Adrian Johnston, “The Exception and the Rule” Continental Philosophy Review 35: 423–432, 2002.
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She attacks Lacan for his structuralist transcendentalism, taking aim at what she understands to be the core tenets of his psychoanalytic theoretical system in its entirety. Butler begins this task by noting that, for Lacan, a distinction should be maintained between, on the one hand, the contingent, empirical field of historically variable “sociality,” and, on the other hand, the necessary, transcendental domain of invariant “symbolic” structures conditioning the social – “a social norm is not quite the same as a ‘symbolic position’ in the Lacanian sense, which appears to enjoy a quasi-timeless character” (p. 20).
Butler then proceeds to propose, worded in several different manners, that Lacan’s transcendental stance is merely a theoretical “bluff” whose specious authority derives from nothing else besides the arbitrary, roundless rhetorical force of the repeated act of this stance’s enunciation – “The ideal form is still a contingent norm, but one whose contingency has been rendered necessary, a form of reification . . . ‘It is the law!’ becomes the utterance that performatively attributes the very force to the law that the law itself is said to exercise” (p. 21), and, “the very description of the symbolic as intractable law takes place within a fantasy of law as insurpassable authority. In my view, Lacan at once analyzes and symptomatizes this fantasy” (p. 30). Butler’s goal in carrying out this critique is to undermine what is described as Lacan’s hasty reification of transitory social codes and arrangements.
Although a few Lacan-inspired authors should be rebuked along these lines, Butler makes a straw man out of Lacan himself. Her entire critique relies upon transforming Lacan into a new Émile Durkheim dressed up in the terminological clothing of classical structuralism à la Lévi-Strauss’ 1949 Elementary Structures of Kinship. She thereby ignores the entirety of Lacan’s later work from the ‘60s and ‘70s, this being highly problematic even if one does not bother to contest her reading of his 1950s period as itself a caricature.
Butler dismisses any possible refutations drawn from elements of Lacan’s teachings as nothing more than afterthoughts appended to a crude formalist ahistoricism (“a social norm is not quite the same as a ‘symbolic position’ in the Lacanian sense, which appears to enjoy a quasi-timeless character, regardless of the qualifications offered in endnotes to various of the master’s seminars” [p. 20]). The qualifications are more than just “endnotes.” Butler interrogates Lacan’s “transcendentalism” under the assumption that he departs from the work of Lévi-Strauss, more specifically, that he endorses the notion of a symbolic order as simultaneously ahistorical (i.e., transcendental as an apriori possibility condition) and transcendent (i.e., a reified structure standing above the social aggregate it regulates).
It is not the case that Lacan treats the symbolic order as itself transcendental qua ahistorical, as a Kantian apriori. For Lacan, the Geist of the polis is indeed a historically variable set of empirical components: particular tongues, certain social rituals, various institutions and practices, etc. Additionally, Butler ignores an import shift that occurs in Lacan’s later seminars, a shift signaled by his declaration that “L’Autre n’existe pas” – the big Other as a transcendent symbolic order does not exist or, if it does exist, it does so as a sort of virtual phantasm emerging within and attaching itself to the complex reality of human social links. In structuralist psychoanalysis, one can define the family in a sufficiently minimalistic fashion that the reification charge loses its sting: the “family” is simply the first social unit in which the psyche of the developing child finds itself. What is more, in equivocating between Lacan’s “transcendentalism” and his 1950s recourse to the primacy of the symbolic,
Butler also conveniently avoids grappling with the “material” (real) as well as “experiential” (imaginary) features of psychical life that Lacan argues are essential to understanding why it is that subjectivity comes to be mediated by and dependent upon the grand Autre of a symbolic order.
Lacanian theory does not require, as Butler vehemently alleges, a dubious dichotomy between the symbolic and the social. An easy way to clarify matters is to invoke the Freudian distinction between phylogeny and ontogeny. The symbolic order is a historically contingent formation at the phylogenetic level, the level transcending the ontogenetic life history of the individual. In an inverse correlation, for the particular subject whose self-identity is mediated by this pre-existent system, this same symbolic order is effectively transcendental in that it serves as a possibility condition for this form of subjectivity itself. Without a symbolic order, the individual would not be a proper subject. The massive time lag between the different diachronic speeds of phylogeny and ontogeny is partially responsible for this dual status of the symbolic as paradoxically both historical (with respect to the phylogenetic collective) and transcendental (with respect to the ontogenetic individual).
This temporal discrepancy makes it seem, from the vantage point of the individual subject’s perspective, as if the symbolic order is synchronic, which it de facto is given the slowness of its rates of change versus the comparative brevity and rapidity of the individual’s life history. Butler fails to fully appreciate Lacan’s philosophical audacity in tacitly relying upon a rigid distinction between the historical and the transcendental to critique him. But, what about Butler’s key assertion that the Lacanian transcendental emperor wears no clothes, in other words, that the binding force of the symbolic rests upon an empty performative act? Is there no other reason for the symbolic’s authority apart from the bald, blunt assertion of this authority by those theorizing about it?
Again, the transcendence of the symbolic order in relation to particular subjects is of paramount importance here. Individuals neither choose what kind of symbolic order to be born into nor have the liberty to capriciously forge their own idiosyncratic symbolic orders ex nihilo. Furthermore, beyond Lacanian theory itself, psychoanalysis in general is committed to the notion that, as the saying goes, “the child is the father of the man.” A strange thing about Butler’s work is that,
for some odd reason, she feels compelled to make the repeated attempt to integrate psychoanalytic ideas into her theories while, at the same time, repudiating the essential axioms upon which analytic metapsychology rests.
One is reminded of Slavoj Žižek’s examples of new consumer products involving a “substance deprived of its substance” (for example, caffeine-free diet Coca-Cola): with Butler, one gets unconsciousfree, fatherless psychoanalysis. A psychoanalytic/Lacanian rebuttal of Butler would be to observe that, by the time an individual could or would conceive of the project of rebelling against norms or transgressing Oedipal sexual patterns, it is already, in a certain sense, too late. As with the gap separating phylogeny and ontogeny, temporality is once more central in understanding the problems with Butler’s arguments. The subject of psychoanalysis is a genetic one, a subjectivity that acquires its very foundations through the unfolding vicissitudes of various levels of mediation. In the beginning, there is no “I,” no locus for choosing what kind of socio-symbolic environment will be responsible for laying down the early, essential coordinates of a subsequently emerging subjectivity. Later, of course, the subject can (apparently) opt to reject many features of his/her past, embarking upon projects of revolt and renewal. Psychoanalysis does not deny this possibility.
However, the analytic caveat in this context is that transgressions are always, at least in part, reactions against a reigning norm. The power of early familial ties is not limited to the common conception of the Oedipus complex as positively conditioning the libidinal economy (i.e., directly bequeathing a sexual identity to individuals as well as steering their object-choices). Due to the fact that psychoanalysis denies that people can choose to make a total and complete break with the past, socio-symbolic features also “negatively condition” the subjects they help to forge. Part of what makes people who they are, psychoanalytically speaking, are not just the modes through which they emulate early Oedipal authority figures based on internalizations and identifications (i.e., positive determination), but also, additionally, the numerous and unpredictable ways in which they respond by struggling to differentiate themselves from these figures (i.e., negative determination). Again, Butler is correct to observe that symbolic structures are never flawlessly reproduced. To put it in the simplest of terms, children never turn out to be exact replicas of their parents, regardless of whether or not the parents want this. But, this does not mean that symbolic structures are fictions so fragile that their ephemeral power can be made to completely dissipate through the mere fiat of acting-out against the avatars of familial and social authority. The fact that there are “errors” in the transcription of norms as symbolic codes does not mean that there is no code in the process of being transcribed.
In a kind of “scorched earth tactic” response to Butler, maybe one could even go so far as to claim that, while nobody ever completely embodies a given norm or structure, the norm/structure has its own peculiar way of existing. These symbolic forms “ex-ist” as a negativity haunting individual socialized agents, inscribed in their being as lacking, as impossible to fully live up to in the flesh. Butler wants to believe that these spectral structures haunting human social reality can be exorcised, that one can eliminate the often painful and undesirable effects of their (non-)presence. She speaks the truth when she observes that symbolic structures and norms are ultimately just individual as well as collective fantasies. The Lacanian qualification, being the little difference that makes all the difference, amounts to insisting that non-existent, fantasmatic elements play a necessary, constitutive role in the forging and sustenance of human experiential reality, and that these (unconscious) fantasies, although variable, resist unrestricted modification at the behest of the subjected subject.
Butler speaks of Lacanian theory as seduced by “a fantasy of law as insurpassable authority.” Should one risk replying in the same terms? By suggesting that all norms are contingent and alterable via parodic performativity, Butler panders to the persistent urge in people to believe that they are “masters of their own destiny.”
Despite the qualifications she would likely tack on here in reaction to this accusation, Butler’s project is secretly enthralled by fantasies of the limitless plasticity of an auto-fashioning self as well as titillating, risk-free provocations against impotent paternal authorities. How could one avoid construing this as a regressive reaction against Freud’s “Copernican revolution?”
For instance, she repeatedly fails to mention a single word about the super-ego as a possible barrier inhibiting or perverting enacted rebellions. Apart from the matter of whether or not Butler’s criticisms of Lacan’s supposed transcendentalist tendencies are justified, the entire strategy of Antigone’s Claim is of dubious merit. Many interpreters of the Freudian legacy (not just Butler) make the mistake of apparently assuming that the psychoanalytic concept of the Oedipus complex is derived from Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. One glance at Freud’s writings shows that this puts the cart before the horse. After first formulating his ideas about how early childhood “family romances” impact the psychical development of the individual, Freud then subsequently compares his theory to the tragic figure of the Theban king. The play furnishes Freud with a handy name for his notion of the relation between psyche and family. However, as should go without saying,
the concept of the Oedipus complex is not dependent upon or developed out ofthe text Oedipus Rex. The Oedipus complex is the result of Freud’s careful observation and analysis of living, breathing human beings, not an empty theoretical flourish arrived at through an unorthodox reading of a piece of literature.
Whether or not every single detail of Sophocles’ tragedies accords with the system of metapsychology is irrelevant as far as the genuine truth criteria for psychoanalysis as a theory of human nature goes. Using, as Butler does, a fictional character to contest a body of knowledge built on the study of factual individuals is an approach of highly questionable worth. Antigone’s Claim consists of three chapters, with the preceding controversies dominating the first two chapters (“Antigone’s Claim” and “Unwritten
Laws, Aberrant Transmissions”). The third and final chapter circumnavigates its way back towards the play Antigone. When asked to justify her defiance of Creon’s edict, Antigone explains that the reason she had to bury Polyneices’ corpse was that Polyneices, as a brother begotten from two parents now dead, is singularly “irreplaceable.” Butler insightfully underscores the falsity of this rationalization. However, her reasons for doing so hinge on the fact that, as a child of incest, Antigone’s father is also her brother. Thus, the body of Polyneices might very well be an overdetermined object in the strict Freudian sense, simultaneously representing Polyneices, Eteocles, Oedipus, and maybe even Antigone herself. Antigone’s conscious sense of its irreplaceable singularity masks the unconscious multiplicity of the figures converging upon it.
What is telling is the reason for the falsity of Antigone’s “claim” that Butler passes over in silence: Ismene is also “irreplaceable,” being a sibling born from the same two dead parents. Antigone places greater value on an inert piece of no-longer-living matter than on the only remaining sibling she has left in this world. Many interpreters portray Antigone as a heroine. And yet, contrary to this reading, doesn’t Sophocles provide ample evidence that she is just as flawed and disastrous a model as Creon, that this is a murky drama with neither protagonist nor antagonist? Antigone rejects Ismene’s compromise, proposed at the play’s opening, of secretly performing the burial rites. Antigone stubbornly insists upon publicizing her flouting of Creon’s edict. As she admits when questioned by Creon after having been caught in the act, Antigone already knows full well the prescribed sentence for transgression: death by public stoning. Then, just after Creon changes his mind and decides to have her entombed alive outside the city of Thebes, rather than executed before the watching eyes of the citizenry, Antigone lapses into a lament. Her defiant language and explicit insistence upon accepting sole responsibility for her decision gives way to a moment of weakness in which she bemoans her troubled childhood, her bad family background, and the reckless behavior of Polyneices. The choruschimes in to remind her that, as the saying goes, she is lying in the bed she made for herself. Everything abruptly shifts right at the moment when she’s deprived of the public spectacle of martyrdom. What kind of heroine, feminist or otherwise, is this? And, doesn’t the fact that Creon occupies the sociosymbolic position previously occupied by Antigone’s father say something about the unconscious catalysts for her overt act of disobedience? Is she truly outside of the “law of the father” that Butler is so quick to declare as powerless and deposable?
The quantity of criticism here indicates that Butler at least has the merit of advancing assertions that are extreme enough to warrant an extended reply. The robustness and spiritedness of her sustained confrontation with psychoanalysis is refreshing within an intellectual climate of placating consensuses. Other aspects of Butler’s work also deserve to be praised. Although her critique of Lacan misfires, this shot strikes a deserving target: as anyone in empirical anthropology today already knows, but as many continental theorists have yet to learn, Lévi-Strauss is essentially dead. This is not to concede any ground on the importance of the Oedipal family. However, reducing familial and social relations to the prohibition of incest is quite simplistic and risks concealing other layers of structural complexity. Additionally, her general notion of performativity qua repetition-as-impossible has great philosophical and psychoanalytic potential, once no longer shackled exclusively to the program of a politics of alternative lifestyles. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Butler’s political agenda in and of itself.
Contesting her critique of Lacan’s alleged transcendentalist ahistoricism is not tantamount to endorsing some sort of homophobic phallocracy. It should also be said that embracing certain Lacanian ideas does not invariably lock one into conservatively resisting any and every measure taken towards concrete social change, although a general Freudo-Lacanian outlook often encourages one to have a healthy degree of pessimism about just how much can be hoped for from the implementation of some of these changes. What is questionable is the feasibility of forcing a shotgun marriage between psychoanalytic theory and feminist/gay politics in which the descriptive discourse of the former is made wholly subservient to the prescriptive injunctions of the latter.
It would be really interesting to see Butler make a more “radical” argument: even if the psychoanalytic portrayal of the Oedipalized psyche is descriptively true/accurate, the prescriptive ethicopolitical domain sometimes “demands the impossible,” namely, the bracketing of these objectively true descriptions in an attempt to reconsider the installation of laws and the definition of rights (as Kant himself demonstrates, accurate descriptions of human nature can and should be ignored by “pure practical reason”). Instead of insisting, as she does, upon the fictitious status of many psychoanalytic concepts, why not shift into a different strategic mode where discursive “fictions” (in this case, denials of psychical realities) are grasped as the very vehicles for altering the status quo?
Butler’s challenge to structuralist modes of analysis entails, at root, calling into question the relation between the exception and the rule. Is there, as with many snippets of “common sense” or “popular wisdom,” some truth to the old cliché that “the exception proves the rule?” At a minimum, contrary to Butler, just because there is an exception does not automatically entail the nullification of the rule. If anything – and the conclusion articulated here is itself a kind of “performative reiteration” of the Butlerian performativity thesis paradoxically arrived at through the very activity of critiquing her position – psychoanalysis shows how the vitality of the living rule is sustained precisely within the ungovernable plurality of the deviations it engenders.