Butler

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Kelley, why don't you reply to me? At least let me know that you have got
my private messages but decided not to reply. At any rate, I am (and
cannot) defend Butler against Nussbaum's charges, having never read
anything by Butler (I have not kept up with Spivak's work either). I think
you will notice that I also shared some skepticism towards the arguments
Nussbaum made in the NR criticism, though I do share her concern of the
eclipse of detailed institutional critique (and I certainly think the name
calling of Katha as a left conservative was wholly unjustified and
mean-spirited; and it was than academic not to invite her to the
conference in which so called left conservatism was critiqued). At the
same, I do see Butler--if Nussbaum's summary is accurate--giving some kind
of expression to the way many gays and lesbians have made and so make
sense of their lives and oppresion.  This may be a disabling perspective,
and that's why asked: if not Butler and Foucault, then who (Nussbaum's
Butler critique reminded me of Charles Taylor's famous essay on Foucault)?
We need to be careful that a critique of Butler does not leave those who
have embraced her with no way to go forward. That's my concern.
Yours, Rakesh