> wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
> >> Materiality and reality aren't being used as synonyms here, they're just
> >> being put in analogous positions.
> >>
> >
> > The problem is that they aren't even analogies. If you took the
> > trouble to read the broader argument, you would realize that Butler
> > is stating that the meaningfulness of sex is not accessible through
> > 'materiality', rather it is discourse that makes the body meaningful
> > by transforming that 'matter' into something meaningful.
>
> That's true, she is saying that - but that's not all she's saying.
>
> If she were just arguing that things in the world can't be apprehended
> directly but only through constructed patterns of thought, the argument
> would be incontestable. But that's closer to the position of the
> "moderate critic" she's arguing against.
>
>
>
Seth, a slight tangent here on a logical confusion.
Your statement breaks down as follows:
"If the world can't be apprehended directly then they can only be apprehended through constructed patterns of thought."
Is this a fair statement of what you think is "incontestable"? Because if it is I think that not only is it "contestable' but obviously wrong. Furthermore, I think, it reveals the usual bias for intellectual experiences and practices over other forms of experiences and practices.
Consider: We literally "apprehend" the world with our hands and limbs. We more metaphorically apprehend the world with all of our senses. The biases of our senses (whatever those biases are) underlie our apprehensions of our world _along with_ (and not apart from) the biases of our "patterns of thought." Further it is difficult to determine to what extent, and in what ways, our patterns of thought, and their accompanying biases, are "physical" and how and where the learned-social constraints factor in to these patterns of thought.
But let me state clearly -- craft is a way of apprehending the world, using a hammer is a way of apprehending the world, seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, handling, walking, sexual intercourse, breast feeding are all ways of apprehending the world, and though we often attempt to understand these experience and practices (and other experiences and practices I have not mentioned) through discourse and the creation of patterns of thought, patterns of thought are not the only way of apprehending the world.
None of these ways to apprehend the world are immediate. All ways of apprehending the world are mediated. But they are mediated in other ways than through "discourse."
So I would change your statement:
The "world can't be apprehended directly" but there are many ways besides patterns of thought by which can apprehend the world. Senses, sexual relations, bodily functions and practices and performances are themselves ways of apprehending the world and cannot be reduced to "discourse" or patterns of thought. Seth, I have a sense that you might agree with some of the skepticism for the primacy of "discourse"-as-mediation that I express above
Which brings me back to Robert's clear statement of Butler's pomo-babble. Robert states: "If you took the trouble to read the broader argument, you would realize that Butler is stating that the meaningfulness of sex is not accessible through 'materiality', rather it is discourse that makes the body meaningful by transforming that 'matter' into something meaningful. Also, keep in mind that discourse is something more than volunteeristic language within a Foucaultian perspective. It's inevitably tied into institutions and social interactions. robert wood."
I have read Butler's book and I wish I hadn't. I had hoped to obtain from her what was promised, implicitly, a world view where gender and sexuality is ambiguous and flowing and not "fixed and fast". What I got was the usual intellectualism and posturing and bad thinking, probably determined by the institutional necessity to say something "important" and "smart" and increase the value of one's human capital.
Still this does not mean that I disagree with Butler's moral "impulse" in as much as I understand it. In fact I agree with it. Social determinations and discourses of gender and sexuality, bend our experiences, and trigger new experiences in ways that we should think about, be open about and investigate. Further, sexual practices are much more varied, changeable and adaptable, than the established ideologies and institutions of any time and place can ever allow with-in their problematic and practices. Having this basic agreement over Butler's moral point I have to say that what angers me about her work is that she obscures it with the pretensions of her prose and the doctrines of her philosophy, which are all displayed in the quote that Doug gives us.
The beauty of Robert Wood's simple and fair (but not simplistic and biased) description of a small part of Butler's thesis is that you can actually argue with it and see where the problems are. (Seth and Doug both realized this and thus the discussion was easily transferred from Butler to Robert's epitome of Butler.)
So here is what I would like to ask Robert (and Doug if he can get over the fact that my contempt for Butler's kind of writing makes my expressions so contemptible.) It is something I don't understand. Maybe there is an answer.
Where does Butler's views leave what we might hypothesize about pre-Homo Sapien human species and what we can observe in the higher primates like chimpanzees and bonobos?
You state: "it is discourse that makes the body meaningful by transforming that 'matter' into something meaningful?" Now it seems that the key word here is "meaningful." The simple statement here is (if I may reduce it) "without discourse there is no meaning" or "if meaning then discourse." This is a statement I just don't accept. I think that "meaning" comes from all sorts of sources that are not discourse. When I used to run regularly and hike regularly and (the negative side) when I used to suffer with "petit mal" seizures I would feel flooded with meaningful experience -- meaningful, but not necessarily "articulated," unless I wrote about it. In my assumption the "meaning" is "there" before the discourse, but the discourse, the writing and articulation does transform the meaning. Further the "discourses" are transformed and "structured" by practices, crafts, institutions, and social relations. So it seems to me that accepting this statement means crucially accepting a particular world view of what is "meaningful" and how discourse relates to it.
So what does this have to do with chimpanzees and bonobos? Nobody can study, or read about, or watch videos of, these species for long without realizing how close they are to our species. Further it seems that their experiences are in some way "meaningful." In other words, if the same experiences and practices occurred to humans we would concede that bonobos and chimpanzees act with meaning. This is debatable for sure. But _if_ for the sake of argument you can accept this then you would have to concede that "meaning" is somehow prior to "discourse" and that "sexuality" can be meaningful without "discourse."
So let me remind you that bonobos and chimpanzees practice and experience sexuality radically differently and yet they are essentially closely related sub-species. Same-sex sex is very common among bonobos and seems to be a part of conflict mediation and female alliance building. Same-sex sex thus seems to be a part of a primate society that tends toward female dominance. Same-sex sexuality not only has a purpose but it seems (from cross species and intergroup studies that I won't go into here) is "used" for a purpose. In other words it is "meaningful" in some broad use of the term I would accept, but not part of a discourse or an institution.
If "any" of what I write is correct, then the problem with thinking about pre-Homo Sapien humans is compounded even more. It seems to me that there is a high-probability that pre-Homo Sapien humans, feel meaning, could distinguish meaning and even articulate certain meanings without having developed "discourses." If this is true then the various sexual practices of these pre-Homo Sapien humans would simply beyond discourse but not beyond meaningfulness.
It seems to me that Butler specifically, and the whole of variegated tradition labeled post-modernism generally, enacts what Geoffrey Galt Harphman calls the critical fetish of language in his wonderful book "Language Alone". (A good, but critical, review of the book can be found here ... http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1189 . Harphman's book is essential for an historical view of these muddled traditions of post-structuralism and post-modernism. ) Discourse which is made possible by language is given the prime focus, even if the discourses are "grounded" in social institutions. Left out is real sensual and multi-faceted reality.
I want to be clear here. I don't think that Robert or Butler deny the biological ( in as much as Butler's arguments can be translated into a "discourse" I can understand), I think that Butler simply emphasizes the primacy of "discourse" and language and thinks that this "world" is how the rest of the human world must be experienced.
I am also not trying to undermine anything that Seth, Robert, or Doug may take as true. (Seth, I think, I mostly agree with in this case except for some rhetorical overkill that I myself am guilty of.) I am only trying to go to the roots of whatever arguments that I can understand that Butler makes. I have read and reread Butler and she seems to me so slippery and so obscure that she is impossible to paraphrase with simplicity without somebody telling me "No you are wrong." But taken little by little it seems to me that "the primacy of discourse" is something that I can analyze and hope that I have gotten some part of Butler right.
Jerry