Still, perhaps one must return to this question [of the author],
not in order to reestablish the theme of an originating subject, but to
grasp the subject’s points of insertion, modes of functioning, and
system of interdependencies. Doing so means overturning the traditional
problem, no longer raising the questions: How can a free subject
penetrate the substance of things and give it meaning? How can it
activate the rules of a language from within and thus give rise to the
designs which are properly its own? Instead, these questions will be
raised: How, under what conditions, and in what forms can something like
a subject appear in the order of discourse? What place can it occupy in
each type of discourse, what functions can it assume, and by obeying
what rules? In short, it is a matter of depriving the subject (or its
substitute) of its role as originator, and of analyzing the subject as a
veritable and complex function of distance (Foucault 118).