Subjects of Terror explores the work of French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval to critique a death-based ideology of subjectivity that has persisted from Kant to Lacan. This ideology is characterized by the notion that the subject embodies the self-sameness of individual experience, functions like language or writing, and ultimately annihilates individual experiences. Theories by Hegel, Heidegger, Kojève, and Lacan have shaped this abstract, impersonal self-concept, which has historically been enforced, notably by the guillotine. Even in less dramatic forms, it elicited strong emotional responses, as seen in the works of Romantic writers like Hugo, Mallarmé, Zola, and Nietzsche. Nerval's writings illustrate how this negative self-construction influences both self-understanding and self-experience, with the prevailing feeling being one of terror—a sentiment still relevant today. The book argues that Nerval's work serves as an aesthetic resistance to this ideology, paving the way for ethical models of subjectivity found in the works of Kristeva, Aulagnier, and Levinas. Despite centuries of societal and theoretical pressures compelling individuals to perceive the world through a lens of destruction, the author advocates for an alternative, open-ended model of experience that emphasizes the libidinization of language.
