Abstract

Subjectile is a concept that names the interface between a support, a surface, and a subjectivity. It tends to refer to the material conditions of a medium (painting or drawing) but it also implies a more general relationship in the texture of representation. The concept is developed by Antonin Artaud and further elaborated by Jacques Derrida, Jean Clay, and Georges Didi-Huberman, amongst others.1 The subjectile is a scene, states Derrida; it is a paradoxical concept as it is by its nature not definable or un-definitive. It is exactly the impossibility of erasing "my subjectivity" in this entry or any definition. It is exactly designed for what any subject project, like a projectile, into any concept, piece of art, a world, a wikipedia entry, or any other entity. Derrida holds that it is a scene. It can be held that some concepts (or entities of art etc.) are met with more subjectility than others because they are pertaining to a certain optness characteristical for the subjectile scene or surface. The designation and usage of the word confers with interface and liminality. Artaud uses the term "subjectile" to portray the paper on which he draws, pointing out, that it betrays him. Taking his use of (t)his term as a point of departure, Derrida wonders about the element of the subject that remains in the subjectile. The bridge that gets constructed between subjectus and subjectum. Another possible usage of the concept is that what comes free like a projectile from the subjected, whereas 'subjected' here is not only designating the surface that serves as a support, but even the subjugated, oppressed, or made subject, whether it be within an individuals psychomotorical entireness or in regard of a community, a collective, a people.

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