This is the first part of my "Judith Butler Journal".
Please, feel free to give comments!
Please, feel free to give comments!
Marie Beauchamps. Judith Butler seminar. A “Journal”. Part 1.
Friday, 13th February 2009.
Entering Butler’s ideas and theory by the end is not the easiest task, but it also makes it a very ‘clear’ task in a way. (By clear I mean that it is hardly polluted by pre-conceptions or pre-ideas, which then leaves a blank page to write on so to speak). To speak in a metaphorical way, it feels as when entering a museum and knowing but very few about what is being exhibited there. In such an experience, the colour of the works represented, their texture, their form, maybe their sounds as well, are the things on which the visitor relates to. These are the elements out of which knowledge and meaning are constructed regarding the works displayed in the museum. Yet, meaning and knowledge are probably also attached, re-linked, and/or re-mediated to or through previous knowledge which the visitor may have accumulated in previous experiences.
As I already suggested, reading the first chapter of Giving an Account of Oneself was part of the same experience. Because my field of reading Butler was almost blank (the ‘almost’ is here necessary, for it remains the pre-condition of my participation in this seminar), the words I was reading while preparing the first session were all potential for a much bigger environment than I could possibly suspect. The point is that it is hardly possible to entertain such a potentiality within a text, as it would require dropping any other activity in order to collect enough time to go through it. So, one has to make choices in the points of focus within the text; one has to choose a focus of reading, making its own path throughout the text, relying on the structure, the language, and all the previous knowledge collected/ accumulated elsewhere.
In fact, it seems that there can be no reading from a purely blank page. For that would mean that the reader has to (consciously or not) eradicate any previous reading, any previous experience from his horizon of knowledge. This would presuppose the ability to free oneself from the language we are constituted of.
The metaphor of the blank page was triggered by our discussion on the impossibility of being transparent and ethical at the same time that arose during our first session. Here, the particular word “opacity” proved to contain a whole bunch of implications, connections and meanings, which asked that all of us revise our understanding of the text, reconsider our approach thereof, and rework our deductions. And now that I’m writing that, I’m wondering whether it is not precisely because of this opacity Butler talks about that we constantly need to revise our understanding and our reading of a text. For if there were such as thing as pure universality, we then should be able to understand somebody’s thought right away. And if we chose to have a seminar on Judith Butler, isn’t precisely because we had acknowledged the fact that our reading and our understanding of her ideas differed from one another? In this way, we indeed formed a group by acknowledging our differences, thereby also establishing the possibility for ethical relations between us.
To go one step further, the differences—which were in the first place necessary to form this group of people working on Butler’s idea—were differences we did not even know of. So, would it go too far to call them ‘content-less’ and thereby ‘substitutable’? I doubt so. For even this example may seem a trivial one, it still seems to me that such a seminar forms the environment of subjective relations which are the basis of any political discussion what so ever. In fact, aren’t we in the position of giving an account of ourselves in the act of reading Butler?
What I mean by that is that in each individual reading, one can recognise the background and preoccupation of each-other. Consciously or not, we constantly draw on what we already understood through other authors, other readings, and other moments of thoughts. Think here for instance of the way Christopher understood the sentence stating that “the notion of singularity is very often bound up with existential romanticism”. His reading clearly demonstrated his individual reading of the text based on previous knowledge, but did not necessarily make sense to the rest merely because we did not share that same background of information. Another example could be my own reading of an irrecoverable referent in the notion of an “I” through Deleuze’s idea of the statement, the latter sharing in my view the same idea of an irrecoverable referent by means of its constant evolution through repetition and transformation. Although I did not see that this reading of Butler may be prevented by the fact that Deleuze refutes the basis of a psycho-analytical formation of a subject (which is in fact a stable ground in Butler’s thinking), I still would like to motivate what made me draw this analogy. In the passage on the irrecoverable referent, Butler states that
the irrecoverability of an original referent does not destroy narrative; it produces it ‘in a fictional direction’, as Lacan would say. So, to be more precise, I would have to say that I can tell the story of my origin and I can even tell it again and again, in several ways. (p. 37)
What appears in the last sentence is that the story of origin can be repeated infinitely in several ways. So, it appears to me that the referent is irrecoverable precisely because of this possibility of repetition in transformation, which is really close to Deleuze’s idea of the possibility of repetition of a statement; for according to Deleuze, the statement appears to be repeatable at the moment it becomes a statement. And if it is repeatable, it is only possible under the condition of its transformation, which makes its origin necessarily irrecoverable. I do understand the main problem of using Deleuze in the analysis of Butler. Nonetheless, leaving Deleuze for being Deleuze, if we account for Butler’s fundament that the subject is formed through the process of a psycho-analytical formation, then it appears that its story of origin can only become repeatable at the moment it has been subjectified (as it needs language to produce the narrative of origin, and language follows or coalesces with the subjectification of the individual). Moreover, the story of origin is only repeatable in several ways, which thus draws on its constant transformation. So, besides the irrecoverability due to the impossibility of exceeding one’s regime of truth, there also seems to be a form of irrecoverability due to a constant process of transformation that is in turn triggered by a repetitive process.
These examples demonstrate that in our reading of a text, we effectively acknowledge the vocabulary and the norms with which we work, thereby giving an account of what has formed us up to that moment. Moreover, we entertain the structure of address in the act of discussing a text, thereby also accepting to be dispossessed of our thoughts through the act of sharing them and discussing them.
Friday, 13th February 2009.
Entering Butler’s ideas and theory by the end is not the easiest task, but it also makes it a very ‘clear’ task in a way. (By clear I mean that it is hardly polluted by pre-conceptions or pre-ideas, which then leaves a blank page to write on so to speak). To speak in a metaphorical way, it feels as when entering a museum and knowing but very few about what is being exhibited there. In such an experience, the colour of the works represented, their texture, their form, maybe their sounds as well, are the things on which the visitor relates to. These are the elements out of which knowledge and meaning are constructed regarding the works displayed in the museum. Yet, meaning and knowledge are probably also attached, re-linked, and/or re-mediated to or through previous knowledge which the visitor may have accumulated in previous experiences.
As I already suggested, reading the first chapter of Giving an Account of Oneself was part of the same experience. Because my field of reading Butler was almost blank (the ‘almost’ is here necessary, for it remains the pre-condition of my participation in this seminar), the words I was reading while preparing the first session were all potential for a much bigger environment than I could possibly suspect. The point is that it is hardly possible to entertain such a potentiality within a text, as it would require dropping any other activity in order to collect enough time to go through it. So, one has to make choices in the points of focus within the text; one has to choose a focus of reading, making its own path throughout the text, relying on the structure, the language, and all the previous knowledge collected/ accumulated elsewhere.
In fact, it seems that there can be no reading from a purely blank page. For that would mean that the reader has to (consciously or not) eradicate any previous reading, any previous experience from his horizon of knowledge. This would presuppose the ability to free oneself from the language we are constituted of.
The metaphor of the blank page was triggered by our discussion on the impossibility of being transparent and ethical at the same time that arose during our first session. Here, the particular word “opacity” proved to contain a whole bunch of implications, connections and meanings, which asked that all of us revise our understanding of the text, reconsider our approach thereof, and rework our deductions. And now that I’m writing that, I’m wondering whether it is not precisely because of this opacity Butler talks about that we constantly need to revise our understanding and our reading of a text. For if there were such as thing as pure universality, we then should be able to understand somebody’s thought right away. And if we chose to have a seminar on Judith Butler, isn’t precisely because we had acknowledged the fact that our reading and our understanding of her ideas differed from one another? In this way, we indeed formed a group by acknowledging our differences, thereby also establishing the possibility for ethical relations between us.
To go one step further, the differences—which were in the first place necessary to form this group of people working on Butler’s idea—were differences we did not even know of. So, would it go too far to call them ‘content-less’ and thereby ‘substitutable’? I doubt so. For even this example may seem a trivial one, it still seems to me that such a seminar forms the environment of subjective relations which are the basis of any political discussion what so ever. In fact, aren’t we in the position of giving an account of ourselves in the act of reading Butler?
What I mean by that is that in each individual reading, one can recognise the background and preoccupation of each-other. Consciously or not, we constantly draw on what we already understood through other authors, other readings, and other moments of thoughts. Think here for instance of the way Christopher understood the sentence stating that “the notion of singularity is very often bound up with existential romanticism”. His reading clearly demonstrated his individual reading of the text based on previous knowledge, but did not necessarily make sense to the rest merely because we did not share that same background of information. Another example could be my own reading of an irrecoverable referent in the notion of an “I” through Deleuze’s idea of the statement, the latter sharing in my view the same idea of an irrecoverable referent by means of its constant evolution through repetition and transformation. Although I did not see that this reading of Butler may be prevented by the fact that Deleuze refutes the basis of a psycho-analytical formation of a subject (which is in fact a stable ground in Butler’s thinking), I still would like to motivate what made me draw this analogy. In the passage on the irrecoverable referent, Butler states that
the irrecoverability of an original referent does not destroy narrative; it produces it ‘in a fictional direction’, as Lacan would say. So, to be more precise, I would have to say that I can tell the story of my origin and I can even tell it again and again, in several ways. (p. 37)
What appears in the last sentence is that the story of origin can be repeated infinitely in several ways. So, it appears to me that the referent is irrecoverable precisely because of this possibility of repetition in transformation, which is really close to Deleuze’s idea of the possibility of repetition of a statement; for according to Deleuze, the statement appears to be repeatable at the moment it becomes a statement. And if it is repeatable, it is only possible under the condition of its transformation, which makes its origin necessarily irrecoverable. I do understand the main problem of using Deleuze in the analysis of Butler. Nonetheless, leaving Deleuze for being Deleuze, if we account for Butler’s fundament that the subject is formed through the process of a psycho-analytical formation, then it appears that its story of origin can only become repeatable at the moment it has been subjectified (as it needs language to produce the narrative of origin, and language follows or coalesces with the subjectification of the individual). Moreover, the story of origin is only repeatable in several ways, which thus draws on its constant transformation. So, besides the irrecoverability due to the impossibility of exceeding one’s regime of truth, there also seems to be a form of irrecoverability due to a constant process of transformation that is in turn triggered by a repetitive process.
These examples demonstrate that in our reading of a text, we effectively acknowledge the vocabulary and the norms with which we work, thereby giving an account of what has formed us up to that moment. Moreover, we entertain the structure of address in the act of discussing a text, thereby also accepting to be dispossessed of our thoughts through the act of sharing them and discussing them.
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