The subject of enunciation may be thought of as the place which a person speaks from, yet it is also what the subject says. In this sense, my work here attempts to chart major signposts in the history of critical theory, beginning with Descartes, Sartre, Jameson, Macherey, Benjamin, and Hegel. The genesis of this discipline, its schism from scholasticism per se, and its relation to political economy and psychoanalysis are marked. I hope it will provide new readers and those familiar with the field a grasp of the challenges that the history of representation has faced, its aporias and liberations, and of course mediatory possibilities.