The I Who Speaks (an)Other Language/ Down Syndrom

Hey Everyone,

Both Michaela's and Marie's postings are both great starting points for the posts and I am very excited to have this forum. Once again, I feel this tutorial is getting started on a great foot and I am very exctied to be participating with all of you! I just wanted to share those thoughs before I began my next post and keep them coming !!

In returning to both of the postings Michaela and Marie posted, I would like to reply to both responces with a specific subject and consider how we could move forward from there. I would like to first respond to Marie's post and then follow with a counter example to Michi's post on David and the Trans-sexual subject. Marie's reading of my post raised a divergent path that I did not consider at first and I feel is a good lead into my posting for today. First, in regards to Marie's reading of my post: I did not mean to suggest, in my first post, that the subject is blocked or barred in advance from self-reflexivity. I wanted simply to point to Butler's crucial lynchpin in her theory, where self-reflexivity is not only crucial to ethics, but also to the formation of the subject, espicially if the subject is an effect of discourse. However, Marie is correct to point out that this problem most certianly happens and is part of the disspossession that takes place, perhaps, most frequently in the "Doctor's Office." And it is here, in this space and with this scene of address, that I would like to consider a different subject than has been previously discussed.

In the Doctor's Office (or for Europeans, the clinic) there is a whole network of relations and discourses that are always, already, outside of the subject. If there is to be any reflexive moments for the subject within the medical domain of intelligibility, then one must first learn the language and meaning of a scientific discourse that produces a medical subject. Here, one is not barred (prevented), per se, but is certainly restrained by a particular 'distance' from those who speak the 'truth' of medical science and those who are conjured as subjects by a medical discourse. A quick example of this would be the medical chart: the collection of medical observations that is kept and written down by doctors, in their language, who then do not share what is written or stored on those files; espicially (and I know from expierence) in the psychoanalysist's office. In America, pyschological records are not property of the subject but of the annalist and this poses problems when a subject cannot respond or reflect on what has been written about him or her in relation to their mental health and the law. Here, one is not completely barred from external knowledge about the self, but the distance between doctor, subject and knowledge creates a barrier or layer of opacity to the subject. This, however, as Butler assures us, can be overcome through reflection, shared language and expierence that critques ethics as a form of valid subject formation.

Here I would like to pose my difference: I am, perhaps, concerned with the same scene of address and the same relations of power, but rather I would like to pose a challenge to a Butlerian model of ethics. In the case of Brenda/David, that Michaela so seemlessly and clearly outlined for us, the subject in this case was able to understand himself in relation to the powers of both the psychological and medical establishments that preceeded him and his subject formation. Only after Brenda/David is able to become an interlocutionary subject with doctors and their 'medical gaze' upon his body, was he able to critique the modes and opperations of power that were barring him from his "own" subject formation. This, as Michaela pointed-out, can only occur through a common language: a "shared" language, a shared logic, a shared understanding, a clear ability to communicate an internal desire to the external world which all follows the underpinnings of our conception of intelligibility and the subject.

But now, what if we switch the subject to that of the child with Down Syndrom? Here we have a subject, that by defenition, is defind in advance, through a medical discourse that places a divergence and "abnormality" at the molecular level of understanding. Indeed, the child with Down Syndrom is first understood by their pathologized genetic difference as an (un)intelligible human subject from birth. We are told through medical science that they are our "genetic others." How do we rethink ethics for the subject such as a child with Down Syndrom that is seen as deriving, inherently, as a divergent subject formation? Or, for pyshoanalysis, a subject that for so long has been seen 'outside' the realm of intelligible lives because people who have Down Syndrom are believed to not be able to reflect on their subject formation. We know that many children with Down Syndrom cannot give a clear account of themsleves in relation to the sturctures of power that reside over them, yet they speak our langauge and live in our culture. They do not, however, share our logic or our reason.

But this, too, is perhaps contrived. Perhaps, the child with Down Syndrom does understand themselves in realtion to our power structures, but does not posses the language (perhaps, no language exsists outside of logic) that she can find to articulate herself. But the problem of addressing the ethics of the subject with Down Syndrom is not simply reducible to a lack of language or reason. Therefore, simple education and reflection will not suffice. How, then, do we understand the subject of Down Syndrom if they hold the key to understanding their internal logic as a valid subject? Here, a formulation of Butler's ethics hits an impasse, a (anti) discurive corner that it cannot reason itself out of: If a subject is disspossessed by an internal "essence" (i.e. Autism, Down Syndrom, ect.) that prevents the subject from understanding themselves and who's internal logic (i.e. actual, communicable understanding of what it is like to have Down Syndrom in our world) is necessarily outside of communication and language; how do we address the other that cannot give an account of themselves and remain ethical to them? And keeping in line with Marie's ending question: "And what consequences does it have on our social and political system to fully embrace the opaque subject? (Could we still build on an institutionalized society for instance?)"