The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection by Judith Butler

The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection Reviews

• 
  hayatem

  "إن السلطة المفروضة على الفرد هي السلطة التي تحثّ على نشوئه، ويبدو أنه ليس هناك مفر من هذه الازدواجية. في الواقع، يبدو أن " أحدًا " لا يخلو من هذه الازدواجية، وهذا يعني أن المضاعفة التخيلية الضرورية لكي يصبح المرء ذاتاً تستبعد إمكانية الهوية الصارمة. وأخيرًا، ليست ثمة ازدواجية من دون فقد، حيث يترك حكم الوجود الاجتماعي أثر دوره في مشهد نشوء المرء."
  
  بالاعتماد على هيجل ، نيتشه ، فرويد ، فوكو ، وألتوسير ، يقدم هذا العمل الصلب في مادته نظرية تكوين الذات التي تبرز الآثار النفسية للسلطة الاجتماعية باعتبارها متناقضة.
  يجمع هذا العمل بين النظرية الاجتماعية والفلسفة والتحليل النفسي، ويقدم تحليلًا لنظرية تكوين الذات المتضمنة في أعمال أخرى للمؤلف مثل الأجسام التي تهم: حول الحدود الخطابية لـ "الجنس" و قلق الجندر: النسوية وتخريب الهوية.
  
  "الادعاء بأن القوة تصنع النفس هو أيضًا ادعاء أن هناك خاصية خيالية ومختلقة للنفسية. إن شخصية النفس التي "تنقلب على نفسها" مهمة في هذه الدراسة ، وتوفر بديلاً لوصف القوة بأنها "داخلية". على الرغم من أن معظم قراء فوكو يتجنبون نظرية التحليل النفسي ، وأن معظم مفكري النفس يتجنبون فوكو ، إلا أن بتلر يسعى إلى تنظير هذه العلاقة المتناقضة بين الاجتماعي والنفسي كأحد التأثيرات الأكثر ديناميكية وصعوبة للسلطة."
  رائع !
• 
  Omar Kassem

  يقول ميشيل فوكو بأنه: "يجب علينا أن نحاول فهم الإخضاع في مثاله المادّي بوصفه مُشكّلاً للذوات".
  انطلاقًا من هذا تعمل جوديث بتلر في كتابها هذا على تفصيل وشرح الطبيعة السيكولوجية للإخصاع وتخرج بنظريات في هذا الشأن، متأثرةً بنيشته وفرويد وهيغل وفوكو بطبيعة الحال.
  ينقسم لستة فصول لست بصدد شرح وجهة نظري بما جاء فيها، بل أبدي إعجابي بالأسلوب والمضمون، وخاصة الفصل الرابع بعنوان: "الإخضاع الألتوسيري" فقد كان شيئًا أقرأ عنه لأول مرة على الإطلاق.
  العمل قصير، مباشر، ليس فيه اي نوع من الحشو او المبالغة، بل أتت موضوعاته في الصميم من دون إطالة، وترجمة نور حريري كانت عظيمة!
• 
  Erdem Tasdelen

  In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler first surveys Hegelian, Althusserian and Foucaultian ideas around subject formation, interrogating how power produces its subject and how that subject comes to perceive itself as one. She tackles the notion of interpellation in Althusser where one is hailed and turns around to face the Law, which allows one to recognize him-/herself as a subject subjected to that Law. But how does one know that one is being hailed, or why does one feel the need to turn around and look at the power which subordinates him/her? Does this not imply that a subject is already at hand, exercising its subjecthood through interpellation? One critical point that Butler draws attention to is that the notion of the subject should not be interchangeable with "the person" or "the individual," and should rather be designated as a "linguistic category, a place-holder, a structure in formation." One finds here a grammatical incommensurability, where whether subjection precedes or succeeds subjecthood is left vague. The Foucaltian account analyzes subjection as an exercise of power whereby the subject is the very instrument of power as well as its subject, but Butler asserts that the subject can not be reduced to the power by which it is occasioned, nor can the power by which it is occasioned be reducible to the subject. Subordination, however, is the very entity which allows the existence of the subject (to be something in order to not be something else), but exposing conscience as a fiction does not imply that it is an unnecessary fiction, because without such fiction a grammatical and phenomenological subject can not exist.
  
  Butler then turns to mourning and melancholia in psychoanalysis as the instruments of gender identification. Gender melancholy here is the process in which the foreclosure of love for someone of the same sex prevents mourning from happening, and Freud describes melancholia as that which does not declare the object of loss or loss itself - melancholia is precisely the effect of unavowable loss. The internalization of this undeclared loss in the ego leads to an identification with the object of love/passion. I can't be male and love a man, and that love has to be rejected to such a degree that I have to assume the role of the one that I'm unable to love - I have to assert my masculinity to denounce the possibility of myself ever loving or having loved a man. This is a very interesting venture into gender formation in the psyche, but I'm not sure whether I understand exactly what it is that allows for one to overcome such foreclosure and announce one's homosexuality. Is homosexuality then a mourning for the foreclosure of love of the opposite sex?
• 
  Federico

  Libro illuminante e ricco di contenuti: Judith Butler tenta di gettare le basi per edificare una sorta di ontologia del soggetto, attraversando Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser e infine la psicoanalisi; rilegando il tutto in un quadro teorico inaugurato con Gender Trouble, dove la riflessione sulla performatività è ora largamente ampliata con la nozione di melanconia applicata al gender. Il testo si accompagna da un'ottima introduzione scritta da Federico Zappino, che talvolta riesce ad essere più chiaro della stessa Butler. L'unico difetto del volume è forse proprio questo: lo stile pedantico e denso di Butler ha rallentato più volte la lettura del libro. Se il mondo sarà clemente, un giorno nascerà un messia queer che renderà potabili i voli pindarici di Judith Butler. Slay.
• 
  Bradley

  I really don't see the point of this book at all. "Power inscribes itself upon us all from within..." yes, but are we not inherently always-already free? So should we have sympathy for the oppressed? Plus, does a book like this, clearly written for an academic audience to be discussed on the conference circuit have a certain futility to it? She never addresses the deconstruction of "theory" in favor of praxis; and does a book like this ever actually reach the people who need it most? I'm not certain that it does, but hopefully there is a trickle down effect in the midst of the "Mass-Media Hyperbole" that dominates contemporary modes of subjection... one can hope, right?
• 
  Erin Kelley

  Bitch of a book to read due to complexity and requirement of previous extensive knowledge of theory, but overall amazing material. Covers the "inter-relatedness" with respect to subjegation regarding ideas presented by Freud, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, and Nietzsche, among others. Butler basically emphasizes that, heterosexual or homosexual, we are all subject to identity struggles as a result of the ideological constructs of power.
• 
  Dennis

  Ah, Judy. I like this book. I've been reading Gender Trouble for, like, a year and a half now. I'm still working on it. This one's going a little faster, but only because I maybe will use it in a paper. She's trying, in this one, to use Foucault, Lacan, and Althusser to explore subjectivity. Each of those three theorists has a slightly different emphasis and she does a good job of making them harmonize.
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  Guilherme Smee

  Eu já havia lido a grande maioria dos livros da filósofa pós-estruturalista, feminista, inspirador ada teoria queer e genial Judith Butler, mas não havia tido contato ainda com A vida psíquica do poder: Teorias da sujeição. O motivo talvez fosse porque esse livro aparentemente não lida com sexualidade e identidade de gênero. Mas ao ler este livro posso dizer que praticamente toda obra de Judith Butler atravessa as motivações dos constrangimentos que perpassam a sexualidade e a assunção de uma identidade de gênero. Neste, está no subtítulo: as teorias de sujeição às quais nos submetemos a poderes que vieram anteriormente a nossa realidade para que a definissem nos seus moldes. Para chegar a essas conclusões ela se utiliza de outros teóricos que usava em outros trabalhos, como Hegel, e fortemente apoiada em Nietzsche e Freud. Contudo, em A vida psíquica do poder, é a primeira vez que ela se utiliza de Althusser exatamente para pensar nos atravessamentos do poder na ideologia através da sujeição a um conjunto de ideias. Um livro muito bom de Judith Butler, mas considero outros dela ainda melhores. =)
• 
  Alkalia

  Pierwszych 130 stron to krytyczne spojrzenie na "Nadzorować i karać" Foucaoulta. Butler długo wyjaśnia nam dlaczego jego koncepcja nie jest juz aktualna we współczesnym świecie. Główny powód jest taki że zmieniła się siła nacisku. Współczesna kultura jest już tak opresyjna w swoich wymaganiach co do stylu życia związanego z rasą, płcią i statusem, że nie potrzebujemy już tak mocno aparatu władzy. Podporządkowujemy się sami z siebie. Robimy to mimowolnie i bezwiednie. Tak jakby od razu wiemy, że nie warto przyznawać się w szkole do tego że jesteśmy homo, bo antycypujemy, że za bycie homo dostaje się wpierdol. Co zatem robimy? Żałujemy że jesteśmy homo, odrzucamy to ze strachu i nie możemy się z tym faktem pogodzić. Ostatnich 50-80 stron to intelektualna uczta. Butler robi kilka sprawnych nawiązań do Freuda, spostrzega że jest to super dziwne i podejrzane, że większość ludzkości jest hetero, obwinia za to proces akulturacji i ogólnie uprawia dużo dobrego złorzeczenia światu.
• 
  Nic

  This may end up being my favorite work by Butler. There was so much great theoretical works being produced in the 1980s-1990s that I think needs to be returned to. A great work that reads Althusser, Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault and Freud together, with guest appearances from Lacan and others. The book will take time but it’s so rewarding. I didn’t get as much out of the Nietzsche chapter and I didn’t feel the Freud/melancholia chapters added too much more than her prior discussion of gender melancholia in Gender Trouble though I’m sure she extends and elaborates those prior discussions in some ways. Worth re-reading again even in the near future.
• 
  armin

  Yes, I did read it. Yes, I gave a presentation about it! No, I'm not gonna review it!
• 
  Joseph Sverker

  This might not be any of the more 'famous' books by Butler, but if one wants to get an insight into a width of Butler's thinking, then this is certainly a book that is necessary to get acquainted with. It follows up in a way from Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter in that Butler now treats more carefully how the subject is being constituted if the willing agent is dead. Butler in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter goes in to a little detail about how an agent or subject is still possible without having an essentialist or existentialist starting point.
  
  After reading those books one will most likely come to the conclusion that it has much to do with performativity and reiterability. However, it is a little difficult to get an idea of how this really work. At least it kind of left me wanting. The Psychic Life of Power fills in some of the gaps. As well as using Foucault and psychoanalysis (as usual) she also, more clearly, take Althusser on board and in particular the thought of interpellation. This is the thought that the subject comes in to being after having been 'called' by the law, or a representative of the law. When someone is being called for, the subject is created in the responding to that call. One recognise oneself by having someone call for you, it could be said. This then, for Butler, opens up 'the site of the subject' or subjectivity in which an identity can be formed.
  
  The sum of things is that identity becomes even more a relational concept in this book. Not only is the subject constructed in a relation or 'call' but there is also a need for the subject to be recognised as that subject by an other. This is a very welcomed development, and probably necessary for the coherence of Butler's thought, to my mind. However, I also think that there are some points of critique here. I am, for example, not sure that Butler manages to really escape the primacy of the subject over discourse, or the law, here. If the subject needs to be recognised by someone (something?) in order to become a subject, or become someone, then who is doing that recognition? Is it really possible, or is it enough, to be recognised by something impersonal? As such, although the relational aspect that is established more clearly with the theory of interpellation clarifies things in Butler's theory of performativity it seems like a new can of worms opens up in the area of recognition. It might simply be my own difficulties in 'thinking away' a strong subject (but I don't think so), but the sense is that a willing agent of some sort does not quite want to go away. Or, to put it slightly differently, even if Butler manages to kill the subject, it seems like the primacy of some sort of concept of personhood does not quite want to go away.
  
  I am not completely sure exactly what I mean with 'some sort of concept of personhood' as of yet, but I hope that will clarify in the process of my PhD on Butler and theology, but I think it will have something to do with a stronger 'relational ontology' where the person is what is established in interpersonal relations. But, that cannot mean that the personal is already there in the relations, but they have to be established in that relation (and hence Butler's theory of performativity will be useful). The real problem then is how not to make a concept of 'the human' as primary (which Butler has a valid critique against). The problem of an origin is a real conundrum, but that is also the case for Butler though. A further problem would be how not to end up in the same difficulty as I find Butler being in, in that the subject need to be assumed before the subject can be constructed. My thought is that there might be some help to be found in the doctrine of the Trinity, but we'll see.
• 
  Rui Coelho

  Accepting Foucault's thesis that power constitutes subjects, Butler attempts to explain how that happens. After some intrresting summaries on Nietzasche, Foucault and Althusser, the athor presents her freudian explanaition: the subjectivation is due to the unresolve grief that domination causes in us. The same question is explored and better answered in Butler's "Undoing Gender".
• 
  Karen Lynn

  Subjection . . . . The act or fact of being subjected, as under a monarch or other sovereign or superior power; the state of being subject to, or under the dominion of another; hence gen. subordination . . .The condition of being subject, exposed, or liable to; liability . . . . Logic. The act of supplying a subject to a predicate. ~Oxford English Dictionary
  
  “To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what “one” is, one’s very formation as a subject, is in some sense dependent upon that very power is quite another. We are used to thinking of power as what presses on the subject from the outside, as what subordinates, sets underneath, and relegates to a lower order. This is surely a fair description of part of what power does. . . .Foucault. . . . understands power as forming the subject as well, as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are. The customary model for understanding this process goes as follows: power imposes itself on us, and, weakened by its force, we come to internalize or accept its terms. What such an account fails to note, however, is that the “we” who accept such terms are fundamentally dependent on those terms for “our” existence. . . . Subjection consists precisely in this fundamental dependency on a discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and sustains our agency. Although Foucault identifies the ambivalence in this formulation, he does not elaborate on the specific mechanisms of how the subject is formed in submission. Not only does the entire domain of the psyche remain largely un-remarked in his theory, but power in this double valence of subordinating and producing remains unexplored. Thus, if submission is a condition of subjection, it makes sense to ask: What is the psychic form that power takes? Such a project requires thinking the theory of power together with a theory of the psyche, a task that has been eschewed by writers in both Foucauldian and psychoanalytic orthodoxies. . . . . . The question of subjection, of how the subject is formed in subordination, preoccupies the section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that traces the slave’s approach to freedom and his disappointing fall into the “unhappy consciousnes.” The master, who at first appears to be “external” to the slave, reemerges as the slave’s own conscience. The unhappiness of the consciousness that emerges is its own self-beratement, the effect of the transmutation of the master into a psychic reality. The self-mortifications that seek to redress the insistent corporeality of self-consciousness institute bad conscience. This figure of consciousness turned back upon itself prefigures Nietzsche’s account, in On the Genealogy of Morals, not only of how repression and regulation form the overlapping phenomena of conscience and bad conscience, but also of how the later become essential to the formation, persistence, and continuity of the subject. In each case, power that at first appears as external, pressed upon the subject, pressing the subject into subordination, assumes a psychic form that constitutes the subject’s self-identity." ~Judith Butler
  
• 
  Uğur

  The phenomenon of power is a kind of will, it is an indicator of material existence, ontologically wanting life. The passion for reality is a reflection of the passion for power, and the knowledge of knowledge is a reflection of the search for power. That is why the search for knowledge and knowledge itself is a reflection of the very existence of power. Foucault says at this point; "the power relationship constantly produces information, and the information produced also leads to constant power effects." therefore, we can easily state that the knowledge gained in human science is a sine qua non of power. As much as information has become dependent on power, power has also become dependent on information. At this point, Butler examined the power - subject relationship through gender and put forward new inferences and sociological analyses that feed Foucault's thought. While explaining that the gender of men and women is not stable and can vary in terms of "knowledge", the invalidity of the subject psychized by power, according to Foucault, subjects are formed within social relations shaped by power, although I also read a subtext in this book that processes the originality of the subject without opposing it. Also, the subject comes back again and Foucault's "power is exercised over free individuals, the slave is already a slave." with his words, he explained the importance of the existence of man, who should be free and original.
  
  It has been a very nice work of sociology in this aspect.
• 
  Bastián Olea Herrera

  Butler es una autora complicada, pero en general en sus otros textos se obtiene una visión completa y detallad del proceso que analiza o describe.
  
  Este libro es lejos el más complejo de ella que he leído, en particular porque se basa mucho en teoría psicoanalítica avanzada. Pero siento que eso le juega en contra. No me gustó eso de ceñirse tanto a especificidades de Freud, llegando a traducirlo palabra por palabra en varios momentos, y tratando sus dichos como leyes. Honestamente es irrelevante para cualquier persona que no esté buscando un desglose repetitivo de minucias psicoanalíticas tratadas completamente en abstracto.
  
  Al final del libro sientes que la autora estuvo dando vueltas durante 200 páginas sobre el concepto de “melancolía”, incluso tomando perspectivas de Nietzsche y Althusser; sin embargo el libro no concluye nada útil al respecto: ninguna conclusión socialmente relevante, no se aplican los conceptos nada, ni se entrega un modelo para analizar ninguna cosa. Simplemente es psicoanalizar por psicoanalizar. Pierde completamente el hilo del análisis del poder que trata en la primera mitad.
• 
  Pedro

  Recopilación de artículos de la filósofa norteamericana donde explora distintas categorías y las conjunciones entre Foucault, Hegel, Althusser y Freud. El modo en que se enraízan los conceptos de sujeto, individuo y persona; el poder en la performatividad a través de las paradojas y la condición de la vulnerabilidad. Es un texto maravilloso para entrar en las principales discusiones de Butler sin entrar en sus textos más famosos, ofrece análisis brillantes sobre la interpelación althusseriana, la sumisión en Freud, la conciencia desventurada (amo-esclavo) en Hegel y la sumisión en Freud. Además, de las constantes referencias a la voluntad nietzscheana y el deseo en Spinoza.
  
  
• 
  Karen

  This is an excellent book for anyone interested in philosophy and theories in subjection and forming subjects. Since I have read this book some time ago, one of the deepest impressions made was her philosophical interpretation on Friedrich Nietzsche's theories in morality and subject formation and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's phenomenology of Spirit. It is great reading for anyone interesting in its subject matter and how these philosophical concepts relate to identity formation in psychoanalysis.
• 
  Carlos

  Creo que se puede hacer un resumen del libro recogiendo una de las frases que plantea al final de este: "Persistir en el propio ser significa estar entregado desde el principio a condiciones sociales que no son nunca del todo propias". Pese al evidente determinismo de tal frase Butler parece manifestar la posibilidad de cierta vida que se escapa al sometimiento, que parte de aceptarlo como tal y, en parte agredirlo, como se hace en el duelo con el objeto repudiado. Solo así comienza la vida, con una destrucción producto de la aceptación del sometimiento.
• 
  milo simon

  muy weno, uno de mis fav de butler hasta ahora jejej
  mucho freud siii, me habría gustado q le diera más duro al althusser, kedé un pokito xato del dadi freud; tb podríamo haber omitido al nietzsche francamente,,,,
• 
  Naz

  özellikle 'Psişik Başlangıçlar' bölümü nefisti.
• 
  Janice Feng

  Forever.
• 
  Direncan

  Çevirinin çok sağlıklı olmadığını düşündüm. Bu da okuma deneyimini yer yer çileli bir hale getiriyor. Ama Cinsiyet Belası metninden sonra özne mefhumuyla alakalı bir derinleşme için güzel bir kaynak
• 
  Jasper L

  That last chapter slaps.
• 
  Judy Chicago fork

  Esto es muy Julia de 4o semestre de filosofía que intenta citar 5 autores en un mismo párrafo.
• 
  Lillian F

  Drinking game! Take a shot every-time Butler quotes Freud, be blackout by page ten.
• 
  andrew

  the work of judith butler
  
  psychic life of so many rhetorical questions
• 
  Luisa

  asdklçhejdkaohakslçfgdikasgn
• 
  Jodi

  For a person with a very full life and lots of physical commitments this complex theoretical abstraction should Never have to be tackled in One Week (actually 2 days given my time constraints)! It's my first semester of grad school and I've been out of college for 5 years- this book completely broke my balls.