A generic term widely used in critical theory to designate what used to be termed the individual or the self. The shift in language is intended to signal the fact that in the face of the arguments by critical theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, the idea of an autonomous individual able to think and act wholly according to their own reason is insupportable. On the one hand, as psychoanalysis shows, the fact of the unconscious means that no agent is fully conscious of all their acts, while on the other hand Marxism shows that no agent is capable of determining the course of history. The key implication of this, which is central to Cultural Studies, is that the subject is the product of the conjunction of history and the unconscious, and not a naturally occurring or ready-made entity.