How to Fail at Being Yourself: An Ethical Guide

Final paper for "Theories of Gender"

Submitted to Prof. Moshe Sluhovsky on the 13th of March, 2023

Tracing the limits, pointing at the possibilities: Butler's main argument

               In "Giving an account of oneself", Butler's goal is to refute the claim that the poststructuralist account of the subject does not allow for personal responsibility or accountability. They offer, as an alternative, an account of the subject's social and psychological limitations and relations to norms and how these allow for and effect self-narration. Butler's argument both encourages a broad empathy to others, and accounts for the interconnections inherent to subjectivity itself. This account delineates the limits of possible responsibility and points to a nonviolent form of ethics. 

Firstly, I shall briefly explain the poststructuralist account of the subject. According to poststructuralist thought, the norms that constitute the conditions for the formation of the subject, that is, bind and allow it, are social and therefore somewhat external to the subject. In Foucaultian terms, one might say that a regime of truth presents the terms that make self-recognition possible. The definition of the "I" is made in relation to prevailing norms. While there is self-creation, the self is not its own exclusive creator. Self-creation is done in relation to and in negotiation with norms that shift during one's life, and self-creation is only made possible through these norms.

               This poststructuralist stance leads to a new interpretation of the Hegelian account of recognition. Through a poststructuralist lens, the process of recognition ceases to be merely dyadic. Recognition is no longer given/received between the recognized and the recognizer, (an "I" and a "you"; a self and an Other, a slave and a master) but between recognizer, recognized, and the norms that govern both of their operations. These norms provide the criterion for recognition. Post-Hegelian recognition serves as a central axis to much of Butler's argument.

Butler utilizes an ecstatic interpretation of Hegelian recognition, meaning that in recognition the "I" constantly surges outside itself, finding itself within the Other. This process is not volitional, "it [the "I"] cannot put an end to this repeated upsurge of its own exteriority." (23) This is one reason why I cannot return to myself; I am constantly "compelled and comported" (23) outside myself, towards an Other. Furthermore, the "I" is altered by each encounter of recognition. In this sense, I become an Other to myself. The "I" surges outward, but cannot return inward, because the space of "inward" is now different than what it was before the "I" turned outward. Moreover, my return inward is governed by the same norms that govern my interaction with the Other to whom I turned. Therefore, self-recognition is not wholly internal. If I am to give an account of myself that is compatible with knowledge and understandable through language, I must leave a purely first-person perspective, itself formed and governed by social norms, and utilize these norms to be understood.

Radicalizing this account and naming another factor that conditions and effects the subject is Cavarero. According to Cavarero and Butler, when one gives an account of oneself, one has an audience; I narrate myself to someone. That fact limits one to the structures of address. To be coherent, one must adhere to rules of address in a given context. Those rules supersede the self that is being narrated, limiting it further. While Foucault focused on the limitations social norms place on the form of the subject ("what can I be?") Cavarero places further focus on the effect linguistic structures of address have on the contents of the subject and its relative importance; these structures inhere themselves into the subject's contents. For Cavarero, the central question of the recognition process is "Who are you?", and it is directed at the Other. I exist, and can only give an account of my existence, for and to you. Consequently, an account of oneself is never fully private. This not only further emphasizes our interconnectedness but also the linguistic dispossession inherent in the act of giving an account of oneself.

Psychoanalysis is used to establish some of the partial opacity of the self to itself. The concept of the unconscious is quite useful in this context. The contents of the unconscious are inaccessible, left only to be filled by a narration done through the psychoanalytic process. There are irrecoverable primary relations which acted on the subject during its highly impressionable prehistory. This prehistory reverberates throughout one's life, thus limiting one's power to explain oneself. There are parts of the self that echo throughout its history but are wholly inaccessible to the narrative "I" who authors this history. Moreover, trauma, due to its inherent resistance to narrativization and causal explanation by the person it inhabits, further dispossesses and complicates our ability to give an account of ourselves.

In the context of recognition, the unconscious is also formed to manage, with only partial success, the excesses of the recognition process. Due to the Other being an Other, and due to each of our singularities, we cannot fully process the information which is exposed to us and which we expose in the process of recognition.[1] Something of the other, and, due to the reciprocal nature of recognition, something of myself forms excesses in the process of recognition. The unconscious is where this excess material is directed and what it effects. This is especially true when self-narration is employed; the limitations of narration and reflexivity cause an excess of unprocessed information which is channeled into the unconscious and thereby re-forms it, consequently also re-forming the narrated "I". Another point Butler makes by utilizing psychoanalytic thought is that the process of recognition is fueled by desire and serves as a conduit for desire. This desire can, though mostly shouldn't, be quenched by judgement.

Judgement, while necessary for the operation of justice and for daily life, should not be given lightly. Moreover, the ethical implications of recognition and of giving an account of oneself should not be constrained to the production and assignment of judgements. "I think that it would be important, in rethinking the terms of the culture of ethics," Butler writes, "to remember that not all ethical relations are reducible to acts of judgement." (30) Judgement, not unlike the account of oneself, is conditioned in the form of address it takes. Butler emphasizes the importance of deferring judgement. They see judgement as interrupting, or finalizing, our understanding of an Other. Judgement cannot co-exist simultaneously with recognition. When passing judgment, we no longer ask, "who are you?", we say "Oh, no I know who you really are". Unlike recognition, judgment is used to disconnect self and Other; judgement defines judge and judged.

In summation, one's account of oneself is not self-grounded and cannot become a full reduction of one's singularity. The regime of truth, the structure of recognition, the form of address, the impulse to judge, the prehistory of subject and it's unconscious, traumatic experiences, language itself, and all non-narrativizable parts of ourselves lead to an inevitable, if partial, failure at giving an account of ourselves. However, this failure need not be an end to our understanding of responsibility and morality. Rather, like Kant's questions of eternity, immortality, and divinity, understanding how and why we fail to answer the question marks a beginning of a philosophical inquiry, not an ending.

The poststructuralist subject may be bound to others and to norms, but the movement that remains within these binds and the mechanisms of binding define the possibility of responsibility. The failure to give a full account of oneself is a condition to any account of oneself. That is what Butler means when they refer to this type of investigation as "the legacy of Kant". (37)

 An account of oneself and the discourse of the subject

In this section, I will describe different relations between Butler's ideas in "giving an account of oneself" to the different ideas we engaged with in the syllabus, starting with Sartre's The Gaze.

               Sartre and Butler hold vastly different views on the subject. The subject in Sartre's theory is, at least internally, pre-discursive and cartesian. The poststructuralist subject, however, is molded in and through social norms. However, both Sartre and Butler ground their accounts of the self in Hegelian dialectics.

Sartre's new cogito is based on mutual recognition between subjects of each other as subjects. If I and the Other recognize each other as subjects rather than objects, we gain a greater, though never a full, certainty that we are indeed subjects, free and exposed to scrutiny by others. This is used to ground a mutual humanity, and indeed, an interconnection, in a philosophical discourse that previously, in Descartes' cogito, struggled to establish that other subjects even exist.

               Butler does not seek to overtake Foucault in the same manner Sartre overtook Descartes; there is no parallel in Butler's text to the "new cogito" in relation to Foucault. However, Butler and Sartre's accounts serve a similar function in the discourse of the subject while existing in drastically different eras within that discourse. While Sartre establishes an interconnectedness between subjects through a reaction to Descartes and a continuation of Hegel, Butler establishes an interconnectedness between subjects through a continuation of Foucault and dislocation of Hegel.nice They both seek to establish similar things within different frameworks while utilizing different, but not wholly different, philosophical methods and tools.

                Due to both thinkers grounding themselves in dyadic Hegelian processes, another similarity arises. The exposed nature of our account of ourselves, our vulnerability when attempting to convey our singularity to another, seems quite similar to the constant anxiety of the subject that is subjected to the gaze of other subjects in Sartre's account. Once the gaze of other subjects is established, each choice we make is subject to another's scrutiny. Similarly, the form of address which includes an account of oneself is directed towards an Other and therefore exposed to it, vulnerable to the Other and their possible judgement.

               Butler's account is both a continuation and a defense of Foucault. While Butler does not limit herself to the language of the critical history of systems of thought, they accept that subjectivation is molded by and occurs through the implementation of social norms. While Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, focused on the different fields of discourse on practices meant to regulate sexuality and the relations of power they thereby express, Butler focuses, in this essay, on speech acts.  While Foucault focused on Christian and psychological practices of subjectivation, namely the confession, Butler, through Cavarero, utilized even more general structures of linguistic address in their account of subjectivation.

               Power, distinctly mentioned and analyzed in The History of Sexuality, is wholly implicit in Giving an Account of Oneself. It is not absent; clearly, the dispossessions of the subject's ability to self-narrate by language, norms of address, social norms and even dyadic recognition express some relation of power and a broader-controlling power. An effort to map these relations utilizing the conception of power established in The History of Sexuality could constitute an impressive essay in and of itself; however, that is beyond the scope of this paper.

Moreover, the relations of power constituted by Butler's account of judgement are also accounted for implicitly in Giving an Account of Oneself. Judgement, through its power to interrupt another's account and compel destructive action, can constitute a threat of force, a fulcrum of power, not unlike the ones described The History of Sexuality.

               Furthermore, both Butler and Foucault see themselves as continuing an essentially Kantian line of thought. Foucault, in his later writings, names Kant's thought as the critical factor of his endeavor, and the conceptions of subjectivation and objectivation established by Kant are utilized by Foucault in his efforts of critique. Foucault presents his efforts as a sort of historicization of Kant's epistemological project: "it [the emergence of truth games] has constituted for a time, a space, and particular individuals, the historical a priori of a possible experience."[2] The various factors described in Butler's paper constitute the possibility of an account of oneself. Through the exploration of the various limitations placed on the subject while it self-narrates, grounded in ecstatic post-Hegelian recognition, Butler describes the conditions of a possible account and therefore of a possible responsibility. In this sense, Butler's paper is a Kantian attempt to understands the conditions of possible experience; This experience is not the empirical or scientific experience Kant intended. Rather, it is the lived, embodied, and singular experience of a subject accounting for itself.  This is another way Butler continues the "legacy of Kant". (37)  

               In my opinion, there is a connection between these works. For those unfamiliar with Butler's theory of gender identity, the absence of gender from Giving an Account of Oneself would seem, well, queer. The absence of gender in Giving an Account of Oneself could be seen as a consequence of the following:

1)      Butler's partial acceptance of Cavarero's rejection of the "we". This "we" in the context of feminism was also criticized by Butler herself in Gender Trouble.

2)      A direct consequence of gender performativity, Butler's theory which views gender identity as a fiction, the theory expressed in Gender Trouble.

With that said, are there no powerful fictions in our social situation? Butler even uses a work of fiction, Kafka's Judgement, to further some of her points. While the absence of gender is consistent and coherent within both the internal context of Giving an Account of Oneself and the external context of Gender Trouble, its absence can seem almost neglectful in the broader context of the discourse on the subject.

               In Simone de Beauvoir's work gender plays a key role in dialectic processes. According to de Beauvoir, one's gender determines one's position in a master/slave and in a subject/object dialectic. If one is a woman, one is constantly on the verge of being an object. A woman is a servant in a master/servant dialectic with the men around her. To de Beauvoir, as soon as a female has her period, she is objectified. For her, Butler's efforts at describing the condition of a possible account of oneself would surely be lacking.

               Moreover, talk of linguistic dispossession that do not address the particular dispossession of women from the phallocentric symbolic and linguistic order by virtue of their emasculation, as mentioned in Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, may be seen as incomplete. With that said, I could hardly see how this Freudian language wouldn’t inhere the phallocentric order Mulvey high-mindedly claims to undermine.

               The fact of the matter is, Butler does not address the particular dispossessions of women in Giving an Account of Oneself. However, the social and political category of women is justifiably a disputed one. Butler doubts the viability of womanhood as a political category in Gender Trouble. In that text, womanhood designates little more than a historical effect.  De Beauvoir expressed a similar doubt in The Second Sex, noting that women are dispersed across many social standings by virtue of their husbands and fathers. However, she did not stress this doubt as much as Butler and Cavarero did. The absence of womanhood in Giving an Account of Oneself is consistent to Butler's thought; however, it can be quite jarring in light of the broader context of feminist and lesbian discourse.

Part 3: A close reading: Nonviolence in Giving an Account of Oneself

As I mentioned earlier, there are the beginnings of a nonviolent ethic in Giving an Account of Oneself. I think that a new discourse of ethics is one of the purposes of this text, and it is expressed most distinctly towards the end of it. What follows is a close reading of the last paragraphs of the text, starting from "But can we say" in page 38 and ending with the end of the text itself.

               The series of questions that open this segment are, in a sense, particularizations of the question of morality in a poststructuralist understanding of the subject. Does "being given over, being structure, being addressed" (38) make us unfree and thereby make responsibility impossible?

               Butler begins, understandably, by refuting Freud and Nietzsche. They are not named initially, but "an internalization of rage" is a clear reference to the subject formation process described in On the Genealogy of Morality, and "the shoring up of the superego" alludes to Freud. Their thought warns us of "bad conscience", the one that encourages the more inward-looking, reflexive sides of the subject. Even if it is an internalization of rage that may posit a justification, I.e., that one deserves the rage one points at oneself, Butler reminds us that negative narcissism is still narcissism.

               Butler claims that Freud and Nietzsche demonstrate a certain tension in "moralizing forms of subjectivity" (38) that they "harness the very impulses they seek to curb". Constantly searching, investigating, thrashing within oneself to look for an answer to or causal explanation of suffering, be that self-suffering or the suffering of others, only makes one more self-absorbed. That is not the responsibility which Bbutler seeks to establish; rather, they would like to establish a responsibility that is compatible with the ecstatic surge outward, towards the Other. As we make our account to someone, we are responsible to and for someone. In this sense, there is a responsibility here`, however, it is not a personal one.

               Butler's goal seems to be that of an ethic that is not only nonviolent, but also somewhat impersonal. Impersonal in three senses: one, in the sense that it seeks to avoid narcissism, two, that it devalues self-preservation`, and three, that it stems from the effects of social norms and conditions, that form and fill "the region of the unwilled". (38) Butler seeks to make an ethic that is based upon our limitations and connections, a. An ethic that is based in our "relationality". (38) It means an insistence on exposure, on vulnerability. It is an ethic that seeks, to the best of my understanding, to defer and delay judgement as much as possible. An ethic that remembers our unavoidable limitations when we give an account of ourselves.

Self-preservation can be de-emphasized because no "I" can exist without a "you"; a "you towards which the "I" is inevitably compelled and comported. If I destroy you in defense of myself, I have destroyed my own ecstatic purpose. If I am compelled to you and molded by you, perhaps it is you whom I should seek to preserve.

               Moreover, if our account of ourselves is given to someone else, and if the unwilled is somewhat molded by others, e.g., the excesses of recognition's effects on the unconscious, then our responsibility should be aimed not merely to ourselves, but to each other. I give an account of myself to you, and I am "impinged upon" (38) by you. This common vulnerability that Butler seeks to emphasize could, perhaps, be the key to an inter-responsibility rather than personal responsibility. However, this is an interpretation. The text only stresses "a common vulnerability, a common physicality, a common risk". (38)

               The last paragraph of the text begins with an attack on the logic of self-defense. Its  internal structure is not disputed, only its uses and consequences. It provides, according to Butler, a boundless justification for violence. Guilt, of a seemingly karmic sort, is negated once more in the name of avoiding narcissism. Butler's conclusion is nonviolence. This argument is quite simplistic when compared to the preceding paper.

               In the next four lines, Butler makes another case for nonviolence. Violence, in Butler's view, "delineates vulnerability from which we cannot slip away". (38) Violence is like a judgement; it is final, in the sense that it requires an end to recognition. It is a beginning, not of an account, not of recognition, not of the promised finality of justice, but of more violence. This thought may not reside in it's proper location, but I find myself wondering how de Beauvoir would have responded to this. Could defensive violence not be necessary to stop fascism?

               I think an answer in the vein of Butler would be that this logic is also the driving force of Fascism. In the twentieth century, was fascism not entertained partially as a defensive force against communism? And, in light of recent events, is "deterrence", used as justification for the violence in Huwara, not an extension of self-defense? The only way to settle the matter of self-defense would be to engage in a sort of truth game: when was the threat real, or real enough, to justify violence? Butler's answer seems to be a staunch: "Never".  

               The vulnerability delineated by violence cannot be resolved through the use of the subject, but, according to Butler, through an acceptance of the situation that allows for violence in the first place. A deep understanding of the vulnerability that is a condition to violence could lead to an alternative discourse of ethics that is nonviolent: that denies retribution, that is merciful and empathetic. Understanding the fundamental vulnerability and interconnectedness inherent to our embodied existence, in a sense, inherent to our subjectivity, could lead to a new form of responsibility that may not end in violent judgement. The conditions of a possible account are therefore to be understood as pointing to a new possibility of accountability.

               We are not responsible for the vulnerable situation that we find ourselves in; however, we are responsible for what we do and what justify with and through this vulnerability. Under the name of subject, according to Bbutler, there are two responses: guilt and self-defense. However, under the name of common vulnerability, forgiveness and empathy may become more readily available.  Thus, nonviolent ethical discourse and conduct may become more viable.       

Afterwards

My personal journey is not unfamiliar to you by now. My knowledge of what one might reluctantly call "continental philosophy" was rather limited prior to this course. Apart from a passing familiarity with Sartre, through a single text in one of my philosophy courses, I had not, academically, engaged with this type of thought. My prior experience was an eclectic and rather incoherent mesh of one-off lectures, podcasts, and books about existential thinkers.

               My understanding of the subject both came about and evolved during this semester. Prior to this course, I knew about the cartesian mind, but not as a part of a discourse on the subject. I have heard of Hegelian dialectics only as a precursor to Marx. I was also vaguely aware that Foucault held some idea that was similar to the Buddhist conception of non-self, but that was the extent of it.

               During this semester, I came to understand the cartesian cogito in a new light. I also came to know Sartre's new cogito. I found the new cogito understandable; Sartre's subject certainly had less of an inclination to solipsism, and the constant scrutiny of the gaze of other subjects had some resonance with me, but I was unconvinced. Psychoanalysis was disturbing, intriguing, and sometimes oddly encouraging. The unconscious has interesting implications and uses, some of them exemplified in Giving an Account of Oneself. With that said, Freud's constant focus on sexuality and the phallus left much to be desired.

While the first text by Foucault was jarring, the notion of a historical a-priori piqued my interest. I found the account of the historical emergence of the subject in The History of Sexuality wholly convincing. The History of Sexuality also indirectly provided context to Freud's insistence on sexual, libidinal explanations. There were also passages in The History of Sexuality that had a striking style to them and left a lasting impression.

As far as the gendered subject is concerned, my understanding of it before the semester was also quite limited. I had some knowledge of gender performativity and have read a bit of Julia Serano. The experience of reading about femininity during the course sometimes bore a similarity to being an expatriate reading immigration law. Many of the texts of this class seemed to communicate the inherent difficulties and suffering in womanhood; many a time I felt a bit insane, as I had to read these texts while nevertheless experiencing a strong desire to be a woman.

With that said, I was incredibly impressed by Simone De Beauvoir, and I wonder how the concept of trans women would have complicated her account. I knew about compulsory heterosexuality before the class, but Adrienne Rich's text still had a powerful impact. I feel it has modified my understanding of femininity, or of feminine social gestures, though I am unsure as to how to put this modification into words. It was also a critique that offered a coherent alternative to the social order it criticized; in itself a great achievement.   

               As is pertains to my gender, things have been complicated since before this class. An understanding of my experience of gender dysphoria, new experiences of gender euphoria and a relatively sudden and intense desire to be a woman, whatever that means, left me somewhat puzzled. I fit some parts of my conception of "trans woman" but not fully, not comfortably and quite incoherently. That last bit proved a compelling field of investigation, though not a fruitful or pleasant one. My investigation was fueled by an intense desire to know, to understand. It is in many ways similar to the desire to pass judgement. I wanted to be able to say: "Oh, that's what I am" and be done with it; in all honesty, I was slightly embarrassed by the time and effort I spent in gendered naval gazing.

               In a sense, I should have known that answers to questions of gender identity would not exist. I have been a Buddhist practitioner for a while; the idea that there is no persistent answer to questions of identity was, nominally, a part of my belief system. However, it was like an answer at the back of a math textbook. I had the data, and I knew the answer was nothing, I just didn’t know how to get to nothing from the data I had. Gender Trouble, for me, was a much-needed demonstration of how to get from raw data, such as my own experience, to nothing. It was the most liberating text I ever read. I would not have been able to understand it without the preceding course. For that I am grateful.

Bibliography

Butler, Judith. "Giving an Account of Oneself", Diactritics 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001): pp. 22-40. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Florence, Maurice. “Foucault” (1984), in The Cambridge companion to Foucault, Gary Gutting (Ed.) (New York 2005), pp. 314-319.

Foucault, Michel. "The History of Sexuality", ([1976] 1996) Tran. Gabriel Esh, Tel Aviv. Vol. 1: pp. 7-28, 42-53, 64-79.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "The Gaze" ([1943], 2007) Tran. Avner Lahav, Tel Aviv. pp. 34-45, 70-76, 95-103, 111-114, 120.

De Beauvoir, Simone. "The Second Sex" Tran. S. Preminger, Tel Aviv. Vol 1., pp. 9-27; Vol. 2: Part four, Chapter 1, pp. 13-14;Chapter 2, pp. 92-103.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema", in Visual and other pleasures. (London, 1989), pp. 14-26.  

Butler, Judith. "Gender Trouble" ([1990] 2001) Tran. Daphne Raz, Tel Aviv. pp. 202-219. 

Feedback by Professor Moshe Sluhovsky

An excellent and thorough investigation of a difficult text. What is wonderful in Butler (and where she offers more than Foucault, I think) is her engagement with PA and her refusal to dismiss it. In MF there is a rejection of any complexity of energies such as desire, shame, guilt. There are either good or evil, real or imposed.

 In Butler there is always an effort to take the major insights of PA seriously and see what a radical post humanist theory can do with them.

Good luck to you

100

m.s.

[2] Maurice Florence, “Foucault” (1984), in The Cambridge companion to Foucault, Gary Gutting (Ed.) (New York 2005), pp. 315