As is usually pointed out, a contemporary theory of the subject deprives the concept of identity from necessary properties. It is also claimed that the contemporary thinking on the notion of the subject is Anti-Cartesian. In the contemporary theory, concepts of subject and identity are deprived of the essential properties, or, to coin a word, those concepts are ‘de-essentialized’.

However, this de-essentialization is turned into its opposite by replacing the de-essentialized subject with the subject of that de-essentialization, or by turning the de-essentialized essence into the essentialized de-essentialization. Theory claims for concepts of subject and identity to be deprived of any essence, shear of from any ground. Nevertheless, subject and identification are re-constituted in the subject of deprivation or in an identity which is an effect of that deprivation.

This is clearly visible in the thinking of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. In The Coming Community, Agamben strips identity of any feature that would determine it. But in the remainder of the book, Agamben says that whatever-being is stripped of idem and that such beings in their ‘whateverness’ are nothing but the pure ipse in its (in)essential and disidentified nudity. In The Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben argues that the desubjectified subject is resubjectified as a subject of its desubjectification. In that book, subject is resubjectified in the concept of the remnant. Such notions of pure ipse without idem, subject capable of its own desubjectification are extremely problematic points in Agamben’s thinking.

This paper considers the possibility of thinking desubjectification and disidentification without turning them into another form of subject or the identity. The first part of the paper considers discussion between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on Cartesian Cogito. Second part of the paper discusses Denis Diderot’s idea of the identity as an equal aptitude to be everyone and none. Such aptitude, capability, or potentiality, was defined by the French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe as the loi de impropriété. In the conclusion, this paper proposes some critical remarks on Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of identity and subjectivity.