This classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the genesis and trajectory of the desiring subject from Hegel's formulation in "Phenomenology of Spirit" to its appropriation by Koj?ve, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault. Judith Butler plots the French reception of Hegel and the successive challenges waged against his metaphysics and view of the subject, all while revealing ambiguities within his position. The result is a sophisticated reconsideration of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern French thought, and her study remains a provocative and timely intervention in contemporary debates over the unconscious, the powers of subjection, and the subject.
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist and feminist philosopher who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy and ethics. They are currently a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.
Butler received their Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s they held several teaching and research appointments, and were involved in "post-structuralist" efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism.
Their research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, and mourning and war. Their most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy and exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence.
This is a really interesting and well written journey using the theme of Desire to travel from Hegel to Foucault, by way of many of France's most important philosophers and thinkers. It was a journey alternating through clear skies and foggy valleys for me, as some sections would hit spot on and others felt too over my head to truly feel I was understanding properly. Worthwhile and recommended overall though! Fascinating to read how different thinkers took the concept of Desire and warped or adjusted it to their own thinking and systems.
a less cited work from Butler's corpus, which traces many of the now (in)famous poststructuralist visionaries (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, etc.) with the eyes of an emerging feminist. as her PhD dissertation, this text demonstrated the rigor of a thinker not only at ease with the continental heavyweights (with an obvious focus on Hegel and the well-known secondary works of Kojeve and Hyppolite), but eager to turn age-old notions on their head. tearing into the motif of "Desire" in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, she immediately proposes that this existential and creative impulse (something akin to Nietzsche's will to power) not be taken as some transcendental essence. rather, we must situate this Desire as a contingent, multivalent force. or at the very least, interrogate the very desires that underpin such essentialist claims. it is a thorough tour de force that greatly assisted in my education on the history of the continental tradition. highly recommend to any and all with a sense that there is still room for Hegelian thinking in current discourse.
one particularly beautiful passage (which, now that I'm returning to it, reminds me quite a bit of Zizek's notion of parallax): "The deceptive pursuit of the Absolute is not a vain 'running around in circles,' but a progressive cycle which reveals every deception as permitting some grander act of synthesis, an insight into yet more regions of interrelated reality. The substance that is known, and which the subject is, is thus an all-encompassing web of interrelations, the dynamism of life itself, and, consequently, the principle that all specific determinations are not what they appear to be." (22-23)
Revised from Judy B's 1984 Yale philosophy dissertation. It's interesting to see the intellectual context that allowed Butler to think Gender Trouble, published the following year, and you can see some of the germs of those ideas popping up briefly here in unexpected places. Also, this convinced me that I absolutely needed to read Hegel.
The book is, of course, dense and slow-going, perhaps even more than Butler's later work, but definitely recommended for theory nerds. Especially worth taking a look at are the overview in C.1 of Hegel's view of the subject in Phenomenology of the Spirit and the C.4 discussion of Hegel's anti/influence on theorists who we would more likely label as precursors to queer theory: Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, and Kristeva.
Such an entertaining piece of work! The center point is Hegel of course,but you get all the great names like Hyppolite,Sartre, Kojeve,Lacan,Derrida,Deleuze and Foucault. Just imagine reading about how all these great french thinkers agree and disagree with each other only to come back to Hegel again and again. Or imagine reading a book about ‘desire’ where every thinker is desiring quite the same thing, but in a different way. All in all, i think this is best book you can get to understand the post-hegelian time in France.
I think I want to write something substantive on Butler, and want to do my homework; I've never read her stuff before Gender Trouble (except for that curious early piece on sadomasochism . . . )
This book is an investigation of the first four chapters in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and evaluates the response to this material in the work of a number of French writers: Kojave, Sartre, Laclan, Deleuze, Foucault. There is indirect reference also to Nietzsche and Husserl in particular. It is based on Butler’s PhD dissertation so it benefits, I suspect, from the restraining discipline of a supervisor and it turns out to be reasonably compact, concise and well structured, with a clear and interesting theme; anyone who has seriously read a few of the writers listed will find Butler’s discussion pleasingly accessible by comparison.
But a book about Hegel is never likely to be plain sailing and Butler’s inimitable style is always bubbling on the surface. For example, it’s not immediately obvious what function is served by the term metaphysical in this pretty opaque sentence: “The conditions that give rise to desire, the metaphysics of internal relations, are at the same time what desire seeks to articulate, render explicit, so that desire is a tacit pursuit of metaphysical knowledge, the human way that such knowledge “speaks.”” Is this not saying something like: The metaphysics of internal relations give rise to a tacit pursuit of metaphysical knowledge?
Butler’s starts by giving her own understanding of Hegel’s Phenomenology. In subsequent chapters, it is necessary to be aware that she is describing and commenting upon the views of other interpreters of Hegel, which of course is the purpose of this book, so one has to be cautious to distinguish the different voices at any point in the book. All the same, one has the clear impression that these are Butler’s influences and that on those matters where she challenges their writing, it is not to reject it out of hand, but more likely because she wants to borrow and work with the same ideas. Certainly, we will find variants of the same ideas popping up in her later writings, so it is no bad thing to appreciate where she first worked with them and how she justifies her own versions of these ideas.
I have to say that I don’t share her understanding of what Hegel says in his Phenomenology. I am no authority and it is much easier for her to make an assertion than for me to refute it but I can at least make the remark. As an example, it seems to me that Butler wants to impose onto Hegel a commitment to the central importance of language that I absolutely did not pick up; she does not support it with direct quotations and I suspect – some might say wildly – that this serves an agenda that has to do with the so called “linguistic turn” in postmodernism. For example, she writes.
“Significantly, Hegel relies on the rhetorical meanings of linguistic explanation in effecting the transition between consciousness and self-consciousness. Inasmuch as self-consciousness is characterized by reflexivity, i.e., the capacity to relate to itself, this is conditioned by the power of articulation. Moreover, it is not that articulation offers forth a “content” which is then reflected upon by a consciousness doggedly watching from an ontological elsewhere, but consciousness reveals itself as an articulated phenomenon, that which only becomes itself as articulation.” [p68]
Butler sets out her strategy for reading Phenomenology early on:
“As the narrative progresses beyond the “this” and the “that,” the various deceptions of immediate truth, we realize slowly that this subject will not arrive all at once, but will offer choice morsels of himself, gestures, shadows, garments strewn along the way, and that this “waiting for the subject,” much like attending Godot, is the comic, even burlesque, dimension of Hegel’s Phenomenology. Moreover, we discover that simply waiting is not what is expected of us, for this narrative does not progress rationally unless we participate in thinking through the logical necessity of every transition. The narrative purports to develop inexorably, so we must test the necessity of its every move. Although Hegel’s Bildungsroman does not address his reader directly, as does Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, the narrative strategy of the Phenomenology is to implicate the reader indirectly and systematically.” [p54] “We do not merely witness the journey of some other philosophical agent, but we ourselves are invited on stage to perform the crucial scene changes. At the close of the Phenomenology, the philosopher is no longer “Other” to ourselves, for that distinction would announce an “outside” to that ostensibly all-inclusive unity. Indeed, we recognize ourselves as the subjects we have been waiting for inasmuch as we gradually constitute the perspective by which we recognize our history, our mode of becoming, through the Phenomenology itself. [p56]
Later, in her discussion of Kojave, Butler writes: “Taking seriously Hegel’s claim that the object of philosophical analysis is itself partially constituted by the analysis itself, Kojève analyzes Hegel not as an historical figure with a wholly independent existence but, rather, as a partner in a hermeneutical encounter in which both parties are transformed from their original positions. Hegel’s text is not a wholly independent system of meanings to which Kojève’s commentary endeavors to be faithful. Hegel’s text is itself transformed by the particular historical interpretations it endures; indeed, the commentaries are extensions of the text, they are the text in its modern life.” [p108]… “Kojève’s peculiarly modern appropriation of Hegel’s doctrine of desire occasions the questions of what in Hegel survives into the twentieth century and what is lost. [p108]
Now these passages do refer to Kojave’s approach but with approval; Butler shares with Kojave the understanding that the outdated writings of Hegel are available to be revised and updated by a new generation, and she recognises the various French writers in this book as the people qualified to carry this out, with herself as their aspiring heir.
Butler’s book is interesting in the way it traces the migration of themes and ideas from one writer to the next, showing how they each find a way to articulate their own innovations in what has become a tradition. She does not, however, establish what it is about Hegel’s Phenomenology that draws them to use this as their foundation, while at the same time radically rejecting the theories which are the subject of Hegel’s masterpiece. Butler described his Phenomenology as though in some way the language was more important to her than the content.
“Like a line of poetry that stops us and forces us to consider that the way in which it is said is essential to what it is saying, Hegel’s sentences rhetorically call attention to themselves.” [p52]
I take the view that Hegel was important to the history of ideas in a way that his literary style was not. Hegel addressed questions of continuing importance and used the best resources available to him at the time – which was 1806 in a European continent reeling from the French Revolution and Napoleonic conquests, after two centuries of Enlightenment thinking. His problems included questions of epistemology – how can we know? – and also ontology – what is real? On the basis of Butler’s account, despite its value as a commentary on the writers included, the impression gained can only be that we can make it up as we go along, using Hegel’s obscure writings as a prompt for a creative writing course. I think Hegel was a lot better than that and I disagree with Butler’s whole approach. I don’t think she understood him and I suspect she did not read much beyond Chapter four.
But then, As Emily Dickenson said, I’m nobody, who are you?
Judith Butler is a very smart individual. They are adept at navigating the complexities of desire and subjectivity. Doesn’t try too hard to save Hegel from post-structuralism and I appreciate that. Does save room for his thought in how it might relate to a dialectic desire. The body (and consciousness) does indeed seem destined to negate itself, and it was determinate negation which made Hegel so powerful.
Lucid, creative, practical, poetic - I’m in awe of Butler. Haven’t finished the entirety of the book but it’ll be useful to dip in and out of re desire and figuring out post-Hegelian dialectics on the philosophies of desire.
Butler is spot on in giving the subject of desire a narrative (via Hegel through Foucault and Deleuze by way of Sartre). This tragi-comic figure (the subject) can only be pitied in her doggedness.
Judith Butler’s 'Subjects of Desire' is like a philosophical detective story where everyone is trying to escape Hegel, only to find him lurking around the next corner. Whether it’s Kojève turning 'Phenomenology of Spirit' into a grand historical drama, Sartre turning desire into existential torment, or Deleuze trying to set desire free from negativity, Butler’s book brilliantly maps out how twentieth-century French thought wrestled with Hegel — and often lost.
The book kicks off with Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, which Butler shows to be the foundation of Kojève’s famous claim that “desire is desire for recognition” (p. 63). Kojève treats history as a long, dramatic struggle for this recognition, where humans only truly exist when their desires are acknowledged by others. Sartre picks up on this idea but gives it a tragic twist: desire, for him, is doomed to failure, always chasing a wholeness it can never reach. As Butler puts it, Sartre’s subject is caught in a “useless passion” (p. 121), forever desiring something that will never satisfy it.
Then comes Deleuze, storming in like a rebellious student trying to escape the Hegelian classroom. He insists that desire isn’t about lack — it’s about creation, movement, life! Yet Butler cheekily suggests that even as Deleuze tries to reject Hegel, he ends up mirroring the very dialectic he wants to escape. “Deleuze’s critique of desire as lack is itself conditioned by the very dialectic he seeks to escape” (p. 189). In other words, Hegel strikes again!
And what about Foucault? He wants to free desire from dialectical thinking altogether, offering a history of how power shapes our desires. But, as Butler points out, Foucault’s genealogy still plays with a tension between oppression and resistance — suspiciously close to a Hegelian struggle. Butler’s takeaway? We might think we’re done with Hegel, but we’re actually just reworking his ideas in new disguises.
Subjects of Desire is both an intellectual adventure and a philosophical trapdoor — just when you think you’re leaving Hegel behind, Butler shows you how deep his influence really runs. If you love philosophy, or just enjoy watching great thinkers fail to break free from a ghostly German idealist, this book is a must-read.
Didn't read everything from A-Z because their writing is incredibly dense, but this is an amazing piece of work (and their PhD thesis, which immensely raises the bar for the level of contemporary philosophy PhD theses..) Butler investigates up to what extent the Hegelian subject - specifically regarding the question of desire - remains intact in the French wave building onto Hegel, which starts with Kojève, and continues with Sartre, Hyppolite, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze.
Philosophers have tended to either ignore desire, or conceive of it in rationalist ways (Kant, Spinoza), as the idea of an incoherent subjects devoid of a metaphysical home seemingly makes the practice of ethics/morality frustrating.
"Because philosophers cannot obliterate desire, they must formulate strategies to silence or control it; in either case, they must, in spite of themselves, desire to do something about desire" (p.2) <3
Brilliantly readable. I had some reservations going into this because of the stereotyped versions of Butler's prose I'd heard horror stories about, but this is just about as clear a book about Hegel could possibly be without losing any of the dialectical flexibility. Definitely recommend to anyone who wants to know about 20th century continental philosophy outside of the phenomenonological->postmodernist lineage, and also interesting to see Butler (who definitely fits within the aforementioned milieu) demonstrate such effortless knowledge thereof.
Catherine Malabou nos llama a abandonar la postura crítica hacia la realidad como el horizonte definitivo de nuestro pensamiento, sea cual sea el nombre bajo el que aparece, desde la «crítica crítica» de los jóvenes hegelianos, hasta la teoría crítica del siglo XX.
Necessary, but not Butler at her full-Butler; more than usual, it takes her a long time to get to her own claims or additions to the plethora of thinkers(') she summarizes. It's seems more of an impressive showing of her reading of Hegel (namely), Lacan, and Derrida-- but it's mostly interesting to see her so attached to Sartre before she transitions, beyond return for the rest of her career, to post structure and psychoanalysis.
Decent primer on the 20th Century French reception of Hegel, beginning with Kojeve's influential "end of history" reading of the Phenomenology, to Sartre, Lacan, and the big poststructuralists, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze.
Dice Butler que «Desear el mundo y conocer su significado y estructura parecen tareas en conflicto. [...] En otras palabras, la inmediatez del deseo resulta ya mediada: en el momento de desear somos más inteligentes de lo que creemos ser».