A term whose ambiguity as between conscious agency and passive subjection was exploited by Louis Althusser. He had drawn on Lacan to sketch out a quasi-functionalist account of the fit between social formations and indvidual subjectivities and identities. Foucault has largely replaced Althusser in feminist theories of the subject as he goes beyond the Althusserian (mis)-recognition and consent model of ideological sunject-formation in his concept of regimes of knowledge/power. These regimes, he argues, have effect of inscribing identity into the very bodies of those subject to them.

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