In the third chapter, the author takes up or rather expands on a Foucauldian understanding of subjection. Here, it is important to note, that as with Foucault - whose own conceptualization regarding Discipline and Punishment, often began with a prisoner as an example of a subject deprived of agency, the conception of subjectivation here is understood not as an identification made by the subject, in a call or some other process of social recognition - but as formative of the very subject itself. In this sense, notwithstanding the author's emphasis on a differentiation between 'formation' and 'determination' or 'causing' - at the very least we see here, the pole of agency resting with the discourse which produces a subject, rather than perhaps an option exercised by a subject from a position of agency.
The concept of subjection in question, taken up is said to neither dominate the subject, nor to produce it. Rather it is said to "designate a certain kind of restriction in production, a restriction without which the production of the subject cannot take place, a restriction through which that production takes place." Here, it would appear that we seem to be entertaining a managerial understanding of subjection, as being a restriction placed apon production, yet a restiction which is said to be required for the subject to take place, and without which production cannot take place.
The influence of structuralism is unmistakeable in Foucault's thought, with the metaphor of a prison being used to depict the soul which is regulated by the imprisoning effect of its delimiting concept. I think an intresting adaptation of structuralist principles may be employed in considering the concept of a prison whose spatial effect makes the soul, as put by the author - into something perhaps more akin to a practice, whose disciplinary effects constitutes those formations of selfhood identified with a soul, or indeed subjection. And, I am sure this would be an angle found to be immanent to the thought of Foucault himself, even if he would like to distance himself from the position of an author.
In this sense, the soul would correspond to the subject's psyche in the psychoanalytic sense. There are however, curious assertions made regarding the correspondence or identity of the ego-ideal and superego. A traditional psychoanalytic reading often takes the superego to be a regulator of the ego-ideal, a point of reference or film as it were which allows the subject to reflect and posit that which it may wish to construct as an ideal. In this sense, would not the subject occasionally, and perhaps as a defensive formation seek to withdraw or conceal the ego-ideal from the superego? And would not this be another possible account or model for the Lacanian notion of the split subject? This is a lesson which is perhaps best ennuncited in discourse, or as Wittgenstein's last assertion in the Tractatus puts before us, 'Whereof one cannot speak, there we must be silent.' A definition of the symbolic, according to Lacan is offered - 'the position of the subject within the symbolic. The norm that installs the subject within language and hence within availible schemes of cultural transmmission.' And while there may be more precise ways to define this, I think this may yet serve as a handy introduction.
What the author lays before us as an aim for this chapter is an evaluation of the earlier described Foucaultian notion of the subject within a psychoanalytic framework. The appearance it would seem, of an effort to instantiate the great missed encounter in the history of French late 20th century philosophy, that between Foucauld and Lacan. Whether this would result, as the author claims, in a psychoanalytic critique of Foucault may have to be assessed in terms of the author's own commitments to the discipline. However, of interest to us would be the notion expressed of a subject intrested in or learning of their own subjection - or to individualise it, one's own subjectivation in order to become its own principle, as the author suggests. This effort, I have already laid before us, in my prior video on chapter 2. A premptory criticism of, for as an initial step, it fails to account for the possibility of a punishment for example, a feature of most disciplinary apparatuses arising from the Other, or the otherness of the other to put it in banal terms. And, just to recap, the unique Lacanian breakthrough in the psychoanalytic tradition was the recognition that ultimately, the subject's own desire can be accounted for only as an adressal if not a demand of the other, an acknowledgement which confronts the concept of a split subject and hence is able to study the dimension of desire and perhaps its later sublimations into drive.
The arrangement of concepts here, does lead us to see, what I would read as a dissasociation immanent to the text. In asking for instance, 'where does reistance to or in disciplinary subject formation take place?' I would ask that you read the sentence with a comma after the 'to' - so as to perhaps better appraise that the author does seem to be able to discern, if not the split subject itself, then let us call it - a displacement in the subject which creates its capacity for resistance it would seem. Yet, for our argument - indeed, for our reading, let us now treat the above question as what is seems to have been formulating, even if not completely transparent in itself; as two questions. Where does resistance to disciplinary subject formation take place? Here, if you may allow me - I would like to represent a Lacanian formulation which psychoanalysts would readily recognize, that the signifier, perhaps exemplified here in the phrase, disciplinary subject formation, represents the subject to another signifier. This, here is really the best way I can introduce you to the Symbolic, as insisted by Lacan as our only possible mediation between the immaginary and the Real.
As a critic I would point out that we find a rather precise differtiation made between the pyche as conceptualised in pychoanalysis, and its reduction to perhaps a more traditional concept of the soul. An observation which would appear to avoid meeting the idea, perhaps misinformed - that the psyche as such is perhaps more readily understood as the state of an individual's associations registered mentally. And, while prosaic, a soul usually bore with it an attachment to a sense of narrative, if for nothing to allow for the subject's capacity of self representation. And here, the author does make a welcome argument identifying in the concept of the soul, as understood as an imprisoning effect - a certain limitation in being able to resist normative prescriptions, compromising as such its own subject formation. A clear measure taken to secure for the subject, its ability to constitute its subjectivating principle as it were, whose insistence we noticed earlier. The ability to formulate a resistance to such forces is a line of inuiry raised, and a constructive study is introduced which seeks to ascertain as to what psychoanalysis may learn from this.
The creative question to ask here would of course be what does this resistance do, if the importance of its faculty as a principle which may allow for a measure of self-determinacy in subject formation has not already been made clear. And while resistance may allow for a capacity to distance oneself from inscriptions or norms of producing a docile body, this resistance itself is not the same as dimantling or changing the terms offered for subject formation.
The more interesting question here, which is also presented is whether the unconscius or psyche when characterized as constituted by resistance, may we discern in it strong attachments which permit for or facilitate this capacity as such? The author states that these unconscious attachments are an example of subjection, that they may indeed be an unconscious subjection, yet what kind of subjection would fail to recognize itself in the address that it understands itself to be subject to? This would imply that the unconscious 'is no more free from normalizing discourse than the subject.' This proposition however would fail at accounting for the capacity of a discursive inquiry, such as psychoanalysis is to be able to interpret the symptoms and fantasies of the subject's discourse by positing them as already apparernt, if only in their unfreedom from normativity. The subject we have here appears then to be a subject already revealed, whose subjection is already determined, symptoms already positted and whose fantasy already realized.
Indeed the direction chosen by this inquiry does seem to posit its own object of study if you will. "If we find an attachment to subjection at the level of the unconscious, what kind of resistance is to be wrought from that?" Here, I would state that an attachment to subjection may be necessary for the pursuit of an inquiry, and if the only aim of such a pursuit is to garner or perhaps mine a resource of resistance then we may ultimately have a subject which is resistant to the discourse in question. The far more productive question, which does follow is whether a resistance, whether conscious or unconscious to normalizing injunctions, which perhaps prohibits such an injunction to completely constitute its object, 'is able to alter or expand dominant injunctions or interpellations of subject formation?'
Here, indeed I do see a recognition of a certain unproductive kind or resistance, unproductive for any subject. Which "can only undermine, but which appears to have no power to rearticulate the terms...by which subjects are constituted, by which subjection is installed in the very formation of the subject? This resistance establishes the incomplete character of any effort to produce a subject by disciplinary means, but it remains unable to rearticulate the dominant terms of productive power."
The instructive insight, which I may not have touched on here earlier is of course the author's adoption, of the Foucauldian approach to thinking the body as a site of investment for power, as apposed to subjection pure and simple. This does seem to be approaching a terrain which seems to loose any traditional mooring in an idea of the socius however - with an inquiry into "the manner in which what is most material and vital in them (bodies) has been invested.", a history of bodies as it were.
Indeed our prior references to practices, would seem well founded when the question of what constitutes an investment for the body as conceived as a site of power, that is not a receptacle or vessel but perhaps a domain or ground contested by powers, and perhaps their admixtures. In her consideration of the position of the subject, along such lines - a position from which I do not exclude that of the reader, and of course their own dependencies, or subjection(s) if you prefer, but also their readings and interpretation - the very faculty this work in question is an appeal to, we may discern a consideration of subjection per se, which does not blind itself in a moment of insight such as a revelatory vision or inspiration, choosing rather to linger on the capacities of a subject traversed by these forces. This is a work of care for such a subject to be, to come, but also an archeology in the Foucaldian sense of the term, of the forms of life already, as it sieves through their lineaments.
There are certain formulations regarding the relation between the body of the subject and their soul, effectuated as it were in subjection - which may posit them at cross-purposes, and while such a formulation is clearly not metaphysical, trying to discern any argument beyond what was initially attributed as a Foucaultian assertion, which points out that the body is in some way used up in the process of production would be difficult to follow and may perhaps call for some linguistic innovation.
Yet, we may discern an appreciation of the Foucaldian engagement with the sexuality of discourse, in its appraisal of exesses or resistances which seek to exeed the normative parameters provided. Another assertion is made however, which introduces the notion of discursive complexity undermining the teleological aims of normalization. Here, I think there may be an assumption made that normalization has teleological aims, an observation which Foucault's critique of epistemes for instance may be read as an account of.
An observation, or rather a taking up of one made by Nietzsche in the Geneology of Morals, regarding the resignification of the sign chain deserves mention. There Nietzsche argues that the uses to which a given sign is originally put to are 'worlds apart' from the uses to which it then becomes availible. This is perhaps the movement which is the hardest to trace from within a geneological register, given the investment in this domain of attributes, qualities, distinguishing marks, signatures and other testaments which constitute or help produce, what may be called singularity effects - perhaps in some ways not unlike a contract which ties a basket of commodities to each other under fixed prices, for the making of a batch. There seems to be a more fundamental topographical question raised here regarding whether thinking a geneology - is able to come to terms with or commiserable with exchange, and the difficulty I point out seeks to in some ways account for that. A difficulty which I might add, a properly dialectical critique seeks to make comprehensible.
An emphasis is placed on the incomplete, nature of the subjection in question which the Foucaldian construction of the subject seeks to account for, a subjection which may be discerned in a repetition which militates against its origin - a phrase which any psychoanalytic understanding of drive would seek to account for, yet perhaps entertain an understanding of symptoms exhibited by the subject, seeking to interpret them, and noticing their sublimated potential and perhaps manifestation in fantasies.
I would like to draw attention to a way in which a problem of interiority and exteriority are constituted in a discourse, or rather a way in which this problem is broached by the author. - "What can we make of the way in which discourses not only constitutes the domain of the speakable, but are themselves bound to the production of a constitutive outside: the unspeakable, the unsignifyable." There may be two ways in which we interpret this particular construction. 1. In speech, even in active first person speech, there becomes availible in the act of ennunciation, an exteriority formed by the act of ennunciation itself. This may be only exterior to the subject of the statement itself, such as for example the slips in speech which Freud may discern as symptoms in which an unconscious may be glimpsed. 2. The other way in which this exteriority could be constituted is as the barred subject which retroactively posits the ground for a discourse, a qualifying statement if you will, much like an unwritten code or background as it were against which a discourse is formed. What both of these positions would have in common, especially if we were to remain consistent with our psychoanalytic or Lacanian perspective, is a commitment to interpret subject formation as possible only in addressing the other, and here it is important to emphasize the other not merely as another body, but another symbolic order, or logic if you prefer.
These terms however may require a redrafting in comparisson with the Foucauldian subject which the author has been seeking to present a critique of. - "If according to psychoanalysis, the subject is not the same as the psyche from which it emmerges and if, for Foucault the subject is not the same as the body from which it emmerges, then perhaps the body has come to substitute for the psyche in Foucault, - that is, as that which exeeds and confounds the injunctions of normalization." There may be rather interesting ways in which the earlier category of the Other may be interpretted here, and indeed the Foucaultian inspiration or rather influence on studies of sexuality are well documented.
Indeed, as sexualised as the category of the subject may be, in terms of how the subject may self-identify themselves, or find themselves identified in a call if you prefer - we may yet have to return to the Althusserian conception of interpellation. A concept whose signifying force does bear a influence in the use of social categories.
Another intresting use would be the way the category of the imaginary with its Lacanian relations to the symbolic and the Real, is mobilised by the author to represent something akin to a site of resistance. This would be a resistance which may safeguard the individual in their sense of interiority at the expense of never entering the domain of the symbolic which would frame a kind of exposure. Nor would it be able to redirect the law, invoked by the author - though what is left unclear is the relation of this law to the production of the subject. In this sense, I would not be able to discern as to whether framing the relation or rather the possibility of such a site of resistance to reframe or challenge the law is of any use given that it does not appear to alter the constitution of the subject in any way which the author of this text, Judith Butler is willing to present in this chapter. Yet, resistance for the author seems to be formally placed here so as to present a site of critique to power - almost on the condition that it may not alter the law, and here what appears to be posited is not a law regarding the production of the subject but a law regarding a formal though perhaps admittedly infectual resistance to power, which in these terms is unable to regulate it.
From within such formulations however, regarding the relation of the law to the imaginary, and resistance to power - the author does seem to suggest a new conception of the subject which is claimed to divulge from the Lacanian framework. "This insistence on the dual possibility of being both constituted by the law and an effect of resistance to the law marks a departure..." Yet does not this description resemble what the traditional idea of courtship entailed anyway? An entertainment of the idea whose consideration is permitted under the name of a law - against which it may yet appeal? Where I believe such a conception would yet entail even if it does not recognise its debt to Lacan's concept of the subject is in terms of the split between the subject and the object petit a, whose constitutive allure as it were rests in the Other, and here I believe the author seems to be bypassing the difficulty as well as the possibilities presented by Lacan who appears to serve rather as a gatekeeper to an altar of some kind before which only the ambiguous notion of "the law" stands.
Here, we should mention - that Foucalt may offer novel formulations in considering resistance here as a productive category, or rather as 'an effect of the very power it apposes.' Indeed, were a logic of such epistemic adaptation if I may - were to be extended to not the body itself, but to the practices, discursive and disciplinary which produce the body, including of course the relations between them, forming our notion of the social body or corpus we may recognize indeed a new formation of the subject, produced as the site of an active and live resistance to power, capable of forming, articulating and practicing logics which may create forms of life that are no longer subsumable within an earlier understanding. The author does however assert that Foucault recasts the symbolic as 'relations of power' and while this may not be a description, it does draw on something of the lack of trepidation which characterizes the effort in his work to anticipate the undermining or rather subversion of the conceptual, or historical innovation in question, which the author here chooses to identify with the site of the Lacanian symbolic.
The author does not seem to be entirely unaware of these difficulties however as she recognizes that even in this Foucaultian organization of the subject as a productive resistance to power, or perhaps as an epistemic challenge to its disciplinary apparatus - the presentation of disciplinary discourse in Foucault does not unilaterally constitute the subject, but rather implicates its own formations in the very act of their ennunciation. Providing as it were, 'conditions for the subject's de-constitution'. And by this we would have to include everything from cynical subversion of intent, to re-deployments of conceptual apparatuses. These following perversions as it were fail to grasp the psychoanalytic notion of a split subject in the construction of the sexual antagonism of discourse of which it does and is a constituting agent. And here, even the subversion of, let us say a disciplinary practice - or, god forbid the theft of the object petit a would serve under the law of the split subject, as both advertising the object under consideration, and forcing a reinterpretation of it in presenting it to another gaze, alas this theft is not a theft of the capacity of a subject to form their object of desire inasmuch as it is a theft of the potential a discourse saw in an object which warranted a reach for it.
Perhaps the subject may learn from these limitations as it were and decide to postit that which it finds reactionary in order to spur a progressive re-territorialization. :)
This procedure however is what is recognized as a disciplinary apparatus, and what is accounted for in some measure is the process by which such a disciplinary apparatus produces subjects. The production of such subjects is what brings into question the possibility of subverting the apparatus itself. Or, to quote the author - "the law turns against itself and spawns versions of itself which appose and proliferate its animating purpose(s). The strategic question for Foucault, is, then how can we work the power relations by which we are worked, and in what direction?"
We also see an apprehension of class relations and their effects on social formations by the author, in rather brutally succint ways, even if they prefigure a certain understanding of what the liberal state is - "In his later interviews, Foucault suggests that identities are formed within contemporary political arrangements in relation to certain requirements of the liberal state, one that assumes that the assertion to rights and claims to entitlement can only be made on the basis of a claim to a singular and injured identity. The more specific identitities become, the more totalized an identity becomes by that very specificity."
I think Zizek makes another version of such a predicament quite nicely apparent when he states that in modern society, political correctness and its normativity often lead to a place where we are unconsciusly prodded not merely to obey certain norms but even in our act of violating them, - let us say when we take a quick break from our job, to do so in a way which can be arranged and accounted for, effectively delimiting the space of real freedom. To make clear the predicament presented here, allow me to quote another line by the author - "In this sense, what we call identity politics is produced by a state which can only allocate recognition and rights to a subject totalized by the particularity which constitute their plaintiff status."
The author recognizes that the totalizing production of individuals extends the jurisdiction of the state (via the process of subjectivation itself - my emphasis), and this does lead to Foucault to raise a call for the remaking of subjectivity beyond the juridical law.
I believe there is a sense of justice marked when the author recognizes in Foucault, not a will to represent a subjectivity whose very forms of revolt are already earmarked by the state, not a hidden or repressed subjectivity, as put by the author - but "for a radical remaking of subjectivity formed against the dominant historical hegemony..."
I do however find the representation of the formation of the subject, by the author - as one which emmerges through an attachment to a founding prohibition to be, perhaps a displacement of what in psychoanalytic terms would be known as the barred subject ($) which allows for the construction of a discourse. Indeed, a founding prohibition as it were - yet subject formation cannot be reduced to the primal scene of a family, for birth cannot be the only subject. Were we to witness a birth for example, our ability to bear witness to it - let us say the beginning of a new movement in a form of composition etc. and to be able to retroactively determine, for ourselves what that event meant for us is what would make our testimony a subject of fidelity and our act perhaps in the words of the author, properly reflexive.
The author does present what would be for us today a useful corrective of the notion, here attributed to Foucault, that psychoanalysis presumes the exteriotity of the law to desire. Her rebuke however, that in psychoanalysis, there is no desire without the law that forms and sustains that very desire - seems to imply that for a desire to emmerge, there must first be a law passed, prohibiting it - and this I believe to be a misreading of the process of the sublation of the symptom into drive. Indeed, a traditional reading would probably invoke the castration complex which the father, and then perhaps the symbolic order introduces into the subject as semblances analogous to the law in question, which is understandable enough - however the notion that each desire would have a corresponding prohibition elevated to a law merely to form that desire seems a gross extrapolation, even if such a situation were to have real corelates in terms of prices for instances and laws which safeguard private property. There is a reason why this is insisted on, for a desire is often not in the consumation of the object itself, and indeed the author does seem familiar with the idea of renunciation as a kind of prohibition a subject may practice which yet strengthens the effects of that which was renounced if for no other reason than its scarcity. The point here is that we are often placed in a way in which a prohibition to an object is what creates the potential satisfaction experienced apon attaining it - and I do believe this is a way in which Lacan formulates the object petit a.
The author, Judith Butler does seem to be able to draft for us something resembling a preamble for that other later Foucaultian project, a hermeneutics of the subject - which can allow for the inscription of the means via which interpellation in subject formation takes place, yet refuses to abandon the subject in their subjection, potentially lethal - like a deer caught under the headlights of an oncoming car. She secures, for the subject in interpellation, via its founding gesture or rather by token of the price bourne by the subject for it, a resistance which may be harboured by the subject - and this does appear to be prefiguring conceptual developments in the chapters to come, perhaps in the guise of a kind of self-consciousness or knowingness in interpellation, or as has been presented by later psychoanalytic pratitioners - the use of social masks. And perhaps I should close with highlighting the injurious interpellations and the potential they bear of creating an identity through injury, which even if not crystallised in identity do provide for a history of a kind of trauma which may leave a scar.
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