Review: Mattering Author(s): Pheng Cheah Source: Diacritics, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp.

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MATTERING
PHENG CHEAH
ON Judith Butler. BODIESTHATMATTER: THEDISCURSIVELIMITSOF"SEX." New York:Routledge,1993. Elizabeth Grosz. VOLATILEBODIES: TOWARD A CORPOREALFEMINISM. Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1994.

theoryand criticismwill indicate Any cursorysurvey of contemporary cultural-political and that the relatedconcepts of "nature" "the given" are not highly valued terms. The reasonfor this disdainand even moraldisapprobation naturalistic of accountsof human existence is supposed to be self-evident: simply put, in a post-Newtonianage, nature refersto the totalityof objects governedby immutablecausal laws. If humanexistence or was merelynatural given, thenwe would neverbe able to alterthe conditionsthatbring about humanoppression.Antinaturalism contemporarytheory, however, betrays a in For to deep fearin its repetitivetiradesagainstthe natural. if it is so obviously precritical treathumanexistence as given, thenwhy does antinaturalism need to be articulated again an andagain? Thisobsessivepushing awayof nature well constitute acknowledgementmay as creaturesafterall. Furthermore, a theoretical in-disavowalthathumansmay be natural itself is producedby the polemical energy that strives to keep position, antinaturalism fromthe sphereof humanlife. Consequently,antinaturalism natureat bay, in quarantine works with a conventionalphilosophicaldefinition of naturewhich it may do well to be question.We maytherefore justifiedin claimingthat,farfrombeing tiredsuperstitions can thatsavvy discourseanalystsandculturalconstructionists leave behind,theconcepts and of "nature" "thegiven"are,in fact, neuralgicpoints,the contestedsites around which is any theoryof political transformation organized. In its conventionalusage, natureis opposed to a whole host of otherterms:history, culture,law, production,andso forth.The slipperinessof nature,however,is seen in the as fact that the relationbetween natureand its others defies characterization a simple relationof exterioritybetweentwo ontologicallydistinctterms.For instance,the relation of natureto history can be posed not only in terms of the modification of natureby historical agency but also from within the realm of historical agency insofar as the constraints of structureor construction on transformativerational agency seem to replicate the limitations or weightiness of nature.Feminism is an exemplarysite for rehearsingthis fundamental questioningof the distinctionbetween natureandits others because it must refute biologistic and naturalisticjustifications for the oppression of women even as it mustaffirmwomen's bodily specificityas the minimalconsensualstuff As whichgroundsfeministpractice. ZillahEisensteinastutelyobservesin spiteof herown intellectualallegiances,"if thebody is alreadyengenderedin this way, how can we claim the our bodieswithoutreproducing inequitiesof the gender-system?... [S]o we become involved in explicating patriarchal relationswithout knowing where patriarchy begins and ends in the definition of a woman's or a mother's body. What aspect of the body constitutesa woman'spotentialcapacities,andwhatpartarticulates oppression?" her [73,
I wouldlike to thank JonathanCullerandBiddyMartinfor theircarefulreadingof an earlierdraft of thispaper. Theyshould not, however,be thoughtto endorse the views expressedtherein.
108 diacritics 26.1: 108-39

75]. Philosophically speaking, the giving of body or matter-what I propose to call "mattering"-may be the process where historyand naturebecome uncannilyindistinits guishablein a mannerthatis both enablingand disablingfor politicaltransformation, conditionof (im)possibility. Thus far, the productiveunease in feminist theory occasioned by the body as the has ambivalentgroundof both oppressionand emancipatorytransformation resultedin debatesover the sex/genderdistinctionandthequestionof essentialism/antiessentialism.I Discussion has, however,primarilycenteredon the strategicdeploymentof the body as and a politicalresource.Two recentbooks-Judith Butler'sBodies ThatMatter Elizabeth Grosz's VolatileBodies-stand out because they promise to raise discussion to a level where political issues concerning the body can be reevaluated through a rigorous of rethinking the relationbetweennatureandits others:culture,history,andsociety. The authorsof these books sharethe distinctive aim of articulatinga feminist theorythat is centeredon a philosophical explorationof the statusof the body. Both Grosz and Butler are trained in Continentalphilosophy, where the secondary status of the body often of Both insist on philosophemes.2 groundsthe misogyny andphallocentrism patriarchal rearticulation the body so that feminist theory does not of the value of a philosophical blindlybase its axiological claims on a self-defeatingphallocentricphilosophemeof the body. This meansthatwhile feministstrategyandqueerpolitics providethe impetusand immediateframeof referenceof these books, feminist andqueerpolitics also functionas of philosophiesof examplesthatillustrateandinforma generalreformulation alternative the body. Both Grosz's criticalexpositions of Freud,Lacan,Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, FoucaultandDeleuze in orderto elaboratea corporealfeminismandButler'sprovocative readingsof Plato, Aristotle, Freud,Lacan, Foucault,Zilek, and Laclau in terms of her theoryof gender performativity obey the generalisttendency of philosophicalthought. My essay is limited to a considerationof the general theoreticalpositions takenby both authors.In the firstsection, I will considertheirdifferentaccountsof the politics of bodies in termsof the ontologicalclaims they presupposeor makein relationto previous philosophiesof the body. In the second section, I will attempta slightlydifferentaccount of dynamismby drawingon the work of JacquesDerrida.I will also suggest why such an account is more plausible from the perspective of the political situation of feminist postcoloniality-in-neocolonialism.

Two Theoriesof CorporealDynamism In the immediateinstance,Grosz's and Butler's returnto the body can be understoodas of as for a reactionto the inadequacies social constructionism a paradigm feministtheory. Simply put, social constructionismespouses the primacy of the social or discourse as constructive form over preexisting matter which is said to be presignificative or nonintelligible. Butler and Grosz are critical of this position for various reasons. For oscillates betweentwo untenablepositions.In presupposButler,social constructionism in andso retroactively installingthe categoryof "nature" the prelinguisticposition of ing a tabula rasa, social constructionism can consider sex either as natural and thus unconstructedor as the fictional premise of a prediscursiveground producedby the concept of gender [6]. In the first scenario, sex cannot be accountedfor and political or contestationis confinedto the level of genderconceived as the interpretation meaning
1. On the sex/genderdistinction,see Gatens. On essentialism,see Grosz, "SexualDifference and the Problem of Essentialism," Fuss, Kirby, and the special issue of Differences entitledThe EssentialDifference, edited by Schor and Weed. and see 2. Onphallocentrism misogynyin Continentalphilosophy, Lloyd;Irigaray;LeDoueff.

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of sex. The second scenarioleads eitherto a linguistic monism thatcannotexplain how or the bodily materialityof sex can be producedby language/discourse to the anthropointo morphizingof "construction" a nominativesubjectendowedwith the powerof selfcausationandcausingeverythingelse. Groszpointsout thatfeministsconcernedwith the social constructionof subjectivity recode the mind/body opposition as a distinction in between biology and psychology and locate political transformation psychological changewhere the body eitheris irrelevantor becomes the vehicle expressingchanges in beliefs andvalues [17]. This effectively ignoresthe pointthatthe body is a uniquesocial, cultural,andpolitical object. It also bearsthe markof differences(sex and race)thatare not easily revaluedthroughconsciousness-raisingprecisely because they are material differenceswhich are not eradicablewithout disfiguringthe body [18]. This critique of social constructionismcan also be understood in the broader philosophicaltermsof the need to rethinkthe link betweenmaterialityandintelligibility, distinctionitself. Indeed, and this natureand its others and ultimately,the form/matter constitutesthe strengthof theirwork, Grosz and Butler share the polemical agenda of of mechanistic distinguishingtheir understandings the body from (i) a post-Cartesian account of the body as a naturalentity, immutableand governed by naturallaws of causality and (ii) a teleological account of naturewhere intelligibility and matterare united in a body which strives toward an internallyprescribedfinal goal.3 As Grosz a of observesin hersuccinctaccountof Cartesianism, mechanisticunderstanding thebody is harmfulto feministtheorybecause it depriveswomen's bodies of agency by reducing of the body to a passive object,seen as a tool or instrument an intentionalwill rather than a locus of power and resistance[9]. But while a teleological account of natureinvests bodies with activity, this activity is always the predicationof intelligible form.This can lead to a biological-deterministic justificationfor the oppressionof women particularly distinctionoriginatingfrom Greekphilosophyis always articubecausethe form/matter lated througha gendered matrix where the productiveor creative agency of form is associatedwith a masculineprinciplewhile matter,which is passively shaped,is coded as feminine [Grosz5; Butler,ch. 1]. Thus, Butlersuggests that"[w]e may seek a return to matteras prior to discourse to ground our claims about sexual difference only to with discourseson sex andsexualitythatprefigure discoverthatmatteris fully sedimented and constrainthe uses to which the termcan be put" [29]. One might furtherargue that despite the Cartesiansunderingof intelligence from naturein the distinctionbetweenres cogitans and res extensa as ontologicallydifferent and and substances,Cartesian Greekontology arecontinuousinsofaras the form/matter mind/matterdistinctions are subtendedby a common opposition between intelligent of activity and brutepassivity. In a mechanisticunderstanding nature,the form/matter distinctionwhich was interiorto bodies in Greekontology becomes an externalrelation, eitherpractical-causal theoretical-contemplative, or between rationalconsciousnessand objective exteriority. Thus, by rethinking the body as something invested with a transformative dynamismor agency, ButlerandGroszalso questionthe pertinenceof the between intelligible form and brutematter,culture/history nature. and oppositions This has immense ramificationsfor political criticism insofar as the form/matter distinction is germane to the paradigmof exterioritythat underlies modern political as oppressionis generallyregarded a social, historical,or thought.Withinthis paradigm, culturalphenomenonand is to be distinguishedfrom a state of war which sometimes the characterizes stateof nature(as in Hobbes). In nature,a stateof war is an irreducible necessity,a brutefact.By contrast, oppressionbelongsto therealmof thepolitical,a realm institutedthroughrationallegitimationas the orderthatelevates us from a naturalstate
3. For a concise butprobablydated account of differentconceptionsof naturein the history of Western philosophyfor a nonspecialistreader, see Collingwood.

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of violence. Unlike natural violence, oppressionthushas a meaningfuldimensioninsofar as it is eitherrationally justifiedor unjustified.By this reckoning,the politicalcritiqueof unjustified oppression is either the attempt to recover some preexisting outside to historical oppression, an outside determinableby political reason, or a reconstructive projectwhich projectsan ideal exteriorto be employed as a guiding thread.Put another way, the exteriorityof reasonto poweris seen as the conditionof retrievingthebody into a stateof peacefulplenitudeoutsidepowerrelations.Suchcharacterizations oppression of distinction.Oppressionis the subordiandpolitical critiquepresupposethe form/matter nation of bodies to a system with irrationalform. Correspondingly, political change is the conceived precisely as trans-form-ation, alterationof the irrationalform of this systemic hold on bodies to a morerationalform. The primacyof formativeagency over matterandbodies and the exteriorityof political reasonto power constitutethe capacity to dragbodies out of the obfuscationof power relations.Simply put,this is a fundamental ontological presuppositionof political theories as different as consciousness-raising, Marxist notions of ideology and praxis, Habermasiandiscourse-ethics, and social of feminism.Sexual oppression,however,challenges the presupposition constructionist an outside to power because oppressionoccurs at the level of the constitutionof bodily materialityas sexed. Thus, Butler's and Grosz's attemptsto rethinkthe body in more dynamic or productiveterms are also immensely importantcontributionsby feminist philosophyto feminist practiceand strategy. AlthoughGroszandButlersharea commonpolemicalstance,theirpositionsdiverge in approachand in substance.Grosz's project is exploratoryand more pedagogically for inclined.She triesto piece togethera differentontologicalframework feministtheory to philosophiesof thebody. Butlerattempts elucidateandclarify by evaluatingalternative the provocativetheory of genderperformativityshe formulatedin Gender Troubleby to returning genealogicalsourcesin philosophyandthephilosophyof psychoanalysisand illustrationthroughreadingsof literaryand filmic materials.Ultimately,the substanby distinctionin tive differencein theirpositionsturnson how they refigurethe form/matter theirattemptsto invest the body with dynamism.In the rest of this section, I will assess of the ontological claims and presuppositions both theoriesof the body. is Butler's theory of gender performativity intendedas an improvementon social While she acceptsthe premisethatgenderor sex is socially constructed, constructionism. of constructionas involving the materialization determinate she urges us to understand of bodies throughthe repetitionof gender norms. types WhatI wouldpropose inplace of these conceptionsof constructionis a return to the notionof matter,not as site or surface, butas a processof materialization thatstabilizesover timeto producethe effect of boundary, fixity, andsurfacewe call matter.That matteris always materializedhas, I think, to be thoughtin relation to the productive and, indeed, materializingeffects of power in the Foucaultiansense.... Crucially,then, constructionis neithera single act nor a causalprocess initiatedby a subjectand culminatingin a set offixed effects. not Construction only takesplace in time,but is itself a temporal process which operatesthrougha reiterationof norms;sex is bothproducedand destabilized in the course of this reiteration.[9-10, Butler's emphasis] of Two important pointsneed to be emphasizedaboutthis radicalization "construcor tion."First,constructionis not only an interpretive hermeneuticactivitythatattributes meaning to preexistentmattersuch as sex but is instead a process of materialization. Second, the categoryof matter,or moreprecisely, the matterof humanbodies, is notjust an ossified productof the activityof the subjectbutan interminable processwhich Butler thus linksto Foucault'snotionof productive power.Butler'stheoryof materialization has diacritics / spring 1996 111

the advantage of rendering the material category of sex into a site of permanent contestation.On theone hand,it alertsus to the fact thatthe body,notjust consciousness, both constitutedby is a cruciallink in the circuitof social productionand reproduction, of a and also constituting given social order.This means thata consideration the material categoryof sex is as crucialto feministcontestationas gendernormsbecause the former is a materialization the latter.But by the same token, a theory of sex as a dynamic of of materialization rather thana substancealso cautionsus againstan unquestionprocess of affirmation sex as a materialbedrockfor axiological claims. ForButler, ing positivist this radicalunderstanding constructionism of does not foreclosethe agencyof the subject but indicatesthe need for a nonvoluntarist accountof agency. The interminable process of construction involves a set of constraints constitutethe humanagentthroughtime. that These constitutiveconstraintscircumscribethe realm of culturalintelligibility at any given moment,therebylimiting the meaningfulpolitical claims availableto the human will in general which is constitutedwithin this field of forces. Hence, the alternative accountof agencyButlerproposesinvolves an examinationof "thematrixthroughwhich all willing firstbecomes possible, its enablingculturalcondition"[7]. The possibility of transformation inheresin the instabilitiesof this matrixas it materializesthroughtime ratherthan in the claiming of a vantage point outside of power relations. of Butler'srefiguring the link betweenmatterandidealityhas threemaintheoretical limbs or genealogicalsources:a Foucaultian historicization theAristotelianconceptof of the schema;a psychoanalytical accountof morphologyorthe imaginary body schemaand a performative accountof the linguistic designationof bodily boundaries.Eachof these offers resourcesfor her critiqueof an anthropocentric notion of willed agency and the mechanisticnotionof matterthe formerimpliesby reopeningthe form/matter distinction. Thus, in chapter1, Butler suggests that a critical returnto the teleological concept of matterin PlatoandAristotlemay be timely because "matter appearsin these cases to be investedwith a certaincapacityto originateandto compose thatfor which it suppliesthe principleof intelligibility... [and is thus] defined by a certainpower of creation and rationalitythat is for the most part divested from the more modernempirical deployments" [32]. For Butler, the Aristotelian notion of schema is provocative because of its The lattercannotappearas a body in phenomenality without indissociabilityfrommatter. the form that constitutes it by supplying it with a principle of recognizability.Butler suggests, however,thatthe unityof intelligibilityandmatterin the same body postulated in Greekontology needs to be understoodin historicalrather thannatural terms.In order to be usefulforfeministtheory,these principlesof formativeintelligibilityneed to be seen as culturalvariables.ForButler,Foucault'saccountof the constitutionof the materiality of the bodyby poweris a salutary historicization theAristotelian of schema.Commenting on Foucault'sdiscussionof how the prisoner'sbody is producedby power,Butlerwrites: [T]he soul is taken as an instrumentof power through which the body is cultivatedandformed.In a sense, it acts as apower-ladenschemathatproduces and actualizesthe bodyitself... [N]ot fully unlikeAristotle,thesoul described of by Foucault as an instrument power, forms andframes the body, stamps it, and in stamping it, brings it into being. Here "being" belongs in quotation marks,for ontological weight is not presumed but always conferred. [33-34, emphasisadded] Butler'sreadingof Foucaultaccordsthe political, historical,or culturalan explanatorypriorityover the ontologicalor the realmof being: for her,form,the conditionunder which "ontologicalweight is . . . always conferred,"is always a function of historical To of production. the extentthatmatteritself becomes a product-effect form, the priority

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Butler confers to historical form is not a critical reinscription of the form/matter of distinction.It is insteada hypertrophy the productivepower conventionallyaccorded to form as the principleof dynamism.The differencehere is thatform is now seen as an instrumentof power. Thus, Butler seems to ascribe to "materiality" qualities that one call superstructural ideological: or might Materialitydesignates a certaineffect ofpower .... Insofar as power operates successfully by constituting an object domain . . as a taken-for-granted ontology,its materialeffectsare takenas materialdata orprimarygivens. These materialpositivities appear outside discourse and power, as its incontestable referents, its transcendentalsignifieds. But this appearance is precisely the momentin which the power/discourse regime is most fully dissimulatedand most insidiouslyeffective. [34-35] This definitionof materialityindicatesthatalthoughmuch of Butler's book is writtenas a generalcritiqueof the roleplayedby matteror natureas a concept in theanthropocentric metaphysics of the subject, her investigations are also confined to the materialityof human bodies. In her syncretization of Foucault/Aristotle,matter is invested with dynamismand said to be open to contestationonly because the matterconcernedis the productof sociohistoricalforms of power, that is, of the humanrealm. But Now, humanismis an anthropocentrism. a critiqueof humanismwhich stresses thatthe humansubjectis aneffect rather thanmerelygiven is still anthropologistic insofar as its domainof investigationstill remainsnon-natural. This anthropologistic horizonis even moresalient in Butler'suse of the psychoanalyticnotion of the imaginaryanatomy. Here, a strong antinaturalism begins to emerge because she theorizes the fluidity and malleabilityof bodies in termsof the uniquerole played by the psychical body image in the formation of human bodily subjects. Briefly, Freud argues that the psychical investmentof a body partactuallyconstitutesit becauseit is only throughthis investment thatthe body partbecomes phenomenologicallyaccessible to us at all. In his theoryof the role in the genesis of the ego, Lacan mirrorstage, where the imago plays a fundamental develops Freud'spostulateinto an accountof subjectconstitutionaccordingto which it is impossibleto determinethe chronologicalpriorityof the psychical image of the body or the physical body. For Lacan,the psychical body image is not merely a mappingof a prior body but the condition through which bodily materiality appears and can be experiencedas such. Put another way, physicalexperienceof the body as the provisional centerof all experience emerges simultaneouslywith the idea of the body. Philosophicallyspeaking, Lacan's concept of the body image is a transcendentalphenomenological investigation of the conditions under which the experience and of apprehension one's own body is possible.Thus,thepsychoanalyticnotionof morphology differsfrom Foucault'saccountof the body because it does not explainthe causality of social-historical forms in producing the materiality of bodies. The former is a transcendentalargument about ontological conditions of possibility; the latter is an abouthistoricalcausality.Butlersynthesizesthe two approaches conflating argument by the elementof prohibitionin the psychoanalyticnotion of identificationwith Foucault's The notion of morphology as a projectedbody microphysicalaccount of regulation.4

4. "lfprohibitionsin some sense constitute projectedmorphologies,thenreworkingthe terms

the variable modes delineating of these prohibitions suggests possibility various of projections, of andtheatricalizing surfaces. These be would 'ideas'of thebody,without which therewould body be no ego, no temporary To 'ideas'are centering experience. theextentthatsuchsupporting of and as and effects regulated prohibition pain,theycanbe understood theforcible materialized by of regulatory [64, power" emphasis added]. diacritics / spring 1996 113

schemawhich delineatesandproducesthe humanbody throughidentificationindicates natureof humanbodies. In Butler'sview, the Lacanianaccountof the the phantasmatic morphological imaginaryoffers ontological corroborationfor Foucault's historicalof causal argumentaboutthe materialization ideal forms. Butthe fit betweentheontologicalandhistoricalaspectsof Butler'stheoryis uneasy since it involves some confusionbetweena psycho- or ontogeneticconditionof possibility andanempiricalcause.Indeed,Butleris awarethatthenotionof thebody imagecarries a trace of Kantianism which she has to eradicatein the interestsof consistency. Let us follow closely this point of tension in her argument. In Butler's view, a Kantian formulation the body conceives the materialbody as noumenal,a pregivenontological of an sich, andthe psyche as an epistemologicalgrid thatestablishesthe body's mode Ding as of appearance an object for cognition [66]. Butlersuggests, however, that one could as also see psychicprojection havinga formativepowersince it is thebody schemawhich of delineatestheboundaries a bodily ego by unitingdisconnectedsensationswhich do not yet make up a body. The contoursof the body or morphology,understoodas "themode by which the body is given, the conditionandcontourof its givenness"[66], would here be an intermediary term,a site of vacillationbetween psyche andmatter.For Butler,the formulation thebodybecausethepsycheis no longeronly of schemais nota Kantian body a grid which maps a preexisting materialbody but actually forms morphology ("the psyche is formativeof morphology"[66]). and A difficulty,however,lies in the meaningof the predicate"formative" its related "to form."Butler'suse of the word vacillates ambiguouslybetween two possibiliverb, ties, not quite a productiveaction (poiesis) or a causal transitiveaction (praxis) nor a act representational/mediating which renderssomethingaccessible to experience.On the Butleris carefulto stressthatthebodycannotjust be a causaleffect of thepsyche one hand, formof idealismwhich denies the existenceof intelligibil[66]. Thatwould be an absurd as two differentordersof being by reducingmateriality a psychical to ity andmateriality effect. On the otherhand,however,becauseshe also has to insiston the productivepower of psychical forms or images in orderto distanceher position from one where the body preexistsits cognition,she has to ascribea causalityof sorts to the psyche. This causality is, however, restrictedto the contoursor surfacesof the body, the site where the body comes to mean,where it is intelligible.Justas Butlerhad earlierascribedsuperstructural qualities to materiality,the materialityof the body now designates its contours of intelligibilityand is suspendedin quotes: It mustbepossible to concedeandaffirman arrayof "materialities" thatpertain to the body, that which is signified by the domains of biology, anatomy, physiology, hormonaland chemicalcomposition,illness, age, weight,metabo" lism, life and death.... But the undeniability these "materialities in no way of implies what it means to affirm them, indeed, what interpretivematrices condition, enable and limit that necessary affirmation.... [E]ach of those categories have a history and a historicity, . . . each of them is constituted throughboundarylines that distinguishthem, . . . relations of discourse and powerproducehierarchiesand overlappingsamong themand challenge those boundaries ... Wemightwantto claim thatwhatpersists withinthese contesteddomains is the "materiality" the body. [66-67] of an itself is now said to be a seductiveconstruction, epistemic The categoryof materiality objectconstitutedthroughandby the networkof productivepower.By historicizingthe process by which morphologyis formed, Butler links morphology's formative power to overmateriality a Foucaultian accountof productive power.Likeotherfeministreaders 114

ElizabethGrosz,JaneGallop,andMargaret of Lacansuchas LuceIrigaray, Whitford,she will destabilizethe Lacanianseparationof the Imaginaryfrom the Symbolic by arguing that the formation of morphology is already a function of social value since the morphologicalscheme which is the conditionof objective exteriorityis alreadymarked masculine.5 Ratherthanenterinto thatarena,I want to point out thatthe termsof thatdebateare anthropologisticand that in Butler's case, her anthropologisticargumentabout the historico-cultural dynamismof materialityqua morphologyleads to an antinaturalistic account of bodies. Now, Lacan's notion of morphology is anthropologisticbecause, of arising out of an accountof "the ontological structure the humanworld,"it takes the existential differentialbetween humanityand natureas its fundamentalpremise. The productivemoment of the imago is a response to "an organic insufficiency in [man's] naturalreality," wherethe"relation natureis alteredby a certaindehiscenceatthe heart to of theorganism,a primordial Discordbetrayed thesigns of uneasinessandmotoruncoby ordinationof the neo-natalmonths"["TheMirrorStage"4]. Consequently,comparedto the permanenceof nature,humanontology is an ontology of lack. But the experienceof lack is also thepossibilityof humanautonomy,becauseit propelshumansfromnatureinto For culture,whichwill latertakeon thenamesof "society,""law,"and"language." Lacan, human autonomyfrom objective structure6 originates in the body in the paradigmatic momentwhen the identification with an image of a stablebody organizesthepresubjectal into a subject.7Indeed, Lacan characterizesthis primordialculturalsubjectivity as a formalismof the humanbodyandproposesa revivalof theAristoteliannotionof morphe ["SRE"13]. The body image intervenesin the withdrawalof natureand maps a social place for the humanbeing.8As a libidinallymappedbody, the humanbody is therefore unnaturalin its constitution.9 Notwithstandingher critical reconfigurationof the Imaginary/Symbolicdivide, Butler's reliance on the concept of morphology indicates that her account of the a betweentheReal dynamismof humanbodiespresupposes versionof Lacan'sseparation and the Imaginary.As we have seen, the barrierbetween the Real and the Imaginary others.My point correspondsto the distinctionbetween natureand its anthropologistic here is that Butler's account of dynamic materiality makes sense only within this anthropologistichorizon. By exploring the historical materializationof ideal forms, Foucault's account of productivepower raised the question of a causal and dynamic relation between intelligibility and materiality in general. Instead of addressingthis questiondirectly,Butlerobscuresit by conflatingan ontogeneticconditionof possibility with an empiricalcause in hersynthesis of Foucaultandpsychoanalysis.This conflation 5. Shealsoarguesthattheprivileging thephallusas theulimate in of signifier theSymbolic
occurs througha disavowedphallocentric specular idealizationof thepenis as a bodypart.

to 6. "[T]he about imaginary anatomy referred herevarieswiththeideas(clearorconfused) which prevalent a givenculture. all happens if thebody-image an are in It as had bodily functions autonomous existenceof its own, andby autonomous meanhere independent objective I of structure" 13, emphasis ["SRE" added]. 7. "Itis the stability thestanding of the of of posture,theprestige stature, impressiveness which thestylefor theidentification which egofindsits starting set in the statues, pointandleave
their imprintin it forever" ["SRE" 15, emphasis added]. Note that these words connoteform, 8. "Itis thegap separatingmanfrom naturethatdetermineshis lack of relationshipto nature,

shape,andoutline. andbegetshis narcissistic on covering whichis paintedtheworld from shield,withits nacreous cut which isforever off butthissamestructure also thesightwhere ownmilieu grafted he is his is
on to him, i.e. the society of his fellow men" ["SRE" 16].

9. "There a specific is relation between andhisownbody ismanifested a series here man that in of social practices. . . in that it denies respectfor the natural forms of the humanbody"
["Aggressivityin Psychoanalysis" 11].

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humanbodies from immutablenature.Butlercan arguethatmatter works by separating possesses a dynamismbecause it is always the matterof humanbodies she tacitly refers to and because she alreadypresupposesthathumanbodies inhabita distinctontological realmcharacterized historicalproduction,power, and ideal forms. Butler's pun that by "bodiesmatter" expressesthis amenabilityof humanmatter(s)to intelligibleformwhich is the source of the dynamismof humanmatter.Since she takes it for grantedthat the natureof humanbodiesis alreadycultural,she does not considerthatthe instabilityof the oppositionbetweennatureand culture,as exemplified by humanbodies, may be rooted in a yet unexploredcausal relationbetween intelligibility and matterin general. Indeed,it is possible to pose the questionof a causal relationbetweenintelligibility andmatterin generalwithinpsychoanalysisif, insteadof relyingon the anthropological thesis that psychic life is unique to humanity,one investigatedthe broaderontological basis for the emergenceof the psyche. It is because Butlerdoes not explorethis question thatshe does not quitesucceed in escaping a Kantianformulationof the body. We have seen thatButlerredefinesbodily materialityin termsof the contoursdelimitinga body. It is true that in her account the body is no longer a preexistent entity awaiting phenomenologicalrecognition,since the body is morphological.Nevertheless,the idea of morphologypresupposesa state of disconnectedsensationswhich are subsequently body is notto be another quasi-Kantian organizedintoa body.Hence,if themorphological epistemic grid, then morphology must have a causal power over these disconnected sensationsin orderto unitethemintoa body.The issues of thecausalityof ideationalforms between intelligibilityandmatterin generalseem over matteror the mutualinteractions form of the crucialat this point. Butler,however, explores these issues in the attenuated referentialrelationshipbetween language and matter.Having suggested that language andmaterialityareimplicatedtermsthatare never fully identicalor differentfrom each other because materialityis a constitutive demand for language which is yet always positedthroughsignification,Butlerasks the following questionandoffers the following answer: [W]hat then do we make of that kind of materialitythat is associatedwiththe body, its physicality as well as its location, including its social and political locatedness,andthatmaterialitythatcharacterizeslanguage?... Toanswerthe questionof the relationbetweenthe materialityof bodies and thatof language requiresfirst thatwe offer an account of how it is that bodies materialize,that is, how they come to assume the morphe, the shape by which their material discretenessis marked ... And withintheLacanian view, languageunderstood basedon idealizedkinshiprelations,is essentialto the as rules of differentiation development ofmorphology. Bodies only becomewhole, i.e., totalities,by the .... and totalizingspecular image whichis sustainedthroughtimeby the idealizing sexually markedname. ... Whatconstitutesthe integral body is not a natural boundaryor organic telos, but the law of kinshipthat worksthroughthe name. In this sense, thepaternal law produces versions of bodily integrity;the name whichinstallsgenderand kinship,worksas a politically investedand investing performative.[69, 72] of The hypertrophy productiveform we witnessed earlierappearshere as the power of namesto sustainthe bodily integrityand materialdiscretenessinitiallyconferredby the imago through reiteration.Once again, production does not operate causally at an atomistic level but formatively, at the level where bodily boundariesare repeatedly delineated, this time by means of a performativeuse of language. The specter of Kantianism returns precisely because materiality becomes present, is given body, materializesonly in being namedor signified in language,which cannotquite avoid the

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:
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?- M -T M ?:ni1 n:U.; O :!Te ...............

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role of being an epistemicgrid of sorts.Furthermore, howeverinhumanand antipathetic to intentionalitylanguageis in structuralist accountsof signification,language remains coextensive with humanityunless one begins to think of the conditionof possibility of languageas a system of marksin generalpriorto the oppositionbetween natureand its others.But since for Butler,linguisticform and iterationremainwithin anthropologistic a sociohistoricalor culturalhorizon,one can say thatdespitehertrenchant critiqueof the and to metaphysicsof grammar the intentional subject,thedynamismshe attributes bodily remainsa functionof sociohistoricalform,whereformis the anthropologistic materiality process of significationsans subject. So far, I have been discussing the theoreticalsources of Butler's account of the agency of bodies. I want now to outline her account of subversionand relate its major theory of the agency of bodies. As we have shortcomingsback to her anthropologistic Butler's theory of productive historical forms/schemas synthesizes Foucault's seen, notionof productivepowerwith a psychoanalyticnotionof repressiveidentificationand account of signification.It results in an account of subversion a performative/iterative of where the body's dynamismderives from negativity.The understanding bodies as a introducesa gap between regulatoryideals or norms and the of materialization process which thesenormsareforciblymaterialized bodiesthrough through persistentreiteration. Since these hegemonicnormsformbodilyboundaries throughexclusion,Butlersuggests that the instabilities of reiteration offer the possibility of counterhegemonic idealsof sex previously of rematerializations throughthe resignification those alternative as abject bodies deprived of symbolic value. Butler insists on the need to repressed and supplementFoucaultwith psychoanalysisbecauseit offers an accountof prohibition which usefully points to this domain of abjected bodies excluded in the repression of formation/constitution body ideals [22]. However,becausethese abjectbodies occupy the structuralposition of a condition of possibility whose exclusion or denegation is necessary to the constitutionof any norm, they cannot be significatively affirmed as norms,new identitarian groundsfor political claims, withoutproduccounterhegemonic and violationsin turn.Inherreadingsof literary filmic examples ing theirown constitutive Butlersuggeststhatsince all agency is enabledby the reiteration of queerperformativity, that of hegemonicdiscursivenorms,thereareno guarantees acts such as passinganddrag Thisis a valuablecautionthatpoliticalcritique thesevery norms. do notendupreinforcing Butler'spointis thatbecauseone is alwaysimplicatedin thatwhich mustbe interminable. one opposes,one mustresistseeing politicalcontestationin termsof a puretranscendence relationsof power [241]. Thus, she urges us to refigurethis structural of contemporary positionof exclusion-which she calls a constitutiveoutside-"as a futurehorizon... in in which theviolence of exclusion is perpetually theprocessof beingovercome"[53]. The of irrecuperability this outside functionslike the force of absolutenegation."[It]acts as and a disruptivesite of linguisticimpropriety unrepresentability, illuminatingthe violent of andcontingentboundaries the normative regime... throughthe inabilityof thatregime threatto its continuity"[53]. to representthatwhich might pose a fundamental Abstractedfrom its immediatesituationof gender and queerpolitics, this idea of a constitutiveoutsideserves as the basis for a radicalvision of the political which exceeds and the conventional political ideals of distributivejustice, inclusive representability sharing.Butler's notion of the constitutiveoutside is the culminatingpointof egalitarian her refiguringof the form/matterdistinction in order to invest the human body with dynamism.Hertheoryof productivehistoricalformstriesto wrenchtheconceptof agency of away fromboththe essentialistdeterminism matterandthe freedomof construction.1"
10. "Thereis a tendencyto thinkthatsexualityis either constructedor determined;to think it thatif it is constructed,it is in some sensefree, and if it is determined, is in some sensefixed. These oppositionsdo not describe the complexityof what is at stake in any effort to take account of the conditionsunder which sex and sexuality are assumed"[94J.

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Butler attemptsto dissociate her position from a Kantianaccount,where ideal form is imposed on preexisting matter,precisely because she sees the Kantianposition as a dogmatic and essentialistmove in which matteris posited as an immutablegiven that exists outside (hegemonic) form. She suggests that this move is replicatedby Slavoj notionof theReal Ziiek, who locatesthepossibilityof politicalcontestationin a Lacanian which resists hegemonic discourse." For Butler, the notion of the Real is an uncritical of as characterization matter immutable.Insteadof being a positivitycapableof retrieval, the Real is a negativitythatresists signification.Butlersuggests thatZizek's position is the dangerousbecause it endsup permanently attributing outsideof discourseto specific social or sexual positions which can then be affirmed only througha celebration of she psychosis. As an alternative, proposesthe ideaof a dynamicoutside[189]. She argues thatmatteris investedwitha subversivedynamismwhich is thenegativityassociatedwith the vicissitudesof significationanditeration. The disputewith Zizek thuscenterson how the constitutiveexclusions of hegemony are to be characterized: should the subversive of human materialitybe characterizedas the negativity of immutablematter agency outside hegemonic form or as the negativity inheringin the iterativematerialization of humanbodies through form?The important hereis that,althoughButler hegemonic point disagreeswith Ziiek on thesourceof the subversiveagencyof materiality, theybothshare of a similar understanding the form/matterdistinctionwhere matteris immutableand form is a principleof dynamism.For Zizek, the Real has the force of absolutenegation because it is an ahistorical,immutable,and unsymbolizablesubstancewhich calls for signification but which signification can never hope to capture.Now, althoughButler invests matter with a sociohistorical or significative negativity, she shares a similar of understanding the immutabilityof matterinsofar as for her the dynamismof matter boundariesof humanbodies as they aredelineatedby pertainsonly to the morphological regulativenormsof powerthroughpsychical identificationandthe performative linguistic actionof naming,whichdelineatesreferentsas objectsforhumanbeings.Whatis never once posed in Butler's debate with Zizek is the possibility that mattercould have a dynamismthatis neitherthe negativityof the unsymbolizablenorreducibleto a function of productiveform.In otherwords,both ButlerandZi ek agreethatmatteris immutable outside a social-anthropologistic purview. To returnto a point I made earlier, insofar as for Butler matteritself becomes a distinctionbut product-effectof historicalform, she does not reinscribethe form/matter insteadextendsthe productive powerconventionallyaccordedto formas the principleof dynamism. We saw that this extension of the productive power of form to human divorceof humanityfromnature. This thesis of materialityreliedon the anthropologistic natureof humannatureallowed Butlerto conflate an ontogeneticcondition the unnatural of possibilitywith anempiricalcause andto reconcileFoucaultwith Lacan.Thus,instead of using the instabilityof the nature/culture opposition in humanbodies as a point of departureto explore a possible causal relation between intelligibility and matter in distinctionby displacgeneral,Butlermerelydissimulatesthe conventionalform/matter it into an oppositionbetweeninertpassive natureand its anthropologistic others.Yet ing the excluded category of naturalmateriality,matter outside a social-anthropologistic purview,returnsto troubleButler's account of agency. Butlerdistinguishesgenderperformativity from a willed and self-controllingact by thatcharacterizes being constitutedin a alertingus to the weightinessor imbricatedness discourse. She sees this weightiness of being-in-discourse as the result of political identificationwherein a signifier within a chain of signification is takenup:

11. For an extendedcomparisonof Lacan's Real with Kantian noumenality,see KremerMarietti.

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"Agency"wouldthenbe the doublemovementof being constitutedin and by a signifier,where "tobe constituted"means "tobe compelledto cite or repeator mime" the signifier itself Enabled by the very signifier that dependsfor its continuationon the future of that citational chain, agency is the hiatus in iterability, the compulsion to install an identity through repetition, which interval, that identity insisrequires the very contingency,the undetermined seeks to foreclose. [220] tently The point I want to stress is that by defining "constitution" repeatedidentification, as Butlerconfinesthetermwithinan ideationalscenario.Consequently, hesitatesbefore she the question of what sustains the causal power of intelligible form over matter, the question of what allows intelligible form to materializeas matterin general. Yet this For questionseems unavoidable. if "'to be constituted'means 'to be compelledto cite, to or to mime' the signifier itself," it must be asked: what are the ontological repeat conditionsunderwhich thecompulsionto identifycantakeplace?Since my firstquestion can be readas a positivist foreclosureof the enablementof the signifier, let me rephrase it: what is the natureof matteras such thatdiscoursecan have a formativeor even causal powerover bodies thatthe ideationalscenarioof psychical identificationimplies? Does nottheconceptof morphologyas a mediatingtermbetweenpsyche andmatter presuppose thisquestionof the causalpowerof ideas over matterandvice versabutcannotask it? Put anotherway, if nomos or tekhne can become physis, then must there not be another level of dynamismsubtendingthese differentorders,irreducibleto nonanthropologistic mechanicallaws of causality and naturalistteleology, of which the performativityof languagewould only be a case? This would imply thatpolitical changecan no longerbe understoodas a function of sociohistorical form qua the sole principle of dynamism. Instead,the categoryof the political itself needs to be rethoughtoutside of the termsof historyand culture,which are its time-honoredcognates. of that,in thefirstinstance,no longer Whyis a rethinking thedynamismof materiality just inheresin embodimentas spatialextensionor in a subjectifiedor linguisticizedrealm more salutaryto a rethinkingof the political? What are the practical implicationsof level of the given or naturepriorto and theorizingdynamismat a nonanthropologistic distinction?Butler's accountof productivehistoricalforms exceeding the form/matter identificationand her theoryof performative agency take the notion of phantasmatic the assumptionof the materialmarkof sex or the intelligible outline of a body through and for imaginary symbolic ingestion-as the paradigm oppressionandsubversion.Her immediateframe of referenceis, of course, the field of gender, sexuality, and desire. into identificationpromisesto Generalized a politicaltheory,this notionof phantasmatic democratizecontestationthroughthe interminableproliferationand destabilizationof "the contemporary political demandon thinkingis to provisionalcross-identifications: out the interrelationships, without simplisticallyuniting, a variety of dynamicand map it relational positionalitieswithinthe political field. Further, will be crucialto find a way to both occupy these sites and to subjectthem to a democratizingcontestationin which the exclusionaryconditionsof their productionare perpetuallyreworked(even though they can neverbe fully overcome) in the directionof a more complex coalitionalframe" [115]. It is, however, not at all clear that all aspects of oppressioncan be reducedto or of explained by the paradigmof regulatoryidentification/internalization norms and, thatall subversionbe inevitablycenteredon the contestationof forms of identity. hence, Scholarsin queer and feminist studies have cautionedagainst the reductionof sexual of oppressionto the internalization constrainingidentity-forms[see Grosz; Martin].I wantto maketwo relatedbutdifferentpoints.First,the implausibilityof identificationas a paradigmof oppressionis especially salient in scenariosof oppressionwhere material marksareconstituted physical andnot ideationalingestion,not necessarilyof the through orderof the visible, such as the tracings of the digestive tract by inequalities in food 120

and or where production consumption theweaving of thebody throughsuperexploitation, hegemony does not function at the level of the outlining of morpheor form and is not necessarily even knowable. Second, the apparentplausibility of the identification paradigm is, in part, based on the tacit presuppositionof an established culture of democraticcontestationwithin the constitutionalnation-stateform. Indeed, like most political theory, Butler's attemptto rethinkpolitical alliances acrossvariousminoritysignifierssuch as "sex,""ethnicity," "culture" or clearlypresupthe NorthAtlantic scenarioof constitutionaldemocracywithin passive capitalist poses relations.12 aboutthis claim-that Thus,even if we accept-and I havemanyreservations democratic contestationis the universal ideal for all polities, Butler's theory of the political seems not to work so well in the situation of global neocolonialism, where oppressionoccurs at a physical level; transnational corporatismtruncatesthe development of a transformative democraticcultureand subversionconsists in the protracted negotiationby variouslevels of actors(extendingfromthebourgeoispostcolonialnationstate to unorganized peasantlaborandnonwageworkers)with the economicimperatives of the global system. Cosmo-politicaltransformation change in a global sense of the or covers variousdiscontinuouslevels, extendingfrom the rearticulation needs of political by subalternecological resistance to state-sanctioneddevelopmentto the (sometimes spurious)assertionof culturalidentityby the postcolonial nation-stateagainst international humanrightsorganizations.All these efforts must tap the motility of the material linkages(laborandfiscal flows, international relations)in which the respectiveactorsare constitutively mired and which make up the global-system. Here, precisely because change must be posed in termsof how a global-systemic field of forces-what Lukaics, Adorno and Horkheimer,Lefebvre and others, following Marx, called "a second naa of ture"-produces thebodilyrealityof the disenfranchised, hypertrophying productive historicalor culturalform as the operativeprincipleof dynamismseems ineffectual.By effected by contrast,the dynamismthat inheres in the linkages and interconnectedness processes of globalizationmight be describedas an incalculabletendentiousnesswhere form and matter,cultureand nature,are woven togetherin an immanencethat escapes rational decision and calculation. Philosophically speaking, this is why we need an accountof the politicalagencyof bodies thatno longerrespectsthe form/matter nature/ or culturedistinctions. At this point,I wantto turnto ElizabethGrosz's refiguringof the form/matter distinction, because it results in an account of the political agency of bodies that is different from Butler's.AlthoughGroszalso theorizesbodies in termsof the social constitutionof nature by relying on a productive account of power, unlike Butler she actually makes an ontological claim aboutwhy humanbodies are amenableto acculturation: I will deny that there is the "real," materialbody on one hand and its various culturaland historicalrepresentations the other.It is myclaim ... that these on representationsand cultural inscriptionsquite literally constitutebodies and help toproducethemas such. Thebodiesin whichI am interestedare culturally, sexually, racially specific bodies, the mobile and changeable termsof cultural production.As an essential internalconditionof humanbodies, a consequence perhaps of theirorganic openness to culturalcompletion,bodies musttake the social order as their productive nucleus. Part of their own "nature" is an or organic or ontological "incompleteness" lack of finality, an amenabilityto social completion,social orderingand organization.[x-xi] 12. I havedeveloped lineof argument fullyin a discussion thelimitsof theneothis more of Kantian see politicalmorality theearlyHabermas; Cheah. of diacritics / spring 1996 121

While Grosz's allusion to the Lacanian thesis of the organic incompletenessof humanbodies indicatesan anthropologistic focus (moreon this later),theimportant point to note is thatGroszsuggests the existence of a bidirectional causalrelationship between socioculturalforms and materiality.This means that for her the productivepower of cultural formsovermatterornature-what she calls "inscription" a nodto Derridawith is not limitedto the delineationof intelligiblebodily boundaries extendsto the"stuff"' but of matter. as she Indeed,becauseGroszsees thecausalrelationship bidirectional, ascribes a dynamism to materiality that exceeds an anthropologisticpurview to include all organicallyanimatebodies. Human bodies, indeed all animate bodies, stretch and extend the notion of physicality that dominates the physical sciences, for animate bodies are objects necessarily differentfrom other objects; they are materialities that are uncontainablein physicalist termsalone. If bodies are objects or things, they are like no others,for they are the centres of perspective, insight, reflection, desire, agency. . . . Bodies are not inert; they function interactively and productively. They act and react. They generate what is new, surprising, unpredictable.[xi] Grosz elaborates this thesis of the volatility of bodies by tracing the bidirectional constitutionof psychical interiorityand materialexteriority,the drifts or vectors from inside out (part2) to outside in (part3) in her critical expositions of varioustheoriesof subjectivity.By figuringthe embodiedsubjectin termsof the model of the M6biusloop she orthree-dimensional figure"eight," suggeststhata thirdtermmay subtendandexceed the mind/bodysplit. This thirdtermis figuredas the torsionor rotationfrom interiority and and or exteriority vice versa,thevanishingpointwhereoutsideandinside,materiality become indistinguishable. intelligibility Grosz's chapterson Freud,Lacan,and Foucault,intellectualresourcesshe shares with Butler,providethe clearestsites of contrastwith Butler.In her chapteron psychical topographies,Grosz presents a broaderdiscussion of Freud and Lacan than Butler's accountof the morphologicalbody,becauseshe makesa sustainedattemptto understand the ontological basis for the constitutiveaugmentationof the naturalbody by cultural to processes.First,where Butleruses Freud/Lacan suggest thatthe psychicalbody image the contoursthatconstitutethe conditionthroughwhich the bodily ego appears provides andcan be experiencedas the centerof perception,Grosz's more detailedstudyof Freud suggests that the ego must be seen as an interface arising from the interactionof two different perceptualsurfaces: the surfacethatrecordsexternalsensory experiencesuch as bodily sensationsandthe surfacewhere these sensationsaresubjectivelyexperienced [37]. While Groszcautiouslyaddsthatthis does not make the ego an effect causedby the body or its surface,this considerationof the interactiverole of bodily sensationsin the constitution of the ego (downplayed by Butler) implies a point or moment where sensations and perceptionare taken over by a fantasmaticdimension and so become from psychical life. indistinguishable Grosz returnsto this point by linking the notion of psychical topographyto the question of the relation between psychology and biology in Freud's "Projectfor a Scientific Psychology." For Grosz, Freud's earlierinterestin how psychical or mental qualitiessuch as memorycould emergefrompurelyneurologicalquantitiesof excitation poses the questionof the genesis of the psychical from the biological. But where Freud remainswithin Cartesiandualismby postulatinga psychophysicalparallelismbetween consciousnessanda thirdneurologicalsystemmediatingbetweenmnemicandperceptual neurologicalsystems, Grosz suggeststhathis hypothesessupportthe moreradicalclaim that"consciousness... is the resultof a particular modalityof quantitativeexcitations,

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that it is, and not just accompanies,the periodicityof excitations"[51]. This implies a causal relationbetween biology and psyche which is, Grosz argues, elaboratedin the attachmentof sexual drives to biological processes. The important point to note here is of thatfor Grosz,this derivationand departure drives from instinctsin the movementof anaclisis or proppingresults in the alterationof biological instinctsthemselves through their mimicryor retracingby sexual drives [54]. fromButler's in two her Consequently, readingof psychoanalysisis distinguishable First,psychical processes have a constitutivepower over biological processes respects. which are not confined to the level of intelligible form but literallyinscribeand change the anatomical,physiological,and neurologicalrhythmsof bodily life [60, 76], although the momentof impingementmay begin with mimicry at the level of form as the notion where Butlercannotquiteescape a Kantianaccount of proppingsuggests. Furthermore, of morphology,Grosz suggests thatthis power of the psyche is a causal power over the body. But second and more importantly,this is not a monism. Grosz suggests that the causal power of psychical processes is not unidirectional.Psychical processes do not impose themselvesupon biological processes unilaterallybut aredemandedto augment biology througha constitutive susceptibility in the latter. Thus, Grosz observes that "[s]exualityinsinuatesitself in the variousbiological and instinctualprocesses because thereis, as it were, a spacewhich it can occupy, an incompletenessat the level of instincts thatit can harnessfor its own purposes.... In this sense, paradoxically,humansubjects are biologically social, social out of biological necessity. A lack at the level of instincts distinguishesthe adventof humandesire from animal need" [54-55].13 We cantherefore thatalthoughbothButlerandGroszinvestthemateriality the see of humanbody with agency, their argumentsproceed from opposite directions.We have seen thatfor Butler,the dynamismof matteris a functionof sociohistoricalform andthat the agency of bodies is the force of negativity which inheres in the repetitionof these repressivebutproductivenorms.ForGrosz, however,humanbiological matterposesses a positive life-forcewhich producesconsciousness,culture,andsociality as its necessary supplements.This emphasis on the positive dynamismof bodies leads Grosz to distinguish betweennegativeand positive theoriesof desire, the formerexemplifiedby Plato, Hegel, Freud,andLacanandthe latterby Spinoza,Nietzsche,FoucaultandDeleuze,14 and to favor a positive theoryof desire and corporealityin part3 of herbook. The questionis whether Grosz's accountof the positive dynamismof corporeality longer privileges no the anthroposas the originalsource of dynamism.No clear answercan be given to this question. Those parts of Grosz's book that develop her ontological argument of a causalrelationship bidirectional between intelligibilityandmateriality certainlyindicate a radicaldisplacementof the nature/culture form/matter and distinctionsas they pertain to the agency of bodies. However, this move is also undercut her relianceon Lacan's by thesis aboutthe biologically social natureuniqueto humansubjectivity, anthropologistic
13. Cf. "[T]hese theorists and clinicians have demonstratedthe extreme pliability, the inherentamenability thebodyimageto immensetransformations, of upheavalsandretranscriptions

socialandsignifying The topsychical, according biological, changes. body imagedoesnotmapa ontoa psychosocial a kindof translation thematerial into domain, body of biological providing
conceptual terms; rather it attests to the necessary interconstituency each for the other, the of

radical inseparability biologicalfrompsychicalelements,the mutualdependence the of of and [85]. psychical thebiological"

14. "Where desire is construedas negative, a lack or incompletion,it is a function and effect

or its Where desireis of themind, psyche, idea:itsphenomenal dictates keycharacteristics. form

understoodas positiveproduction,it is viewed 'behaviorally,'in termsof its manifestconnections

andallegiances, artifice, bodily its its and accounts impetus. Thepsychoanalytic phenomenological
and ofthe bodythuspresume entailthe notionofdesire and theontologyof lack,whiletheSpinozist, productivistnotion entails an externalizedperspective" [222nl].

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a dictumthatremainsimplicit despite the positive theoryof corporealityshe elaborates in the laterpartsof her book. Grosz's questioningof the binaryoppositionbetween natureand cultureis articuis latedatanambitiouslevel of ontologicalgeneralityeven if this articulation brief.Unlike to who restrictsthe term "materiality" the anthropologisticconfines of human Butler, bodies, Groszsuggests thatthe humanbody itself canbe reducedneitherto a natural, raw, or presocialentity nor to a social, cultural,or signifying effect "lackingits own weighty and Groszwishes to reexaminethe interaction engagementof the two terms materiality." of in humanbodies, "theproduction the naturalin the (specific) termsof the cultural,the of as of cultural the(reverse)precondition thenatural" [21], as a destabilization thenature/ cultureoppositionin general. It is notadequateto simplydismissthecategoryofnatureoutright,to completely transcribe withoutresidueintothecultural:thisitselfis themonist,logocentric, it of gestureparexcellence.Instead,theinterimplication thenaturalandthesocial hole or culturalneedsfurtherinvestigation---the in naturewhichallows cultural seepage or production mustprovide something like a natural conditionfor culturalproduction;but in turn,the culturaltoo mustbe seen in its limitations, Cultureitself as a kindof insufficiencythat requiresnaturalsupplementation. can only have meaningand value in termsof its own other(s): when its others are obliterated--as tends to occur within the problematic of social in constructionism--culture effect takes on all the immutable, fixed characterto istics attributed thenaturalorder.Naturemaybe understoodnot as an origin or as an invariable templatebut as materialityin its most general sense, as destination(with all the impossibilities,since Derrida, that this termimplies). The relation is neither a dialectic (in which case there is the possibility of supersessionof the binaryterms)nor a relationof identitybut is markedby the interval,bypure difference.[21] betweennatureand Groszsuggeststhatif we wantto investigatetheparadoxical interplay cultureof which thehumanbody is a case, thenwe haveto considerwhat it is in bothterms which allows this interplayto happen.Here, an inquiryinto the differentialconstitution discloses a philosophicallypriorspace in and of "nature" "culture" theirinterdependence as or movement that Grosz calls "materiality destination."This is a nonsubstantialist distinctionas the dynamism outsidetheform/matter of reinscription the conceptof matter of subindividualdifferencesof forces. I will call this dynamism"mattering." The shift here is froma model of independent subjectivityto an attemptto trackthe constitutive miredness of autonomous subjectivity in the always-already occurring Within the context of the momentum of a cross-hatchingof hetero-determinations. of Grosz's book, this dynamismof differencesof forces has an ethical politicalargument significance because, in remindingus of the differentialconstitutionof materiality,it alerts us to the fundamentalrole played by sexual difference (qua example of pure differencein a Saussurean-Derridean sense) in the constitutionof corporealidentity.In an allusionto Luce Irigaray, Groszsuggests thatsexual differenceas an ethicalproblematic shouldbe thoughtnot as a comparisonbetweentwo types of independently existing sexual identitiesbut instead as a constitutiveintervalbetween the sexes which always remainsunbridgeableby experience or knowledge [208]. The founding status of the is as movementof differentiation hereincarnated an aporiabetweensexual differenceand sexual identity.On the one hand, feminist political theorymust grounditself, however provisionally,in a sexual identity.On the otherhand,the insistenceon thatgroundseals off sexual identity from the ongoing relations of differentiationthat constituted that identityin the first place and that are the conditionsof its reconstitutionthroughtime. 124

Sexual identitywould, in a sense, be a violation of sexual difference.Yet this violence shouldnot be understood oppositionto peace. Sexual identityandsexual differenceare in in an aporeticembrace.This is becausedifferenceor absolutealterityas such can appear only in its effacement.Hence, sexual differenceas the closest phenomenalanalogueto pure difference gives itself to be violated in its codings as sexual identity. In Grosz's words, "the framework... of sexual differenceentails not the concept of a continuum, a wholeness, a predivisionalworld as plenum, but the simultaneousrecognition and effacement of the spacings, the intervals... thatbind each 'thing' to every otherand to the whole of existence without, however, linking them into an organic or metaphysical wholeness" [209]. The ethicaldimensionof the alterityor exteriorityin mattering broughtout by Grosz is differentfromButler'sideaof theconstitutiveoutside.Both notionsof exterioritypoint to outsides that remain irrecuperableand are thus sites for a persistent critique of hegemony. Butler's notion of the constitutive outside, however, refers to an outside formedthroughthe exclusionarymaterialization humanbodies as meaningfulbodies. of It consists of abjectedbodies excluded from symbolic significance in the formationof historicalbodily ideals. Consequently,for Butler,this outside returnslike the repressed, as the force of negative disruptionwithin reiterativesignificationthatcharacterizesthe failureof conformityto symbolic ideals. By contrast,the constitutivetraceof alterityin Grosz'ssense occursata priorlevel of thevery giving of matterin generalwithina shifting field of differencesof forces. It is neitherpositive nornegative:it is a generativeviolence that needs to be affirmedas the conditionof possibility of the subsistenceand reconstitution of bodies as they continue to exist in time. Because it refers to the recalcitrant residue left over by the materializationof symbolic ideals, Butler's notion of the constitutive outside does not carry the same sense of affirmative responsibility to constitutivealterity. Butlerhasrecentlyarguedthatthepositionsof DerridaandFoucaultareincompatible on thegrounds theformeris concerned that withtheproduction limitless(im)possibilities of at a transcendental logical level whereasthe latteris concernedwith the fabricationof or local ideals which "enhance the sense of politically practicable possibilities" ["Poststructuralism" 10-11]. I will considerDerrida'swork in the next section. Here, I want to suggest that although Grosz does not explore this point, her emphasis on the generativeviolence of differencein the constitutionof corporeality,a position indebted to Derrida,might not be discontinuouswith Foucault'sposition because its questioning of the form/matterdistinction also implies an undoing of the opposition between the transcendentaland the immanent analogous to Foucault's rethinkingof power as a shifting substrateof forces. In my discussion of Bodies ThatMatter, I questioned the accuracyof Butler's attemptto make Foucaultcompatiblewith a psychoanalyticnotion of identification.Here, I want to suggest thatButler's readingof Foucaultdoes not take into accountthatFoucault'sexplorationof the constitutionof the prisoner'sbody led him to contemplatea positive notion of dynamism,not reducibleto a functionof productive historical form or signification, which he called a microphysics of power, a level of the mediatingbetweenthe stateandthe materiality bodies andtheirforces, constituting very physicality of bodies by penetratingtheir pores ratherthan just delineating their surfaces [Discipline and Punish 28]. It is immensely significant, I think, that notwithstanding Foucault's profound historicism, he subsequently theorized power at a level of generality,in terms of differencesof forces that engender nonanthropologistic states of power only in the last instance: [P]ower must be understoodin the first instance as the multiplicityof force relations immanentin the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization;as theprocess which, throughceaseless struggles and diacritics / spring 1996 125

confrontations, transforms, strengthensor reverses them;as the supportthese force relationsfind in one another,thusforming a chain or a system,or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another;and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutionalcrystallizationis embodiedin the state apparatus,in the formulationof the law, in the varioussocial hegemonies.Power's conditionof possibility, or in any case the viewpointwhich permits one to understandits exercise ... and whichalso makesitpossible to use its mechanismas a grid of intelligibilityof the social order ... is the movingsubstrateof force relations, which,by virtueof theirinequality,constantlyengenderstates ofpower, butthe latterare always local and unstable.... One needsto be nominalistic,no doubt: power is not an institution,and not a structure[like languageor signification]; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is a name that one attributesto a complexstrategicalsituation in a particularsociety. [Historyof Sexuality93] The important point here is thatthe moving substrateof force relationswhich is the conditionof possibilityof power cannotbe understoodsolely as a functionof historical or social form.Forwhile power is not an ontological structure substancethatprecedes or it is nevertheless not reducible to it, because social hegemony must be sociality, understood a codificationof these force relations.Yet, althoughthese force relations as are immanentto a given sociohistoricalsituationand can have empiricalcausal effects, because they representa condition of they are paradoxicallyalso quasi-transcendental for graspingthe Socius, a grid of its intelligibility,which cannot "itself' be possibility accessible to cognitive or practical-intentional masteryand control.This is because the field of shiftingforce relationsis unmotivated althoughnot capricious.Thus, power as a field of forces is "something" can only be namedcatachrestically that becauseit can only be descriptivelyisolated in its dissimulationin sociality. Given Foucault'semphasison how ideationalnormscan materializeas physicalbodies through power,one can also see thissimultaneous inertiaandproductivity, andactivityof differencesof forces15 passivity as the effaced trace,which is the quasi-transcendental conditionof possibility and the immanentcausalorigin of empiricality,physicality, materiality, nature.The convenor tionaloppositionbetweentranscendentality immanenceis hereundonealongwith the and oppositionbetweennatureandculture.Whereasin Butler'suse of Foucault,the natureor matterof humanbodies is understoodas a product of historical/cultural form, in my of as readingof Foucault,theweightinessor immutability natureis now to be understood an effect of differencesof forces that are philosophicallypriorto the anthropologistic distinctionsbetween form/matter, or nature/culture, nature/history. Like Grosz's accountof the generativeviolence of differencein the constitutionof Foucault'snotion of poweras a field of forces also points to the dynamism corporeality, of mattering. is important emphasizethatthis responding/responsibility the giving It to to of matteris perpetually with risk.The dynamismof mattering neitheractivenor is fraught passive, positive nornegative,presentnorabsent,since "it"exceeds an anthropologistic horizon.Consequently, boththe immutability natureor the given andthevariabilityof of culture, history, the social, or productioncan be understoodas the product-effectsof the site "mattering," quasi-transcendental of their interimplication,the condition of and others.To makeanother (im)possibilityof nature its anthropologistic pointthatGrosz does not make, this means that the dynamismof matteringis not a priori enabling or
15. "I wasputting that to a forththehypothesis therewasa specificity powerrelationships,

an a a and whichbelonged to density, inertia, viscosity, courseof development an inventiveness theserelationships whichit wasnecessary analyze" and to ["Clarifications" 184]. 126

disenabling,useful or harmfulto humantheoreticalor practicalactivity. Like Butler's notionof the constitutiveoutside, the dynamismof matteringis a foundingandenabling violence. The crucialdifference is thatGroszfocuses on the relationalityof bodies, not but only at the ideationalor subjectivelevel of cross-identification, also in terms of the differential inscriptionof materiality--"the complex intertwiningrelations of mutual productionandfeedbackof materiallydifferentbodies, substances,forms of matterand materiallydifferentinscriptions,tracings,transformations" [189]. This, coupledwith her insistenceon theopen-endedness materiality of which remainsincalculablefor humanity, for providesa fruitfulphilosophicalpointof departure exploringthe precarious possibilities of agency in scenariosof materialinterconnectedness otherthandemocraticcontestation.I have suggested thatneocolonial globalizationis one such urgentscenario. It should, however, be said that Grosz's brief articulationof the interminable is, responsibilityto mattering as she realizes,undercut herheuristicuse of the M6bius by here.First,althoughthe M6bius loop as a modelfor subjectivity.Two pointsareimportant is an appositefigure for the interimplication between the inside and outside of the loop subject, exteriorcorporealsurfaces and psychical or conscious interiority,it remainsa figure of autonomyinsofaras the interplaybetween inside and outside is limited to the inside and outside of the subject.Thus, Grosz acknowledgesthat "utilizingthe Mibius of strip limits our understanding the subjectin termsof dualismbut links it to a kind of the monism,autonomyor self-presencethatprecludesunderstanding body,bodies, as the terrain and effect of difference" [210]. Second, despite her gesturing toward the dimensionof matteringin her thesis aboutthe openness of materinonanthropologistic ality as destination, Grosz seems to intern the dynamism of mattering within an anthropologisticconfine in most of her discussions by giving a anthropo-ontological for This explanation thetorsionbetweencultureandnature, intelligibilityandmateriality. is because, like Butler, Grosz also relies on the Lacanianthesis of the naturallack in mankind, the thesis of the innately social nature of humanity, as the condition of possibility of culture. Consequently,an active/passive split resurfacesin Grosz's reductionof the dynamism of materialityto the positive activity of humanbodies. This occurs often, when propositionsmade aboutthe agency of bodies referonly to the active ability of human bodies to overcome biological constraints.For instance,Grosz suggests that the human body has a capacity"to open itself up to prostheticsynthesis, to transformor rewriteits to environment, continuallyaugmentits powersandcapacitiesthroughthe incorporation into thebody's own spaces andmodalitiesof objectsthat,while external,areinternalized, addedto, supplementing supplemented the 'organicbody' ... surpassingthebody, and by not 'beyond' naturebut in collusion with a naturethat never lived up to its name, that representsalways the most blatantculturalanxietiesandpropositions"[187-88, emphasis added]. And despite her caution that one should not dismiss nature, Grosz also uncriticallyemploys the conventionalphilosophemeof productionin her claim thatthe humanbody shouldbe seen as "aculturalinterweaving productionof nature" and [18] or that"thebody is not opposed to culture,a resistantthrowbackto a naturalpast;... [but] is itself a cultural,the culturalproduct" [23]. Furthermore, despite her astuteobservation that the body is indeterminablypositioned between materialweightiness and cultural variabilityso thateithertraitmay be useddependingon whetherone opposes essentialism or social constructionism, emphasison strategicuse favorsvariabilityas a higherlevel the of strategic cognition. Often, the weightiness of matteror naturein general is played down. Orinhumannaturecarriesan unfavorable connotationin comparisonwith human as nature, which is fluid and capable of retranscription, in Grosz's remark about psychoanalyticaccounts of the body: "[T]hebody which it [psychoanalysis]presumes and helps to explain is an open-ended, pliable set of significations, capable of being rewritten,reconstituted,in quite othertermsthanthose which markit and consequently diacritics / spring 1996 127

capableof reinscribingthe forms of sexual identity and psychical subjectivityat work today"[60-61]. At such moments,the dynamismof matteringas a questioningof the form/matter, by activity/passivitydistinctionsis as attenuated Groszas it is in Butler's accountof the productivepower of historicalforms. One sees the exclusive identificationof dynamic activity with human materialityin Grosz's reading of Foucault. Drawing a contrast betweenNietzsche's andFoucault'saccountsof the power-bodynexus, Groszarguesthat the body is a passive targetof power in Foucault,whereasfor Nietzsche the body is the active site from which the will to power emanates. dismisses consciousness as a mode of active resisFoucault's anti-humanism tance topower's alignments;butat thesame timehe seems to stripcorporeality itself of its multiplicity of forces. Nietzsche's bodies, like Foucault's, are inscribedbypower, brandedto create a memory,but this is precisely because the body'sforces, theforces of forgetfulness are so strong. For Nietzsche the body'sforces are thesitefor resistancebecause of theirimpetusand energy,not simply because of their location and recalcitrance. [147] Grosz advocates a displacementof the active capacity for transformation traditionally accordedto consciousnessinto a multiplicityof corporealforces. Insteadof questioning the thematicoppositionbetweenpassivity and activitywhich underliesthe form/matter of and mind/bodydistinctions,she merelyreversesthe correlation activitywith mindby it to body or matter.Consequently,althoughGrosz and Butler differ in their ascribing of distinctionandalthoughtheirreadingsof Foucaultdiffer refiguration the form/matter of locates agency in the active recalcitrance bodily materialityto power,whereas (Grosz in the vicissitudes of the iterationof historicalform), like Butler, Butlerlocates agency Grosz also misses the peculiardynamismimplied by Foucault'saccountof power. In my discussion of Foucault,I suggested that it was the peculiarityof bodies as a and inmixingbetweenhistory/culture nature,tekhndandphysis which led to paradoxical of forces, a dynamismin excess of and constituting the thinkingof power as differences betweennature its others.Foucault'ssuggestionthat"therallyingpoint and thedistinction for the counter-attack againstthe deploymentof sexualityoughtnot to be sex-desire,but bodies and pleasures"[Historyof Sexuality 157] should, I think,be readin termsof his of rethinking power.Grosz,however,readsFoucaultas arguingthatthe body is a passive as targetand a site of resistanceby virtueof its recalcitrance brutematter.She criticizes Foucaultfor gesturingtowardbodies and pleasuresas some naturaloutside preexisting the exercise of power [155]. However, what is at stake in the thinking of power as differences of forces is not that bodies are thoroughlyinvested with historicalpower to (Butler)northatthe positive activityof bodily forces is a site of recalcitrance historical power (Grosz). The stakes are instead a thinking of the dynamism of materialityas a suspendedbetweenthe active andthepassive, a dynamismthatobeys process(mattering) an inhumantemporalitywhich is incalculableby humanpolitical reasonbecause as the betweenthe passiveweightiness conditionof possibilityof both,it oscillates undecidably of natureand the active variabilityof culture and history. If Grosz finds Foucault's throwbackto natureas raw materiof formulation bodies and pleasuresan "enigmatic" of ality for a theoretician productivepower [155-56], I want to suggest thatthis enigma is a consequence of the paradoxicaldynamism of mattering.Foucault's "bodies and pleasures"do not refer to a prehistoricaloutside of the agency of sex-desire but the instabilityof unequal force relations.These force relations are both the condition of possibility and impossibilityof the agency of sex-desire. As a condition of possibility, these force relations engender states of sex-desire which in turn codify pleasures.

128

Alternatively,as a condition of impossibility, these force relationscan be affirmedby variousstrategicrealignments loci of resistanceto the hegemonicstatesof sex-desire. as In sum, Butler's theory of productive historical forms ascribes the dynamism of humanbodies to the negativityinheringin theirconstitutionthroughidentificationwith images or schemas.This relies on an ontologicaldistinctionbetweenhumanbodies from the immutabilityand passivity of naturalbodies outside a humanpurview. Although Grosz rethinks the agency of bodies in terms of the dynamism of materiality as destination,she codes this dynamismas the positive energyandactivitythatis the natural bodiesto be othered fromthereal.Bothremain withinananthropologistic capacityof human horizon insofar as they take an otheringfrom natureas the markof humanity.A more would be "freedom." metaphysicalname for humanity's"otheringfrom nature" DeconstructiveMaterialism? My discussion of Butler's and Grosz's provocativeand challengingattemptsto rethink the dynamismof bodies indicatesthe immensedifficultyof sustaininga radicalquestionform/ ing of conceptualcategoriesas fundamentalto our thinkingas the nature/culture, matter,and active/passivedistinctionswithoutlapsing into an anthropologistic position. In the previous section, I arguedthatalthoughFoucault'stheoryof power is commonly read as a historicistor sociological theory, it is, in fact, an attemptto grasp an inhuman or subindividualdynamismpriorto the above conceptualdistinctions.I also suggested that Grosz's emphasison the generative violence of difference, a position indebtedto Derrida,was continuouswith Foucault'sposition althoughshe does not readFoucaultin the same way. UnlikeDeleuze or Derrida,Foucaultdoes not scrupulouslydocumentthe relationshipof his work to the history of philosophy. In this section, therefore,I will elaborateon the inhumandynamism of matteringby turningto the work of Derrida. Before I do this, however,I wantto situatethe approaches GroszandButlerin relation of to the intellectualhistoryof anthropologistic theoriesof ethicaltransformative agency in orderto juxtapose the work of Derridawith this intellectualtrajectory. theoriesof practiceor transformative Simply put, all anthropologistic agency share threecommon axioms.First,they all regardthe given as somethinginertandimmutable, whether the given is conceived as that which is priorto humanuse or as naturein the Newtonianor Cartesian sense, the totalityof objectsgovernedby immutablecausallaws. Second, they suspect, with some justification, that whenever human existence is describedas merelygiven, such a descriptionhas oppressiveconsequences.Third,they try to show thathumanexistenceis dynamicandthatthisdynamismis thesourceof resistance or transformation. course,the contentsof anthropologistic Of theoriesof ethicaltransformative agency vary widely and are sometimes antitheticalto each other.The variance almost always occurs in how differenttheories conceptualizethe dynamismof human existence. Consider,for instance,the most opulenttraditionof practicalphilosophy,the humanisttrajectoryof Germanidealism and Marxist materialism.For Kant, practical freedom is groundedin the transcendental causality pertainingto ideas of reason.This causality is the ability of the humanwill to escape the bonds of facticity by prescribing universal rational form onto the sensible world. This dynamism is attributedto the of of will ontologicalconstitution theanthroposas a creature reason:"reason notgive way to any groundwhich is empiricallygiven [because]reasondoes not..,. follow the order of things as they presentthemselves in appearance,but frames for itself with perfect spontaneityan order of its own according to ideas, to which it adapts the empirical conditions"[A.548.473, emphasisadded]. This ascriptionof dynamismto anthropologistic form which is characterized the as wherewithalto trans-form given persists,via Hegel's notion of Spirit(the reconcilithe diacritics / spring 1996 129

ationof universalformwith the manifoldof matter humanactivity),in the materialism by of Marx.In overturning Hegel, Marx suggests that the dynamismof historicalchange rather forcesof production thanthelaborof the Concept.Yet the early stemsfrommaterial Marx'sethicalhumanist theoryof critiqueof alienatedlaborrelieson an anthropologistic humanproductionas free self-conscious activity:the realizationof humanessence by self-externalizingand self-objectifyingprocesses which form externalnaturein accordancewith humanneeds [see "Economicand PhilosophicalManuscripts"]. Despite the break between historical materialismand the earlier contemplative materialism,the form remainsin the later Marx's characterascriptionof dynamismto anthropologistic izationof the laborprocess as the realizationof purposivehumanform in matter:"At the end of every labourprocess, a result emergeswhich had alreadybeen conceived by the workerat the beginning,hence alreadyexisted ideally. Mannot only effects a change of his form in the materialsof nature;he also realizes [Verwirklicht] own purposein those materials.And this is a purposehe is conscious of, it determinesthe mode of his activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinatehis will to it" [Capital 284]. This leitmotif of human self-objectification is the ontological basis of Marx's concept of revolutionary practicalconsciousnessis the teleological destinapractice:revolutionary as tion of creative self-fulfilling labor. The proletariat universal class must grasp the of the previoushistoryof exploitationandits alienatingsocial formsto transcend totality it because this totality is the monstrousnegative image of purposiveform in the labor process.The point I want to make is thatMarxistmaterialismreducesthe alterityof the activitybecause it given to somethingthatis entirelyamenableto humantransformative of reificationis the best example of this reduction is a social process. Lukics's critique of the given to an effect of social process. theories of dynamismcan also be antihumanist. But anthropologistic Thus, Butler with approvalfor graspingthat praxis as socially cites Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach" itself [250n5] even thoughfor her,the transformative activityis constitutiveof materiality source of subversionis not an intendingcollective revolutionaryclass-subjectbut the and withintheprocessesof identification significationthatdelineatebodies.And iteration as my discussion of Butler and Grosz indicates, antihumanistpositions can attribute form or to anthropologistic materiality.For Butler, dynamismeitherto anthropologistic resistanceinheresin the way in which social andhistoricalforms materialize;for Grosz, resistanceissues from the dynamiclife force of humanbodily materiality,the life force acculturation the anthropos. of thatissues fromthe natural amenabilityto transindividual By dismissingthe given outrightas a dogmaticconceptor by reducingnature,even human nature, to an effect of "the social," "history,""culture,"or "language,"an leaves unansweredmany questions anthropologistictheory of ethical transformation of concerningthe interimplication these terms with what they oppose. I have already some of these problemsin discussingButlerandGrosz,so I can be telegraphic rehearsed here.For instance,on what ontological basis do we assertthe formative/causal power of "culture," "language,"and so forth over the given? How can we explain the complex emergenceof the psyche from materialityand the interplaybetween the two in human beings?Moregenerally,how can we explainthe possibilityof language,culture,history, and the social? Even if we resortto the thesis thatthese featuresco-belong with human existence, we still need to pose the question of the possibility of human existence. theoriesof significationandregardlanguageas an Conversely,if we follow antihumanist inhumanstructure which the humanspeakingsubjectis constituted,we need to turn by as is a criticaleye towardwhy this inhumanstructure often regarded theconstitutivemark aboutlanguagethatmight of theanthroposalone.Inotherwords,whatis it thatis inhuman lead to a broaderinvestigationof the relationof the humanto the inhumanin general in which we may graspthe complexity of the given withoutappealingto an ontotheology? To rephrasethe gist of these questions by deforming slightly Grosz's thesis of the 130

volatility of bodies, how might the incompletenessof humanbodies lead us to consider the inhumandynamism that is the openness or vulnerabilityconstitutive of all finite bodies because they are given and can cease to exist in space-time? I wantto suggest thattheworkof JacquesDerridais a rigorousattemptto rethink the horizon.The reductionof the given to dynamismof the given outsidean anthropologistic transformation premisedon is somethingamenableto or constitutedby anthropologistic an initial separationbetween subject and object. Dynamism is either the action of the humansubjecton the object (humanism)or the constitutiveimmersionof subjectsand objects within a trans-subjective anthropologisticstructuresuch as society, culture,or distinctionattempts language(antihumanism). Heidegger'scritiqueof the subject/object to breakwith this trajectory.16Unlike Hegelian idealismandMarxism,which sublatethe oppositionbetweensubjectandobjectinto a largerunityandmakethegiven intoa product of the laborof the concept (Hegel) or humanmateriallabor(Marx),Heideggeralertsus to a scene of giving thatis priorto thedistinctionbetweensubjectandobject.He considers how objects are given to finite subjects by the movement of a nonanthropologistic withdrawing Being: "Finiteintuitionof the being cannotgive the objectfromoutof itself. Itmustallow the objectto be given.... Because ourDasein is finite--existing in themidst of beings thatalreadyare,beings to which it has been deliveredover. .... [Dasein]must offer [the independentbeing] the possibility of announcingitself' [17-18]. Both determinate objectivity and determiningsubjectivity are constitutedby this giving/gift of objects in space-time. Derrida breaks with Heidegger in his reformulationof the nonanthropologistic dynamismof the gift of being-the question of original finitude-in terms of original differenceinsteadof the originalpresenceof Being set apartfrom the empiricalworld in "its"withdrawal. presentpurposes,we can say thata majorpartof Derrida'sendeavor For is an interminable working throughof the practicaland theoreticalimplicationsof his reformulation originalfinitudeas difference. of An intervalmust separate thepresentfrom what it is not for thepresent to be itself, but this intervalthat constitutesit as a present must, by the same token, dividethepresent in and of itself, therebyalso dividing,along with the present, everythingthatis thoughton the basis of the present,thatis, in ourmetaphysical language,every being, andsingularlysubstanceor the subject.... And it is this constitutionof thepresent, as an "originary"and irreduciblynonsimple(and therefore,strictosensunonoriginary) synthesisofmarks,or traces of retentions and protensions . . . that I propose to call archi-writing, archi-trace or diff6rance.["Diff6rance" emphasisadded] 13, One practicalstake in reformulating dynamismof the gift of being as the constitutive the intervalof diffirance is the attemptto go beyond the problemof an originalcause which would not itself be an effect of a prior presence, a problem generally solved by the notionof a self-causingbeing as purepresence[see OG 290-91]. Because unsatisfactory "it"is nothingbut the sheerplay of differencesof forces which constitutesevery present of which being in space-time,thepeculiar"causality" diffirancedenotesa nontransitivity is neithersimply active or passive and which "cannotbe conceived eitheras passion or as action of a subject or an object, or on the basis of the categories of agent or patient" ["Diffrrance" 9]. In a rare comment, Derrida explicitly relates the "causality" of diffirance to Foucault'srethinkingof power as the multiplicityof immanentforce relations: 16.Fora critique residual and see ofHeidegger's anthropologism itspoliticalconsequences, Endsof Man"andOf Spirit. Derrida,"The diacritics / spring 1996 131

Even if, as Foucault seems to suggest, one no longer speaks of Power with a capitalP, butof a scatteredmultiplicity micro-powers,the questionremains of of knowingwhat the unity of signification is that still permits us to call these decentralizedand heterogeneous microphenomena"powers". ... I do not believe thatone shouldagree to speakof "force"or of "power" [unless]... one thefact thatthere is neveranythingcalledpower orforce, but takesaccountof only differencesofpower and offorce, and thatthese differencesare qualitative In as well as quantitative. short, it seems to me thatone muststart, as Nietzsche doubtless did,from differencein order to accede to force and not vice versa. 149117 ["Afterword" I have alreadysuggestedthat Foucaultshould not be read as reducingthe dynamismof productivepowerto social or historicalrelations.In the above passage,Derridasuggests thatpower is not, in the first instance,located in the positive capacityof some body but movementpriorto andconstitutingthe or in a nonlocalizablerelationality differentiating relata and their capacities. This attributionof a causal power to difference has two and implications.First, it deformsthe oppositionbetween the transcendental important the immanent.As that which constitutively inhabits the order of presence even as it remains irreducibleto presence, diffirance can be thought neither as a transcendent conditions noumenalgroundwithoutrelationto presencenor as a set of transcendental thatallow an ineffableexteriorityto be experienced.Rather,these differencesof forces area field inwhich all determinate being is in relation.Second,wheremuchcontemporary as and criticismregards"culture" "discourse" theprivilegedsites of the dynamicothering of the anthroposfromthe given andview themas historicalversionsof the transcendental conditions that constituteempirical reality, the "causality"of diffirance designates a and nonanthropologistic dynamicconceptionof natureand history,natureas history,in which the foundingoppositionsbetweenphysisandits othersareundone."Thus, Derrida suggests that "culture[is to be thought] as nature different and deferred, differingall deferring; the othersofphysis-tekhne, nomos,thesis,society, freedom,history,mind etc. as physis different and deferred,or as physis differing and deferring.Physis in diffirance" ["Diffirance"17]. Consequently,the nontransitivecausality that characterizesthe dynamism of the given cannotbe conceived in termsof the action of a subject on an object that typifies
17. Cf.Derrida's briefremarksonpower in Foucault[" 'Todojustice to Freud"' 265-66] and his reflectionson theparadoxes ofpower in "ToSpeculate-'On Freud.'" Gilles Deleuze makes thesamepoint: "forceis neversingularbutessentiallyexists in relationwithotherforces, such that

a that anyforce is already relation, is to saypower"[Deleuze70].

of the be without trace 18. Theinstituted cannot thought thinking retention difference thus a as where difference of within structure reference a appears suchand permits certain of here-and-now, amongthe full terms.The absenceof another libertyof variation as of another of the worldappearing such, transcendental another origin present, the of the absence within presence thetrace... describes itself presenting as irreducible of that the of the from moment onethinks its structure by implied the"arbitrariness sign" nature convention, and between short thederived of symboland opposition possibility
"the immotivation the trace has always of referringbackto a "nature, sign .... Without trace: the trace is indefinitelyits own becoming become.Infact, thereis no unmotivated unmotivated.... Thus,as it goes withoutsaying, the trace whereofl speak is not more naturalthancultural,not morephysicalthanpsychic, biological thanspiritual.It is that of startingfrom which a becoming-unmotivated the sign and with it all the ulterior of oppositionsbetweenphysis and its other, is possible .... The immotivation the trace ought to be understoodas an operation and not a state, as an active movement,a demotivationand not a structure.[OG 46--48, 51, emphasisadded]

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humanist anthropologisticaccounts of agency. The dynamism of the given is the subtendingmovementthatenables a subjectto act on andaffect an object. But neitheris accounts of agency. it reducibleto the constitutivepower of discourse in antihumanist Derridaexplicitly distinguisheshis view of the cultureof and within nature,cultureas originarynature,from Greekphilosophy'steleologized notionof natureas the generous as donorto which all of nature'sothersareto return, well as fromthepost-Cartesian sense of naturalityto which the concept of humanproductionas the impositionof purposive form on the given is opposed on the groundsthatthese ascribedynamismto intelligible form [see GT 127-28]. But his position should also be distinguishedfrom antihumanist accountsof agency, because these cannotexplain how the given comes to be immersed formations(seen as dynamicbecausecontingent,contingentbecause in anthropologistic and how these contingent formationsemerge from the given. Nor can they artificial) satisfactorilyaccountfor why it is thatthese dynamicformationscan constrainus like a secondnature afterradicalcritiquehasexposedthemas contingentnon-natural processes. Derrida'sthoughtof the cultureof naturelocates contingency In contradistinction, in the very gift of being. The gift is markedby incalculablechance in a paradoxicalunity with necessity:"If it is not to follow a program,even a programinscribedin thephusis, a gift must not be generous. ... The gift, if there is any, must go againstnatureor occur it withoutnature; mustbreakoff at the same blow, at the same instantwith all originarity, with all originaryauthenticity. And therefore,also with its contrary: artifice,and so on" He suggests that the emergence of contingent anthropologisticformations [GT 162]. presupposesthe originarycontingency of the gift as its condition of possibility. Thus, of Derrida has althoughhe hasmostlybeen readas a theoretician linguisticundecidability, desistedfromprivileginglanguageand insteadgeneralizesthe diacriticityof the always of linguisticsign into a mobile andweblike "structure" differencesandreferralthatis the condition of possibility of any self-identical unit or formation(conscious, organic, or nonliving, thatis, subjectivity,substance,or matter)presentedin space-time.This is not in aboutthe constitutiveroleof differentiation/exclusion thedynamic merelyanargument delineationof intelligiblebodies for humanrecognitionby ideationalforms(for example, Butler's idea of the constitutiveoutside). It is an argumentaboutthe constitutiverole of of differencesof forcesin thevery beingof a thing,in the materialization matterin general. For Derrida,"spacing,"anothername for originaldifference,"designates... a 'productive,' 'genetic,' 'practical' movement, an 'operation"'[P 94]. The system of spacing/ alterityis even "anessentialandindispensablemechanismof dialecticalmaterialism" [P 94]. What accountof transformative agency follows from the dynamismof the given? from the side of individual bodies, spacing or differance designates the Rephrased constitutivesusceptibilityof finite bodies to a processof otheringfromtheirself-identity. This process of othering inscribes or weaves these bodies into a larger network, a a nontotalizable"structure," moving base that sustains and relates every determinate or social formation. This "structure"is not a transcendent object, entity, subject, weave (Derridacalls it "generaltextuality") exterioritybut a sensible transcendental where the idealandthe empirical,formandmatter,areno longerseparatelevels thatmeet at various interfacesbut infinitely interlaced[OG 290]. Deliberativeconsciousness, an indispensableelement of rational subject-agency, is thus mired in, conditioned, and enabledby a shiftingforce-field,theboundsandtendenciesof which it cannotcognitively map into a definitive set of determinationsor a totality because consciousness is constitutedby that shifting force-field. Cognitive mapping,althoughnecessary, is also that allows a given act of mappingto impossible,because the gesture of differentiation takeplace must,in turn,presupposea priorenablingdifferencefor which thatact cannot account.Put anotherway, finitudeas such cannotbe graspedor mappedout. It is radical Two important andoriginalcontamination. implicationsfor practicalphilosophyfollow diacritics / spring 1996 133

fromthis. First,the sourceof oppressionandits reachcannotbe definitivelyconfinedand mappedout by the political subject, the subject of calculation. However, by the same as token, the tendenciesof conditionsdetermined oppressiveat a given moment are not exhaustivelypredictable.Currently oppressiveconditionsarenot inherentlyoppressive. Their oppressive character dependson how they are inscribed,at a given moment, in a work,Derridapointsout, "noconcept textuality.Thus,in thecontextof intellectual larger outsideof all thetextualwork is by itself, andconsequentlyin andfor itself, metaphysical, in which it is inscribed"[P 57]. To returnto Butler and Grosz for a moment, their antihumanistanthropologistic accountsof transformative agency acknowledgebut also guardagainstradicalcontamination in different ways. Butler acknowledges radical contaminationby stressing the contingency involved in the assumptionof emancipatorysignifiers as identities for politicalcontestation.However,becauseshe limitscontingencyto the realmof discourse and the production of bodies by anthropologisticform and does not consider the of in of interdependence symbolic andmaterialconstraint the materialization bodies, she has little to say about scenarios of contestationwhere the constraintson and enabling of materialrather thandiscursive, conditionsfor the resignification identityareprimarily thanideational. Groszdoes attribute economicrather dynamismto the life force Although of a materialitythat is not controllableby consciousness, her identificationof this life force with humancorporealityleads to the coding of this dynamismas activity and the of overvalorization its emancipatory capabilities. Let us contrastthese accountswith Derrida'saccountof transformative agency. In Specters of Marx, radical contamination is called "spectrality."In the process of spectralization sketchedout in Marx'swritings),an ideaor spiritualformis incarnated (as or given a prostheticbody, which is then (mis)takenby the subject as his or her own this corporealbody. The subject's realbody thusbecomes spectralwhen it incorporates is pointhereis that,for Derrida,spectralization unavoidprostheticbody. The important able for all finite beings. Commentingon the living body that is the ontological basis of Marx's anthropologisticaccount of transformative agency, Derridapoints out Marx's foreclosureof the constitutivesusceptibilityof the humanbody to spectralization: Thelivingego is auto-immune whichis whattheydo not wantto know.Toprotect its life, to constituteitself as uniqueliving ego, to relate, as the same, to itself, it is necessarily led to welcome the other within (so manyfigures of death: diffirance of the technical apparatus,iterability,non-uniqueness,prosthesis, synthetic image, simulacrum,all of which begins with language, before language), it must thereforetake the immunedefenses apparentlymeantfor the non-ego, the enemy... and direct themat once for itself and againstitself. [SM 141] In orderto live, active mattermight seek to augmentitself (and not just by compulsion) by takingon and being passively trapped spectersof whatit is not. These specterscan by become a second nature.In spectralization, active and the passive, matterand form, the immutabilityand dynamism,necessity and contingencyceaselessly change places. For this reason,the dynamismof the given can be attributed neitherto the productivepower of historicalforms(Butler'sposition)norto a material endowedwith energy corporeality andactivity(Grosz'spositionattimes).Thepointhereis notjust to reversethe correlation of activitywith productiveformby ascribingactivityto matter.It is insteadan attemptto grasp the peculiar dynamismof the given, which is prior to the distinctions between activityandpassivity,form andmatterbecausethis dynamismis the constitutiveplay of difference. Elsewhere, Derridasuggests that "[t]he concept of mattermust be marked

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twice... outsidethe oppositionsin which it has beencaught(matter/spirit, matter/ideality, matter/form etc.)" [P 65]. In Specters ofMarx, Derridadescribeshis reinscriptionof the concept of matteras "a materialismwithout substance .. . for a despairing 'messianism"' [168-69]. The I adjective"despairing," think,indicatesthatbecause the dynamismof the given issues from the structuralopenness of finite being, its agency is that of the chance comingbut that togetherof certainfactors,anunmotivated notcapriciouscut-and-patch cannever constitutea cause thattechnicalandpoliticalreasoncan fully masterandharness.Inother words, since, froma structural pointof view, the dynamismof the given is a moving base, one cannot unconditionallyaffirm "it" as the necessarily enabling groundof political To transformation. returnto the example of the autoimmuneliving ego, the spectersthat it ingests in order to survive may take on the names of "alienation,""ideology," "reification,"and so forth. Yet, at the same time, Derrida's "commodity-fetishism," "' is "a despairing'messianism. This is because the same structural openness of position withina changingforcefinite social, economic, andpoliticalformations,theirinscription field, cancauseoppressivespectralbodies to mutatein unpredictable ways. Onecanbegin a situationthatis always alreadygiven, where one always already"is"andthe only from dynamic complexity of this "is" implies a paradoxicalaccord of chance and necessity. This meansthatthe openingof changeis always recedingandincalculable.Whichmeans thatchangeshouldbe thoughtin termsotherthanthe calculativeinitiationof a new causal chain. It should be thoughtin termsof an act of calculationthat affirms,maximizes, or transformation intensifies an incalculable nonanthropologistic already in progress, in to for orderto prepare andallow thistransformation come into presencein its effacement, to coagulateinto determinable reality.Whatis requiredis a rigorousresponsibilityto the spectralwhich accountsforthecontinuitybetweenthe constitutivesusceptibilityof finite bodies andtheirsusceptibilityto particular oppressiveformswithoutreducingthe former to latter. Using the work of Derrida,I have suggested that in the sphereof humanexistence, the constitutive susceptibility of finite bodies is the condition of possibility of both political transformationand oppression. What makes a theoretical questioning of urgentat thismoment,in this text?I end with an example.It is well known anthropologism bent has failed to respondadequatelyto thatMarxistphilosophyof an anthropologistic in the persistenceof a "secondnature" late capitalism.This is a centralthemeof Specters of Marx. One of these "second natures"is "the nation,"which Marx thought would with the globalizationof marketsand the capitalistmode of production.19 We disappear as know thatalthoughthe nationregaineda modicumof radicalrespectability a resultof socialist decolonizing nationalisms (exemplified, for instance, by the theories and as projectsof FrantzFanonandAmilcarCabral),its recompradorization the postcolonial nation-state in global neocolonialism has led to critiques of postcolonial bourgeois The intensificationof nationalidentityas an ideological form [see Appiah;Chatterjee]. in reassertions the neocolonialglobalizationhasled, in the pasttwo decades,to culturalist of South in which women are a crucial site for the rearticulation postcolonial national identity.Forpresentpurposes,the curiousquestionfor the outside observeris this:given of the patentlynegative consequencesthis culturalrearticulation nationalidentitywill have for the social position andeverydaylives of women, why do some women actively participatein these cultural reassertionsat the same time that they are also gender activists? This situationcannotjust be explainedaway in termsof official nationalistideology. Many Maghrebianstates (for example, Algeria and Tunisia) do not have an Islamic government.In Sudan,"Islamis an integralpartof the political cultureand of popular
19. For a thoroughaccount of Marx's critiqueof nationalism,see Szporluk.

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culture,even thoughin Sudan,as elsewhere,religionmaybe manipulated elites"[Hale by 150]. This means that culturalreassertionshave to be understoodas partof the popular reformulation nationalidentity.Alya Baffounnotes that"thepersistenceof traditional of thoughtand the inabilityof the political elite to impose a patternof a society based on a modem rationalearethe ways by which the irrational the mythicalbecome a formof and social organization management" and Indeed,AlgerianIslamicgroupsunderstand [174]. theirprojectof the Islamicizationof the nationas a popularresponseto "thefailureof the era nationalist, modernist,socialistic andsecularregimesof the post-independence of the ArabWorld"[Bouattaand Cherifati-Merabtine KhawarMumtazobservesthatfor 187]. Pakistani women's rightsactivists,womenwho participate fundamentalist in movements are profoundly enigmatic because they reject the concept of gender equality, "see restrictions women's mobility and curtailment legal rightsas protectivemeasures on of thereforeunquestionable), condemnwomen agitatingfor and by prescribed religion(and as westernizedandun-Islamic.At the same time a numberof these women arealso rights professionals,workingas teachersanddoctors.They demanda banon polygamy, reject divorce by repudiation,condemn exploitation of women by men-all concerns with which the women's rightsactivists are also occupied"[230]. The answer may be that the populararticulationof national identity functions as naturalizedconstrainton actions pursuinggender interests. "Women's organizations in movement,to workingfor reformwithin rangefromparticipating the fundamentalist of the framework Islam,andto fightingfor a secularstateandsecularlaws. In spite of this wide rangeof tendenciesandstrategies,all of themhaveinternalized some of theconcepts In developedand used by fundamentalists. particular, they have internalizedthe notion of an externalmonolithic enemy, and the fear of betrayingtheir identity-defined as thangenderidentityin the group"[H61ie-Lucas groupidentity,rather 398]. In the face of the apparent mutualexclusivity of being a feminist andbeing a nationalistin these cases, a genderactivismhas arisenin Egyptwhich is a form of low-profilepragmaticactivism within the milieu of the popular-religious-national everyday ratherthan political in a highly organized or self-conscious sense [Badran 203]. Margot Badran notes that "today's feminists in Egypt are women with layered identities, only one of which is feminist. By publicly assertingone identitythey might be seen as giving priorityto that identityover others,and this they are most unwilling to do" [207]. What is interestingabout these examples of internalized/naturalized popular-national constraints feminist interestsis the strengthof this popular-nationalist on conviction in the face of the sacrifices it entails. It is crucial to rememberthat in neocolonial is momentbuta secondnatureinduced globalization,nationalidentification nota primary by the shiftingfield of materialforces. Like a compoundformedin a chemical reaction that is not reducibleto the differentreactants,nation-nessis the unstableproductof a togetherof economic,cultural,andpoliticalfactors.As such,this secondnature gathering canneither rejected anactof individual collectivewill (humanist be or by anthropologisms); the sheer force of matter'senergy (Grosz);nor yet resignifiedsolely by by outstripped democraticcontestation (Butler). In this scenario, nationness might be described as "spectral"ratherthan "ideological,"which does not mean that it cannot become an effects of the complex ideology servingthe interestsof state-elites.These unpredictable of cultureand materialforces-greater economic independencefor some intertwining sectorswhich ameliorates"traditional" forms of patriarchal domination;intensification of religiousnationalismas a resultof the mortgagingof the postcolonialnation-stateto global capital and the ensuing uses of fundamentalistnationalismto articulategender interests-are not adequatelycapturedby anthropologistic accountsof ethical transformation.I can see the precariousfeminisms in neocolonial patriarchal postcolonialityas cases of deconstructiveresponsibilityto the spectralityof nationness.To theorize the in possibilityof politicaltransformation this space is to unlearnthe distinctionsbetween 136

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