Judith Butler and theology
I’ve been reading Butler’s Gender Trouble over the past couple weeks. It’s my first direct exposure to Butler, and just understanding her is arduous enough, but of course I’m also trying to keep track of the ways in which her thinking could be put in play within theology (possibly against her will). I thought I’d put down a few apparent connections along that latter line, and see if others had anything to correct or add.
Obviously on the issue of the phenomenological and ostensibly natural structures of gender and sexuality Butler has all kinds of direct relevance. In particular, she demonstrates exactly the kind of critique that one would need to rigorously lay waste to ‘theology of the body’ type thinking. It would be counterproductive to set it up as an issue of Butler vs. JPII, of course, but the structure of her arguments—which tend to identify the element in an account that intends itself as critical or subversive (e.g., the constructedness of ‘gender’) and extend that element to the point of subverting what that account takes as fixed or natural (e.g., the ontological stability of ‘sex’)—would work delightfully well against that style of thinking.
Obviously, too, her implicit but direct criticism of ‘theological’ or ‘religious’ thinking deserves to be mulled over. I don’t know whether or not this is consistent in her other writings, but in Gender Trouble, these adjectives take on a fairly specific Nietzschean meaning (especially clear on pp. 76-77). Thought is designated as theological or religious when it produces and absolutizes some unattainable law, an ‘inevitable and unknowable authority before which the sexed subject is bound to fail.’ I can think of two sources for this kind of designation: one, the (Lutheran) interpretation of Paul according to which the whole purpose of the law is to prove to us our sinfulness; two, the (voluntarist) idea of God as a wholly inaccessible lawgiver. Both sources have been subjected to quite a bit of criticism by theologians themselves of late, but Butler could be read as identifying these as structural problems for theological anthropology and ethics broadly speaking rather than just as issues for Jewish-Christian dialogue and the doctrine of God.
The connection that’s been occupying me most lately, though, is a bit less direct. I think it’s possible to read Gender Trouble as a series of theoretical interventions aimed at showing that any appeal to an ‘original,’ ideal, precultural structure of existence is bound to fail. Part of it is her radical social constructionism, of course, wherein it’s simply impossible to appeal to a precultural or prelinguistic anything. But there’s something else, too: she’s just as disparaging towards theories based on future ideals as on purportedly original ones. I’m not quite clear on how this argument goes yet, because it’s not quite as close to the surface of her text. (Perhaps it would be in some of her more recent political writings.) It has to do with at least three claims:
- Appeals to extra-cultural ideals—i.e., ideals completely heteronomous to ‘the law’ as we know it—inadvertently reify the existing culture itself (the clearest statement of this in Gender Trouble comes in her critique of Julia Kristeva);
- Ideals, even though they’re intended as critical alternatives to some existing culture, are more often than not effects of that culture which serve to quietly support it rather than subvert it;
- The very structure of the ideal ultimately restricts cultural possibilities rather than expanding them.
This critique has plenty of momentum among other recent continentals, too: it figures in Nancy, Agamben, Ranciére. And it calls into question an enormous number of theological concepts. The kingdom of God, the body of Christ, the promised land, the exodus, the garden of Eden, the fall—all of these function, to one degree or another, as paradigmatic “original” instances of something (the state of perfection, the church, God’s saving work, the prelapsarian situation, etc.).
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Tags: Judith Butler,Method
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It’s been a while since I’ve read Butler in depth (I’m most familiar with Undoing Gender) but I think she also offers us a way to formulate a new anthropological methodology: one that is not based upon compliance with or preservation of some original and precisely defined idea of the human, but instead is open-ended and known only eschatologically.
In other words, the definition of ‘truly human’ or, to speak theologically, ‘imago dei,’ is not something that we can ever know fully, but is something that we must always be learning. any attempt to speak of the truly human will necessarily be a process of categorization and therefore exclusion.
this does not necessarily clash with the existence of a creator or even of an ‘objective’ human nature; rather, it means only that the full extent of human nature is revealed or knowable only through time and that our grasp on human nature will necessarily be limited and imperfect until the eschaton.
it seems as though this would constitute a dramatically different approach to questions of defining ‘human nature.’ the current method, especially on issues of gender/sexuality, seems to be deductive and insists upon the all-encompassing accuracy of the premises (adam/eve; male/female etc) from which all else is deduced. butler offers a more inductive method in which persons thought to be outside the boundaries of the human are allowed to speak and argue on behalf on their own humanity. in other words, the church acknowledges the existence of gays and lesbians (it is mostly silent on the existence of intersexed people) but while it sees their sexuality as given, it thinks their sexuality is a deviant or defective (or shall I say objectively disordered) version of authentically and exclusively heterosexual creation.
this also is a necessary supplement to those who claim that Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of the truly human and that we needn’t concern ourselves with questions of the natural. It is not that they’re wrong, but that, especially on issues of gender and sexuality, Jesus (or at least our ability to interpret his relevance on these issues) is so unhelpful. Typically, one of the following occurs: either the normativity of Jesus is rejected because his “maleness” seems to subjugate the full humanity of women; the maleness of Jesus does in fact seem to give some sort of normative advantage to maleness (I think this is becoming less common); or people say—Jesus shows us that sex and gender really aren’t that important so we shouldn’t make such a fuss. This may be true, but it doesn’t really help us acknowledge the full humanity of gays and lesbians or intersexed people etc etc.
for example, the Vatican refers to the possible inclusion of lesbian rights under the category of human rights to be “anti-human.” it is not just that the lesbians are un-human, but that they attack, harm, and threaten true humanity.
Hey Brian,
I couldn’t find your email on the site, but I wanted to send a link your way. I was recently introduced to your blog by way of Per Crucem ad Lucem’s link to your post on David Bentley Hart and pacifism; it sparked some thoughts and helped them find form, specifically with regard to martyrdom. Anyway, here’s the link if you’re interested, and keep up the good work:
http://resident-theology.blogspot.com/2009/07/to-no-good-end-requesting-coherent.html
oh, also, in addition to a more open and truly inclusive understanding of the human, I think Butler challenges us to interrogate our need to delineate the human from the non-human animal. just as those people who are non-persons of a given age/culture are thought to be unworthy of being grieved for or subject to violence, we seem to similarly deny non-human animals and the entire natural world a value and worth. in other words, we need to re-conceptualize the truly human in a way that acknowledges that we are also always fully animal and continuous with, rather than categorically distinct from non-human animals.
look at the debate over abortion: much of it centers around whether or not fetuses and embryos at various stages of development are ‘persons.’ by this we mean not just do they meet the standards of constitutional or legal personhood, but are they fully human. this question is relevant only because we only extend value and worth to (some) human life—the non-human world is thought to be entirely dispensable.
I don’t want to oversimplify here: I know that attitudes towards abortion have varied tremendously through ages and cultures, but is there not a connection between our denial of worth to non-human mammals or even a pig (seemingly, the only animals worth grieving are the pets of the wealthy) and the legality of abortion?
in other words, if we afforded worth and value and grievability to the non-human world, then the denial of personhood to the fetus would not be a way to legitimate its killing. but because a pig is not a person, like a fetus is not a person, like a lesbian is not a person, they have no right to existence and to flourish as pig, as fetus, as lesbian woman because they are not fully human. the concept of human dignity is itself a way to deny the dignity of the non-human. I am not here equating the dignity of the ape with the human or of the dog to the ape—I merely arguing that human dignity amounts to the denial of the natural world of any dignity.
Katie,
You’ve argued lots of interesting and thought-provoking points (I especially appreciate your point about the silence of magisterial theology and natural law reasoning on the intersexed). I am still mulling over most of them, but I have a couple of responses:
1) On the point of the animal and human continuum, Jean Porter argues pretty well in Natural & Divine Law that medieval theology and philosophy did recognize and value such a continuum.
However, your causal claim about the supposed correlation between abortion and the animal-human continuum strikes me as fallacious. Granted, our cultural attitudes towards animals are not very consistent (your point about the pets of the rich is a good one). But a rational animal who can not only feel pain but can conceive of herself as an agent and can meaningfully comprehend and evaluate the circumstances in which she finds herself certainly demands a different order of respect than animal that can do only some or none of those things. Furthermore, only such a rational agent would seem to demand such respect categorically from other rational agents. If my only possible source of nourishment is a pig, for example, I would be morally justified in killing and eating the pig. Not so with an unwilling rational animal. There could be a moral calculus, in other words, which could allow abortion while recognizing the (limited) value of the fetus.
The real problem with your connection between the two is that abortion advocates rarely even take up the issue of the rights or the value of the life of the fetus. The argument is usually cast in terms of the rights of the mother.
Re: the above – at least, I think. I’ll think on your animal/abortion link a bit more, though it strikes me as unpersuasive.
2) Much more importantly: As for Jesus, I really think we’ve given up way too much if we deny that Christ’s life is at all normative for our understanding of human nature. If Christ was fully human – and it is hard to see how he is salvifically important in any way if he was not; and if Christ was sinless – and it is hard to make sense of the NT or the claims to his divinity if he was not; and if sin, as an offense against God, also is failure to live up to our humanity – and it is hard to make sense of God as creator if it is not; then Christ’s life must illustrate human nature fully lived and fully expressed.
While that does not mean that everyone has to live a life exactly like Christ’s in order to be fully human (e.g., that masculinity is not the only legitimate way of being fully human is admitted even by those who want to draw some sacramental conclusions about JC’s maleness), it does mean that what Christian revelation has to say about anthropology cannot be reduced to a mere eschatological unknown.
spencer—hey, what’s up. thanks for your response.
after reading your response, I realized that I need to re-state some things that I did a poor job of stating the first time.
To clarify on the animal rights abortion thing. I did not mean to argue for some sort of unconditional prohibition on the killing of animals for food. I was instead trying to contrast the way that animals are treated in industrial agriculture (stuffed in cages from which they are never allowed to leave etc etc aka deprived of a life that is fitting for a pig) and a system in which a pig (or cow or chicken) gets to live as a pig or cow of chicken ought to and then is killed in an humane way. the former is possible only because we think that because pigs are not human then their flourishing is unimportant—in other words, only humans have the right to the flourishing that is appropriate to them.
I’m going to ask you to clarify the following: “I would be morally justified in killing and eating the pig. Not so with an unwilling rational animal. There could be a moral calculus, in other words, which could allow abortion while recognizing the (limited) value of the fetus.” It seems like you are arguing two different things here—also, it seems like the irrationality of the fetus, its seeming occupation of the category of non-person (and the fact that it is growing inside someone) is precisely why we judge its killing different from the killing of a 5 year old child.
and i think your point about abortion rarely being cast in terms of the rights of the fetus actually supports my argument: the rights of industrially-slaughtered chickens deprived of the conditions of chicken-flourishing center more on the right of people to consume unlimited amounts of chicken or of chicken farmers to maximize their profits by any means necessary. this happens in part because, as non-persons, we do not see chickens as having the right to chicken-flourishing.
and I actually totally agree with you that Christ IS revelatory of what it means to be fully human. I should have been more precise in saying that in adjudicating issues of gender and sexuality, the historical person of Jesus Christ is not helpful. By this I just mean that not everyone is called to exhibit the same sex or gender as Christ. One can be fully human and have a different sex or gender than Christ.
And saying that the truly human can be fully known only eschatalogically is not the same as saying it is an eschatological unknown.
1) Have you seen this: http://itself.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/butler-and-anselm/
2) What does the designation future achieve? Is origin/future two modes of ideals? Or is the distinction stronger or placed elsewhere?
Butler does have a strong critique of a theological temporality, but it doesn’t seem like you are using future in that sense.
I am just interested to share some ideas about my mis/understanding of Butler.
First of all we should not read Butler for definite answers. She is not interested in this kind of academic discourse.
Secondly, she is more concerned to challange our so-called assumptions regarding number of things from gender to politics of war. This attitude of questioning our settled assumptions has a direct link to our understanding of theology. For example, there are number of issues based on our theological assumptions relating to gender. Her critique may be capitalised to sort out limits of that which is originally based on theology and what has been added by our cultural understandings of theology. I mean that theological texts are being read in a particular enviornment and that context then influence our construction of the texts.
Thirdly and most particularly with reference to her book Gender Trouble, one point is often skipped from our attention that this is a critique of two different strands of gender one that is sponsored by feminists and the other that is so-called cultural-theological and we may term it as traditional point of view. In this exercise what she highlights that there are limits to both of these strands. For example, when she raises the point that if gender is solely based on culture as understood by feminists then male may also become a woman, but this does not happen. Therefore what she makes us to comprehand on this basis that in a way both feminists and traditionalists are relying on same binary sexual divisions. The other aspect of this issue is that there ought to be some limits to construct sexual divisions into wholly different categories of gender as done by traditionalists. Although, once again, emphasising on that there is no clear cut answer, but it has a definitive indication that we should resort to some sort of denovo relationship which takes in to account the biological fact of difference of sex on the one hand and our annexing of gender divisions to culture on the other hand.
I am convinced that this partcular insight can be developed to critique our theological categories and assumptions. Most particular in this respect is notion of nature which is sponsored by religion to fortify binary division of sex. This complicity of nature with religion ought to be targeted on the basis of Butler`s incisive insight. Although this construction may be beneficial to some extent but this has its own limitions. We may be able to disassociate this complicity, but then we will be confronted with an issue that if religion is not shaping (gender) identities then what else should be regarded to do this job.
So again wherefrom I started this comment that definite answer is itself a source of problem. Analysis and critque may be carried out, but this will then lead to another unresolved set of questions and we will be left with no option except that which is often excercised by Butler and that is to raise questions and disturb already settled assumptions and then leave room for new assumptions to settle down before they could be subjected to academic assualt.