One comes across the same
>problem in feminist thought--Butler says there is no such thing as a
>woman, then other feminists get pissed off at her, because she has
taken
>away the standpoint from which they can theorize their own oppression.
That's why I like Sedgwick, too. She often works in both the registers whose antagonisms you point out. I do think Butler's "no such thing as a woman" is productive in an essay like "Arguing the Real," where what she's really doing is challenging Zizek's "Rock of the Real," the Lacanian "rock" (also "negativity") of symbolization against which the subject forcloses, and signification is made possible. How the law of the rock itself leads, in the next step, to a basically essentialist identity for "woman." For Butler this theoretical work is necessary in understanding how ideologies work, how the phantasmatic is invested in an empty sign, to make that a politically motivated sign. Wish I had the essay on me.
-Alec
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