11/19/2023 0 Comments Judith butler drag![]() ![]() Footnote 2 Subjective or bodily action thereby appears as something of a re-action in which respective norms are reworked or resisted. On the contrary, in assuming the phenomenological idea of the ‘body as situation’ after Simone De Beauvoir, Butler formulates a theory of performativity as a twofold phenomenon: being passively situated and having to actively take on the situation (Butler 1986). This does not mean, however, that she has nothing to say about how individual bodies take on, performatively change, subvert or resist these categories. In the following, I take Butler’s account of performative gender identity as an example of a top-down perspective in that she critically investigates how particular bodies are (forced) to assume an already constituted set of socio-cultural identity categories (e.g. My aim is to integrate top-down perspectives that critically investigate how specific identity categories affect particular bodies, and how they can react to this, with bottom-up perspectives that try to define the necessary role of the body for basic forms of identity in general. The argument will follow that such a constitution of identity or subjectivity provides a specific form of bodily performativity which in turn corresponds to a habitual identity. Therefore, I will assume that identity is developed already at a bodily level and that this takes place via the processes of habit formation. Moreover, this comparison could throw light on pre-linguistic forms of identity formation, and on how they might relate to and even found explicit forms of identification. In this sense, one could not only investigate why some ‘terms’ of bodies matter, while others not, but take the matter of bodies seriously, that is, investigate how specific bodily subjects themselves experience, are affected, enabled or constrained by those norms, why they might desire to preserve them or are motivated to resist them, and to what extent they are able to do so. This means not merely the way they are categorized as either intelligible (matter) or abject (no matter), but how norms through habituation literally become part of what one is or becomes. This could render concrete her rather abstract theory of signification and citation by showing how social norms concretely shape bodies in material and phenomenological terms. Indeed, what I want to suggest here is that it might be fruitful to complement Butler’s account of performativity with a phenomenological account of habit formation. Although Butler herself theorizes performativity merely as a linguistic process of signification or citation through which bodies or subjects are made intelligible, her general idea of performativity (or the materialization of identity) shows many links with the concept of habit formation to be found in the philosophical, and more specifically, phenomenological tradition. Rather, performativity is situated between these dualities: between being acted upon and acting the social and the individual passivity and activity. Performativity amounts neither to a humanist or postmodern voluntarism, nor to a strict (social) determinism, as Butler herself emphasizes. Footnote 1 In this sense, I want to take seriously the idea that identity is not the expression of a prefigured essence or stable core, but indeed dependent on ‘performances’, that is, on what we do. In this paper, I will read Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and of materialization as a theory of identity. In this regard, I will argue for a performative theory of (bodily) habitual identity. The body will therefore be conceived as something which is already skilful and creative, sensitive and vulnerable, and ultimately, as Butler anticipates, responsive to the intertwinement of individual and social aspects of identity formation. Alternatively, this paper will provide a phenomenology of habit formation that re-introduces the body not as thematic materiality, but as lived materiality. What follows intends to draw out the concept of ‘the body’ in Butler’s work, the role of which is surprisingly meagre given her clear favour of language signification in the elaboration of her theory of performativity. The constitution of subjectivity, in other words, requires at the most basic level some kind of bodily performativity. The goal is to argue that identity is developed already at a bodily level and that this takes place via the processes of habit formation. This paper will interpret Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and materialization as a theory of identity, and so put it into dialogue with a phenomenological account of habit formation.
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