Drawing by Franz Kafka
It's been a long time since my last post so I thought I'd make an effort to get back to posting more often. Thankfully, I have just read a very stimulating book which I think is worth writing about. The book is a work of philosophy, which is helpful because so far I haven't posted much on this topic (despite it being in my blog title!)
The book in question is Giving an Account of Oneself by Judith Butler. Although Butler is known mostly for her work in gender studies, she has written on other topics including ethics, language, politics and many other philosophical topics. Whilst her style is dry, intellectual and abstract, she grapples expertly with complex and fascinating ideas, concepts and bodies of work, and has produced some impressive works over the last 20 years. Clearly, her notion of the performative character of gender has made a bigger influence on scholarship than anything else she has worked on, but from what I've read I think her other studies deserve more attention than they appear to receive.
In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler takes up issues in moral philosophy but looks at them from the point of view of social relations. In other words, she looks at the social context in which moral issues arise. From here she moves her discussion quickly to the question of the individual self and how it gives an account of itself. This is important because giving an account of oneself is often what is at stake in moral issues or what often takes place within the moral sphere, for instance in being made accountable to a system of justice. As Butler explains, this is how Nietzsche understands the formation of conscience and memory, of how we become reflective about our actions and how we come to give an account of ourselves. What is important in this for Butler's discussion is the fact that the moral, reflective subject is brought in existence through an address from an other.
It is this issue, the formation of the (moral) subject through the need to be accountable, which is one of the key strands throughout the book. From here Butler looks at various kinds of issues which relate to this key strand: what form does an address take (both an address from an other and an address made to an other), in what context does an address take place, and how full an account can a subject give of itself. For example, although Butler is clearly sympathetic to much of Nietzsche's account, she asks whether fear is the only valence carried by the address of the other. Are there not other reasons and motivations to give an account of oneself besides fear of punishment?
Assuming one is, in one way or another, interpellated by an address from an other, Butler next turns to issues of narration. As she makes clear, being able to narrate one's life requires certain abilities such as being able to link sequential events with plausible transitions, being able to draw on narrative voice and authority, and directing one's account at an audience whom will be persuaded by such an account. Furthermore, these capacities (the capacity for narrative), are a precondition for an account of moral agency. Hence, there is a sense in which the self arrives late. The self is formed from forces and capacities which limit the self's freedom, and therefore it's ability to give an account of itself.
From this examination of the formation of the moral, reflective subject, Butler then examines various intellectual positions which differ in their understanding of this formation and the consequences for giving an account of oneself. For example, she contrasts Nietzsche's view of the formation of the moral subject with Foucault's account. The latter departs from Nietzsche by considering how subjects are constituted through codes of conduct which are not necessarily or always codes of punishment. Butler also shows how Foucault is different to Freud in this matter - the latter arguing that aggression is the basis of morality. Butler seems to prefer Foucault's account because it is less cynical and more subtle. For Foucault, the self forms itself in relation to codes, prescriptions and norms in a more dynamic and critical way. Hence, the self is not reduced to just an effect of those codes, prescriptions and norms.
From here we get to the nub of Butler's argument. Although the self has certain powers, capacities and a certain moral agency, nonetheless this self emerges in a context of unfreedom. The self is formed by conditions and forces it itself did not choose. This is a rather uncontroversial point when one thinks about the fact that we are forced to learn a language we ourselves did not invent or choose, as well as the fact that our whole environment was already up and running before we came along. Hence, it is intuitively clear that the subject emerges into an initial state of unfreedom. The question that has to be asked then is thus: how to we come to exercise freedom? Or rather, how to we acquire to capacity to exercise freedom?
This leads Butler to address a common complaint made against 'post-structuralists' such as Foucault: don't accounts like his undermine moral agency and responsibility? Butler takes up this question in a slightly different way. She wants to see whether a self that is ungrounded, divided and incoherent from the start can be ethically responsible. She does this by turning the issue around. Rather than seeing the limitations of self-knowledge as undermining the project of morality and ethics, she turns this into a virtue. It is because we are formed by primary social relations with others that there is something opaque about ourselves when we reflect on and try to give an account of ourselves. But because this opaqueness stems from a sociality, we are therefore bound to others in important (ethical) ways. Hence, Butler argues that an ethics which acknowledges and is based on this kind of social bond is more attentive to the other(s). For example, if we can acknowledge our own incoherence and opacity, then hopefully we can recognise this in others and hence treat more ethically. Butler thus sees a strength for ethics in acknowledging the limits of self-knowledge and acknowledging the limits of acknowledgement itself.
This is a very brief and partial outline of some of the book. I have largely concentrated on the first chapter of the book. In the other two chapters Butler considers many other issues and bodies of work, including two short stories by Kafka, psychoanalysis's contribution to the issue of self-knowledge and to the issue of otherness, and influential accounts of the self and its relation to the other/others such as those of Levinas, Laplanche and Foucault.
In short, Butler takes the notion of there being a kind of opacity to the self, a limit to self-knowledge, and hence self-narration, and theorises it using various philosophical, psychoanalytic, existential, and historical accounts. But more than this, Butler examines the ethical, moral and social consequences for this and comes out in defence of a highly sensitive ethical philosophy which is attuned to the otherness in oneself and so the otherness outside oneself also.
It is, in my opinion, a brilliant piece of work which will provoke and stimulate, and which deserves repeated reading of, meditation on, and discussion of. There are some great analyses of interesting thinkers and the comparisons make for a fascinating mix of ideas. For those people who are drawn to existential, moral and social questions, this is a worthwhile book to read. There can be few issues as momentous, as pressing, and as at once personal and social, as the issue of giving an account of oneself. However, there is also something terrifying about giving an account of oneself. At what price must we pay for (trying to give) such an account?
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