Interesting critique

[Alison K Takenaka]

The tension between the feminist ideologies of Nussbaum and Butler works to foreground one of the most provocative questions facing postmodern-leaning thinkers in the academy.  That is, is the cyclical reconsideration of previous notions to be privileged over the political "use value" of notions that will empower women in "real life" contexts?  In its purest sense, postmodern theory says to privilege no notion over another, but the pragmatists among us might then ask if anything can be accomplished if we aren't willing to decide on a "right" tactic at discrete occasions.  Perhaps the tension is generated when Nietzsche and Marx collide.


>>> Susan Ervin-Tripp <ervintrp at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU> 11/22/99 09:27PM >>>
There was an interesting critique of Judith Butler cited
in the New York Times Magazine this week in an interview with
Martha Craven Nussbaum:

It is worth thinking about for women who study gender and language.

.....Earlier this year, [Chicago Philosopher Martha] Nussbaum took
aim at Judith Butler, the radical feminist philosopher who has
attained cultlike status (through dense monographs like "Gender
Trouble") for arguing, among other things, that society is built
on artificial gender norms that can best be undermined with
"subversive" symbolic behavior, like cross-dressing. Appearing
in The New Republic, Nussbaum's 8,600-word essay, "The Professor
of Parody," castigated Butler for proffering a "self-involved"
feminism that encouraged women to disengage from real-world
problems -- like inferior wages or sexual harassment -- and
retreat to abstract theory. "For Butler," she wrote, "the act of
subversion is so riveting, so sexy, that it is a bad dream to
think that the world will actually get better." By abdicating
the fight against injustice in favor of "hip defeatism," Butler,
Nussbaum concluded darkly, "collaborates with evil."

The review received a visceral response within the academy and
beyond. Butler's defenders branded it an ad feminam attack on an
innovative thinker whose reputation was surpassing Nussbaum's
own. "It was a crassly opportunistic act," said Joan Scott, a
historian at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Others welcomed Nussbaum's blow against the hermetic politics of
postmodernism. "The piece was a skillful and long-overdue
shredding," said Katha Pollitt, the feminist writer.

[A]ccording to Nussbaum's withering judgment [Butler was a}
mandarin philosopher who refused to use [her] theories to help
wage the battle for freedom, justice and equality. ...Butler
drew Nussbaum's ire because she claimed to be using philosophy
to address political issues even as she manipulated
poststructuralist theory to sidestep them. "I thought of the
Butler ... reviews as acts of public service," she said. "But a
lot of my impatience with [her] work grew out of my repudiation
of my own aristocratic upbringing. I don't like anything that
sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the
Bloomsbury group or Derrida."

...When I asked why she reacted so strongly to Butler's work,
she furrowed her brow, looked down and spoke with the hushed,
somber tone one might employ in addressing a grave threat to
national security. "Butler is like the Pied Piper leading all
the children away!" she told me. "If all these wonderful people
drop out of politics, then there are that many fewer people left
to fight against evil ."

  NYTimes Magazine Nov 20, 1999
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Susan M. Ervin-Tripp                 tel (510) 841-6803
Psychology Department             FAX (510) 642-5293
University of California            ervintrp at socrates.berkeley.edu 
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