Jim Devine wrote:
>I don't know anything about Butler, so I can't comment on her views.
>If she's indeed one of the "language is the only reality" types,
>then forget her. Doug, aren't all of the statistics you wield so
>well in LBO "discursively constructed"? Does that mean that they
>should be flushed down the toilet?
Why do people think that calling something "discursively constructed"
means it's trivial? GDP is a discursive construction - it has no
existence apart from the system of monetary representation that it
emerged from. It doesn't feed people or make them happy, but
important folks pay lots of attention to it and it guides their
actions.
>More importantly, I really don't like the kind of argument in which
>someone says "But Authority X says you're wrong," where here X is
>Butler. I think that the old bumper-sticker slogan "Question
>Authority" was quite valid.
He said, citing an authority...
>Just because X was right about issue Y doesn't mean that he or she
>is right about issue Z. Instead, tell us what logical argument X
>presented, what kind of empirical evidence he or she mobilized,
>and/or what kind of philosophical-methodological insights X had.
I gave it to you from the horse's mouth.
>The sex/gender distinction (and the dialectic between them) was
>developed by anthropologists (who of course used language and so
>constructed their concepts "discursively"), many of whom were
>influenced by feminism. Unfortunately, I can't give you a specific
>reference, since my books are in boxes...
>
>If we are to reject the sex/gender distinction, what is the
>alternative? How does that alternative concept help us understand
>the relevant issues?
Even if you don't take the whole Butler dose, I think it's always
important to ask what is happening ideologically when biology - or
"nature" - is invoked. When people start talking about hormones,
there's some invocation of physical necessity against whose judgment
there's no appeal. Or in the dismal science, "natural" rates of
interest or unemployment. As Keynes said of the "natural" rate of
interest, it's the one that is most likely to preserve the status
quo; I think you'll find the same when "natural" differences between
the sexes (not genders) are invoked.
Doug