judith butler_futher refletions on conversations of our time

8/12/2019 Judith Butler_Futher Refletions on Conversations of Our Time

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Further Reflections on Conversations of Our TimeAuthor(s): Judith ButlerSource: Diacritics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 13-15Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566267.

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2/4

FURTH R REFLE TIONS

CONVERS TIONS

O U R

T I M

JUDITH BUTLER

The

exchange

that

ErnestoLaclau and

I

conducted

through

e-mail last

year

at

this time

begins a conversation hatI expectwill continue.AndI supposeI would like to use this

supplementary

eflectionto

thinkaboutwhat

makes such a

conversation

possible,

and

what

possibilities

might

emerge

from

such a

conversation.

Firstof

all,

I

think

that

I was drawn

o

the

work of Laclau

and

Mouffe

when

I

began

to

read

Hegemony

and

Socialist

Strategy

and

realized that

I

had

found

a

set

of

Marxist

thinkersfor whom

discourse

was

not

merely

a

representation

f

preexisting

social

and

historical

realities,

but was

also

constitutiveof the field

of the

social and

of

history.

The

second momentcame when I

realized hatcentral

o the

notionof

articulation,

ppropri-

ated

from

Gramsci,

was the notion

of

rearticulation.As a

temporally dynamic

and

relatively

unpredictable

play

of

forces,

hegemony

had

been

cast

by

both Laclau and

Mouffe as analternative o formsof staticstructuralismhattendto construe

contempo-

rary

social

forms

as

timeless

totalities.

I

read

in

Laclau and

Mouffe the

political

transcription

f Derrida's

Structure,

Sign,

and

Play :

a

structure

gains

its status as

a

structure,

ts

structurality,

only

through

ts

repeated

reinstatement.

The

dependency

of

that

structure n its

reinstatementmeans

thatthe

very

possibility

of

structure

epends

on

a

reiteration hat s in

no

sense

determined

ully

in

advance,

that

or

structure,

nd

social

structureas

a

result,

to become

possible,

there must

first be a

contingentrepetition

at

its

basis.

Moreover,

or

some social

formation o

appear

as

structured s for it

to have covered

over

in

some

way

the

contingency

of its own

installation.

The theoreticalrearticulationf structure s hegemonymarked heworkof Laclau

and

Mouffe

as

consequentiallypoststructuralist

nd

offered

perhaps

he

most

important

link

between

politics

and

poststructuralism

n

recent

years

(along

with the work

of

Gayatri

ChakravortySpivak).

The

move from

a

structuralist

ccount

in

which

capital

s

under-

stood

to structure ocial

relations

n

relatively

homologous

ways

to

a

view

of

hegemony

in which

power

relationsare

subject

o

repetition,

onvergence,

and

rearticulation

rought

the

question

of

temporality

nto the

thinking

of

structure,

nd

markeda

shift froma

form

of Althusserian

heory

hat akes

structural

otalities

as

theoretical

objects

to

one

in

which

the

insights

into

the

contingent

possibility

of structure

naugurate

renewed

conception

of

hegemony

as

bound

up

with the

contingent

sites

and

strategies

of the

rearticulation f

power.

It

is,

of

course,

impossible

in

this

context to

reconstruct

he

particular

way

in

which

Derrida's work

and Foucault's work

converge

in

the

reconceptualization

f

hegemony

thatLaclauand

Mouffe

have

offered.Oneof

the

points,

however,

hat

became

most salient

for me

is the

reintroduction f

temporality

and,

indeed,

of

futurity

nto the

thinking

of

social formations.

Among many

critical social

theorists,

the

tendency

has been to

underscore

how the

systemic

character

of

capital

tends

to

incorporateany

instance

of

opposition

n

the

service of

capital's

own

self-augmentation.

would

clearlyagree

hat he

incorporative

and

domesticatingpossibilities

of

capital

are immense. But I

would

also

diacritics

/

spring

1997

diacritics 27.1: 13-15

13


3/4

argue

hat

any theory

hat

ails to

think

he

possibilities

of

transformationrom

within

that

systemic

ormation s

itself

complicit

with

the idea of the

eternal

haracter

f

capital

that

capital

so

readily

produces.

Hegemony

also

marksa

limit

to

the

totalizing

terms

within

which

social formationsare to be

thought.

For what

hegemony

attends o are the

moments of

breakage,

of

rearticulation,onvergence,

and

resistance

hat

are not imme-

diately

coopted

by

social formations

in

their

past

and

present

forms.

That no

social

formation

an

endurewithout

becoming

reinstated,

nd

that

every

reinstatement

uts

the

structure

n

question

at

risk,

suggests

that

the

possibility

of

its

own

undoing

s at

once

the condition of

possibility

of

structure tself.

Before

I

knew the

work

of Laclau

and

Mouffe

very

well,

I

came close to

this kindof

insight

in

my

work on

gender.'

There

I

argued

hat

gender

is not an inner

core

or static

essence,

but

a

reiterated

enactment

of

norms,

ones

which

produce, retroactively,

he

appearance

of

gender

as an

abiding

interior

depth. My point

as

well

was

that

although

gender

s constituted

performatively,

hrough

a

repetition

of acts

(which

are

themselves

theencodedaction of

norms),

it is notfor that reasondetermined.ndeed,

gendermight

be remade

and

restaged

hrough

he reiterative

necessity by

which it is

constituted.

Here

I

focused on the

transposition

of two Derridean

nsights

into

gender

theory, mirroring

whatLaclau

and

Mouffe

were

doing

within

he

theorization f

hegemonicpolitics:

1)

that

the term

thatclaims

to

represent

a

prior

reality

producesretroactively

hat

priority

as an

effect

of

its own

operation

and

(2)

that

every

determined

tructure

ains

its determination

by

a

repetition

and,

hence,

a

contingency

hat

puts

at

risk

the

determined

haracter f that

structure.For

feminism,

that

means that

gender

does

not

represent

an

interior

depth,

but

produces

hat

nteriority

and

depthperformatively

s an effect of

its

own

operation.

And

it means that patriarchy r systems of masculine domination are not systemic

totalities

bound o

keep

women

in

positions

of

oppression,

but,

rather,

hegemonic

forms

of

power

that

expose

their own

frailty

in

the

very operation

of

their

iterability.

The

strategic

ask

for

feminism

is

to

exploit

those occasions of

frailty

as

they

emerge.

But more

recently,

Laclau

has

offered another set of

insights

that

converge

in

interesting ways

with

my

own

thinking.

The

first has

to do

with his

enormously

provocative

claim

that the

essentially

performative

haracter

f

naming

s

the

precondi-

tion for

all

hegemony

and

politics

[xiv]

(preface

to The Sublime

Objectof Ideology

by

Slavoj

Zizek).

What is meant

by performative

ere

is

of

the

utmost

importance.

For

names do not

merely

bring

into

existence what

they

name,

as divine

names do.

Names

within the

sphere

of

politics produce

the

possibility

of

identification,

but

also foil

that

possibility.

To the extent

that

they

are not

descriptive

and,

hence,

for

Laclau,

not

tied

to

established

contents),

they

become the sites for

a

hegemonic

rearticulation

f

subject

positions.

A name

does

not

fully

describe he

subject

hat t nevertheless

naugurates

nto

social

space

and time. But

in

what

does

its

productivepower

consist,

and

what

are the

conditions

of

possibility

for

such

power?

Laclaurefers

to

what

remains

undetermined

n

the

subjectthrough

he

power

of the

name,

the referential imits

of

interpellation.

What

is it thatconstitutesthe limitations

of

the

performative

power

of

naming?

What

s

it,

as

it

were,

thatholds the

name

open

as a

site of

hegemonic

articulation?

We mightsay that namesfunction to the extent thattheyare used withinlanguage

games

in

whichtheir unctionsare

already

stablished.

Orwe

mightargue

hatnames

seek

to

capture

a referent hat

always

eludes thenomination

by

whichthat

capture

s

sought.

We

might say

that

there

s

something

in he

psyche

as

that

which resists

interpellation,

as Mladen

Dolar

has

argued,

andwe

might

call this the

Real

according

to Lacanian

protocol.

On

theother

hand,

is there

perhaps

an

abyss

opened

by

the name

that makes

possible

the contestover

its

right

nd

proper

unction?

And f

so,

how

might

we

begin

1. The work

ofAnna-Marie

Smith

helped

me

to understandmore

clearly

the

links between

ourpositions.

14


4/4

to

approach

he

thinking

of

such

an

abyss?

Is the

Heideggerian

notion

of

the

ontological

difference

the

primaryway

in which

Laclau understands his

persistentnecessity

of

indetermination?

s the

indetermination hat renders

all

decision

contingent

(in

the

relative

sense)

the same

as

that

which

produces

the

name

as an

infinite site of contest

(at

the level of description)?

These

seem to

me to be one set of

questions

that

I

would

hope

to

pursue

as I think

about

further onversationswith

Laclau,

conversations

hat

we

will

surely

continue.

n the

spirit

of

this

exercise,

then,

I

leave

it

open-ended.

WORKS CITED

Derrida,

Jacques.

Structure,

ign,

and

Play

in the

Discourse of the HumanSciences.

Writing

and

Difference.

Trans.Alan Bass.

Chicago.

U

of

Chicago

P,

1978.

Laclau, Ernesto,

andChantalMouffe.

Hegemony

andSocialist

Strategy:

Towardsa

Radical

Democratic

Politics.

Trans.

Winston

Moore

and

Paul

Cammack.London:

Verso,

1985.

Laclau,

Emesto.

Preface. The

Sublime

Object

of Ideology.

By Slavoj

Zizek.

London:

Verso,

1989.

diacritics

/

spring

1997

15

judith butler_futher refletions on conversations of our time

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