Splitting the Subject: An Overview of Sartre, Lacan and Derrida

It has been proposed that there is, or that we should assume there to be, such a thing as a classical conception of the subject," and in the same breath, that we should reject it. This subject has been conceived as essentially unified, and as substantial. The latter property is now the less defended, and probably the less defensible, and it is therefore on the unity of the subject that "non-classical" expositions of the subject come to focus. My concern here will be to look at various ways in which the subject has been split and to ask on what conditions a truly split subject may be conceived.