After the Death of the Subject, Hatred of the Human

The death of the subject was about the loss of human agency. Today we are witnessing the undermining of something recognizably human as such.

Already in 2002, the theorist James Heartfield posited that the “subject”—the freely thinking and autonomously acting moral agent at the core of Enlightenment thought and modern political activity—had died. According to Heartfield, the death of the individual subject was the consequence of the world historical defeat of the collective working class. Alt…