The Question of Subjectivity in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

This thesis attempts to observe the relationship between psychoanalytical internal factors and social external factors while analysing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in the light of such significant theoretical considerations as Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and ideological appartuses, Michel Foucault’s concept of different power technologies which institutionalize the subject’s knowledge, and Jacques Lacan’s idea of the symbolic order. In addition, this paper seeks to expose the process how the idea of composite subject in poststructuralist and postsemiotic theories replaced Cartesian subject of Western metaphysics. Besides discussing the terms ideology, institutionalization, symbolic order, postsemiotic and Cartesian subjectivity, I will also rely on Carl Gustav Jung’s thesis of persona identity, which might question all the previously affirmed theories. All these theories and Miller’s play trigger the question whether the subject is able to diverge from its stable, subjected condition of existence to any extent, and if so, how this more conscious state could be achieved by the socially positioned human being.