{"id":4121,"date":"2009-10-15T23:03:08","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T03:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=4121"},"modified":"2011-10-25T14:13:18","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T19:13:18","slug":"pluth-butler-the-real2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/10\/15\/pluth-butler-the-real2\/","title":{"rendered":"pluth butler the real2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject<\/em>. Albany: New York, 2007.<\/p>\n

On Butler’s conception of the body<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As she describes it, the body presents language with a problem and is certainly not reducible to language, but the body is also not radically distinct from language, otherwise we would never be able to account for the body as a resistance to signification. Butler is trying to think of the materiality of the body as something experienced within<\/em> language, and this actually sounds very much like the Lacanian understanding of the real as an impasse in signification (real2).<\/p>\n

Only whenever Butler comes across the term real<\/em> she systematically understands it to be a domain radically distinct from language and does not seem willing to acknowledge that there is another approach to the real in Lacan’s work, one where the real is just an “impasse in formalization.” 145<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Lacan’s work, the real is an “impasse in formalization” that can be handled in two different ways \u2014<\/p>\n

1. it can be covered up by creating a signified for it, or<\/p>\n

2. it can be preserved in a particular type of signifying practice.<\/p>\n

Badiou argued that Lacan’s theory embraced a covering up of, or a distancing of the subject from, the real, and I countered with the claim that Lacan actually embraced the alternative position in his theory of the act.<\/p>\n

Butler’s notions of the body and passionate attachments to identity do not lead her to develop a theory of the act, which would be in part about renewing and rewriting our very attachment to identity itself. In other words, Butler does not seem to consider the possibility that certain signifying practices may be entirely outside the domain of identification. According to Butler, we remain committed to subjection, and thus identification, at the psychic or unconscious level.\u00a0 In fact, <\/strong>[for Butler] this is the very condition for us to be subjects at all. <\/strong>146<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: New York, 2007. On Butler’s conception of the body As she describes it, the body presents language with a problem and is certainly not reducible to language, but the body is also not radically distinct from language, otherwise we would never be … Continue reading “pluth butler the real2”<\/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":[78,24,40,119,15,106,41],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-4121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-lacan","category-lack","category-language","category-subjectivity","category-the-act","category-the-real","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121","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=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4123,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions\/4123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}