Abstract

The dissertation explores the ways in which Spanish philosophers, writers, and artists of the '60s, '70s, and '80s responded to the crisis of the modern philosophical subject , which was proclaimed by French post-structuralist thought. I analyze works by Spanish philosophers , fictional texts , and paintings by the artistic group Equipo Cronica. In the texts under scrutiny I detect a theory of the idiotic subject which is polemically directed against the critique of subjectivity, although at the same time embodies its main points. ;By presenting the subject as an idiot Spanish authors create a discursive space in which certain characteristics of the philosophical subject are critically examined, negotiated, and shifted, without discarding the subject per se as a term which has an ontological and epistemological validity of its own. The idiot, while retaining the capacity to be present to itself, defies the Modern philosophical subject's claims to produce a coherent world view, and thus rejects the role of being the absolute foundation. The idiotic subject does not claim to posit the world, for it contemplates itself as a product of social structures and institutions which it cannot control. Moreover, the term idiot restitutes the individualistic ground that is lost in the category of the philosophical subject. The idiot as an alternative philosophical category retrieves its etymological meaning of private person---a marginal human being which is not totally adjusted to the polis, does not share its values and uses a language in which meaning is not entirely based on social consensus. ;The Spanish texts that feature the discourse of the idiot thus imply a social program which seeks to transform the private realm into a place for philosophical and ideological discussion. In their ideological interpretation of the category of the subject Spanish authors intend to configure an alternative social subject by means of manipulating the audience's perception. It is proposed that the readers/spectators exposed to the theory and the discourse of the idiot will recognize themselves as idiots---that is, will embrace their condition of being constructed subjects and subsequently will choose the individualistic position of private persons as the ultimate form of resistance