The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection

Exactly as described

I was drawn to interpellation. Althusser had written something about interpellation in The Spectre of Hegel and Judith Butler's book the Psychic Life of Power is a scholarly analysis of interpellation as a therapeutic result of trying to put intertextual meaning on the language people have been captured by when they feel a self being imposed upon themselves by a social order. I wonder about collapse of shambolic disorder when people think I'm too smart to tell them anything about this kind of theory. This book is based so much on Hegel and Lacan that modern philosophy can mulch these words into concepts for psychotic multiplicities, but there is no unity in subjects who get split with being alive in a song by Pearl Jam called Alive. Take a look. You know where, under where, or underwear on or off, take your pick.

Are you a man who is attracted to women? Did you know why? It's because when you were an infant, you wanted to have sex with other men but your parents told you not to. Then you wanted to have sex with your own mother, but your parents forbid you to do that as well. So, unable to HAVE your objects of desire, you have to BECOME your father (the first one you were forbidden to have) so that one day you will get to HAVE your mother. Or...a suitable stand in for her.Yes, this is psychoanalysis at its best, which is about as good as doing a few Tarot card readings as a means of gaining greater insight into human development. Butler seems stuck on the theories of Freud which have long ago been disproven by scientists around the world. In her world, there are no people, only objects of sexual desire. There is no human connection, no love and no common sense. It is ashame that this is required reading in some humanities departments these days. If you can get through this without falling over laughing then you either have no sense of humor or are afraid to upset the academic powers that be who have dubbed Butler worth reading. I choose to keep on laughing.

This Butler is her best yet. It is imaginative, provocative, and excellently argues. She moves through a number of theories and discourses including Althusser, Freudian psychoanalysis, Foucault, and Hegel in order to argue out a VERY important concept: passionate attachments. This concept of Butler's represents a major intervention and contribution for radical politics. The basic idea is the subjects becomes attached to the conditions of their own subjectivity EVEN if these conditions are oppressive one. Very interesting and suggestive point. This book is well worth the buy just to see how Butler will argue this point out. If I have one criticism of Butler is that her discussion ultimately resonates with a number of Lacanian concepts, but she still maintains her skeptical distance from Lacan--these Lacanian criticisms can be found in Zizek's excellent "The Ticklish Subject."

In *The Psychic Life of Power* Judith Butler provides a critical inquiry into the process of subject formation that reveals the self-conscious subject as necessary paradox. Her main argument is that the emergence of the subject depends on subjection to power and yet the subject that is inaugurated exceeds this power, because subjection can never fully totalize the subject. In order to elaborate her theoretical movements Butler draws on Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser, and Freud. The main metaphors for understanding the works of subjection are the turning of the subject on itself and the interpellation of the subject by the other. Consciousness and desire function as guiding categories for the analysis. Taking on the much discussed question of the possibility of agency Butler shows that the normalizing effect of social norms always produces an inassimilable remainder in the subject from where resistance against those norms becomes possible. *The Psychic Life of Power* provides a very powerful rethinking of the question of subjectivity and self-consciousness, even though - or maybe because of - the individual chapters' appearance as separate essays. In the introduction, however, Butler reveals how the various explorations all fit together in her thinking. A new stage of Butlerian lucidity - in and on Butlerian terms, though.

It arrived quickly and in good condition. But, I did not like this book. It is a difficult read with lots of repetition about power, and subjection. Unfortunately I had to read this book for a Shakespearen course.

This is a contituation from her earlier publications, "Gender Trouble," "Bodies That Matter." Those who read these two texts would find this book extremely interesting. Butler seems to move her theorization of subjectivity from the materiality of the body (in previous texts) to the psychic realm of subjectivity. Please note that this is NOT a reflection of Cartesian dichotomy of mind/body. Rather, I understand her move as strategic choice, in order to deepen her analysis of power and its relation to psychic realm, before delving into the inextricable reality of psyche and body. Here Butler draws on the works of various philosophers, such as Hegel, Althusser,Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and so on, to explicate the complex process through which power engenders a psychic form (see intro), and constitutes a self. As always, her eloquent rhetorical style and brilliant epistemological turns are amazing enough.