[lbo-talk] J Butler on Theory & Practice

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Aug 31 09:53:50 PDT 2007


This is one of the more interesting things I've come across in Butler. It is from "A Careful Reading" in Feminist Contentions, Linda Nicholson, et al (1995), pp. 128-29:

For what is at hand politically is a set of challenges that are historically provisional, buty are not for that reason any less necessary to engage. I would suggest that a fundamental mistake is made when we think that we must sort out philosophically or epistemologically our "grounds" before we can take stock of the world politically or engage in its affairs actively with the aim of transformation. The claim that every political action has its theoretical presuppositions is not the same as the claim that such presuppositions must be sorted out prior to any action. It may be that those presuppositions are articulated through a reflective posture made possible through that articulation in action. To set the "norms" of political life in advance is to prefigure the kinds of practices which will qualify as the political and it is to seek to negotiate politics outside of a history which is always to a certain extent opaque in the moment of action.

--

In other words, sometime theory can be advanced by acting first and only afterwords determing the theory implicit in that action. In the case of major advances in theory I would say that is _always_ and not merely sometimes the case. That, incidentally, is one of the reasons I fancy Tattersall's speculation on the origin of language through the invention of children -- language following play which called for language.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list