The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection

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Summary: Psyche Meets Subject
Review: I've read this book three times in the past several months in preparation for giving a talk on post-structural perspectives on early childhood gender and sexual development in psychoanalysis. As always, I find the effort it takes to understand Butler's writing to pay off richly in the brilliance of her arguments. In particular, I was drawn to two sections in this book: the first a reconsidering of who it is that turns to become a subject in Althusser's model of interpellation, and the second an exchange of papers with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in which both grapple with how her work might be informed by psychoanalytic practice and the practice might be informed by her work. Having read this book both prior to and after immersing myself in Freud, Lacan and some of their major commentators, I found that I got far more out of Butler's book with a stronger background in the language and assumptions of psychoanalysis.

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Summary: The Paradox of Subjection
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Powerfully synthetic, ultimately unsatisfying
Review: In this book Judith Butler deals with the legacy of Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, Lacan, Freud, Nietzsche, Althusser and Marx re: the interrelationships between desire, normativity, and the production of subjects. What should be noted, however, is that although none of the aforementioned authors are deconstrustionists, and although the poststructuralists among them are often numbered among the ranks of 60s and 70s anti-psychiatrists, Butler's treatment of these problems is and remains much more psychoanalytic, deconstructionist and semiotic than Marxist, socio-political, or material. Butler's description of some of the Cartesian-circle-esque catch-22s which arise in thinking about the subject is impeccable, but her solutions are flawed. In continually, albeit timidly, resurrecting different forms of idealistic and psychic "remainders" over and above the normalized, she never deigns to address the materialist and socio-poltical objections that are typically levelled agains the freedom side of what otherwise (not here!) goes under the label of the problem of free will versus determinism. In other words, Butler's feminist, textual, and psychoanalytic interests, as powerfully as she treats them, lead her to completely overlook the challenges posed by naturalism to any political or ethical program. As a result, her optimism regarding the possibility for the subject to turn its oppressive conditions of production against themselves is intriguingly suggestive, but not yet truly convincing. If you've read Althuuser, Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, and Nietzsche on subjectivty, this book will help consolidate what you have learned, but it will not leave you with any new concepts or convictions.

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Summary: A Continuation of Thoughts on Subjectivity
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Continuation of Thoughts on Subjectivity
Review: 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.