User:Eleanorg/1.2/RWR/Annotation: Beside Onself: on the Limits of Sexual Autonomy

Annotation:

Butler, J. (2004) 'Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy' in Undoing Gender (London: Routledge).

In this essay, Butler applies her familiar notion of "the constitutive sociality of the self" (p.19) to interpersonal relations. She shows that this sociality is not only a source of oppressive norms, but also the basis for loving relationships. As the essay originated as a lecture for Amnesty on 'Sexual Rights', it closes by reflecting on how these insights should inform political organizing.

The essay opens with a discussion of grief. Its title is apt because grief, Butler says, "delineates the ties we have to others" and "shows us that those ties constitute a sense of self, compose who we are..." (p.18). Grief "contains within it the possibility of apprehending the fundamental sociality of embodied life, the ways in which we are from the start, and by virtue of being a bodily being, already given over, beyond ourselves, implicated in lives that are not our own" (p.22). Butler articulates a subject here who is made up of its relations with others; always permeable. Physical embodiment is a key source of this permeability, which renders us available "to the gaze of others but also to touch and to violence" (p.21) - the latter being described as "an exploitation of that primary tie... in which we are, as bodies, outside ourselves, for one another" (p.22).

This observation leads into a discussion of how we are to deal politically with this constant vulnerability to others. With reference to the example of post-9/11 US politics, Butler acknowledges the temptation "to shore up sovereignty and security to minimize or, indeed, forclose this vulnerability" (p.22). She proposes instead, though, the use of grief "as a resource for politics" (p.23) which remains aware of our reliance on one another. This approach is contrasted with liberal campaigns for "autonomy" which necessitate that we "present ourselves as bounded beings, distinct, recognizable, delineated, subjects before the law" (p.20). Critiquing conventional political tactics employed by sexual minorities (amongst others), she asks: "If I am struggling for autonomy, do I not need to be struggling for something else as well, a conception of myself as invariably in community, impressed upon by others[?]" (p.21).

While Butler priviledges physical vulnerability in this essay, the psychological theory from which she draws is equally relevant to emotional, intellectual and cultural identity - always enmeshed in a sociality which brings the possibility for both enrichment and/or annihilation.