Although oppressive social practices like capitalism are often portrayed as static, totalizing social 'structures' with 'logics' and 'imperatives' that must be accommodated politically and economically, such portrayals are problematic both theoretically and politically. They rest on determinist and essentialist conceptions of social practices, and they curtail the scope of politics, government regulation, and human action and creativity. Fortunately, social practices can instead be conceptualized as thoroughly social, historical, and contingent, and thus susceptible to political intervention and reworking, as many feminist, (...) post-structuralist, and anti-economistic Marxian theorists do. Attempting to build on such alternative conceptualizations, I argue that Judith Butler's concept of reiteration provides a particularly useful, in-depth theorization of power, the mechanisms enabling social practices to endure and change, and the role of the individual and collectivities in perpetuating and challenging social practices such as capitalism. In so doing, the concept of reiteration offers a compelling and detailed non-voluntaristic account of human agency. Butler's work is thus helpful in theorizing and empirically investigating both the obstacles to and the possibilities for resisting exploitation and altering unjust social practices. (shrink)

Although oppressive social practices like capitalism are often portrayed as static, totalizing social 'structures' with 'logics' and 'imperatives' that must be accommodated politically and economically, such portrayals are problematic both theoretically and politically. They rest on determinist and essentialist conceptions of social practices, and they curtail the scope of politics, government regulation, and human action and creativity. Fortunately, social practices can instead be conceptualized as thoroughly social, historical, and contingent, and thus susceptible to political intervention and reworking, as many feminist, (...) post-structuralist, and anti-economistic Marxian theorists do. Attempting to build on such alternative conceptualizations, I argue that Judith Butler's concept of reiteration provides a particularly useful, in-depth theorization of power, the mechanisms enabling social practices to endure and change, and the role of the individual and collectivities in perpetuating and challenging social practices such as capitalism. In so doing, the concept of reiteration offers a compelling and detailed non-voluntaristic account of human agency. Butler's work is thus helpful in theorizing and empirically investigating both the obstacles to and the possibilities for resisting exploitation and altering unjust social practices. (shrink)

This paper offers a detailed account of Foucaults ethical and political notion of individuality as presented in his late work, and discusses its relationship to the feminist project of the theory of sexual difference. I argue that Foucaults elaboration of the classical ethos of care for the self opens the way for regarding the I-woman as an ethical, political and aesthetic self-creation. However, it has significant limitations that cannot be ignored. I elaborate on two aspects of Foucaults avoidance of sexual (...) difference as a relevant category for an account of political and ethical individuality, which thus implicitly associates individual agency with men. I argue that Foucault implicitly assumes the existence of an ontological desire to become engaged in political self-creation. However, the ethical position of self-knowledge and desire should be understood as a contingent option that depends on material and historical conditions for its realization. Hence, I argue that a feminist reworking of Foucaults notion of political individuality should add a substantial ethical condition to the imperative of self-knowledge and self-creation – making possible the desiring woman subject. (shrink)

This article draws from Adriana Cavarero’s considerations on the role of the body in diverse contemporary modalities of violence. We propose a conceptual path along some ideas from Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler and Kaja Silverman in order to state, on the one hand, an onto-epistemological turn that understands the body as the effect of social norms and, on the other, an ethical and political reflection about the levels of violent exposure that suffer those bodies that are excluded from the cultural (...) frames that make a life livable. The concave mirror—as a possibility for other alternative ways of representing the body—is postulated as an alternative to the hegemonic ways in which the representation operates in the configuration of the body as a totality and unity: those that theory links to the flat mirror. (shrink)

While popular debate grapples with the legality of gay marriage, networks of medical, political, and juridical discourses produce and situate sexuality in a field of knowledge that is constantly under examination and administration. The rationalization of sexuality, and its dispersion into multiple fields of knowledge, has become part of a system of power relations that produces identities and manages them. Within this context, this paper places Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus on Sade's Juliette in conversation with Foucault's first volume of the (...) History of Sexuality. It explores how instrumental reason and power/knowledge relationships produce discourses of sexuality, which have come to dominate Western society. It also explores possible sites of resistance, through the notion of performativity, that exist within these modes of rationalization and power. I argue that this interlocution of Horkheimer and Adorno with Foucault helps us see sexuality as a site of both domination and resistance. It also shows how sexuality is produced in a field of contestation where possibilities of practices of freedom are always circumscribed by modes of rationalization and networks of power. (shrink)

While popular debate grapples with the legality of gay marriage, networks of medical, political, and juridical discourses produce and situate sexuality in a field of knowledge that is constantly under examination and administration. The rationalization of sexuality, and its dispersion into multiple fields of knowledge, has become part of a system of power relations that produces identities and manages them. Within this context, this paper places Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus on Sade's Juliette in conversation with Foucault's first volume of the (...) History of Sexuality. It explores how instrumental reason and power/knowledge relationships produce discourses of sexuality, which have come to dominate Western society. It also explores possible sites of resistance, through the notion of performativity, that exist within these modes of rationalization and power. I argue that this interlocution of Horkheimer and Adorno with Foucault helps us see sexuality as a site of both domination and resistance. It also shows how sexuality is produced in a field of contestation where possibilities of practices of freedom are always circumscribed by modes of rationalization and networks of power. (shrink)