Post-Modernist Rejects Identity Politics | Judith Butler

Judith Butler next to the broken symbol for women's rights

“The feminist ‘we’ is always and only a phantasmatic construction, one that has its purposes, but which denies the internal complexity and indeterminacy of the term and constitutes itself only through the exclusion of some part of the constituency that it simultaneously seeks to represent… The radical instability of the category sets into question the foundational restrictions on feminist political theorizing and opens up other configurations, not only of genders and bodies, but of politics itself.

The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. My argument is that there need not be a ‘doer behind the deed,’ but that the ‘doer’ is variably constructed in & through the deed.” 194-195

Identity politics’s “reasoning falsely presumes (a) agency can only be established through recourse to a prediscursive ‘I,’ even if that ‘I’ is found in the midst of a discursive convergence, and (b) that to be constituted by discourse is to be determined by discourse, where determination forecloses the possibility of agency.” (195)

“The theories of feminist identity that elaborate predicates of color, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and able-bodiedness invariably close with an embarrassed ‘etc.’ at the end of the list. Through this horizontal trajectory of adjectives, these positions strive to encompass a situated subject, but invariably fail to be complete. This is a sign of exhaustion as well as the illimitable process of signification itself. It is the supplement, the excess that necessarily accompanies any effort to posit identity once & for all.” (196)

“I have tried to suggest that the identity categories often presumed to be foundational to feminist politics, that is deemed necessary in order to mobilize feminism as an identity politics, simultaneously work to limit & constrain in advance the very cultural possibilities that feminism is supposed to open up. The tacit constraints that produce culturally intelligible ‘sex’ ought to be understood as generative political structures rather than naturalized foundations. Paradoxically, the reconceptualization of identity as an effect, that is, as produced or generated, opens up possibilities of ‘agency’ that are insidiously foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as foundational & fixed. For an identity to be an effect means that it is neither fatally determined nor fully artificial & arbitrary. That the constituted status of identity is misconstrued along these two conflicting lines suggests the ways in which the feminist discourse on cultural construction remains trapped within the unnecessary binarism of free will and determinism. Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated & becomes culturally intelligible. The critical task for feminism is not to establish a point of view outside of constructed identities; that conceit is the construction of an epistemological model that would disavow its own cultural location &, hence, promote itself as a global subject, a position that deploys precisely the imperialist strategies that feminism ought to criticize. The critical task is, rather, to locate strategies of subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, to affirm the local possibilities of intervention through participating in precisely those practices of repetition that constitute identity &, therefore, present the immanent possibility of contesting them.” (200-201)

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

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Philosopher Judith Butler rejected feminist identity politics.

Butler states that feminism presupposes a prediscursive subject, a subject prior to any social construction. On the contrary, subjectivity exists only in and through our performance of discursiveness.

In positing a prediscursive identity, feminists claim to rely on a firm foundation for a political action. The identity claims to be totalizing to all who fall into said identity because it precedes there existence. However, such an identity is a fiction and open to great instability. Any politics which proceeds from such an assumption ultimately ends up excluding many of the very individuals it claims to represent. No matter how identities attempt to close themselves off, there is always an etcetera, a remainder, which the identity simply can’t account for.

Butler contends that the identity woman is not prior to the acts a women performs. On the contrary, identities are not the cause, but the effect of acts. This theoretical framework allows identities to always remain open, to evolve or adapt, for such identities are constituted on the performative acts of subjects.

PHILOSOPHY



Death is very STRANGE | Heidegger

An atomic mushroom cloud in the shape of a skull with the word "Death" over it

Death is immanent. It is guaranteed. It is inescapable. It is the possibility where possibilities as such become impossible.

Join Philosophy Bee and Mr. Platypus as they analyze the phenomena of Death.

Citations:

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, HarperPerennial/Modern Thought, New York, 2008. Buy here!

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PHILOSOPHY

Nihilism | Why Even Get Out of Bed?

Mr. Meeseeks with the words "Nihilism" and "Existence is meaningless"

THEORETICAL NIHILISM

Nihilism is typically defined as a belief in nothing. Depending on a person’s flavor of nihilism, nihilists don’t believe in objective morality, no good or evil. There is no objective knowledge, no truths and no falsehoods. There is no reason to even exist, because we are all going to be dead in the end. The universe is, and beyond that nothing: no order, no structure, no design, no purpose. Is it truly all for naught? Nothing matters.

Arguably the best thinker on nihilism was 19th century German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche said there were many different stages to nihilism, but all of them relied on a willing towards nothing. Nietzsche believed liberal democracies, modernity, and capitalism inaugurated a new, higher form of nihilism: Theoretical Nihilism.

Friedrich’s proclamation of the Death of God is the realization that all the highest values have been devalued.

TRANSCRIPT

Citations:
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Edited by Daniel Breazeale. Translated by Reginald J. Hollingdale, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014. Buy here!

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Buy here!



Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Buy here!

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Buy here!

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Buy here!

Heidegger, Martin. “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 2004. Buy Here!

Ceika, Jonas. How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle: Nietzsche and Marx for the 21st-Century Left. Watkins Publishing, 2022. Buy Here!

Fincher, David, director. Fight Club. 20th Century Fox, 1999. Buy Here!

Liv Agar:
WallStreetBets, Gamestop, & Nietzsche’s Account of Nihilism

Aperture:
Nihilism: The Belief in Nothing

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Foucault on the Gulag Question

Michel Foucault's Head over a dark picture of a Gulag

What did Foucault have to say about the Gulag Question?

In the late 1970s, as the revelations of the brutality of the Gulags in the USSR became common knowledge, some Leftists attempted to use French Philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings on the prison system to explain away the reality of the Gulag. They would claim, “Everyone has their own Gulag, the Gulag is here at our door, in our cities, our hospitals, our prisons, it’s here in our heads.” While Foucault agreed that the technologies of the Gulag share a history with other forms of incarceration in the West, the politics which lead to the creation of the Gulags were very different than other forms of incarceration. Foucault believes the the problem of the Gulag is a unique to socialist states, and therefore, it requires a critique of the very principles of socialism.

Drawings from the Gulag by Danzig Baldaev.

Citations:

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Buy here!

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Beware the Vicious Sharon Chung

BEWARE THE VICIOUS SHARON CHUNG!

Several McLean County Republicans, like Sheriff Jon Sandage and District 10 County Board member Chuck Erickson, claim District 7 Board Member Sharon Chung repeatedly, viciously, and with extreme malice attacks the Sheriff every chance she gets. Agitation Rising investigates these claims only to discover the SHOCKING truth!


Video originally posted on District 8 Board Member Shayna Watchinski’s Facebook Page.

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Who’s Your, Daddy? Peterson vs. Foucault

Jordan Peterson vs. Michel Foucault

Psychology professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson–who will only be referred to as DADDY—often pronounces his deep disdain for po-mo no-mos, i.e., post-modern neo-marxists. Despite there being no such thing as a po-mo no-mo (because the philosophies of post-modernism & neo-marxism are opposed to one another), one po-mo no-mo Daddy often brings up is another type of Daddy, French philosopher Michel Foucault. I react & respond to a video by Daddy where he is heavily criticizing Foucault to answer the question: Who’s Your Daddy?

Sources:
Bite-sized Philosophy video:
Jordan Peterson – Mental Illness, a Social Construct – Foucault

Daddy’s Youtube Video:
2016 Lecture 07 Maps of Meaning: Part 1: Osirus, Set, Isis, & Horus

Other videos about Daddy:
Contrapoints:
Jordan Peterson

Cuck Philosophy:
Jordan Peterson doesn’t understand post-modernism

The Living Philosophy:
Jordan Peterson’s Shadow

Eternalised:
Jordan Peterson vs. Friedrich Nietzsche | Is God Dead?

JUST A REACTION:

JUST A RESPONSE:

Citations:

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!

Foucault, Michel. History of Madness, translated by Jean Khalfa, Routledge, London, 2009. Published in French in 1961. Buy here!

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 2006. Published in French in 1964. Buy Here!

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. Buy here!

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. 1976. Buy here!

Maps of Meaning. 2002. Buy here!

12 Rules for Life. Buy Here!

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SAFE-T Act Town Hall: Q&A Part II

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Questions include:

  • Effective Dates of Safe-T Act
  • Concerns About Implementation
  • What Accountability is there for Officers who violate the new law?
  • New body-cam Laws
  • Is the SAFE-T Act leading to a rise in crime?
  • Officer Complaint Policy
  • What About Illinois Police Leaving the Profession?
  • Does the SAFE-T Act remove Habitual Offender Status?

Watch the Town Hall:


CIRC Official Guidance

Town Hall Powerpoint Presentation

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Contact CIRC at cisolidarityresearch@gmail.com.

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