File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-06-15.140, message 2


Date: Wed, 01 Nov 1995 11:10:26 -0500 (CDT)
From: schrift-AT-AC.GRIN.EDU (Alan Schrift)
Subject: Re: Foucault and feminism?


>
>
>On Sun, 29 Oct 1995, Pia Livia Hekanaho wrote:
>
>> In Bodies That Matter Butler still uses foucauldian 
>> "methodology" but the lacanian themes are very strong, too. (And in my 
>> opinion she succeeds very well in combining these two strategies.)
>> Absolutely worth studying!
>>   Livia
>> 
>Susan Bordo offers an interesting critique of Butler's use of Foucauldian 
>theory in "Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies" a review essay on 
>Gender Trouble, hooks' Yearning, and Flax's Thinking Fragments in the 
>Spring 1992 issue of Feminist Studies 18 (1) pages 159-175.
>
>This is the only article I've been able to find which offers a strong
>negative critique of Butler's conception of the body (not including 
>various articles which refer to the problems of social construction 
>theory for feminism.)
>
>Does anyone have any other references which critique or even mention 
>Butler's BTM?  Has anyone seen any articles applying "Butler" to literary 
>studies?
>I'm very intrigued by her theory of the performative  
>(parody and miming) and am looking for other references to it.  Irigaray 
>also addresses it and in film theory there's been some work done on 
>the masquerade.  Anything else anyone is aware of?
>
>I'd really appreciate the info!
>
>peace
>beth 
>bdroppl-AT-grove.ufl.edu
>
>
>
>----------------------- End forwarded message -----------------------
>
Beth,

Excuse the self-reference, but I discuss Butler--favorably (mostly GT, but
also a little on BTM)--in the context of Foucault in the 2nd chapter of my
_Nietzsche's French Legacy:  A Genealogy of Poststructuralism_ (Routledge,
1995).  In brief, I argue that the Foucauldian project of constructing a
multiple subject--itself a Nietzschean project of sorts--is left unfinished
in Foucault's own work, but I suggest that we see two forms in which it
might be developed in Butler and Laclau/Mouffe.

Alan D. Schrift
Department of Philosophy
Grinnell College



   

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