Research On Judith Butler's Thought On Post Subject Literary Criticism

In philosophic discourse,“subject” is by no means a concept with definite meaning.It is in such theoretical context that a close reading of Judith Butler's literary criticism practice and research on her post-subject literary criticism become significant.Using “post” as a prefix for“Butler's subject literary criticism” is to highlight the subject theory underlying her criticism practice.Unlike the either-or attitude between to abort or to defend,Butler builds up her postsubject theory,which on hand breaks up with the rational subject and on the other hand further deepens the theory of disciplined subject to adopt a both-and attitude.In her theory,the subject is neither a transcendental transcendence,nor a puppet of social power,but both of discourse and material,both being passively impacted and being actively created.Abandoning both the rationalism illusion of an almighty modern Subject and the static thinking mode of dualism,Butler reveals how subject occupies its position by performing social,physical and linguistic norms,and at the same time obtains agency to overflow,go beyond,and deviate from the norms whose authority comes from constant citation and repetition.This explains the contradiction in her analysis that while in Passing she sees the deconstruction of the selfsufficient and autonomous rational subject into a differential marginal existence of a symbolic system,self-silence under the gaze of the other,and passive existence with unspokenable trauma suffering from multi-interpellation,she also detects subjects' deviation from norms in the behaviors of not only fictional figures like Antigone,Tommy and Paul but also the projected narrator of Willa Cather.From such literary criticism,it is revealed that Butler's post-subject is not a static one-time solidification,but constant overflowing and bursting to unbounded space of alterity in continuous performing of norms.In the face of the disillusionment of the myth of the self-sufficiency of rational subject,Butler outlines the return of subject but the starting point can only be his/her “subjection” to discourse.In the face of the collapse of the fantasy of the agency of rational subject,Butler depicts the dancing of subjectivity,but the dancers must be under the shackle of discourse.The original assumption of the co-existence of both “subjection” and “dancing” means a new pivot for ethical responsibility and also new interpretation.From Georg Benderman in Kafka's Judgment,Butler sees subject's opaquity and life's vulnerability,which inspires her to found inter-subjective ethics on subject's relationality with the other,and raise the ethical responsibility to acknowledge and respond to the other.Poems from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib abuse photos shed a light on both the social obstacles preventing such responsibility to be fulfilled and hope promising a future of interweaved lives.As her interpretation of the subject's road to liberation,Butler never anchors hope in a place outside power,but always insists on looking for the way out within the domain of power.When terms on emotion are used to define the inter-subjective ethical responsibility,such emotional capability is not taken for granted as a binary relationship only between subjects.On the contrary,the never-absent framework set by power and norm illustrates the forever presence of the Other.Therefore,Butler's discussion of subject's emotional response to the other is also an exploration of a breakthrough at the edge of the frame,and a pursuit of secret to owning such emotional capability to sense and respond to otherness.From her review of Poems from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib abuse photos,Butler reveals not only precariousness,the undeniable and irrevocable stae of being of post-subject,but also precarity,a condition of existence without security.The latter illustrates how some lives are subject to more massive deprivative violence.Within the frmae or beyond the frame is a question of being livable or unlivable.When there are demands to be livable denied by the existing ontological norms and epistemological frameworks about life,it is time to pursue new norms,and new frameworks,which can provide a more cautious view of life.Butler creates the concept of “grievability” to presuppose that very life matters.The emotional experience of grief provides opportunities to negotiate the boundary of the framework of “life”,to realize the “promise of the future” brought by the gap between conceptual norms and the reality,and bring the interweaving of lives.