{"id":8245,"date":"2011-09-26T12:38:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T17:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=8245"},"modified":"2011-09-26T13:02:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T18:02:01","slug":"8245","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/09\/26\/8245\/","title":{"rendered":"Butler structure of address"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I give an account, and give it to you, then my narrative depends upon a structure of address<\/span>. But if I can address you, I must first have been addressed, brought into the structure of address<\/span> as a possibility of language before I was able to find my own way to make use of it. This follows, not only from the fact that language first belongs to the other and I acquire it through a complicated form of mimesis, but also because the very possibility of linguistic agency is derived from the situation in which one finds oneself addressed by a language one never chose<\/span>. GA 53<\/p>\n

I would suggest that the structure of address<\/span> is not a feature of narrative, one of its many and variable attributes, but an interruption of narrative<\/span>.\u00a0 The moment the story is addressed to someone, it assumes a rhetorical dimension that is not reducible to a narrative function.\u00a0 It presumes that someone, and it seeks to recruit and act upon that someone. Something is being done with language when the account that I give begins: it is invariably interlocutory, ghosted, laden, persuasive, and tactical.\u00a0 It may well seek to communicate a truth, but it can do this, if it can, only by exercising a relational dimension of language<\/span>.\u00a0 GA 63<\/p>\n

This view has implications for the making of moral judgements as well: namely, that the structure of address conditions the making of judgements about someone or his or her actions; that it is not reducible to the judgement; and that the judgement, unbeholden to the ethics implied by the structure of address, tends toward violence.\u00a0\u00a0 … To hold a person accountable for his or her life in narrative form may even be to require a falsification of that life in order to satisfy the criterion of a certain kind of ethics, one that tends to break with relationality<\/span>. GA 63<\/p>\n

.. we must think of a susceptibility to others that is unwilled , unchosen, that is a condition of our responsiveness to others, even a condition of our responsibility for them. It means, among other things, that this susceptibility designates a nonfreedom and, paradoxically, it is on the basis of this susceptaibility over which we have no choice that we become responsible for others<\/span>. GA 87-88<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I give an account, and give it to you, then my narrative depends upon a structure of address. But if I can address you, I must first have been addressed, brought into the structure of address as a possibility of language before I was able to find my own way to make use of … Continue reading “Butler structure of address”<\/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":[78,138],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","tag-givingccount"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245","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=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8247,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}