CCarvalho - Logic(s) of subjection. Butler's symptomatic reading of Hegel and Lacan on the symbolic (2008). (original) (raw)
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Striving for the Impossible: The Hegelian background of Judith Butler
Acta Politica, 2009
This study analyses the Hegelian roots of the subject-theory and the political theory of Judith Butler. Butler can be seen as the author of the concept of gender performativity. Butler claims that identities are linquistic. Subject's identities are "terms". Linguistic identities are performative and normative: they produce, according to cultural rules, the identities which they just claim to describe. Butler's theory of the performativity of identities is based on her theory of identities as ek-static constructions. This means that there is a relation between the self and the Other at the heart of identities. It is claimed in this study that Butler's theory of the relation between the self and the Other, or, between the subject and the constitutive outside, is based on G.W.F.Hegel's theory of the dialectics of recognition in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Especially the sections dealing with the relation between "Lord" and "Bondsman" set the theoretical base for Butler's theory of the ek-statism of identities as well as for Butler's political theory. Further, it is claimed that Hegel's own solution for the enslaving and instrumentalizing relation between the self and the Other, reciprocal recognition, remains an important alternative to the postmodernist conception supported by political theorists like Butler. Chapter 2, on Hegel, goes through the dialectics of recognition between the self and the Other in The Phenomenology of Spirit up until the ideal of reciprocal recognition and absolute knowledge. Chapter 3 introduces two French interpretations of Hegel, by Alexandre Kojève and Louis Althusser. Both of these interpretations, especially the Kojèvian one, have deeply influenced the contemporary understanding of Hegel as well as the contemporary thought-presented e.g. in the postmodern political thought-on the relations between the self and the Other. The Kojèvian Marxist utopia with its notion of "the End of History" as well as the Althusserian theory of the interpellative formation of subjects have also influenced how Hegel's theory of the self and the Other have travelled into Butler's thought. In chapter 5 these influences are analysed in detail. According to the analysis, Butler, like numerous other poststructuralist theorists, accepts Kojève's interpretation as basically correct, but rejects his vision of "the End of History" as static and totalitarian. Kojève's utopian philosophy of history is replaced by the paradoxical idea of an endless striving towards emancipation which, however, could not and should not be reached. In Chapter 6 Butler's theory is linked to another postmodern political theory, that of Chantal Mouffe. It is argued that Mouffe's theory is based on a similar view of the relation of the self and the Other as Butler's theory. The former, however, deals explicitly with politics. Therefore, it makes the central paradox of striving for the impossible more visible; such a theory is unable to guide political action. Hegel actually anticipated this kind of theorizing in his critique of "Unhappy Consciousness" in The Phenomenology of Spirit.
“Dependency, subordination, and recognition: On Judith Butler's theory of subjection”
Continental Philosophy Review, 2006
Judith Butler's recent work expands the Foucaultian notion of subjection to encompass an analysis of the ways in which subordinated individuals become passionately attached to, and thus come to be psychically invested in, their own subordination. I argue that Butler's psychoanalytically grounded account of subjection offers a compelling diagnosis of how and why an attachment to oppressive norms -of femininity, for example -can persist in the face of rational critique of those norms. However, I also argue that her account of individual and collective resistance to subjection is plagued by familiar problems concerning the normative criteria and motivation for resistance that emerge in her recent work in new and arguably more intractable forms, and by new concerns about her conceptions of dependency, subordination and recognition.
PARADOXICAL BEGINNINGS: READING JUDITH BUTLER'S SENSES OF THE SUBJECT
Chiasmi International , 2017
Spanning nearly twenty years, the essays in Judith Butler’s Senses of the Subject investigate the processes of subject formation. Via an engagement with canonical philosophical figures like Descartes, Malebranche, Merleau-Ponty, Spinoza, Irigaray, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Fanon, Butler develops the thesis that a radical “susceptibility” or “impressionability” vis-à-vis social and linguistic powers is constitutive of the “I.” This claim, as I suggest in the review, has two implications. First, any attempt to account for this process of initial formation is inherently paradoxical; it seeks to put into words a moment that is temporally and structurally prior to the emergence and development of the “I” and the ability to recount such an emergence. Second, the subject, and also the process of subject’s formation, is structurally and temporally open, incessantly relying upon that which is “external” to the subject for its emergence. This collection, which is exclusively devoted to Butler’s engagement with the philosophical tradition, is an invaluable contribution not only to the understanding of Butler’s philosophy and her relationship with the canon. It also opens the space for an investigation of Butler’s philosophical commitments to query why the body seems to dematerialize from her work, even, it seems, when she makes the materiality of the body an explicit focus of her inquiry.
Unbecoming Subjects: Subject Formation and Responsibility in the Context of Judith Butler's Thinking
Dissertation, Universität Tübingen, 2004, 2005
The manuscript seeks to inquire into poststructuralist theorizing of the contexts and conditions of the subject’s continuous emergence and focuses on the importance of subject formation with regard to ethical theories on responsibility by reading Butler and her authors. Rather than reading Butler as a theorist of gender and sexuality in a narrow sense -- as has been the prevalent way of engaging her work in the existing literature to this day -- this work strives to understand and demonstrate the pertinence of Butler’s thinking for critical theory and philosophy as these are concerned with ethics and with the question of the subject as more broadly construed. I argue that response and responsibility are crucial modes of subject formation. The trajectory of my dissertation -- inquiring into Butler’s readings of Hegel, Nietzsche, Althusser, Levinas, Freud, Foucault, and Kierkegaard -- draws out the implications of what it means to theorize subject formation. Approaching the question of the subject through the question of its emergence offers important avenues to unearth how at their very core subject formation and the enterprise to give an account thereof are ethical questions and have decisive bearings on what kind of ethical theorizing will subsequently become available. Main issues in the manuscript are the precariousness of life, the role of others, desire and the unattainability of satisfaction, the implication and dispossession by social norms that always precede and exceed us, and the primacy of others and their addressing us, which means that responding and responsibility are crucial modalities of subject formation.
Binary Trouble: Preconditions for Non-binary Gender in Works of Heidegger, Derrida and Butler
Binary Trouble: Preconditions for Non-binary Gender in Works of Heidegger, Derrida and Butler, 2018
Non-binary gender as an umbrella term refers to any gender beyond the male/female categories. With the progressing LGBT+ movement and future predictions referring to all persons equally „regardless of their chosen gender” (Cave, Klein, 2015), the question of philosophical and societal limits of being non-binary is a fundamental one for understanding the patterns in the current sign system. Binary, as such, is of a philosophical nature and can be interpreted as political; as in the works of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler who both accelerated feminist criticism by analysing how the masculine is privileged in the construction of meaning. Also, for Martin Heidegger binary is a subject of criticism as he tried to establish a new dualistic-thinking humanism in which being comes before metaphysical oppositions. However, in his attempt to define being through its difference to beings, being is dependent on the difference. There is a significant problem with Heidegger's approach to gender and sex. The neutral Dasein is neither of the two sexes but as factual it is a gendered being (Geschlechstwesen). Derrida analyses the pre-differential state as a precondition for uniqueness of each gender, which is separated by space and time of endless difference, and Butler investigates the reinterpretation of meanings of differences and the becoming of gender. The goal of this article is to compare the approaches of these three scholars to find the possibilities, preconditions and limits of non-binary gender. Thus, I read Heidegger and compare his thoughts on sex and gender of Dasein with the perspective of Derrida and Butler, and then I discuss the limits of Butler's approach by using the perspective of Derrida and come to the conclusion on visibility of gender signs and their validity in discourses. Together with Butler, I assume that there is no gender identity but performatively constituted expressions (Butler 1990, 25), whose origin is the own desire for recognition, which is why I don't differentiate between sex/gender/desire. In his lectures on Geschlecht, Derrida describes inter alia the way logocentrism has been genderized on the example of Dasein, a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger which has opened novel possibilities. Although these three thinkers rarely come together in comparisons, I am of the opinion that analysing them in this sequence is optimal for the reasoning about gender and its limit within the process of structural reorganization of society in the Western culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. I argue that the point of clash of their arguments dwells in the interlinkage of thinking, acting and signifying of a politicized material body. All of them problematize authenticity and repetition. Heidegger provokes the idea of a neutral and bodiless Dasein which can become authentic but where no becoming of gender is possible, Derrida seeks the pre-differential state which enables becoming, and Butler seeks the way in which gender is becoming. Although Heidegger tried to establish thinking beyond dualistic terms, he defined being by using its difference from beings, i.e. he thought of being through difference and escaped the problem of identity, including the sexual or gender identity of Dasein. Derrida criticized the binary domination, reviewed the conditions for the functioning of the prime beginning, which he understands as the primordial sexual difference that existed before the binary opposition. In this context, sex is pre-differential, unsigned, naked but is being veiled by the clothes of language and culture. This pre-differential state can be understood as a positive potential for a non-binary identity, a possibility of sexual multiplicity and denotation of self as any possible sex. Similarly, as a stroke strikes validity as for example when minting the coin, the formation of gender should be understood as striking, respectively as signification rather than construction or production. It is a violent act which is exercised from the outside on the surface which is initially reconciliatory. In the space opened by Derrida and by using his instruments of decomposition and citationality, Butler builds her concept of performativity and gender performance as a practice by which discourse produces effects that it names. She regards binary as fiction which has the regulatory function to confirm the heterosexual coherency. The materiality of sex is violently created and operates as a ritual. Such performativity as a predicate used for creating facts is based on a game of sign because whatever we think of materiality it is always embedded in a chain of signs that constitutes its concept. The possibility of subversion offered by Butler does not “mint” the validity of non-binary identity because this is being done, with Derrida's words, by a stroke which is the discourse itself. It has its power just by the sign, if it would not operate with signs, it wouldn't be visible. However, in the space of the current „we“ invisibility means recognisability, i.e. the legibility of the sign. By breaking the power of the current „we“ or „discourse“ the possibility of sexual multiplicity can be afforded, respectively of non-binary identity. But its strike, which would impede the validity of such identity, will only be possible in chaos. Until then, the signs of the non-binary identity will be assigned to the ideal created by the actual „we“, i.e. to the ideal of masculinity, respectively femininity, likewise there will be the effect of phallogocentrism. Subversion is necessarily political because it requires a refusal of repeating the imposed sign and its replacement by a modified sign in a new context. It can take place only within the discourse because it cannot be left out. Concluding on her approach, I argue that sex/gender/desire depends on the strength of the discourse and on the strength of subversion; their essence is incidental and can be compared to the essence of thrownness, which Derrida describes on the basis of Heidegger's thrownness into being. The spreading of non-binary visibility can further abolish the effects of the discourse, but not the discourse itself. It is the power of the „monster” which shifts away into a field of impossibility, excludes, respectively pathologizes. Similarly, the expressions of non-binary gender identity are excluded because they are visible and therefore unreadable. Although Derrida is considering the possibilities of a pre-differential state and Butler points out to the possibility of returning back into it, neither of them shows a way how it would be possible to overcome the power of discourse because, in my opinion, the existence outside of the discourse is not possible. Likewise, it is not possible to break the logic of positivity by destruction because we would lose communication and thus ourselves. Thus, logocentrism cannot be done away with, it is only possible to disturb it and let the act of questioning it function further.
Judith Butler's recent work is exemplary of the trend in contemporary theory to consider ethics. Her deliberation over ethical questions, and the place of ethics in intellectual work, has undeniably intensified since September 11. This article will demonstrate, however, that this is a rendering explicit of what has always been implicit in her work. Rather than perceiving the ethical dimension of Butler's writings in her increasing interest in thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt, I contend that it is in her sustained interest in Hegel, and specifically in Hegelian recognition, that her work can be read as engaged with ethical concerns. This article highlights the growing critical concern with the prevalence of recognition in ethical theory and questions the possibility of theorising ethics outside of the recognition-paradigm.
The Vulnerable Subject: Butler Reading Hegel
Rethinking Vulnerability and Exclusion. Historical and Critical Essays , 2021
In this contribution to a volume dedicated to conjoining the related but problematic notions of ‘exclusion’ and ‘vulnerability’, I would like to explore the tie between the notion of ‘vulnerability’ and the critique of the sovereign subject in Judith Butler’s later thought, tracing its connections with G. W. F. Hegel and the critical reception of the German thinker by such authors as Slavoj Žižek or Jean-Luc Nancy.
Global Scientific Journal Publication, 2022
Judith Butler's concept of performativity asserted that the individual sense of self is not made by someone else but is originally constituted by the individual human being. However, some scholars such as Jay Prosser and Lise Nelson consider such notion as problematic, arguing that it is impossible to be in oneself without recognizing other constituted realities. To overcome the problems confronting Butler's concept of performativity, the researcher proposed that it must be integrated with Martin Heidegger's phenomenology of dasein in terms of: (a) subjectivity, (b) stable/constituted identity, and (c) authenticity. Heidegger's phenomenology of dasein argues that man has the capacity to understand his own sense of self in his different existential encounter of the world, towards other beings and also by surpassing his own facticity or limitation. The integration of the concepts of Butler and Heidegger leads also to a conceptual shift of understanding gender from performativity towards gender as Being containing the following elements: (a) Gender as Being is constituted by subjectivity and objectivity, (b) Gender as Being means that one has the capacity to live as best as what he likes to become in the midst of the stabilized/constituted identity, and (c) Gender as Being means that one has limitations and its limits is the key to possibilities. Improving on Butler's concept of performativity, this research concludes that gender identity is constituted not only based on one's subjective desire but on other aspects as well, such as lived experienced with other beings and one's being situated in the world.