concept of interpellation has the advantage of putting the subject back in its
place – an expression that is to be understood in both a pejorative sense (it
dethrones the subject from its position of mastery and origin of meaning)
and a positive sense (it assigns the subject its due place, by describing the
linguistic process of subjectivation). It therefore makes it possible to understand
both the importance of the notion of the subject in linguistic matters (after
all, linguistics has recourse not to one concept of the subject, but to two, since
it distinguishes between the subject of the utterance and the subject of the
enunciation); and the need to invert the common sense that attributes centrality
to the subject. In linguistic matters at least, it is difficult to argue that the
subject-speaker, who must be integrated into a language that is prior and
external to her, is the source, the centre, or the mistress of meaning. This
inversion of perspective is characteristic of the Marxist tradition: it is already
to be found in Voloshinov’s work. In Deleuze and Guattari, the displacement
goes even further and the philosophical work done by the concept of the
subject is performed by different concepts – assemblage or haeccity. But to
link interpellation and subjectivation – that is, to retain a concept of the subject
put in its place – is to understand that language does not ‘serve’ to
communicate, even if communication obviously occurs: it is the social praxis
whereby individuals become subjects because they become speakers. Even
so, it is important not to slip into the determinism of an interpellation that
imposes on a helpless subject an identity and a discourse over which she has
no control. Already, in Bourdieu, individual action is determined by the field
in which it occurs, but agents have their own individual strategies with which
they negotiate the constraints of the field. I have, therefore, suggested regarding
the interpellation of the subject-speaker by language as reciprocal, and that
corresponding to this interpellation is a counter-interpellation. The term, clearly
inspired by Freud’s counter-investment, is directly inspired by Judith Butler ’s
reading of Althusser ’s theory of ideology.^9 There are some proximate concepts
in contemporary philosophy: counter-identification in Pêcheux or counter-
effectuation in Deleuze. The concept aims to describe the fact that, while
speakers enters into a language that is prior and external to them, they
appropriate it (this is called a style).
Contrasting Short Glossaries of Philosophy of Language • 209(^9) See Butler 1995 and 1997.