Tsk, tsk. This is all really simple. Academic males won't be able to "get it up" to "perform" (as agents) unless they cite Judith Butler in their publications, :-). Barkley Rosser On Mon, 25 Jan 1999 11:48:32 -0500 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Bill Lear posted this to PEN-L, but it seems relevant to the stumbling
> Judy seminar.]
>
> From: "William S. Lear" <rael at zopyra.com>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 23:10:02 -0600 (CST)
> To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
> Subject: [PEN-L:2542] Re: Butler and bad writing
> Reply-To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
> Sender: owner-pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
>
> On Sun, January 24, 1999 at 15:30:53 (-0800) MLAFFEY at KENTVM.KENT.EDU 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
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu