discipline: configuration of knowledge and skills associated with a certain area of study. grammatical subject: controls the verb, distinct from object ideological or psycho-social subject: sb implicated in and subjected to a particular personal-political structure and its associated world-view

3. Althusser-conflictual nature of this subject in a political sphere--Marxism hailing or interpellation misrecognition, méconnaissance Freud/Lacan-explore it in psychoanalytic sphere Benveniste-two dimension of the "I"--the I-who-speaks (le sujet d'énonciation) and the I-who-is-spoken (le sujet d'énoncé) the I-who-speaks is always to some extent mis- or under-represetned by the I-who-is-spoken

4. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy • "all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects“ • "Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject“

5. subject from Latin subiacere: 'to throw under' subjectum- thrown under if thrown under by someone, is passivity role of the victim, those who are 'done to' rather than those who 'do‘ some prefer participant, anyone taking part, passive or active or agent, a degree of activity, independence even if acting partly, on behalf of someone or something else has 'the power to do', 'the force that causes effects' Latin agere, 'to act, to make happen', English-to agitate, agencies, secret agents

6. Identity Philosophy and Mathematics - 'absolute sameness', 'absolute equality between two equations‘ Latin root, idem, meaning 'the same one', cf idiosyncrasy, idiolect change in def, personality as a construct personal experience, personal history broader, sociological, constructivist terms--public pressure and larger circumstances usually a fusion of these two identity a product of public and private histories (auto/biography)

7. Identification - ambiguous process difference between 'identification of' and 'identification with' distance between other and self identification of someone or something--point to, labeling, 'naming' them as other identification with someone or something sympathizing, empathizing and confusing ourselves with someone or something else (with a character or cause)

8. It suffices to understand the mirror stage in this context as an identification, in the full sense analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes [assume] an image-an image that is seemingly predestined to have an effect at this phase, as witnessed by the use in analytic theory of antiquity's term, "imago". Lacan, Jacques The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function. 1949.

9. "Nor have I seena mightier man-at-arms on this earththan the one standing here: unless I am mistaken,he is truly noble. This is no mere hanger-on in a hero's armour." (244-251)

10. "I had a fixed purpose when I put to sea.As I sat in the boat with my band of men,I meant to perform to the uttermostwhat your people wanted or perish in the attempt,in the fiend's clutches. And I shall fulfil that purpose,prove myself with a proud deedor meet my death here in the mead-hall." (632-638)

11.  "Order my troop to construct a barrowon a headland on the coast, after my pyre has cooled.It will loom on the horizon at Hronesnessand be a reminder among my people –so that in coming times crews under sailwill call it Beowulf's Barrow, as they steerships across the wide and shrouded waters." (2802-2808)

12. While Beowulf seems to acknowledge the psychological posture conditioned by, or at least compatible with, literate practices, the acknowledgment characterizes that posture as a clear, direct threat to the ordering structures - and thus to the basic survival - of the poem's central system of personal interdependencies. Beowulf confronts the psychological demands of the reading experience by persistently reaffirming those idioms of speech and patterns of interaction that require the open immediacy of spoken exchange... The poem thematizes, therefore, its own mode of transmission, but even more important, it presents its audience with a sense of a world in transition, a world that looks back in nostalgic longing for an already absent past and forward with marked hesitation to the final voices in song. (321) Michael Near, "Anticipating Alientation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy." PMLA 108:2 (1993): 320-332.

13. The poem's description of human (and monstrous) volition embeds choice in social contexts that both condition choice and display its consequences. (203) Andrew Galloway, "Beowulf and the Varieties of Choice." PMLA 105:2 (1990): 197-208.

14. While we have no way of guessing at Beowulf's sexuality, or at the poet's or the hero's personal views on marriage, we cannot ignore the strength of expressed masculine desire in the poem. Intensity and passion are located in the bonds of loyalty and friendship forged between men, and marriage is vauled as an extension of this larger emotional context. In Beowulf the marriage alliance is essentially an alliance of men; Deleuze and Guattari identify "the perverse tie of a primary homosexuality," a love of, even an obsession with, the "same" as a means of avoidance of the other, in tribal negotiation for marriage partners: "Through women, men establish their own connections; through the man-woman disjunction, which is always the outcome of filiation, alliance places in connection men from different filiations" (165). That such filiation often fails in Beowulf as a result of incessant feuding does not change the fact that the woman given in marriage is perceived as the visible token of male alliance. (74) Gillian Overing, Language, Sign and Gender in Beowulf. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.