Page 113 - Decoding Culture

106 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE

this would be difficult since in its major formulations it appears to
presuppose the absolute primacy of psychoanalytic processes in
the constitution of subjectivity. Everything in this conceptual
domain is understood in relation to the subject; little or nothing in
relation to the diverse social circumstances in which subjectivity is
daily deployed, negotiated and reconstructed. In short, within
Screen theory the category of 'the subject' is reified.
The practical consequences of this reification can be seen in
the characteristic ways in which Screen theory handles the con­
cepts of text and reader. The (film) text - for all the formal
emphasis on 'productivity' in post-structuralism - is still under­
stood as the seat of determinate effects upon individual agents.
The sequence is something like this: texts (and discourses) carry
ideology; ideology operates primarily through the constitution of
subjects; subjects are formed through universal psychoanalytic
processes; and individuals are unavoidably on the receiving end of
such constitutive mechanisms. What is not theorized or theoriz­
able in these terms is how real social subjects - assuming that
such an ontological entity is permitted within the terms of Screen
theory - relate to the subject positions prescribed for them by
texts and discourses. Are they active agents with the freedom to
accept, reject or modify the position that they are offered for read­
ing a text? Or does the formation of subjectivity in basic
psychoanalytic processes constrain agents in terms of structures
that are built into the unconscious? And what of multiple inter­
pellation? Faced with the plurality of subject positions on offer in
the diverse discourses of modern society, how do agents grapple
with the evident potential for contradiction and inconsistency?
And what of textual polysemy? Is it purely dependent upon the
terms of subject constitution, or do we need further concepts
which will give us access to the social construction of meaning in
reader-text relations?

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