RHETOR 103B Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Judith Butler
Document Summary
Claim that discourse forms the body is not simple - we need to distinguish forming from causing or determining. Subjection is the literal making of a subject. Designates certain kind of restriction in production. Prison acts on the prisoner"s body by forcing the prisoner to approximate an ideal. Thus the prisoner"s individuality is rendered coherent and totalized. Need to counterpose the soul to the psyche. The psyche is what exceeds the imprisoning effects of the discursive demand to inhabit a coherent identity, to become a coherent subject. Question of psychoanalysis is a question of locating or accounting for resistance. Problem of bodies in f: power not only produces the boundaries of a subject but pervades the subject"s inferiority. Soul is taken to be an instrument of power through which the body is cultivated and formed. There is no body outside of power. Production of the subject takes place to some extent through the subordination and even destruction of the body.
