A dramatic turn of importance, prestige, or authority, attached from the modern age to the Self, or consciousness, the speaking, autonomous subject. This subject has moved from the center of many discourses on human beings and deeds (anthropology, psychology, linguistics, etc.) to a marginality.
In the modern (post-medieval) period, individuals, one way or another (for example, through individual consciousness as an arbiter of truth or through the individual as a right holder), become more central than in previous epochs.
The individual was treated primarily as a source and only sometimes as a result, considered in principle as a source of thoughts, actions, feelings, etc., very rarely as something that only comes from something else.
In structuralist and especially poststructuralist works, the subject is expelled from the central stage.
For example, language cannot be explained in terms of what images or ideas pass through the consciousness of the Self, rather the thoughts, actions, and even feelings of individuals are interpreted in the light of linguistic, economic, cultural, etc. systems in which these people are bound.
What was once the center of discussion – the ego – has been pushed to the periphery – language and other systems are becoming central.
