Revisitng Lord and Bondsman

Revisitng Lord and Bondsman

At a talk given in London in 2009, Butler re-visits the section on Lordship and Bondage and begins with the initial self-consciousness noticing that this other self-consciousness ‘over there’ is not unlike the initial self-consciousness, it to an extent both is and is not the other self-consciousness. Butler draws attention to the appearance of the other, but it is not an absolute other, it is not another self-consciousness standing separate and in opposition to the initial self-consciousness.  The other is both me and not-me. This is the definition of the ek-static self that Butler first introduced in Subjects of Desire, only it is used here to spearhead a renewed sense of the ethical. The question for Butler then becomes: how to live with the other?  It is this question of cohabitation with the other that has become the most resonant of 21st century Hegelian themes.

The dialectic of singularity and substitutability is defined as: this other that I did not choose, yet with whom I must share and cohabit the planet; this other that is over there that is both me and not-me.  Singularity of the one and its substitutability with the other, the former signifying individual self-consciousness, the latter signifying its going outside itself, a self-loss of sorts in that it appears in the other, is the other. For Butler the paradox of singularity and substitutability, of finding oneself over there in the other that is me and not-me, cannot be dialectically resolved. That there is no possibility of a dialectical resolution is the defining feature of the ethical relationship to the other.

In late 2009, during a talk on Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler was asked if she was arguing for a move away from an identity claim based in singularity towards a notion of ‘multiple identity’ so that instead of the declaration, "I am this," the question was asking if Butler's alternative was instead, "No, I am not just this, I am that and that, my identity is multiple."  In response Butler pointed out that even when one tries to break the singular determination of identity, “I’m not just that, I’m this and this, I’m that and much more.” Nevertheless one still finds oneself within what she calls, after Foucault, the “regime of ontology.” One is still trying to determine who one is, one is just doing it “multipley.” But this ‘multiplicity’ that combats the ‘singularity’ of identity is not what Butler is advocating, she is not a pluralist in any simple sense. Instead she emphasizes a ‘scene of address’:

But maybe the thing is to not determine who I am whether singly or multipley, but to be engaged in a kind of scene of address to oneself, to another, to a set of others, where those terms get re-worked in ways that make a difference, then we are less interested in determining who we are singularly or multipley than in some act of communication, or some act of avowing and articulating a relationship which is more ethically significant than establishing who I am.²³

Seeking to accentuate a different relation to the other that emphasizes not the consolidation of identity but rather Butler wishes to place an emphasis on the ways in which the structure of the address, its materiality and discursive setting, hinders or opens a relation to the other: a relationship or set of relationships in which the very epistemological assumptions sustaining the ‘I’ are disarticulated, putting the ‘I’ at risk of incoherence ? (2005, 23)

Recognition can only take place within a particular structuring of normativity or 'scene of address.’ If a particularly oppressive scene of address can be exposed or ‘parochialized’, that is, revealed as a particular semblance of power and interest, this could possibly open the space for alternative ways of avowing relationships which prove more important than accounting for the sovereign “I”. Clearly not entertaining any possibility of a transparent self-knowing subject Butler wants to counter an ‘ethical violence’ that demands a subject maintain a ‘self-identity’ at all times (2005, 42). Against Nietzsche and following up on the work of the later Foucault, Butler argues that

any effort we make ‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in order to approach being true. As we ask to know the other, or ask that the other say, finally or definitively, who he or she is, it will be important not to expect an answer that will ever satisfy. By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the question remain open, even enduring, we let the other live, ... If letting the other live is part of any ethical definition of recognition, then this version of recognition will be based less on knowledge than on an apprehension of epistemic limits. (2005, 43)

When we ask of the other, “Who are you?” we should seek to establish a communication that more effectively engages the other, rather than seeking out an answer and assessing it for its historical/scientific accuracy and fidelity which reflects a rather paternalistic/diagnostic attitude. Butler contends that forcing one to recite a self-narrative, whether over a glass of wine or across a table at an immigration hearing, only misses the point — that in forcing somebody to speak the ‘truth’ of themselves only speaks to the wish that they conform to a codification of norms, to articulate their story in accord with the prevailing scheme of intelligibility.²⁴ The very space of determining who will be recognized and who will not is pre-structured by normative schemes that place the other within a specific epistemic terrain of knowability, hence any possibly new identifications and articulations are foreclosed and these very limits to intelligibility are challenged by political critique.

[A]ny discourse, any regime of intelligibility, constitutes us at a cost. Our capacity to reflect upon ourselves, to tell the truth about ourselves, is correspondingly limited by what the discourse, the regime, cannot allow into speakability. (2005, 121)

For example Butler points out in the context of war, the loss of Iraqi lives are considered less grievable than the loss of American lives. Her strident wish is to mobilize more ‘egalitarian forms of recognition’ so that for example, Palestinian lives lost are not rationalized away as the cost of harbouring ‘terrorists’. A different sort of acknowledgement needs to be fostered that considers the precariousness of human lives when war is waged. “In order to become open to offering that sort of acknowledgement, however, we have to come up against the limit of the cultural frames in which we live. In a way, we have to let those frames get interrupted by other frames” (interview with Nina Power). Yet do not lines of interdependency run deeper between oneself, family, friends and local community than between, for example, oneself and the average Iraqi in Iraq? “Can’t I be excused for at least grieving the Iraqi less, proportionate to my dependence?” To which Butler responds:

It is not a question of how much you or I feel —it is rather a question of whether a life is worth grieving, and no life is worth grieving unless it is regarded as grievable. In other words, when we subscribe to ideas such as “no innocent life should be slaughtered,” we have to be able to include all kinds of populations within the notion of “innocent life” —and that means subscribing to an egalitarianism that would contest prevailing schemes of racism. (2010a)

It is not a question of feelings. Butler is making the point that currently wars are waged and lives lost based on premises that delimit the cost of human suffering to a very stringent and strident definition of whose lives count as human lives. Whose lives are grievable? Whose lives remain ungrievable? Which lives count as human lives and which lives do not? And to be sure, it is not simply a question of adding more people under the flag of recognition, but “how existing norms allocate recognition differentially? What new norms are possible and how are they wrought?” (2009d, 6). Butler insists on a fundamental shifting of the normative schemes that constitute the terms of recognizability. And in order for that radical shift to occur, a politics of critique must confront the very epistemic limits of what constitutes the human, and of human life. The schema of recognition based upon the volitional self-determining ego of liberal political theory must be cast aside for a new ethic of recognition based not on a seamless accounting of oneself, but on the very failures of that operation, not on our mutual rationality (or nationality), but our mutual exposure and vulnerability to one another.