Marx’s account of history decenteres the subject from being sole author of its practices.

Evidence

It is not possible to hold to that logic of identity after Marx because although Marx does talk about man (he does not talk about women making history, but perhaps they were slotted in, as the nineteenth century so often slotted women in under some other masculine title), about men and women making history but under conditions which are not of their own choosing. And having lodged either the individual or collective subject always within historical practices, we as individuals or as groups cannot be, and can never have been, the sole origin or authors of those practices. That is a profound historical decentering in terms of social practice. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 182

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘not of their own choosing’ conditions recall the anti-essentialist critique of the choosing subject that downstream Islamophobia theory applies to racialized agency.
• DEFINE: Defines one of the four great decenterings of modern thought that dismantle the logic of identity.