Subjective dispossession and objet a
Butler’s Move Away From Nietzsche’s Punitive Structure of Address
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Butler’s Move Away From Nietzsche’s Punitive Structure of AddressButler now very much abandons the idea of the role of self-subjection in the constitution of the subject and seeks instead to address other less punitive and more sustaining forms of subject formation. Re-thinking her position on subject formation, specifically the punitive scene of inauguration that calls upon the subject to account for itself, Butler seeks out more ‘sustaining forms of address’. A reading of Foucault’s later works on the self and in particular The Use of Pleasure, prompts Butler to state: For Foucault reflexivity emerges in the act of taking up a relation to moral codes, but it does not rely on an account of internalization or of psychic life more generally, certainly not a reduction of morality to bad conscience ... I perhaps too quickly accepted this punitive scene of inauguration for the subject …The turning against oneself that typifies the emergence of Nietzschean bad conscience does not account for the emergence of reflexivity in Foucault. (emphasis added, Butler 2005, 15) What needs first to be noted here is the invocation of and importance attached to ‘moral codes’ in the constitution of the subject. The self-beratement thesis that made up the main focus of Butler’s theoretical labours in PLP is amended if not rejected outright in order to frame ‘less punitive’ measures by which the subject is sustained in social life. Butler now focuses more attention on the ways in which a “social dimension of normativity governs the scene of recognition” (2005, 23). With regards now to her previous readings of the dyadic exchange between self and other in the scene of mutual recognition, Butler now reads the scene discursively.22 Structuring the dyadic exchange between self and other is a frame that defines the very parameters within which the other is deemed recognizable: “[Hegel] did not explain why some are recognizable, and others not” (2010c). This is not liberal hand-wringing over the need to include more people inside prevailing norms of recognition, since this would be to mistakenly read her emphasis on norms of recognition in a humanist light instead of striking to the heart of her contention — that to recognize something as recognizable it first has to be rendered intelligible within a normative frame that constitutes its recognizability. In asking the ethical question “How ought I to treat another?” I am immediately caught up in a realm of social normativity, since the other only appears to me, only functions as an other for me, if there is a frame within which I can see and apprehend the other in her separateness and exteriority. (2005, 25) There are other ways in which subjects are constituted and sustained that don’t rely on scenes of punitive accusation. To base an ethics on accusations and the demand to give an account in one’s defence on threat of punishment is a particular scene of address that no longer appeals to Butler as the paradigmatic example of subject formation. The very concept of self-narration that secured the Nietzschean punitive account of self-formation, is critically rejected in favour of her renewed emphasis on the subject’s self-loss in alterity. The general nature of alterity now includes a structure of normativity that acts as a disciplinary matrix stipulating what objects will be deemed recognizable and that bears on a definition of ontology: These normative conditions for the production of the subject produce a historically contingent ontology, such that our very capacity to discern and name the ‘being’ of the subject is dependent on norms that facilitate that recognition. (2005, 4) What Butler wants to make sure to avoid is the liberal humanism of ‘inclusiveness.’ The notion of numerically including more people — more women council members, more minority representation on the board of directors, etc — all too easily falls into a politics of toleration; one recognizes the other in the guise of tolerating them. But as Slavoj Žižek points out, Martin Luther King did not ask white people to ‘tolerate’ African Americans. Feminists are not asking men to ‘tolerate’ women. To reduce the issue of equality to ‘toleration’ is to de-politicize an issue that concerns economic and social rights. Butler states, “It isn't simply a question of getting more people included under prevailing norms, but to articulate new egalitarian norms of recognizability.” Clearly her project is not ‘additive’. One gets the impression that the author of Gender Trouble would not pay any special heed to a politics of equality strictly based on a numbers game. Instead she seeks to draw attention to the underlying exclusions and normative judgements when it comes to recognizing something as a human life. I am caught up not only in the sphere of normativity but in the problematic of power when I pose the ethical question in its directness and simplicity: “How ought I to treat you?” If the “I” and the “you” must first come into being, and if a normative frame is necessary for this emergence and encounter, then norms work not only to direct my conduct but to condition the possible emergence of an encounter between myself and the other. (2005, 25) Important to note here is that norms not only frame in the sense of ‘directing’ ones conduct, but act as the very conditions of emergence of the encounter itself. The structure of the encounter is framed according to prevailing normative schemes. There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ encounter with the other outside of any and all norms. Whether the other will even appear within the terms of recognisability depends on the normative framing, that is, the very fact that one encounters, ‘sees’ an other is due to a particular structure of normativity that enables this sighting to occur. That one sees a ‘person’ there rather than a ‘slave,’ ‘untouchable,’ ‘terrorist,’ or ‘nothing’ is conditional upon the normative frame. Revising Recognition: Singularity and SubstitutabilityIn Adriana Cavarero’s book Relating Narratives (2000) Butler finds a fellow traveller influenced by Hegel, Levinas and Arendt. Cavarero strikes a distinctly post-Hegelian tone with the statement that “there is an other not fully known or knowable to me.” Here Cavarero is voicing a resistance to a version of the Hegelian scheme in which the other is brought under the umbrella of the One. Striking out in contrary fashion Cavarero insists on the opacity, uniqueness and ‘nonsubstitutability’ of the other. Butler notes positively how this view acts as a limit on the model of “reciprocal recognition offered within the Hegelian scheme and to the possibility of knowing another more generally” (2005, 31). In other words, Cavarero puts the breaks on any quick formulation of self-other that does not heed caution when approaching the complexity of the self-other dynamic. Cavarero maintains that the self is only knowable by telling its story to an other. Each person has a unique story to narrate, but we cannot do this by ourselves, we can only narrate our stories to an other. Cavarero underscores the ontological condition of radical exposure and vulnerability of one human to another. Eschewing those schools of political theory that subsume the human under broad sweeping universals, and postmodern theory for dismantling the "I", Cavarero insists that identity is premised on an essential dyadic relationship emphasizing the singularity of the unique individual. In contrast with the individualist ethics of liberal contract theory, Cavarero's ethics places a distinctly Hegelian emphasis on the importance of procuring identity in a community of others and in a radical exposure and vulnerability to the other. She also makes a point of insisting that the other is nonsubstitutable, it is an absolute other. Cavarero's claim is similar to Houlgate's Cartesian insistence that the other is really other, that in order for the identity of self-consciousness to coalesce it must maintain consistent boundaries between itself and the other. Cavarero places an emphasis on 'singularity', on the uniqueness of one's story, seeking to rethink an ethics and politics that has steamrolled individuality in favour of individualism. Butler is largely supportive of Cavarero’s project because she limits “the claims of Hegelian sociality upon us.” This means the dyadic relation between the “I” and “you” does not resolve itself into a higher synthesis, it does not aufheben into a wider sociality. Butler says something similar with regard to its ethical implications, “To revise recognition as an ethical project, we will need to see it as, in principle, unsatisfiable (2005, 43). Unsatisfiable in the important sense that it is not finally resolvable, or cannot be sublated into a higher logical synthesis. Another variation of this theme that Butler puts forth is when we ask the other, “who are you?” we are not to expect an answer. Or at least an answer that satisfies. Butler is also to a certain degree influenced by Cavarero’s insistence on the exposure and vulnerability to the other, and the latter’s influence can be noted in Butler’s ethical re-signification of Hegel’s scene of recognition, as Butler notes: “Whereas the Phenomenology of Spirit moves from the scenario of the dyad toward a social theory of recognition, for Cavarero it is necessary to ground the social in the dyadic encounter” (2005, 32). Hegel moves from the dyadic encounter to Religion, Reason and finally Spirit whereas Cavarero starts from the opposite end and grounds her theory of the wider social totality in the dyadic encounter of self and other. The I is radically exposed to the other and the other to the I, each in their respective vulnerability and singularity. But while Butler may like Cavarero’s initial focus on the dyadic scene of recognition, she is less enamoured with the latter’s extreme emphasis on singularity of the “I” as opposed to the “we”. In opposition to Cavarero’s strict emphasis on the uniqueness and singularity of the “I”, Butler responds by stating: If I try to give an account of myself, if I try to make myself recognizable and understandable, then I might begin with a narrative account of my life. But this narrative will be disoriented by what is not mine, or not mine alone. And I will, to some degree, have to make myself substitutable in order to make myself recognizable. The narrative authority of the "I" must give way to the perspective and temporality of a set of norms that contest the singularity of my story. (2005, 37) Butler insists on “a structure of substitutability at the core of singularity” (35), offsetting Cavarero’s emphasis on singularity. The concept of substitutability is the means by which Butler signals the importance of sustaining a “we” and making sure to maintain that the singularness of the “I” does not take precedence over our substitutability with one another, and that uniqueness and singularity do not trump the efforts at sustaining a collective “we”. Butler, in order to make her argument, relies on the structuring role of discourse, quoting Foucault: “discourse is not life its time is not yours” (2005, 36). Discourse is indifferent to the individual singular subject, there is a sociability that exceeds the life of the subject, any emphasis on singularity effaces the extent to which this overlooks the ways in which the subject is constituted by a discourse that is beyond it and that will exceed the life of the individual subject. Butler’s point is that while Cavarero rightly heeds the importance of emphasizing the singular irreducibility of the other, of the dyadic encounter, she is mistaken in her conclusion that a wider sociality is imagined only at a cost to the singular subject. Butler affirms Cavarero’s emphasis on mutual exposure and vulnerability, of the importance placed on subjective constitution based on an other who is similarly vulnerable and exposed and Butler is drawn to Cavarero’s description of perpetual openness and exposure to the other and how this factors into and is constitutive of subjectivity. However Butler locates a residual humanism in Cavarero’s contention that, in this exposure to the other, the “I” can give an account of itself to the other, its own unique, singular story. Download 480.65 Kb. Share with your friends:
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