A Collision of Idiocies
Further to my rumblings about Professor Judith Butler and her obscurantist posturing, the fine people at Obscene Desserts have devised a new party game, juxtaposing her blathering, and that of her peers, with Communist propaganda posters. It seems to me the results would make excellent flash cards, and thus one could more readily memorise such gobbets of wisdom as,
“Libidinal dependency and powerlessness is phantasmatically overcome by the installation of a boundary and, hence, a hypostacized centre which produces an idealized bodily ego; that integrity and unity is achieved through the ordering of a wayward motility or disaggregated sexuality not yet restrained by the boundaries of individuation.”
Hours of fun. Related. And. Also.
That’s “Blairs Law”
Did she really misspell “hypostasized?”
It’s hard to care, really. Prolonged exposure tends to dull the senses. Though I do like “phantasmatically”.
‘to write in this way as a literary academic, someone who is actually paid for having among other things a certain flair and feel for language, is rather like being a myopic optician or a grossly obese ballet dancer’ – Terry Eagleton
David
The communist flash-cards idea is a good one, but I can’t help thinking that the Butler quotation you provide would work better as a Carry-On film script. Imagine Hattie Jacques, all prim and severely buttoned-up in front of a class of the Carry On regulars.
Hattie: “…an idealized bodily ego…”
Charles Hawtrey [scandalised]: “Ooh, I SAY!”
Hattie: “…a wayward motility…”
Sid James “fnarr fnarr fnarr”
Hattie: “…disaggregated sexuality…”
Kenneth Williams [shocked nostrils a-flair]: “Matron!”
Hattie: “…not yet restrained…”
[cut to shot of Babs Windsor cleavage]
And so on.
One begins to see parallels between rarified academic discourse and saucy double-entendre. Are they by chance related? Or is it just me?
All kidding aside, I think you need to see this sort of thing in context. But this is where I came in….
I read somewhere that premature hypostasis is a problem for some.
I struggle to imagine a context in which that particular example would be redeemed. (Those with a strong stomach can see the context for themselves – Bodies That Matter, 75.) As we’ve seen before, Butler often resorts to prose that’s absurdly baroque. The idea seems to be to make each sentence as opaque and imposing as possible, thus leaving readers daunted and compliant. (How can one dispute an assertion that’s incomprehensible? And how many students would dare to raise a hand and say, ‘Excuse me, Professor. That sounds like bullshit…’)
I suppose it’s a kind of rhetorical amulet for people who aren’t terribly secure in their ideas. Perhaps because those ideas are tendentious or unsound, and thus best obscured. I see no reason to extend benefit of the doubt to someone whose “work” is so frequently unsupported or simply unintelligible, and, it seems, deliberately so. As Georges has suggested, if Butler’s job is to communicate profound and original thoughts, argued clearly, she doesn’t seem to do that job particularly well.
But I do think the Carry On approach has potential.
A little context:
‘Significantly, this idealized totality that the child sees is a mirror image. One might say that it confers an ideality and integrity on his body, but it perhaps more accurate to claim that the very sense of the body is generated through this projection of ideality and integrity. Indeed, this mirroring transforms a lived sense of disunity and loss of control into an ideal of integrity and control (“la puissance”) through that event of specularization. Shortly, we will argue that this idealization of the body articulated in “The Mirror Stage” reemerges unwittingly in the context of Lacan’s discussion of the phallus as the idealization and symbolization of anatomy. At this point, it is perhaps enough to note that the _imago_ of the body is purchased through a certain loss; libidinal dependency and powerlessness is phantasmatically overcome by the installation of a boundary and, hence, a hypostacized centre which produces an idealized bodily ego; that integrity and unity is achieved through the ordering of a wayward motility or disaggregated sexuality not yet restrained by the boundaries of individuation: “the human object [_l’objet humain_] always constitutes itself through intermediary of a first loss–nothing fruitful takes place in man [_rien de fécond n’a lieu pour l’homme_] save through the intermediary of a loss of an object” (Lacan, II, 136/F165).’
Butler, _Bodies That Matter_, p.75, in the chapter ‘The Lesbian Phallus’
And, yes, the word in her text is ‘Hypostacized’
It occurs to me that the use of ‘we’ (‘…we will argue…’) is somewhat odd…the book is single-authored.
All clear now? Good.
Carry on…
Ah, the poetry of it.
Horseshit like this – forgive the technical term – is laughably pompous and, despite the claims of “subversion”, impotent and conformist. I find it hard to accept that someone with intellectual autonomy would find much of interest in this clownish bunkum, except perhaps as something to ridicule. The “we will argue” is particularly funny given Butler’s apparent aversion to clarity and formal argument. It would, I think, be better to say, “We will simply assert, without much in the way of evidence…”
It’s also fun to browse the outpourings of Butler’s admirers and their attempts to divine her meaning. I stumbled across some rather bold claims that sex is best approached as a “purely linguistic construct” and that the “lesbian phallus subverts the very foundation of patriarchal models of power.” It’s hard not to notice just how often claims of “subversion” and eye-catching sexual terms are strewn like frosting across mangled arguments that are all but devoid of evidence or logical structure.
Since Narcissism is the core of modern leftism (pomo marx), with a healthy does of envy it’s easier to understand writes by looking at what they attack and applying projection to it.
Basically Judith has penis envy and feelings of inadequacy.
And, err, being kind, generous and selfless is the core of modern rightism… Not!
I thought Ivan “It’s good to be greedy” Boesky was the quintessential modern advocate of capitalism.
Exactly georges. The left has to use a fictional character to disparage economic freedom.