The concept of a « subject », which comes from outside anthropology, can be investigated by a repeated decentering shift : first of all, from the discipline, which means visiting (and dialoging with) political philosophy. The subject can take a place in anthropology as a third-party concept that helps us move beyond the cleaved meanings attributed to the notions of « person » and « individual » while, nonetheless, relying on them. A few examples are used to propose working with this concept and altering it from an anthropological viewpoint. The figure of the subject enables us to move beyond the problematics of identity with which anthropology has been preoccupied, even obsessed, since its ethnicistic origins till the recent polemic in France that sets « communitarism » at odds with the « republic ». By placing the question of the subject in anthropology, we can, in turn, review, and move beyond, the opposition running through political philosophy between the acting and « subjected » subjects.