Saint Genet, Thief Accusation, Sartre, Althusser, Interpellation

   

The accusation of thievery shows up in both Sartre and Althusser. The former in the essay "Saint Genet," quoted here. I am pretty sure where I heard this originally referenced was in an old lecture on Existentialism by Robert Solomon, who taught in the city where I'm from but whom I had the misfortune of only coming to know after he'd passed away. He wrote the small passage on the back of our PoS text: 

"DIZZYING WORD

Our sentence is not severe. What.
ever commandment the culprit has
violated is simply written upon his
skin by the harrow.

-- KAFKA,
In the Penal Settlement

The child was playing in the kitchen. Suddenly he became aware of
his solitude and was seized with anxiety, as usual. So he "absented"
himself. Once again, he plunged into a kind of ecstasy. There is
now no one in the room. An abandoned consciousness is reflecting
utensils. A drawer is opening; a little hand moves forward.

Caught in the act. Someone has entered and is watching him.
Beneath this gaze the child comes to himself. He who was not yet
anyone suddenly becomes Jean Genet. He feels that he is blinding,
deafening; he is a beacon, an alarm that keeps ringing. Who is Jean
Genet? In a moment the whole village will know. . . . The child
alone is in ignorance. In a state of fear and shame he continues his
signal of distress. Suddenly

. . . a dizzying word

From the depths of the world abolishes
the beautiful order. . . . ^*

A voice declares publicly: "You're a thief." The child is ten
years old.

That was how it happened, in that or some other way. In all
probability, there were offenses and then punishment, solemn oaths
and relapses. It does not matter. The important thing is that Genet
lived and has not stopped reliving this period of his life as if it had
lasted only an instant.

It is the moment of awakening. The sleepwalking child opens his
eyes and realizes he is stealing. It is revealed to him that he is a
thief and he pleads guilty, crushed by a fallacy which he is unable
to refute; he stole, he is therefore a thief. " 

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6354449 

And for Althusser, a similar process occurs in what Professor Allen recognized as the "moment of interpellation" 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/althusser/#TheIde