On Sun, January 24, 1999 at 15:30:53 (-0800) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>...
>Initially articulated as a critique of compulsory heterosexuality
>within feminism (Osborne, 1996: 110), the notion of performativity is
>best understood as an attempt to avoid two forms of reductionism: on
>the one hand, a metaphysical voluntarism that makes agency an
>unexplained attribute of the sovereign subject, and on the other, a
>fatalistic determinism that sees the subject as completely determined
>by social context. While acknowledging the social construction of
>gender, Butler is also concerned about the politically disabling
>consequences of theories of social determination. Her aim is
>therefore both to recognize that the subject is socially constructed
>and, at the same time, to argue that this does not mean the erasure of
>agency. Butler seeks to open up a space for agency through the notion
>of the performative.
Good. We need to explain agency not as "an unexplained attribute" of
a subject nor as "a fatalistic determinism" (a tendency found in
Marxism, perhaps?). Butler plies between this Scylla and Charybdis by
granting that although "the subject is socially constructed", "this
does not mean the erasure of agency". Ok, at least I can begin to see
the fog lifting. Now, some tentative reformulations so I can try to
get a better handle on this.
By "social construction" of something, say gender, I assume what is
meant is something other than innate development. That is, the human
liver and its function are not something that is socially constructed
(though they are in part "environmentally constructed"). To be
"socially constructed" means to be defined, e.g., behaviorally, by
social convention.
The risk of seeing subjects (can't we just use the word "people",
aren't we all subjects in one way or another? Well, I won't
quibble...) as solely formed by social convention has dangers, so
while Butler wants to retain this, she also wants to add another
piece, aimed at one particular shortcoming of viewing subjects as
solely constructed by social convention, namely, that this view erases
agency of the subject (I assume "agency" is akin to Free Will?). Her
addition which is aimed at allowing for agency is called "the
performative". She locates the "act", or ongoing "activity", of
"performativity" in "discourse", which I assume means some form of
social encounter among humans. This performative act brings into being
the thing it "names" or refers to. I'm curious to know why, if Butler
is trying to propose something other than social construction, she
constructs a theory ("performativity") which is based on human social
interaction. Is not then performativity itself social construction?
This seems to me to be the case, especially since Butler says that
"The 'performative' dimension of construction is precisely the forced
reiteration of norms", and where else can these norms be reproduced,
but in culture.
I'm also curious: What does it mean to "bring[] into being" a subject?
Butler thinks that agency lives in the interstices of reiteration.
Somehow the repeated acts are not smooth, are discontinuous, and
therefore agency sneaks in.
She equates performativity with "citationality", or citing things
repeatedly. This repeated citation demands a certain linguistic
continuity ("it must draw upon and recite a set of linguistic
conventions"), but aside from that, there is some form of (unnamed)
element in subsequent reformulations which is to some extent "skewed"
from earlier ones, thus providing the cracks in the subject formation
in which agency can appear. I could easily see how skewed
reformulation actually provided better "cover" for pernicious ideas.
Even if ideas were entirely "orthogonal", they have some persistence
(the slave-owner tells the black that they are lazy and worthless
today, tomorrow he says they are stupid and dirty the next --- just
how does a lack of overlap provide for *more* agency rather than
less?).
So, what I get from this is that because of some form of discrepancy
in succeeding formulations of norms ("multiple logics"?), subjects are
able to somehow detect this inconsistency and to thereby "act" as
agents (do they commit an act of agency in detecting this?).
So culture ("cultural practices") reinforces heterosexual norms
through marriage and the division of labor. Then, "reproduction"
(intercourse, pregnancy, childbirth?) is "overdetermined" by things
that "are not reducible to ... citation", i.e., marriage and division
of labor. By "overdetermined", I assume she means there are multiple
factors pushing in the same (similar, given the lack of precise
overlap?) direction (some of) which are individually capable of
producing the observed effect of subject formation.
I'm sorry to be dense, but just how is any of this novel? Don't we
know that despite vicious and repeated attacks on people, they can
retain dignity, hope, sense of self, agency? And don't we know that
this same repetition is sometimes extremely difficult to overcome?
And why does Butler assume that it is *further* efforts to undermine a
person's sense of self, their agency, that produce the effect of
agency? What role would activism and scholarship aimed at undermining
power and its institutions have? It is not a form of resignification,
but it does often have the effect of freeing people from the labels
they have come to internalize. And how does what she describes fall
outside of "social context", whatever that might encompass? She tries
to say subject formation is not "completely determined by social
context", but if she is to do so, she needs to show how *her* account
is not a part of "social context".
Also, why doesn't she travel more the route of Chomsky in his
description of language development, according to which the innate
capacities interact and grow within a certain environment, much like
the formation of the ocular apparatus. Can't agency and subjectivity
be looked at similarly? Could not the capacity for agency (and
subjectivity) be innate capacities which are formed in interaction
with the (social) environment? Wouldn't we then be interested in
social practice which enhanced the former and diminished the latter?
Haven't we seen this before?
I am not getting it.
Bill
