>Butler teaches in Rhetoric, which, at Berkeley can tend towards philosophy,
>literature, critical theory, even film studies, it just depends. She cannot
>completely shirk the label "philosophy"; her PhD is in Philosophy and, when
>it comes down to it, she actually writes _more_ about philosophical issues
>than she does about literature. In fact, taking _Bodies that Matter_ (1993)
>as an example, it is her writing on literary topics that I find weakest.
why?
>Some Anglo-American philosophers would dismiss her writing as
>'Continental'-- as not really philosophy (although radicals or Marxists
>would probably reject this division into 'real' and 'fake' philosophy as so
>much bourgeois mystification). Nussbaum, at least in her TNR mode, seems to
>take the Anglo-chauvinist approach. Having said that, I mostly find her
>critique apt. She points out that if one attempts to extract a feminist
>political lesson from Butler, we are more or less told to resist gender
>normativity at an interpersonal and everyday level.
and this would be bad, why? or are you claiming butler dismisses all group actions or identifications? i gather so. can i ask is your evidence for that anything apart from the anecdotes below?
>This is more or less describes Butler's activism. She is notorious for
>quibbling at conferences about being referred to as a woman or lesbian.
>Perhaps it is self-mockery, but I would not rule out the possibility that
>she actually sees this as politics. For example, at the Freud conference
>here at Yale last year someone referred to "the three women" on the panel
>and Butler grabbed the mike to report that, while the others may have
>identified themselves as women, she had not. People kind of giggled, and
>she succesfully flustered the questioner enough to evade his/her question.
>But I thought, what a drag! This is political speech?
well it would depend on your definition of political speech, obviously. it remains important to query 'women' as a label that implies any particular contents, and this seems to me ot be one way of doing that even if it's not the one i would choose. i'd be far more interested in hearing from you what she had to say about freud in that context.
catherine