Reading Subject, The Problematic and The Outcasts: A Semiotic Model of Ideology & The Ideo-Material Subject

Are we just products of our conditions? Are we masters of our reality? Or, perhaps, we are active in our production, but neither product nor master? Up until now most, if not all, models of Ideology and Discourse produce an over-determination of subjectivity or materiality. On the one hand, the subject is inserted as an inert abstraction of their actions or position within a larger relationship of power or production. On the other, they are the holders of a subjectivity from which all of our social reality is materialized. This work will address this issue of over-determination running a semiotic model of Ideology through a general theory of Discourse and will analyze two case studies of Dystopian works published in the early twentieth century to show how the subject interacts with their own conditions of existence. In doing so this thesis presents what is called the Ideo-material subject.