[lbo-talk] Thoughts on Butler

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Sun Jun 8 14:07:13 PDT 2008


The problem is that this line of argumentation assumes Habermas' project is the sole manner of conceptualizing and engaging in the political. Without that assumption, the argument doesn't go anywhere. I've consistently argued that there are political and activist networks that Butler's arguments are significant to the conversations at hand. They just aren't occurring in the spaces that Habermas imagines the political to be occurring. (Although they might be more recognizable to his follower Michael Warner in his theorization of a counter-public.) robert wood

P.S. The is something ironic that the names Habermas and Chomsky are invoked. I personally finding reading either's prose to be an excruciating task and death occasionally seems like a reasonable out when reading Habermas in particular. Not that it says much about their value as intellectuals one way or another. (In all fairness, Chomsky gives a damn good interview. He becomes a lot more interesting (to me) with an interlocutor.


> Evidently quite a few people on the list can resist Butler's
> charm.
>
> And, you can mount an argument that in fact Butler in some of her
> writing contradicts herself in the conjunction of theory and
> practice. In other words you apply some of Chompsky and Habermas's
> ideas to Butler. The key assumption is that when Butler mentions
> political contest, I take that to mean she wants to open up ideas to a
> more democratic forum.
>
> Let's take the above as an example. I think someone like Chompsky who
> writes very plainly and clearly does so with the explicit purpose of
> making his ideas and opinions understood by the largest audience he
> can reach. He wants to open ideas to agreement, argument or contest to
> the largest group of people he can. Chompsky's linguistic competence
> is following Habermas' proscription for making theory and practice,
> democratic.
>
> In the above sense Chompsky is practicing what he preaches (and/or what
> Habermas preaches). The basic sermon for both (I think) is that most
> of us are masters of our language at its most commonly used
> level. This idea is a basis for a concept of democracy. In other
> words, Chompsky's political ideal is put inot practiced by his clear
> speaking and writing.
>
> On the other hand, the use of highly technical language limits the
> potential audience, and therefore contracts the public forum for
> discussions.
>
> Methods of writing like those practiced by Butler and Derrida for
> example, create a specialist language and therefore their audience is
> limited. In the quote above then, Butler's practice of writing
> contracts her audience and contradicts her claim that she has opened
> some idea to political question. Opened for who? Only the initiates
> and those unable to resist her charms constitute her public and her
> public forum for discussion.
>
> Evidently, Chompsky is among the resisting class. Here is Chompsky
> pleading dumbfoundedness:
>
> ``I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these
> [critiques of science], using the only methods I know of; those
> condemned here as "science", "rationality", "logic" and so on. I
> therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me
> "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely
> different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may
> be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I
> read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and
> postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that
> is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of
> other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of
> math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In
> the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done
> so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people
> in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I
> can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one
> seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is
> (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do
> not know how to proceed.[29]
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Opinion_on_cultural_criticism_of_scien
> ce
>
> I am actually an agnostic on the question of whether or not various
> writings of Butler or Derrida are intelligible. They are most of the
> time, but they require a lot specialist work and are tough going.
>
> On the other hand, I prefer Habermas's or Chompsky's point that to
> open an idea or problem up for the purpose of politically democratic
> discussion, it is important to present it in ordinary or commonly
> used language.
>
> Now the idea maybe very difficult to understand. If that is the
> problem, then it is only made more difficult to understand when it is
> presented in specialist language. So, the tactical presentation has to
> be staged in such a way as to introduce the idea in its simplest form
> first. After that is done, then the idea can be further refine with
> more technical terms as these are introduced and explained. This what
> teachers do all the time. Teaching isn't very democratic in practice
> but its goal can be democratic.
>
> CG
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