ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to conceptualize the crucial moment when a person becomes a documentary subject. Broadcasters and broadcasting lawyers are aware of the importance of the moment of signing up a potential subject of the film. In an encounter between a filmmaker and the subject of a documentary, it is usually the filmmaker who comes forward and asks for permission to make a film about the given person or an institution. The chapter reviews the notion of ‘interpellation’ as presented by Althusser in order to confirm that one is always already interpellated into the late capitalist system. It looks at Butler’s reformulation of the Althusserian notion of interpellation, as the subject’s relationship to power is perhaps more complicated than Althusser suggests. The chapter examines Althusser’s original text in some detail, and discusses Butler’s reformulation of it and Dolar’s crucial intervention.
