Date: Wed,  3 Dec 2003 18:28:46 +1030
From: Amy Patterson <amy.patterson-AT-student.adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Ebert: "The Knowable Good"




eduardo enriquez wrote:
> 
>                                                     being able
> to have all the sex you want with anyone and also
> transgressing codes in the way you dress as it seems
> it is for people like judith butler. 

sorry to take this out of context, but i don't think that this is at all a fair summery
of
butler's work.
one of the central (and often overlooked) concerns of her theoretical writing is: how are
we to understand/define (and make use of) agency? 
surely this is a politically useful question to be asking, especially within the context
of the analysis of the constitution of the human subject that has emerged from
contemporary critical theory, which is often quite deterministic. 
yes, her explicit subject matter is sex, gender, and sexuality, and her examinations of
the nature of power and of the possibilities of non- state-centred resistance to it are
generally focussed within this context, but this doesn't mean they can't be generalised,
and it certainly doesn't mean that she's merely interested in "being able to have all the
sex you want with anyone" or "transgressing codes in the way you dress".