{"id":8182,"date":"2011-09-20T12:37:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T17:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=8182"},"modified":"2012-10-01T22:01:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T03:01:04","slug":"8182","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/09\/20\/8182\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek comment on Butler 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hanlon,Christopher. “Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political: An Interview with Slavoj .” New Literary History, 32 (2001): 1-21. PDF\u00a0 rest of interview in this blog is here<\/a><\/p>\n

Question: Judith Butler\u2014with whom you have engaged in ongoing if cordial debate\u2014maintains that the Lacanian topology is itself dubious for its nonhistorical, transcultural presuppositions. You yourself have written that \u201cjouissance is nonhistorical\u201d How do you respond to complaints such as Butler\u2019s?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Ah! This is what we are struggling with for dozens, maybe hundreds of pages, in this book. My answer is to say that she is nonhistorical. That is to say, she presents a certain narrative, the same as Ernesto [Laclau]. With Ernesto, it\u2019s that we have an older type of essentialist class politics, then slowly, slowly, essentialism starts to disintegrate, and now we have this contingent struggle for hegemony where everything is open to negotiation . . . . With Judith Butler, there is the same implicit narrative: in the old times, there was sex essentialism, biologically-identified; then slowly, slowly, this started disintegrating into a sex\/gender distinction, the awareness that gender is not biologically\u2014 but rather culturally\u2014constructed; finally, we come to this performativity,contingency, and so on and so on. So the same story, from essentialist zero-point to this open contingency where we have struggles for hegemony which are undecided. My first reproach as a philosopher to this is that here, some metanarrative is missing. To ask a very stupid, na\u00efve question: why were people one hundred and fifty years ago essentialists? Were they simply stupid? You know what I mean? There is a certain, almost teleological narrative here, in which from the \u201cbad\u201d zero-point of essentialism, slowly we come to the \u201cgood\u201d realization that everything is a performative effect, that nothing is exempted from the contingent struggle for hegemony. But don\u2019t you need a metanarrative if you want to avoid the conclusion that people were simply stupid one hundred and fifty years ago?<\/p>\n

CH: Well, perhaps not a metanarrative in the sense of a guiding historical trajectory, but an acceptance of a loosely Foucauldian premise, that one hundred and fifty years ago there were in place certain institutional mechanisms, powerdiscourses, which coerced belief from their subjects, engendered them . . .<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Ah! But if you accept this Foucauldian metanarrative, then things get a little complicated. Because Foucault is not speaking about truth value; for him, it is simply the change from one episteme to another. Then . . . OK, I ask you another question\u2014let\u2019s engage in this discussion, with you as Butler. So: is there a truth-value distinction between essentialism and the performativity of gender or is it simply the passage from one episteme to another? What would you say?<\/p>\n

CH: I won\u2019t speak for Butler, but if I were a Foucauldian, I would say that the latter is the case, though I may prefer the later episteme in light of my own political objectives.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Yeah, but Butler would never accept that.<\/p>\n

CH: You don\u2019t think so?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: You think she would? Because I think that the epistemic presupposition of her work is implicitly\u2014even explicitly, at least in her early work\u2014that, to put it bluntly, sex always already was a performative construction. They just didn\u2019t know it then. But you cannot unite this with Foucauldian narrative, because Foucauldian narrative is epistemologically neutral, in which we pass from one paradigm to the other.<\/span> You know, sex was confessionary then; sex is now post-confessionary, pleasurable bodies, whatever . . . . But OK: Foucault would be one possible metanarrative. Marxism would provide the other one, in the sense that \u201cthe development of capitalism itself provoked a shift in subjectivity,\u201d whatever. But again, what I claim is that there is some unresolved tension concerning historicity and truth-value. I ask you a different question. Both in Laclau and in Butler, there is a certain theory: Butler\u2014and I\u2019m speaking of early Butler; later, things get much more complex, much more interesting, a more intense dialogue becomes possible . . .<\/p>\n

CH: So we\u2019re talking about Gender Trouble, parts of Bodies That Matter . . .<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Yeah, I\u2019m talking about Gender Trouble<\/em> with Butler, and about Hegemony and Socialist Strategy<\/em> with Laclau. Why? Because let\u2019s not forget that these two books were the only two authentic \u201cbig hits\u201d of the time. . . . I\u2019ll tell you why: both Gender Trouble<\/em> and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy<\/em> were read as a model for a certain political practice. With Gender Trouble<\/em>, the idea was that performativity and drag politics could have a political impact; it was, to put it in na\u00efve, Leninist terms, \u201ca guideline for a certain new feminist practice.\u201d It was programmatic. It was the same with Hegemony and Socialist Strategy<\/em>. It was a justification for the abandonment of so-called essentialist class politics, after which no specific struggle takes priority, we just have to coordinate our practices, cultivate a kind of \u201crainbow coalition,\u201d although Ernesto rejects the term . . . . Now, what are these theories? Are they universal theories\u2014of gender or of social\/political processes\u2014or are they specific theories about political practice, sex practice, within a certain historical\/political moment?<\/span> I claim that the ambiguity is still irreducible. At the same time that it\u2019s clear that these theories are rooted in a certain historical moment, it\u2019s also clear that they touch upon a universal dimension. Now my ironic conclusion is that, with all this anti-Hegelianism, what both Ernesto and Judith do here is the worst kind of pseudo-Hegelian historicism. At a certain point, it\u2019s as if the access to truth or what always already was true is possible only in a certain historical situation. So in other words, philosophically, I claim that beneath these theories of contingency, there is another narrative that is deeply teleological.<\/p>\n

CH: But either Butler or Laclau might rebut this reproach by pointing out that even such an embedded teleology is no worse than a matrix of non-historical Lacanian presuppositions.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: But my God, this is the big misunderstanding with her! Butler systematically conflates what she calls \u201cReal<\/span>\u201d with some nonhistorical symbolic norm.<\/span> It\u2019s interesting how, in order to qualify the Lacanian notion of sexual difference as a nonhistorical Real<\/span>, she silently slips in this nonhistorical gender norm, to then claim that \u201cwe homosexuals are excluded from this,\u201d and so on. So her whole criticism inveighs against this notion that Lacan thinks of sexual difference as part of a nonhistorical, heterosexual normativity, and that this is what should be subverted . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, my counterpoint is that \u201cReal<\/span>,\u201d for Lacan, is the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal<\/span>\u201d is that on account of which every norm is undermined. When [Butler] speaks of historicity, my point is not that there is something nonhistorical which precedes us.<\/span> My point is that the Lacanian Real<\/span>, in a way, is historical, in the sense that each historical epoch, if you will, has its own Real<\/span>. Each horizon of historicity presupposes some foreclosure of some Real<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Now, Judith Butler would say \u201cOK, I agree with this, but doesn\u2019t this mean that we should re-historicize the Real<\/span>, include it, re-negotiate it?\u201d No, the problem is more radical . . . . Maybe the ultimate misunderstanding between us\u2014from my perspective\u2014 is that for her, historicity is the ultimate horizon. As an old fashioned Freudian, I think that historicity is always a certain horizon which has to be sustained on the basis of some fundamental exclusion.<\/span> Why is there historicity? Historicity doesn\u2019t simply means that \u201cthings change,\u201d and so on. That\u2019s just stupid evolutionism; not in the biological sense, but common sense.<\/p>\n

Historicity means that there must be some unresolved traumatic exclusion which pushes the process forward. My paradox would be that if you take away the nonhistorical kernel, you lose history itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And I claim that Judith Butler herself, in her last book, is silently approaching this position. Because in Gender Trouble<\/em>, the idea that your psychic identity is based on some primordial loss or exclusion is anathema; it\u2019s the Big Bad Wolf. But have you noticed that, if you read it closely, in The Psychic Life of Power<\/em> she now accepts this idea of a primordial loss when she speaks of these \u201cdisavowed attachments\u201d? The idea is now that we become subjects only through renouncing the fundamental passionate attachment, and that there\u2019s no return, no reassumption of the fundamental attachment. It\u2019s a very Freudian notion. If you lose the distance, the disavowal . . . it\u2019s psychosis, foreclosure. The big problem I have with this shift is that it\u2019s a very refined political shift of accent. What I don\u2019t quite accept in her otherwise remarkable descriptions is how, when she speaks about the \u201cmarginalized disavowed,\u201d she always presupposes\u2014to put it in very na\u00efve terms\u2014that these are the good guys. You know: we have Power, which wants to render everything controllable, and then the problem is how to give voice to those who are marginalized, excluded . . .<\/p>\n

CH: You see it as a kind of vulgar Bakhtinianism?<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek: Yeah, yeah\u2014you know what I\u2019m aiming at. What I\u2019m aiming at is . . . aren\u2019t racist, anti-Semitic pogroms also Bakhtinian carnival? That\u2019s to say that what interests me is not so much the progressive other whom the power is controlling, but the way in which power has to disavow its own operation, has to rely on its own obscenity. The split is in the power itself. So that . . . when Butler argues very convincingly against\u2014at least she points to the problematic aspects of\u2014legal initiatives that would legalize gay marriages, claiming that in this way, you accept state authority, you become part of the \u201cvisible,\u201d you lose solidarity with all those whose identity is not publicly acknowledged . . . I would say, \u201cWait a minute! Is there a subject in America today who defines himself as marginalized, repressed, trampled by state authority?\u201d Yes! They are called survivalists! The extreme right! In the United States, this opposition between public state authority and local, marginalized resistances is more and more an opposition between civil society and radical rightwing groups. I\u2019m not saying we should simply accept the state. I\u2019m just saying that I am suspicious of the political pertinence of this opposition between the \u201cpublic\u201d system of power which wants to control, proscribe everything, and forms of resistance to subvert it. What I\u2019m more interested in are the obscene supplements that are inherent to power itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanlon,Christopher. “Psychoanalysis and the Post-Political: An Interview with Slavoj .” New Literary History, 32 (2001): 1-21. PDF\u00a0 rest of interview in this blog is here Question: Judith Butler\u2014with whom you have engaged in ongoing if cordial debate\u2014maintains that the Lacanian topology is itself dubious for its nonhistorical, transcultural presuppositions. You yourself have written that \u201cjouissance … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek comment on Butler 2001”<\/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":[78,21,72,114,15,118,41,20],"tags":[105,109],"class_list":["post-8182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-jouissance","category-objet-a","category-sexuation","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-the-real","category-zizek","tag-thedebate","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182","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=8182"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8186,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8182\/revisions\/8186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}