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As we look back today to that obscure but for none of us insignificant period of (post) structuralism, it would seem that none of the slogans which at that time were intended to sweeten its message can still claim any credibility. Far from being dead and buried, like some purloined letter, the"author'seems to have been with us all along, barely hidden by the folds of those quotations marks from where he was laughing behind our backs. And far from taking over the place of the subject,"structure'has, so to speak, only displaced it: much to our surprise, the"eccentric'subject is still a subject — it is precisely its dependence on something which it did not itself institute or constitute that has prevented it from dying a peaceful death. Forcing the subject to abdicate from the centre did not entail the subject's destruction₂. Quite to the contrary, this decentring has managed to revitalize the subject, and the unexpected result of its rejuvenation is simply that its accusers are now themselves accused: relieved of the heavy burden of a centre where it stood constantly accused of falling short in its every endeavor, the subject seems to be thoroughly enjoying its new freedom to linger wherever it pleases, as long as it is not in the centre, and to exploit its elusiveness to harass whoever came in its place with new, apparently insoluble questions and problems. Granted, discourse functions without a meaning-giving subject underlying all knowledge; but then what could it mean that I know?

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4467-4_6

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