ABSTRACT
Anyone who has tried to keep up with the current state of critical discourse does not need to be told that the Bourgeois or Humanist Subject (hereinafter abbreviated as BHS) is in very serious trouble. Something like a major industry has developed, primarily among the cultural materialists, new historicists, and feminist critics associated with them, which is devoted to BHS-bashing. And since no one else has yet risen to the BHS’s defence, I have reluctantly agreed to take on this thankless task. I had better confess at the outset, though, that I am a card-carrying BHS myself, as are the members of my nuclear, affective family and most of my friends, because some people might object that this firsthand acquaintance with the subject (in both senses) is empiricist and therefore disqualifies me from discoursing about it. They may be right, for it seems that the principal qualification of those who are doing all the discoursing-i.e. the bashing-is that they have never seen a real live BHS. But I must leave that for the reader to judge.
