As a form of power, subjection is paradoxical. To be dominated by a
power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power
takes. To find, however, that what "one" is, one's very formation
as a subject, is dependent upon that very power is quite another.
If, following Foucault, we understand power as "forming" the
subject as well, it provides the very condition of its existence
and the trajectory of its desire. Power is not simply what we
depend on for our existence but that which forms reflexivity as
well. Drawing upon Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and
Althusser, this challenging and lucid work offers a theory of
subject formation that illuminates as ambivalent the psychic
effects of social power.
If we take Hegel and Nietzsche seriously, then the "inner life" of
consciousness and, indeed, of conscience, not only is fabricated by
power, but becomes one of the ways in which power is anchored in
subjectivity. The author considers the way in which psychic life is
generated by the social operation of power, and how that social
operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it
produces. Power is no longer understood to be "internalized" by an
existing subject, but the subject is spawned as an ambivalent
effect of power, one that is staged through the operation of
conscience.
To claim that power fabricates the psyche is also to claim that
there is a fictional and fabricated quality to the psyche. The
figure of a psyche that "turns against itself" is crucial to this
study, and offers an alternative to describing power as
"internalized." Although most readers of Foucault eschew
psychoanalytic theory, and most thinkers of the psyche eschew
Foucault, the author seeks to theorize this ambivalent relation
between the social and the psychic as one of the most dynamic and
difficult effects of power.
This work combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in
novel ways, offering a more sustained analysis of the theory of
subject formation implicit in such other works of the author as
"Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" "and" Gender
Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity."
General
| Imprint: |
Stanford University Press
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Release date: |
May 1997 |
| First published: |
1997 |
| Authors: |
Judith Butler
|
| Dimensions: |
203 x 127 x 21mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth
|
| Pages: |
228 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-8047-2811-9 |
| Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
General
Promotions
|
| LSN: |
0-8047-2811-9 |
| Barcode: |
9780804728119 |
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