My reaction to Butler has been that though her ends are admirable, I am having problems finding much of real value in her book (though I have only so far read part of the Introduction and the first part of Chapter 2). I think part of my problem is that she is using a fair amount of abstraction that I find untenable as well as language that is to me opaque and jargon-laden. My comments, as a result, are nearly completely negative, which makes me feel a bit badly because I know how much Doug thinks of her (makes me feel bad in two ways actually: that I am stomping on something that Doug finds of value, and/or that I am just too boneheaded to see what is really important).
Hopefully in getting this out I can uncover some of my weaknesses in interpretation that others can help me fix.
Butler starts off her introduction with a quote from Foucault:
We should try to grasp subjection in its *material instance* as a
constitution of subjects. [emphasis added]
This reification of a relationship among people ("subjection") as a "material instance" is a theme suffused throughout Butler's thought.
She starts off her thoughts by making the odd claim that subjection is "a form of power". This claim, coupled with the standard definition of subjection she supplies from the OED leads to what she believes is a "paradox". Subjection, "a form of power", is "paradoxical" according to Butler because "one's very formulation as a subject" is "dependent upon that very power".
But this description of subjection is less than satisfying. She arbitrarily sets up subjection as "a form of power" rather than as a relationship that exists between those who wield (and use) power, and those who suffer it.
She assumes that it (subjection) exists within the subject itself: power --- as subjection --- is "what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are". At the same time she claims that it exists outside the subject (power is "external to oneself" and "what we oppose"). Butler's paradox arises when she simply assumes an identity between these two forms; thus the "paradox" that subjection depends upon subjection. But this paradox is mere linguistic (if grammatically inconsistent) sleight of mouth: "a power external to oneself" is equated by definition with "what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are".
She moves quickly from this creative step to describe a very impoverished model of power which she then uses to contrast her own ideas: "power imposes itself", she says the standard story goes, "upon us, and, weakened by its force, we come to internalize or accept its terms." In this model, she posits power as nothing but an objectified form, like a missile hurled at us.
Her immediate criticism of this model, however, is that this model ignores the fact that by internalizing or accepting the terms of power we become "fundamentally dependent on those terms" for existence. But what does this add? What does "dependent on" mean? How does acceding to terms others set make us "fundamentally dependent" on them? Why not "incidentally" or "partially"? What is it that she sees as being dependent? A person? A psyche? A condition? A belief? She seems to be merely shuffling about meanings, "dependent on" to mean "defined by".
She also unnecessarily restricts the relationship of the potentially subjected (one might ask if *this* relationship is a "form of power") to the potentially dominating --- a restriction of focus that I think has grave consequences, because I think that this is where thinking on this topic must begin. She says subjection is a "fundamental dependency on a discourse we never chose". However, here some real questions arise: Does the Nazi-to-be --- the merely angry and ignorant but as-yet-unfocused --- not "chose" the discourse of Nazi hatred? Is it not functional, does it not serve his/her ends? Has not a *positive* edifice of potential hate --- of hate-almost-to-be --- not already been constructed in this person's head? Isn't the relationship of power to the subject one that comes late in the game, when power (Nazis) in this case provides solutions of a sort which, to the subject-to-be, provide a perfectly reasonable and *empowering* solution to his/her predicament? Why, again, is this not something the subject "never chose"? Is the subject a mere tabula rasa that power "animates and sustains"? Or, does power exist because we need it? Because it is chosen, often with glad relief, in part because other solutions to the problem are cut off by material means, by law, by politics, by urban organization, etc.?
Butler expands upon her "paradox":
the paradox of subjection implies a paradox of referentiality:
namely, that we must refer to what does not yet exist (p. 4)
Here, again, she misses what, even to the seventeenth-century New England Puritan practitioners of Ramist logic (her predecessors in a form of imaginative couplings used to explain the nature of essential social relations, who in turn derived their formations from Aristotle's categories) is unremarkable. The minister/congregation, buyer/seller, parent/child, husband/wife, worker/boss couplings all involve two entities, neither of which can exist alone, both of which are simultaneously created (note Ramist logic provides for two degrees of "paradox" to Butler's one, because the causal chain is bidirectional, not one-way, as is Butler's). For more on Ramist logic, and the whole of the rich and fascinating Puritan Weltanschauung, see Edmund S. Morgan *The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England* (Harper & Row, 1966 [1944]), especially the first chapter, "Puritanism and Society" --- more on this below.
Her narrow acceptance of Althusser's subject-formation model (interpellation) --- while critical of it in a narrow way --- misses a more fundamental point which I think goes to the very heart of power and subjection. Who really has power when "the passerby, hailed by the policeman, turns and recognizes himself as the one who is hailed"? Is the passerby really "accepting the subordination and normalization effected by that voice"? What if the passerby is a woman and the police officer is a self-conscious kid fresh out of the academy, and what if the woman is a self-confident professor of rhetoric? What if the officer is a black woman and the passerby a white male? A white male judge that the officer knows from court? What if the hailing of the passerby is done because the officer is hurt and asking for assistance? What if the black female police officer is bisexual and feels strangely and awkwardly physically attracted to the white male passerby, to whom she calls out in distress, and who in turn really is a closet KKK member, but who nevertheless feels overcome by the sight of another human in pain (as opposed to a disembodied Black Evil in hate speeches) and comes to her aid while in an epiphany feels his KKK beliefs take flight? What if the officer is one the passerby recognizes as someone he met casually at a party the night before, with whom he got drunk, and without discussing professions, talked for two hours about the beliefs of Tolstoy and Robbe-Grillet on the purpose of art in society (or, if you must, the 49ers chances of beating the Vikings in the Super Bowl)?
Can two actors simultaneously have power and suffer subjection (reflexivity)? What if the subject, following Bataille, "conserves a certain dignity, a fundamental nobility and even a sacred truth"? What if subjection is temporary or incomplete and the subject "conserves to some extent the sovereign importance of himself as an end in himself"? (Georges Bataille, *Eroticism: Death and Sensuality* (City Lights, 1986 [1957]), pp. 149-50).
Is it the (female) prostitute that has power over the man? (ibid., p. 133, top) Was Clint Eastwood in *Tightrope* his own master, subjecting the New Orleans prostitute to his will? Or was it the other way around? Is a prostitute "proud in the shame she is bogged down in and wallows in it cynically"? (ibid, p. 133).
We might pause here to pursue Bataille's own paradox:
The divine world has to descend among the world of things. There
is a paradox in this double intention. The determined desire to
centre everything on continuity has its effect, but this first
effect has to compromise with a simultaneous effect in the other
direction. The Christian God is a highly organised and individual
entity springing from the most destructive of feelings, that of
continuity. Continuity is reached when boundaries are crossed.
But the most constant characteristic of the impulse I have called
transgression is to make order out of what is essentially chaos.
By introducing transcendence into an organised world,
transgression becomes a principle of an organised disorder. Its
organised character is the result of the organised ways of its
adherents. Such an organisation is founded upon work but also and
at the same time upon the discontinuity of beings. The organised
world of work and the world of discontinuity are one and the
same. Tools and the products of toil are discontinuous objects,
the man who uses the tools and makes the goods is himself a
discontinuous being and his awareness of this is deepened by the
use or creation of discontinuous objects. Death is revealed in
relation to the discontinuous world of labour. For creatures
whose individuality is heightened by work, death is the primal
disaster; it underlines the inanity of the separate individual.
(ibid., p. 119)
Are we truly separate individuals? Well, enough of Bataille and back to Butler...
Let's take a closer look at power in the real world.
Consider the Australian rock-and-roll band AC/DC's song "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to be a Millionaire)". This is a song which (incidentally) demeans women: "I got a momma who's a hummer, just keepin me alive. While I'm in the band going drinking with the boys she's working 9-5 (she knows her place, that woman)." This can fairly be said to contribute to the manifold harm of women, and therefore constitutes a form of power. But I still love this song because it is 1) a cool rock-and-roll song; 2) it is a song of working-class material desire from the standpoint of those who Have Not (the song begins, "Uh, the following is a true story. Only, the names have been changed, to protect the guilty. Well, I left my job in my home town and I headed for the smoke. Got a rock-and-roll band and a fast right hand. We're gonna get get to the top. Nothin's gonna stop us, no nothin'." Since I don't dig the oppression of women, I suppose I have converted their disrespect for women into satire, unbeknownst to the members of the band, one of whom, the singer Bon Scott, is dead. In other words, I have effectively voided the power of this sentence, of this assertion made by the band. So, what becomes apparent is that the subject-to-be is immensely important in whatever subject formation goes on. In this case, the subject-to-be, me, had a history, an "initial state" if you will, that power met up with and found no openings to operate. The "configuration" of the subject, the details of individual experience, mood, alertness, etc., then becomes extremely important to understand. Therefore, power cannot even be *defined* until it enters the mind, until it interacts with it and is fully formed by this interaction.
Or, take the Patsy Cline song "Sweet Dreams", which some would consider to have sentiments demeaning to women ("I should know I'll never wear your ring"). What do we hear when this line comes through? Is it demeaning, does it contribute to this? Can this only be true to a certain *type* of person who is already willing to accept this? Can the Patsy Cline song *introduce* this notion of subjection of women to men, or is this something that must be built up piece by piece, leaving us not looking at a theory of power, but at a more general theory of learning. Here, we would have to enter the realm of cognitive science, looking perhaps at such writers as Dewey, Chomsky, even Christopher Simpson's book *Science of Coercion*.
Personally, I find religion, at least in large part, extremely destructive, a system of power that more often than not thwarts efforts to expand human understanding of ourselves, and therefore human freedom. Reading about the Puritan system of logic used to construct their beliefs, I am struck by the fact that religion was, and is, essentially a deductive system, one in which rules of behavior that are desired are reverse-engineered (deduced) from religious principles. That is, those writing the rules decide that they want people to do X (women should obey men). They therefore work backwards until they find the religious principle on which this injunction can reasonably stand. They then "start" at this principle and work forward, "deducing", in a fake sort of way, the result that women should obey men. This fake rigor makes it extremely difficult to penetrate, because it takes a great deal of effort to see through it, to understand that ad-hoc nature of it and the predetermined outcomes, and to even *question* the process is equated with utter foolishness, as Thomas Hooker claimed of his Ramist conceptions of the minister/congregation tenet: "no man that hath sipped on Logick, hath a forehead to gainsay" (Morgan, p. 24).
The Puritan system was extremely extensive and very focused on behavior in everyday life. Morgan writes that "They wrote hundreds of books explaining the exact conduct demanded by God in every human situation" (p. 2) --- what, in effect, were "complete blueprints" used to guide behavior. Imagine the difficulties of assaulting such a system!
To answer some of Butler's questions, I think, requires not the extreme abstractions she uses, but the detailed kinds of study that examine not individual *acts* of power, but the sources of systemic power (who the people are who construct the systems), the structures erected (formal and informal, law and custom), the relations of such systems (to other systems), and the often long and detailed history of these.
So, to understand the male power (of some men) over women (some women) in the United States, we need to look as far back as regularization of marriage by Puritans and all that intervenes.
As mentioned, these ideas tie into those of John Dewey, who was concerned with how society continually renews itself through education. Power relations can be examined fruitfully as particular instances of education, of convincing, persuading, teaching, coercing, forcing, unfolding, directed, merest exposure, and more...
So, once we realize the large field in which this phenomenon takes place, that of cognitive development, we have more tools at our disposal. We can look at, for example, the work of Edgar Litt showing how blacks are more often subjected to a schooling that emphasizes obedience.
Finally on Butler, I was, as was Jim, absolutely baffled by her 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.'" This is, to me, just straight Freudian nonsense, nothing more. I can't imagine why Butler would say such a thing or find it in any way useful.
I do agree with Doug on his outline of the importance of raising these questions, but I do think there are better ways to go about it. Why not start with a critical analysis of Mancur Olson's *The Logic of Collective Action*, a deeper study of the numerous laws inhibiting public action even when decent information might be available?
I'll respond to some of Doug's points in more detail in a bit...
Bill