Sorry if this is more hostile, but if Butler fans want to give her a better press, they should get typing.
Judith Butler the Psychic Life of Power
Introduction
1. Subject - a terminological confusion.
The word subject has two meanings in English that are more or less opposite. The first is 'thinking agent', as in the subject of the sentence, 'Judy wrote PLOP', is Judy because she decided to do it. The second is something upon which one acts, as in 'the subject under discussion is PLOP'. The civic-political meaning of 'Subject' as in subject of the Crown, is a version of the latter. The etymology is from 'to throw', so, an action which subjects what is thrown to the action of a thinking agent, a subject.
The English Hegel scholar TH Green commented upon the different usages of the word 'subject' in English and German when he wrote that 'By the "subject" of rights he ['a German'] would mean the person exercising them, or to whom they belong; by "object" that in respect of which the rights are exercised. ... But English writers commonly call that the subject of a right which the Germans would call the object.' (Principles of Political Obligation, p 180)
And out of this simple terminological confusion Butler, following Foucault has constructed a vast edifice of confusion. The substance of her argument is to elide the two meanings of 'subject' so as to make the one, freedom, coeval with the other, slavery.
Self-control, the emergence of a freely-willing subject is elided with the domination by a hostile power. Butler writes 'the subject must thwart its own desire' and, later, as if it meant the same thing 'to desire the condition of one's own subordination...' But this is a false identification. The subject must indeed thwart its own unformed desires, if it is to subsume these under more developed intentions, higher desires, such as losing weight to look good, for example. But to say that this is the same thing as 'desiring one's own subordination' is just a mistake. To forgo pleasure in the here and now for a more developed satisfaction in the future is not subordination, it is freedom. To surrender to natural appetites without their deliberate sublation is the condition of slavery.
What strikes Butler as tragic, strikes me as rather wonderful. What a great thing that we are not slaves to our immediate appetites, but can choose to supplant natural desires, with higher social wants.
But then Butler has a love of the tragic. I was amazed by this statement: 'That accounts in part for the adult sense of humiliation when confronted with the earliest objects of love - parents, guardians, siblings and so on - the sense of belated indignation in which one claims "I couldn't possibly love such a person."'
What amazed me was the ready presumption that every reader of her book would immediately recognise the 'the adult sense of humiliation when confronted with ... parents'. I must admit that I rubbed my eyes when I read this. I have never felt such a thing. At first I wondered whether I was some kind of freak. And then I remembered that this is after all an American writing, and, on the unlikely prospect that all Americans would instantaneously recognise this sense of humiliation, nine tenths of the world's population who have not had the advantages of therapy and day- time television would, like me be scratching their heads in bemusement. What's the matter Judy, don't you love your mother? I love mine. And my father too. Still do. Embarrassed to say so, really, in this public forum. But just to make the point, the 'adult sense of humiliation' that Butler thinks is a human universal, is actually a thoroughly peculiar product of late twentieth century American society.
Butler's awkward relationship to family speaks volumes. It is spoken of in terms of abuse, and repressive socialisation. Hard to imagine that most people in most places grow up in the selfless love and care or their parents, healthy, well-adjusted individuals. Some, I suppose grow up to be professors of cultural studies, but then statistically it must go wrong somewhere.
Characteristic of the confusion of the two meanings of subject is Butler's assumption that small children are socialised as subjects (ie thinking agents). But in truth children only really attain subjectivity by breaking away from their parents. -- Jim heartfield