{"id":1765,"date":"2009-01-29T11:42:05","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T16:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2009-05-27T09:05:49","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T14:05:49","slug":"implicated-yet-enabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/01\/29\/implicated-yet-enabled\/","title":{"rendered":"implicated yet enabled"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Salih 2002. p 79)
\nTo theorize sex in terms of interpellation as Butler does is to imply that one\u2019s body parts (particularly penis and vagina) are not simply and naturally \u2018there\u2019 from birth onwards, but that one\u2019s sex is performatively constituted when one\u2019s body is categorized as either \u2018male\u2019 or \u2018female\u2019 … Butler spends some time considering how subject positions are assumed in response to what she calls the \u2018reprimand\u2019 of the law \u2013 i.e. the policeman\u2019s call. Unlike Althusser, who regards this hailing as \u2018a unilateral act\u2019, Butler argues that interpellation is not \u2018a simple performative\u2019, in other words, it does not always effectively enact what it names, and it is possible for the subject to respond to the law in ways that undermine it. Indeed, the law itself provides the conditions for its own subversion (BTM: 122). Butler recognizes that acts of disobedience must always take place within the law using the terms that constitute us: we have to respond to the policeman\u2019s call otherwise we would have no subject status, but the subject status we necessarily embrace constitutes what Butler (borrowing from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) calls \u2018an enabling violation\u2019. The subject or \u2018I\u2019 who opposes its construction draws from that construction and derives agency by being implicated in the very power structures it seeks to oppose. <\/strong>Subjects are always implicated in the relations of power but, since they are also enabled by them, they are not merely subordinated to the law (BTM: 122\u2013 3) (Salih 2002. p 79).<\/p>\n

If one is \u2018hailed\u2019 into sex rather than simply born a \u2018woman\u2019, then it must be possible to take up one\u2019s sex in ways which undermine heterosexual hegemony, where hegemony refers to the power structures within which subjects are constituted through ideological, rather than physical, coercion … A girl is not born a girl, but she is \u2018girled\u2019, to use Butler\u2019s coinage, at or before birth on the basis of whether she possesses a penis or a vagina. This is an arbitrary distinction, and Butler will argue that sexed body parts are invested with significance, so it would follow that infants could just as well be differentiated from each other on the basis of other parts \u2013 the size of their ear lobes, the colour of their eyes, the flexibility of their tongues.<\/strong> Far from being neutral, the perception and description of the body (\u2018It\u2019s a girl!\u2019, etc.) is an interpellative performative statement, and the language that seems merely to describe the body actually constitutes it.<\/strong> Again, Butler is not refuting the \u2018existence\u2019 of matter, but she insists that matter can have no status outside a discourse that is always constitutive, always interpellative, always performative. We will return to the perceived body \u2013 what you could call a phenomenology of body parts \u2013 later when we consider Butler\u2019s discussions of the psychoanalyst, Lacan (Salih 2002. p 80).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Salih 2002. p 79) To theorize sex in terms of interpellation as Butler does is to imply that one\u2019s body parts (particularly penis and vagina) are not simply and naturally \u2018there\u2019 from birth onwards, but that one\u2019s sex is performatively constituted when one\u2019s body is categorized as either \u2018male\u2019 or \u2018female\u2019 … Butler spends some … Continue reading “implicated yet enabled”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,78,96,98,90,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency","category-butler","category-phallus-butler","category-resignify","category-resistance","category-sexual-difference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3376,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/3376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}