>I was gone for the weekend when Catherine asked me 1) why I find Butler's
>writings on literature weak, 2) why I feel her version of politics is
>quietist, and 3) what Butler said at the Freud conference.
>
>1) I'll beg off and simply recommend Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's introduction
>to Novel_Gazing (1997) as a successful critique of the version of paranoid
>reading practice Butler's literary readings exemplify. Even if one doesn't
>find (as I find) Sedgwick a more perceptive, generous, and politically
>pungent reader of literature than Butler, you would probably find her
>argument thought provoking.
I've read it. I'm not sure I agree with her arguments about paranoid reading. She makes some great points, but I think it's inadequate as an account of what critical practice should be. In general, though I would agree that Sedgwick's work as a whole prosduces more interesting readings of literature than most people, including Butler. I find that a pretty limited criticism, but it's fair enough. I would prefer to say Butler's textual readings are very uneven.
>2) I think Butler herself defines her politics as quietist. In Feminist
>Contentions, and again in the Merely Cultural exchange, she both reduces
>her politics to a refusal of all norms _and_ adamantly refuses under
>questioning to allow her politics to be reduced to any such refusal of all
>norms. In my view, this makes her an obscurantist, or, as Nussbaum calls
>her, a sophist.
I don't think her politics can be summarised as refusing all norms. Do you? Obscure? not in the context in which she writes, and if you want more than that then yes she has limitations. But I still don't see why operating in that context is in itself a bad thing. And these epithets do not present much of a criticism. What *exactly* would be wrong with being a sophist (not that I'm saying Butler is), and hey isn't that criticism rather obscure, except within a certain field?
>3) Her remarks at the Freud conference were brilliant. She discussed the
>incest taboo and made compelling observations about its connection to the
>stigmatization of homosexuality. She really stirred things up amongst the
>latter day puritans, left and otherwise, camped up her in New Haven. Her
>comments have stayed with me long after the other the other speakers have
>blurred into the general fog of memory.
And this, I think, goes somewhat towards proving the point I was trying to make. I'd still like to know more if you have notes or could recall.
Catherine (feeling Antipodean)