• No results found

3. The Genie Speaks for Themself: Subject Formation in Butler

3.2. An Alternative Reading – Giving an Accont of Oneself

3.2.2. Locating Levinas and Foucault in Giving an Account of Oneself

We can thus see a similar structure of intersubjective ethical-subject formation in the notion of ‘giving an account of oneself’ to the one in the work of Levinas and Foucault. Elsewhere in GAO Butler seems to even more explicitly align with this. They state that:

“from the outset, what relation the self takes to itself; how it will create itself in response to an injunction, how it will form itself, and what labour it will perform upon itself is a challenge…The injunction compels the act of self-making or self-creating, which means

240 Ibid., p. 36.

241 Ibid., p. 69.

242 Ibid., p. 113.

that it does not act unilaterally or deterministically upon the subject. It sets the stage for the subject’s self-crafting, which always takes place in relation to an imposed set of norms.”243

This expresses the same middle-ground position on ethical-subjectivity that has been developed throughout this thesis. It suggests an ethical agency that is “neither fully determined nor radically free”, but rather sits in relation to others at the level of both thid-personal structures and second-thid-personal address.244

The question is then how to locate Levinas and Foucault in this notion of ‘giving an account of oneself’. If their work can be shown to be compatible with such an approach, and not in tension with one another within this framework, this would suggest that we here have a way of drawing on all this thought in thinking of intersubjective ethical-subject formation.

While the explication above suggests that we can arrive at a middle-ground position across this work, it is worth further establishing how Levinas and Foucault can be placed within

‘giving an account of oneself’. To that end I briefly locate where they may be seen in Butler’s text, and whether their thought therein can be reconciled.

With Levinas, we can see a similarl recognitional structure in the structure of address as we see in the encounter with the face. Indeed, Butler separates their account of recognition from a more standardly Hegelian one by noting that the mutual recognition of subject and other in address doesn’t overcome the alterity of otherness.245 We see then a respect for alterity as radically other in giving an account. And the way that alterity is crucial to the formation of the subject is also reminiscent of its operation in Levinas. In both cases, it is the interruptive force of the inalienably other that provokes subject formation. For Butler,

“if the other is always there, from the start, in the place of where the ego will be, then a life is constituted through a fundamental interruption, is even interrupted prior to the possibility of any continuity.”246 The other is crucial, as in Levinas, as a condition of subjectivity itself.

As such, there is not a move from an independent subject through alterity to one more fully realised, but as in Levinas, the subject is always already in a relation with alterity.247 This

243 Ibid., p. 18.

244 Ibid., p. 19.

245 Ibid., p. 33.

246 Ibid., p. 52.

247 Although in psycho-analytical terms, Butler here speaks of the over-determination of attachment for the subject (p. 74).

is the crucial idea of Levinas’ present in Butler’s work. Butler takes Levinas as showing how

“at the most primary level we are acted upon by others in ways over which we have no say, and that this passivity, susceptibility, and condition of being impinged upon inaugurates who we are.”248 This impingement is a structural feature of subject formation, as “this condition of being impinged up is also an ‘address’ of a certain kind”.249 If we are all necessarily impinged in our ability to give an account of ourselves, and this giving of an account takes on the form that has been outlined above, then this ultimately leads to the creation of the subject. We can therefore see in Butler a Levinasian take on subject formation as responding to the interruption of alterity.250

The influence of Foucault is explicit in Butler. His ideas of how the subject interacts with structural determinants are drawn upon in describing the scene of address. For instance, Butler takes Foucault as showing that the work on the self always takes place in the context of a set of social norms preceding and exceeding the subject that set a limit of what is intelligible for subjectivity.251 Although the subject in Foucault is actively creating itself as ethical-subject in an aesthetic practice of self-poesis, this is mediated by the subject’s societal context. There is thus room for both subjective agency and external determination. Although structures of power-knowledge will determine in advance what forms the subject can take, the subject is not fully constrained. As Butler notes, Foucault rather “offers a framework for the scene of recognition” with his account.252 This can be related directly to the scene of

248 Ibid., p. 90.

249 Ibid.

250 Here there is also an interesting similarity and difference between Butler and Levinas on alterity. Butler seems to follow Levinas in that an other does not necessarily refer to a literal other person. She says for example that “whether or not there is an other who actually receives” the address is “beside the point, since the point will be that there is a site where the relation to a possible reception takes form”. (p. 67) While this may sound quite

Levinasian, is important to note that it appears here that for Butler it is less the actual alterity that is important, more than the possibility of alterity as a structural condition of the address.

251 Ibid., p. 17.

252 Ibid., p. 22. Although, admittedly, Foucault himself does not frame the self-creation involved in the care of the self in recognitional terms, we can potentially see an

intersubjective interaction here. For example, as discussed above, there is the role of the master and the discourse of another in helping lead to the self to have the correct relation to itself.

address. Just as in Foucault the subject forms itself in the framework of structural factors, so too the subject gives an account within a specific framework of norms in Butler.

This recognition of the inevitably social nature of a self-relation in Foucault also shows where the performative side of subject formation fits. It is necessitated by the social interruption of the account that the subject can give. Butler takes Foucault’s account of reflexivity in the care of the self as almost direct inspiration. They demonstrate how the socially situated nature of giving an account influences the way the subject can account for themself. For instance, they note that “the self does not simply begin to examine itself through the forms of rationality at hand. These forms of rationality are delivered through discourses, in the form of an address and they arrive as an incitement”.253 These forms are not imposed by structural forces existing as some external, monolithic power. Rather, living in a social context entails that the subject will encounter structural influences through its interactions. And these external forces not only influence the subject by providing a normative framework in which subject formation takes place, but also in affecting the kind of relation the subject takes to itself. As Butler points out, “the self’s reflexivity is incited by another, so that one person’s discourse leads another into self-reflection.”254 We thus see here a Foucauldian frame of care of the self as socially embedded reflexivity leading to intersubjective subject formation reflected in Butler.

In Butler’s terminology, this socially caused reflexivity is a kind of interruption. Self-reflection is always a response to some social trigger, be it the structural norms that demand a certain kind of self-examination, or the questioning of another. In this sense the response of a subject in giving an account of themself is always going to be a public act. This is the flipside to the social embeddedness of reflexivity. If “the relation to the self is a social and public relation” then the self-examination becomes a practice of externalizing or publicizing oneself.255 And if this self-examination leads to a form of self-creation then that self-creation too is similarly a public process. We see this in Foucault’s repeated emphasis on the aesthetic nature of care of the self. Self-creation on this picture is not something done only with the subject in mind, but must also involve awareness of how the subject is going to be viewed in their social context. There is a certain “performative production of the subject within

253 Ibid., p. 125.

254 Ibid.

255 Ibid., pp.113-114.

established public conventions”, in Butler’s terms.256 In giving an account of themself, the subject creates themself within a socially structured, public scene of address. We see here clear echoes of the Foucauldian practice of ethical self-formation as it has been outlined.