Caleb Parsons
Crucial to understanding the political philosophies posited by Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou is a recognition of the relationally and performativity of identity. The human subject becomes manifest through an act of differing, which takes place persistently throughout the subjects existence. Butler and Athanasiou point out neoliberal individualism as a drastic departure from their political theory. By ignoring the socialization and indebtedness to others, neoliberalism misses the relationality of the creation of the political subject. For Butler and Athanasiou, political subjects never exist in any pure autonomy since we are reliant upon others in order to be created as thinking-speaking subjects. Similar to points brought up by Linda Zerilli in her work Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom, Zerilli emphasizes the necessity for feminists to engage in a more open, flexible form of democracy. Serial makes it clear that people are intrinsically linked to the social groups that seek to define them. Within these social groups, it is impossible for any individual to speak for the perspectives and experiences held by the group. While this is the case, democratic politics is defined by the act of "speaking for" others within a social group. This dependency on each other for political and social recognition leaves the individual vulnerable to misrepresentation and alienation. What Zerilli later advocates is for a political discourse that takes into consideration the impossibility of speaking for "everybody," and direct the discussion around a looser, more reflective process. Butler and Athanasiou make it clear that bodies do not wholly possess themselves; in reality, the "other" is in possession of our bodies.
How much of the thoughts and ideas experienced by the individual subject are theirs, as opposed to manifestations of socialized modes of thought?
This is a really interesting dialogue you pose, especially after discussing paradoxes within Butler and Athanasiou’s work. This paradox of identity, whether one is autonomous or relative, is beyond the body that Butler and Athanasiou discuss. Even though one is disposed physically through their body in terms of the other, there is a separation of self, that each individual has their “own” body, even if they may never own it. As Zerilli concludes in terms of identifying with a group and speaking for a group, perfection and a clean cut don’t exist—we are always vulnerable. The open, flexible form of politics she suggests, could easily be applied to identity. In terms of one’s mental facilities, of course they are influenced by others, but each is their own. It does have to be—and cannot be—all or nothing. There has to be a compromise.
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