In this episode we delve into Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself, an illuminating book from 2005 that examines subject-formation and the relationship between the self, other people, and the normative social order. We reconstruct Butler’s efforts to ground a philosophical ethics with positive claims in the insights of three theoretical traditions that have generally been understood to frustrate moral philosophy: post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Our core focus is the question of whether Butler’s conceptions of the ‘relationality’ and ‘opacity’ of the human self can do the kind of ethical heavy lifting that they claim.
This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available to our subscribers on Patreon:
patreon.com/leftofphilosophy
References:
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
52 | Mike Davis: Historical Materialism and Militant Theory
51 Teaser | What is Utopia? Part III. Hermeneutics and Utopia: From Hans-Georg Gadamer to Ernst Bloch (Part 2)
50 | Hermeneutics and Utopia: From Hans-Georg Gadamer to Ernst Bloch (Part 1)
49 | Coming to Terms with Human Finitude w/ Prof. Martin Hägglund
48 | Gillian Rose: Speculative Thinking and Post-Kantian Sociology with James Callahan
47 | Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle
46 Teaser | What is Dialectics? Part V: Adorno's Negative Dialectics
45 | On Solidarity and Conflict with Nathan DuFord
44 | Karl Kautsky's Cooperative Commonwealth
43 | Transindividuality and Marxism with Jason Read
42 | Going Beyond the Pleasure Principle with Freud
41 | James Boggs and the Problem of Rights under Capitalism
40 Teaser | What is Liberalism? Part I. John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
39 | Lukács: Social Totality and the Commodity Form
38 | Liberal Democracy in Crisis: Carl Schmitt and the Present
37 Teaser | What’s the ‘Structural’ in ‘Structural Injustice’?: Iris Marion Young and Political Philosophy
36 | What is Utopia? Part II. Plato's Republic (with Owen Alldritt)
35 | Moral Luck and Pedagogy (with Aaron Rabinowitz)
34 Teaser | What is Dialectics? Part IV: Dialectic of Enlightenment with Adorno and Horkheimer
33 | (Un)Learning How to Do Politics with Hannah Arendt
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