The following "confession" (or, at least, an attempt to "tell the truth about
myself") will prove rather ironic, given the recent posts concerning identity.
But, I just thought I would clarify a screwup on my part: I was using Rebecca
Brown's mail browser when I sent my last message so it appeared to come from her
and it appended her signature. So, not that my authorial intent means much, but
I wrote it.
I also wanted to respond quickly to Jeff by saying that we may be talking past
each other to some extent.
First, I evidently have not read enough Marcuse, because I am not completely
clear about the productive functioning of repression--Foucault certinly takes
the "repressive hypothesis" to directly entail a negative conception of power.
So either Foucault is wrong, Marcuse is wrong, or they are speaking about
drastically different variants of "repression." Could you point me to any
particular passages that might catch me up on this issue?
Second, I do think that Butler's argument in the first fifty pages of "Gender
Trouble" reveals the inadequacy of the claim that "sexuality is discursively
produced, but...we have sexed bodies also." Butler and Foucault agree that we
have "sexed bodies," but it is precisely discursive practices that "sex" those
bodies--and moreover (and this is Butler's real insight) there is no "sexing"
before the body. One cannot posit some originary body before it's discursive
construction (there is no "before the law" except within a juridical discourse).
I admit that this point as I have schematically presented it here seems a bit
obtuse, but I am only trying to get to the crux of the matter and stress what I
see as important in Butler's work (and Foucault's for that matter).
Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota
myself") will prove rather ironic, given the recent posts concerning identity.
But, I just thought I would clarify a screwup on my part: I was using Rebecca
Brown's mail browser when I sent my last message so it appeared to come from her
and it appended her signature. So, not that my authorial intent means much, but
I wrote it.
I also wanted to respond quickly to Jeff by saying that we may be talking past
each other to some extent.
First, I evidently have not read enough Marcuse, because I am not completely
clear about the productive functioning of repression--Foucault certinly takes
the "repressive hypothesis" to directly entail a negative conception of power.
So either Foucault is wrong, Marcuse is wrong, or they are speaking about
drastically different variants of "repression." Could you point me to any
particular passages that might catch me up on this issue?
Second, I do think that Butler's argument in the first fifty pages of "Gender
Trouble" reveals the inadequacy of the claim that "sexuality is discursively
produced, but...we have sexed bodies also." Butler and Foucault agree that we
have "sexed bodies," but it is precisely discursive practices that "sex" those
bodies--and moreover (and this is Butler's real insight) there is no "sexing"
before the body. One cannot posit some originary body before it's discursive
construction (there is no "before the law" except within a juridical discourse).
I admit that this point as I have schematically presented it here seems a bit
obtuse, but I am only trying to get to the crux of the matter and stress what I
see as important in Butler's work (and Foucault's for that matter).
Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota