Excitable Speech

Butler, Judith P. 1997. Excitable speech: a politics of the performative. New York : Routledge

Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability

Austin distinguishes "illocutionary" from "perlocutionary" speech acts that, in saying do what they say, and do it in the moment of that saying; the latter are speech acts that produce certain effects as their consequence; by saying something, a certain effect follows. The illocutionary speech act is itself the deed that it effects; the perlocutionary merely leads to certain effects that are not the same as the speech act itself. (Butler 1997: 3)

Ma ei ole veel Austinit ennast lugenud, kuid siin tundub mulle, et illucutionary ja perlocutionary on seostatavad loomuomase kodeeritusega. Tähendab, perlokutiivne liigutus on instrumentaalne (loomuomane) ehk tegu mis toob endaga kaasa tagajärgi teo käigus, illokutiivne (mitte-loomuomane) aga toob endaga kaasa tagajärgi tänu konventsioonile.

Who speaks when convention speaks? In what time does convention speak? In some sense, it is an inherited set of voices, an echo of others who speak as the "I". (Butler 1997: 25)

Siin on jutt Althusserist, hõikamisest ja rituaalist. Põlvitamine ja huulte liigutamine palves paneb sind uskuma. Tühi žest täitub aja jooksul, kokkuleppelise (rituaalse) žesti kordamine toodab idee (ideation).

...subject's autogenesis... (Butler 1971: 26)

Hea sõnapaar, võib aidata Foucault' enesehoolega.

Indeed, one can be interpellated, put in place, given a place, through silence, through not being addressed, and this becomes painfully clear when we find ourselves preferring the occasion of being derogated to the one of not being addressed at all. (Butler 1997: 27)

Another case of "märgi puudumine on ka märk": väljahõikamine ei pea olema verbal conduct, see võib toimuda ka läbi mitte-väljahõikamise (nt spordimängus valivad kaptenid meeskonnaliikmeid ja viimast last ei vali keegi). Tekitas minus küsimuse, kas väljahõikamine võib olla ka mitteverbaalne nähtus? Kui jah, siis mis see oleks? Kas kellegi suunas vaatamine on sel juhul väljahõikamine? Kas siin on mingi piir? Peaks see silmside olema kindla kestuse, intensiivsuse või korduvusega? Või peaks see olema tahtlik (käe)žest?

...social positionality... (Butler 1997: 33)

Is that even a word?

Interpellation is an act of speech whose "content" is neither true nor false: it does not have description as its primary task. Its purpose is to indicate and establish a subject in subjection, to produce its social contours in space and time. Its reiterative operation has the effect of sedimenting its "positionality" over time. (Butler 1997: 34)

Answer: I guess now it is. Selline kirjeldus väljahõikamisest näib sobivat silmsidemega. Kindlam oleks öelda, et väljahõikamine saaks olla kinemorfiline konstruktsioon, mis peale silmsideme koosneb ka "metasuhtelisest" väljendusest (nt pilk kohtub Teisega ja näole ilmub disgust).

1. Burning Acts, Injurious Speech

...according to his [Austini] view of the illocutionary speech act, the name performs itself, and in the course of that performing becomes a thing done; the pronouncement is the act of speech at the same time that it is the speaking of an act. Of such an act, one cannot reasonably ask for a "referent," since the effect of the act of speech is not to refer beyond itself, but to perform itself, producing a strange enactment of linguistic immanence. (Butler 1997: 44)

Vist ei tasuks Butleri kaudu Austinit "lugeda", aga seni on minu paralleel coherent: kangi tõmbamine või sigareti süütamine ei pruugi viitada millelegi muule, kui iseendale.

2. Sovereign Performatives

Finally, I read the figure of sovereignty as it emerges within the contemporary discourse on the performative in terms of the Foucaultian view that contemporary power is no longer sovereign in character. Does this figure of the sovereign performative compensate for a lost sense of power, and how might that loss become the condition for a revised sense of the performative?
The interest in this figure of the performative follows from a conviction that a similar way of regarding speech as conduct is at work in several political spheres at the same time and for political purposes that are not always reconcilable with one another. Utterance itself is regarded in inflated and highly efficacious ways, no longer as a representation of power or its verbal epiphenomenon, but as the modus vivendi of power itself.
We might regard this overdetermination of the performative as the "linguistification" of the political field (one for which discourse theory is hardly responsible, but which it might be said to "register" in some important ways). (Butler 1997: 74)

lingvistifikatsioon
semiotifikatsioon
nonverbalistifikatsioon

3. Contagious Word: Paranoia and "Homosexuality" in the Military
Paeluv, aga ei andnud tsitaate.

4. Implicit Censorship and Discursive Agency

This paradoxical production of speech by censorship works in implicit and inadvertent ways. Thus, it becomes important to distinguish between explicit and implicit censorship. The latter refers to implicit operations of power that rule out in unspoken ways what will remain unspeakable. In such cases, no explicit regulation is needed in which to articulate this constraint. (Butler 1997: 130)

Implitsiitsed võimuoperatsioonid välistavad kindlaid väljendusi ette ära ja ei nõua välist sekkumist või keelamist.

Clearly, the military's efforts to regulate speech is not paradigmatic of all kinds of censorship. It does, however, introduce at least two "productive" modalities of power that contrast with the conventional view of censorship as juridical power. By "productive" I do not mean positive or beneficial, but rather, a view of power as formative and constitutive, that is, not conceived exclusively as an external exertion of control or as the deprivation of liberties. According to this view, censorship is not merely restrictive and privative, that is, active in depriving subjects of the freedom to express themselves in certain ways, but also formative of subjects and the ligitimate boundaries of speech. This notion of a productive or formative power is not reducible to the tutelary function of the state, that is, the moral instruction of its citizens, but operates to make certain kinds of citizens possible and others impossible. (Butler 1997: 132)

Foucault' võimukontseptsiooni järgi ei ole selline tsensuur mitte ainult piirav ja välistav, vaid loob subjekte ja legitiimseid piire kõnele. Produktiivne võim teeb kindlat tüüpi kodanikud võimalikuks ja teised võimatuks.

To become a subject means to be subjected to a set of implicit and explicit norms that govern the kind of speech that will be legible as the speech of a subject. (Butler 1997: 133)

Veel Foucault'd. Subjektiks saamine tähendab olla allutatud hulgale implitsiitsetele ja eksplitsiitsetele normidele mis valitsevad sellist tüüpi kõnet mis on legible (vastuvõetav?) subjekti kõnena.

Some would argue that no text can be fully freed from the shackles of censorship because every text or expression is in part structured through a process of selection that is determined in part by the decision of an author or speaker and in part by a language that operates according to selective and differential rules that no individual speaker ever made (that may well be collectively forged, but not tracable to a single author, except in specific cases of grammatical revision and coinage). A highly generalized thesis, it appears to apply to any and all language. And though it may well be true and valid, I think that in its generalized form, it does not directly translate into a political consideration of censorship. Indeed, taken in its most generalized form, one normative implication of such a view is the following: because all expression is always already censored to some degree, it makes no sense to try to oppose censorship, for that would be to oppose the conditions of intelligibility (and, thus, to oppose the very terms by which the opposition is articulated).
The view that I am proposing, however, revises this more generalized thesis in the following direction: the conditions of intelligibility are themselves formulated in and by power, and this normative exercise of power is rarely acknowledge as an operation of power at all. Indeed, we may classify it among the most implicit forms of power, one that works precisely through its illegibility: it escapes the terms of legibility that it occasions. That power continues to act in illegible ways is one source of its relative invulnerability.
The one who speaks according to the norms that govern speakability is not necessarily following a rule in a conscious way. One speaks according to a tacit set of norms that are not always explicitly coded as rules. Charles Taylor argues that our understanding of these rules cannot be reduced to having a self-conscious representation of these rules: "it is carried in patterns of appripriate action." A "background understanding ... underlies our ability to grasp directions and follow rules," and this background understanding is not only embodied, but embodies as a shared social sense: one does not follow a rule alone. (Butler 1997: 133-134)

Kõik väljendused on ette ära tsenseeritud ja arusaadavus on võimu poolt formuleeritud. Kõneledes järgitakse mitte-teadlikult alati vastavalt kindlatele normidele mis ei ole eksplitsiitselt kodeeritud reeglitena. Taust-arusaam on kehastunud sotsiaalses mõttes, reegleid ei järgita üksinda.

...entrance into language comes at a price: the norms that govern the inception of the speaking subject differentiate the subject from the unspeakable, that is, produce an unspeakability as the condition of subject formation. (Butler 1997: 135)

The rules that constrain intelligibility of the subject continue to structure the subject throughout his or her life. And this structuring is never fully complete. Acting one
s place in language continues the subject's viability, where the viability is held in place by a thread both produced and defended against, the threat of a certain dissolution of the subject. If the subject speaks impossibly, speaks in a way that cannot be regarded as speech or as the speech of a subject, then that speech is discounted and the viability of the subject called into question. The consequence of such an irruption of the unspeakable may range from a sense that one is "falling apart" to the intervention of the state to secure criminal or psychiatric incarceration. (Butler 1997: 136)

The view of censorship as one in which a centralized or even sovereign power unilaterally represses speech suggests that the subject of speech is burdened by the exteriority of power. The subject is not quite as victimized in the view that asserts that citizens wield the power to deprive each other of the freedom of speech. When that subject, through its derogatory remarks or representations, works to "censor" another subject, that form of censorship is regarded as "silencing" (Langton). In that form, the citizen addressed by such speech is effectively deprived of the power to respond, deauthorized by the derogatory speech act by which that citizen is ostensibly addressed. Silence is the performative effect of a certain kind of speech, where that speech is an address that has its object the deauthorization of the speech of the one to whom the speech act is addressed. It is the subject who now is said to wield such power, and not the state or some other centralized institution, although institutional power is presupposed and invoked by the one who delivers the words that silence. Indeed, the subject is described on the model of state power, and though the locus of power has shifted from the state to the subject, the unilateral action of power remains the same. Power is exerted by a subject on a subject; its exertion culminates in a deprivation of speech. (Butles 1997: 137)

Üks subjekt "vaigistab" teise tänu institutsionaalsele võimule. Siin järgib Butler klassikalist võimu definitsiooni: üks subjekt paneb teise tegema midagi (vaikima) mida ta muidu ei teeks.

Apart form the use of the term in real estate matters to refer to legally barring the redeption of a mortgage for value, "foreclosure" means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "to bar, exclude, shut out completely."
As an action, it appears to presuppose a subject, but that presupposition may be nothing more than a seduction of grammar. Indeed, psychoanalytically considered, foreclosure is not a singular action, but the reiterated effect of a structure. Something is barred, but no subject bars it; the subject emerges as the result of the bar itself. That barring is an action that is not exactly performed on a pregiven subject, but performed in such a way that the subject him/herself is performatively produced as a result of this primary cut. The remainder of what is cut out constitutes the unperformable in all performativity. (Butler 1997: 138)

Viimasest lausest on raske aru saada, kas välistatu on igasuguse performatiivsuse mitte-performatiivsus või hoopis see, mis pärast välistamist üle jääb... Igatahes meenubtab välistamise kaudu subjekti moodustamine Foucault' kultuurimääratlust, mille järgi kultuuriliste väärtuste omandamine nõuab pingutamist, millega näib kaasnevat ka välistamise protseduur. MVS-s on mõeldav, et ühe kultuuri kommunikatsioonisüsteemi omandamine tähendab samaaegselt kõigi teiste välistamist.

The implicit operation of censorship is, by definition, difficult to describe. If it operates within a bodily understanding, as Taylor and Bourdieu suggest, how can we understand the bodily operation of such a linguistic understanding? If censorship is the condition of agency, how do we best understand linguistic agency? In what does the "force" of the performative consist, and how can it be understood as part of politics? Bourdiey argues that the "force" of the performative is the effect of social power, and social power is to be understood through established contexts of authority and their instruments of censorship. Opposed to this social account of performative force, Derrida argues that the breaking of the utterance from prior, established contexts constitutes the "force" of the utterance.
In the introduction I maintained that the speech act is a bodily act, and that the "force" of the performative is never fully separable from bodily force: this constituted the chiasm of the "threat" as a speech act at once bodily and linguistic. Feldman's contribution to speech act theory underscores that speech, precisely because it is a bodily act, is not always "knowing" about what it says. In other words, the bodily effects of speech exeeds the intentions of the speaker, raising the question of the speech act itself as a nexus of bodily and psychic forces. (Butles 1997: 141)

See, et performatiivi jõud ei ole lahutatav kehalisest, sarnaneb väga Argyle'i väitega, et "words have little effect unless backed up by the appearance or reality of power". Ja, et sotsiaalne võim on mõistetav ainult autoriteedi ja tsenseerimisvahenditega suhestatuna, meikib ainult senssi.

Pierre Bourdiey offers one account of how norms become embodied, suggesting that they craft and cultivate the habitus of the body, the cultural style of gesture and bearing. (Butler 1997: 142)

Pierre Bourdieu writes that "modalities of practices ... are powerful and hard to resist precisely because they are silent and insidious, insistent and insinuating. (Butler 1997: 142)

Focusing on the work of Heidegger, Bourdieu argues that Heidegger's language consistently engages strategies that produce the illusion that it has broken with ordinary language. Codes of legitimacy are established precisely through the invocation of non-ordinary words in ways that appear to have a systematic relation to one another. (Butler 1997: 142-143)

See on huvitav tähelepanek. Filosoofi keelekasutus legitimeerib end läbi ebaharilike sõnade mis näivad olevat omavahel süsteemselt suhestatud. Sarnane mõju tekib Lotmani terminite kasutamisel mvs peal, "struktuuriline asümmeetria" kõlab väga tähendusrikkalt, aga tegelikult saab sama nähtust väljendada palju arusaadavamas keeles palju paremini.

For Bordieu, then, the distinction between performatives that work and those that fail has everything to do with the social power of the one who speaks: the one who is invested with legitimate power makes language act; the one who is not invested may recite the same formula, but produce no effects. The former is legitimate, and the latter, and imposter. (Butler 1997: 146)

If iterability is a structural characteristic of every mark, then there is no mark without its own proper iterability; that is, for a mark to be a mark, it must be repeatable, and have that repeatability as a necessary and constitutive feature of itself. (Butler 1997: 149)

Sama saab väita kinemorfiliste konstruktsioonide kohta kui neid käsitleda "mitteverbaalsete märkidena".

That speech is not the same as writing seems clear, not because the body is present in speech in a way that is not in writing, but because the oblique relation of the body to speech is itself performed by the utterance, deflected yet carried by the performance itself. To argue that the body is equally absent in speech and writing is true only to the extent that neither speech nor writing makes the body immediately present. But the way in which the body obliquely appears in speech is, of necessity, different from the way it appears in writing. Although both are bodily acts, it is the mark of the body, as it were, that is read in the written text. Whose body it is can remain permanently unclear. The speech act, however, is performed bodily, and though it does not instate the absolute presence of the body, the simultaneity of the production and delivery of the expression communicates not merely what is said, but the bearing of the body as a rhetorical instrument of expression. This makes plain the incongruous interrelatedness of body and speech to which Felman refers, the excess in speech that must be read along with, and often against, the propositional content of what is said.
Bourdieu offers a theory of bodily knowingness in his notion of the habitus, but he does not relate this discussion of the body to the theory of the performative. The habitus refers to those embodied rituals of everydayness by which a given culture produces and sustains belief in its own "obviousness". In this way, Bourdiey underscores the place of the body, its gestures, its stylistics, its unconscious "knowingness" as the site for the reconstitution of a practical sense without which social reality would not be constituted as such. The practical sense is carried by the body, where the body is not a mere positive datum, but the repository or the site of an incorporated history. (Butler 1997: 152)

Kõnes on keha kohal, tekstis mitte. Tekst on justkui "keha jälg", midagi mida keha on teinud, midagi mis on kehast kaugenenud. Kelle keha kirjutas teksti, võib jääda alatiseks selgusetuks. See bearing of the body võib siin olla mvs.

Interpellations that "hail" a subject into being, that is, social performatives that are ritualized and sedimented through time, are central to the very process of subject-formation as well as the embodied, participatory habitus. To be hailed or addressed by a social interpellation is to be constituted discursively and socially at once. This interpellation need not take on an explicit or offical form in order to be socially efficacious and formative in the formation of the subject. (butler 1997: 153)

But this bodily habitus is generated by the tacit normativity that governs the social game in which the embodied subject acts. In this sense, the body appropriates the rule-like character of the habitus through playing by those rules in the context of a given social field. Its participation in the game is the precondition for a mimesis or, more precisely, a mimetic identification, that acquires the habitus precisely through a practical conformity to its conventions. "The process of acquisition," Bourdieu writes, is "a practical mimesis (or mimeticism) which implies an overall relation of identification and has nothing in common with an imitation that would presuppose a conscious effort to reproduce a gesture, an utterance or an object explicitly constituted as a model." This acquisition is historical to the extent that the "rules of the game" are, quite literally, incorporated, made into a second nature, constituted as a prevailing doxa. Neither the subject nor its body forms a representation of this conventional activity, for the body is itself formed in the hexis of this mimetic and acquisitive activity. The body is, thus, not a purely subjective phenomenon that houses memories of its participation in the conventional games of the social field; its participatory competence is itself dependent on the incorporation of that cultural memory and its knowingness. (Butler 1997: 154)