Discourse theory restores a decentered subject while culturalism restores a unified consciousness

Evidence

The difference is that, whereas culturalism would correct the hyper-structuralism of earlier models by restoring the unified subject (collective or individual) of consciousness at the center of “the Structure,” discourse theory, by way of the Freudian concepts of the unconscious and the Lacanian concepts of how subjects are constituted in language (through the entry into the Symbolic and the Law of Culture), restores the decentered subject, the contradictory subject, as a set of positions in language and knowledge, from which culture can appear to be enunciated. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 204

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the crux contrast between culturalism’s unified consciousness and discourse theory’s Lacanian decentered subject.
• XREF: Pairs with the reading on silence and subjectivity; the Lacanian Symbolic/Law of Culture framing echoes structuralist language theory. — connects to: The discursive turn requires reintroducing the subject as non-unitary and internally contradictory; The discursive perspective reintroduces non-unitary subjectivity that structuralism had abolished; Subjects are constituted by unconscious cultural categories rather than their authors (+9 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 204