We've actually been here before (Maybe someone should start up a Butler
list) and to some, (I have my hand up here) Butler's appropriation of F is a
redutio ad absurdum. Moreover, and despite the many assertions to the
contrary, this makes Butler, and Foucault by association, a linguistic
idealist. Now don't get me wrong, I too would graciously accept the status
of a God. I mean who wouldn't want to be the source of creation. But, how
true (fashionable scare quotes left out intentionally (again fashionable...,
(this could go on all day!!)) is it. Can I, as Marx put it, stop myself from
drowing by divesting myself of the thought of gravity? Er, probably not, and
nor can Butler get rid of the "originary presence" via the same technique.
Pushed this far Foucault's all too important arguments become facile and
easy to disregard.
It is at this originary "before construction" that
>Butler takes direct aim. I can elaborate on this argument with a passage from
>"Gender Trouble," but I don't have it with me right now.
>
>
>
>Sam Chambers
>University of Minnesota
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
*******************************************************************
"We stand at the end of the age of reason.
A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.
(Adolf Hitler)
*******************************************************************
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------
list) and to some, (I have my hand up here) Butler's appropriation of F is a
redutio ad absurdum. Moreover, and despite the many assertions to the
contrary, this makes Butler, and Foucault by association, a linguistic
idealist. Now don't get me wrong, I too would graciously accept the status
of a God. I mean who wouldn't want to be the source of creation. But, how
true (fashionable scare quotes left out intentionally (again fashionable...,
(this could go on all day!!)) is it. Can I, as Marx put it, stop myself from
drowing by divesting myself of the thought of gravity? Er, probably not, and
nor can Butler get rid of the "originary presence" via the same technique.
Pushed this far Foucault's all too important arguments become facile and
easy to disregard.
It is at this originary "before construction" that
>Butler takes direct aim. I can elaborate on this argument with a passage from
>"Gender Trouble," but I don't have it with me right now.
>
>
>
>Sam Chambers
>University of Minnesota
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
*******************************************************************
"We stand at the end of the age of reason.
A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.
(Adolf Hitler)
*******************************************************************
Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
--------------------------------------------------------