>>To claim that discourse is formative is
>>not to claim that it originates, causes, or exhaustively composes
>>that which it concedes; rather, it is to claim that there is no
>>reference to a pure body which is not at the same time a further
>>formation of that body. In this sense, the linguistic capacity to
>>refer to sexed bodies is not denied, but the very meaning of
>>"referentiality" is altered. In philosophical terms, the constative
>>claim is always to some degree performative.
This seems to me not even a hypothesis, but the intuition behind one. At the very least, Doug, you must give us more if you want us to agree with Butler here. We would have to work through a best case example of a reference to the body that is apparently also not a 'further formation' or 'performative' utterance but simply a constative claim, to use her words.
Katha has indeed given some examples. What is abstract here is not Butler's claim, clever and paradoxical, but the absence of the working through of any examples or study of experimental work in which there is plausible and strongly evidenced findings about a 'pure body'. How else are we to believe that even the most apparently constantive claims are always to some unspecified degree performative? And if the degree is in important cases negligble--and Butler is fudging here--then what's the significance of the claim?
>>In relation to sex, then, if one concedes the materiality of sex or
>>of the body, does that very conceding operate - performatively - to
>>materialize that sex?
Maybe, maybe not.
>>And further, how is it that the reiterated
>>concession of that sex - one which need not take place in speech or
>>writing but might be "signaled" in a much more inchoate way -
>>constitutes the sedimentation and production of that material effect?
What seems new here is the idea that reiteration can happen through an inchoate signalling. Without an example or two, I find it impossible to wrap my head around this idea. Doug, what do you understand by it?
>>The moderate critic might concede that some part of "sex" is
>>constructed, but some other is certainly not, and then, of course,
>>find him or herself not only under some obligation to draw the line
>>between what is and is not constructed, but to explain how it is
>>that "sex" comes in parts whose differentiation is not a matter of
>>construction. But as that line of demarcation between such
>>ostensible parts gets drawn, the "unconstructed" becomes bounded
>>once again through a signifying practice, and the very boundary
>>which is meant to protect some part of sex from the taint of
>>constructivism is now defined by the anti-constructivist's own
>>construction.
Yes but this is idealism--the boundary does not exist outside of construction. Maybe, maybe not. But this is just declared. With enough reiteration does it become so?
Doug, are you quoting Butler fairly here? Do you agree?
Is construction something which happens to a
>>ready-made object, a pregiven thing, and does it happen in degrees?
I don't undertand this.
>>Or are we perhaps referring on both sides of the debate to an
>>inevitable practice of signification, of demarcating and delimiting
>>that to which we then "refer," such that our "references" always
>>presuppose-and often conceal-this prior delimitation?
But this does seem to say that all demarcations are pragamatically motivated or motivated by power. Again this may or may not be true (there do indeed seem to be pragmatic dimensions to the current spate of claims about genetic determination, but to understand the role of pragmatics in explanation, I would have to study Bas Van Fraasen--a relevant article in the most recent Biology and Philosophy). But there is no argument here for the radical constructivist take.
Indeed, to
>>"refer" naively or directly to such an extra-discursive object will
>>always require the prior delimitation of the extra-discursive.
Why? It's easy to turn the table: if I refer 'naively' and 'directly' to the extra discursive object of the human genetic diversity we have inherited as a result of our evolutionary history to cast doubt on typological or traditional race thinking, how have I or we limited the extra discursive, apparently for pragmatic or power related reasons? Is it a political or discursive or pragmatic decision for Lewontin to demonstrate that the genetic diversity we have not chosen but inherited as a result of our evolutionary history does not sustain typological ways of thinking about human biodiversity?
And
>>insofar as the extra-discursive is delimited, it is formed by the
>>very discourse from which it seeks to free itself.
But all this says is discourse creates all meaningful boundaries. Are the only meaningful boundaries discursive ones? Why? (Are even the only alterable boundaries discursive ones in the sense that Butler defines them?) Again this is not in itself even a hypothesis but at best an intuition behind one.
Skeptical, Rakesh