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Joseph Antony

Instructor: Dilip K Das

H-1651

Theories of Subject

Final Assignment: Performativity and Modes of Social Existence

The notion of ‘performativity’ is part of a wider movement against Descartes’ cogito that

posits the presence of an essential interiority in all of us. This trope of interiority came to be

known as “representationalism”. Classical representationalism that we see in Descartes is one

issuing directly from his dictum “I think, therefore I am”. This basically means that the

indefatigable evidence of one’s existence is the very fact that one “thinks”. The consequent

corollary to this proposition is the existence of an essential thinking subject. A further

extrapolation of this argument is that the “I” that exists is the representation of the “I” that thinks.

Thus Descartes’ argument is one that assumes an ontological gap between the thinking I and

representation of this interior I—“I am”.

Thus representation, for Descartes, is based on the distinction between the signatum (that

which is to be represented) and signans (that which represents). The two are essentially and

existentially different. Therefore, it could be said that the dictum “I think, therefore I am” is a

self-representation of a self-consciousness. Descartes is certain of the existence of this

consciousness or cogito because the locus of the represented and representation of this

proposition is the same. Further, Descartes is sure that he is composed of a cogito because he

thinks “clearly and distinctly”. And hence, if this true proposition—“I think, therefore I am”—is

derived from the “clear and distinct” perception of it, Descartes concludes, by transitive relation,

that anything that we perceive “clearly and distinctly” has to be true.

As is the case then, there are two components to representation in cartesianism: signans

and the signatum. In practice, there are three steps to this process of representation. First there is

an objective reality (that which is to be represented, hence signatum); second, this objective

reality has to be thought and reflected upon “clearly and distinctly”; third, the final true

proposition that represents this objective reality (signans) in the cogito of the individual.

Underlying principle of this mode of representation, however, is a ‘privileging of a

presence’. It is based on metaphysics of presence that derives its truths and observations from

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onto-theology. Metaphysics of presence assumes meaning as coming from a self-knowing, self-

propelling transcendental being. This being is not a physical or visible material existence; it’s

invisible and occult just as in Descartes’ representationalism, the cogito—an essential interiority

—is the source or the origin of all truth. The penultimate ‘presence’, however, is that of God,

who is the “guarantor of reason”—the ‘reason’ with which one perceives “clearly and distinctly”

an objective reality and represents it in his cogito. A day to day example of this is the ‘presence

of the author’ in the text. The text is assumed as originating from the intentionality of the author.

A refutation of this privileging of the presence, and hence representationalism, is

Saussure’s theory of Language or Semiology. Language, for Saussure, is a system of signs which

includes two components: signifier and signified. Signified is a mental concept and signifier is a

word that acts as a marker for this mental concept i.e., the word denotes the mental concept.

Saussure argues that the relationship between this signifier and signified is entirely arbitrary. For

example, the word ‘cow’, for what it’s worth, could represent a cat, provided a consensus about

the same is achieved among all the social actors who speak a particular language. As we can see,

this is an attack on the Cartesian model of representation that purports that there is a pre-existing

objective reality that precedes the representation—in which case, Saussure argues, that a mental

concept should be denoted by the same word in all the languages. The arbitrary nature of the sign

is the most decisive break away from the metaphysical tradition. If the sign—composed of the

signifier and the signified—is arbitrary there is no logical or derivative connection between

signans and signatum.

Saussure, in a further broadside against representationalism, argues that the signifier and

signified come into being at the same time through the structures of language. They inhabit the

same plane like two sides of a paper. This notion is then a clear refutation of the ontological gap

in Cartesianism. For Saussure, thought is not an autonomous entity. It is constituted in language

and without language all ideas are “a vague, uncharted nebula”.

Another aspect of Saussurean linguistics is the distinction between langue(language) and

parole(speaking). Langue is the ensemble of rules and conventions that pre-exist the individual.

Parole, however, is the external use of langue. For Saussure, this is the individual willful act of

speaking. Thus by privileging langue over parole Saussure like those before him is harking back

to metaphysical tradition that presupposed a willful interiority. Language then is subject-less; it

is not a function of the subject.

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Emile Benveniste, focusing on parole, then brought to the fore the concept of a subject

in Language. For Saussure parole was external to language but for Benveniste language only

exists as far as it does in parole and thus both are interdependent. According to Benveniste, the

subject comes alive in language through speaking. It’s through language that men constitute

themselves. “Ego is he who says ego”.

To demonstrate this Benveniste draws our attention to the nature of different pronouns of

person, e.g., the personal pronoun “I”. The pronoun “I” doesn’t refer to any lexical entity. It

doesn’t refer to any one individual and as such there is no concept of an “I” in language, but if it

did, it’d create anarchy. What we see here then is the fact that “I” is an empty non-referential

sign. These non-referential empty signs are appropriated by individuals during an act of speech.

The subject thus comes alive only during an instance of speech or discourse. Personal pronouns

such as “I” are value-less except in a specific act of speech. Thus subjectivity is only the capacity

of the speaker to posit himself as a “subject”. This intermittent and conditional nature of the

subject that comes into being only in an act of discourse goes against the Cartesian

understanding of the self which presumes a subject prior to the act of speech and language.

Language for Descartes is only a “sensible” instrument of communication emerging out of a pre-

existing intellect.

Further personal pronouns can only be expressed in contrast. The utterance “I” pre-

supposes a “you”, meaning it’s only in conversation with another person (“you”) that I comes

into existence. The constitution of person in this way is the foundation of inter-subjective

communication. These pronouns that express person is thus indispensible to language and is

found in every language.

The most important point Benveniste makes is the temporal organization of these

language structures. Every language distinguishes time using different tenses and all of these

tenses are in reference to the present—that is, “the instance of discourse”. Hence, you have

pronominal forms that do not refer to any objective positions in time, but only the instance of

discourse which contain them. Another implication of the theory of subjectivity propounded by

Benveniste is the relation between an interior I and the exteriority of I in the instance of

discourse. As it follows, I is not a unified whole; it is fundamentally split and most importantly,

this exteriority experienced here is spacial.

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Jacques Lacan was mainly concerned with this spacial organization of the ego. He argued

that there is no psychic unity between I who speaks and I who is spoken about. Subject formation

for Lacan depended on this fundamental split and the subsequent attempt to resolve the split. The

formation of ego in Lacan develops in several stages. At first, there is the mirror stage, which

starts when one is 6 months old. Prior to this, the human baby has no concept of itself. This stage

is characterized by the “plenitude” or the organic sufficiency that the baby experiences in itself.

After 6 months, even though it still lacks co-ordination of motility, its visual system is advanced.

According to Lacan, the baby only starts to form an image of his self during ‘the mirror stage’

when he sees his specular image in a mirror. The mirror stage thus describes the formation of an

ego or a ‘self’ through identification. This is because the baby has no working motor functions. It

will still be in its nascent formative stages. As such, the baby will feel no epidermal boundary

which is crucial to the formation of a ‘my body’ and ‘other bodies’. Seeing his own image, the

baby is filled with a feeling of ecstasy and alienation. At first, the baby is jubilant at identifying

his own image in the mirror, but at the same time, it also feels alienated from its self-image.

Lacan calls this estrangement from one’s own self-image as ‘misrecognition’. The baby sees a

whole in the specular image which it feels is lacking in its own fragmented body, owing to his

bodily incapacities. This sense of contrast that the baby feels because of its own lack of co-

ordination is first experienced as a rivalry with the specular image, as it threatens the baby with

the prospect of fragmentation. This leads to an aggressive tension between the baby and the

mirror image. This ‘lack’ that is now instituted in the baby also leads to a ‘desire’. It’s a desire to

acquire the wholeness in the mirror image. The specular image or the imago, for the baby, thus

becomes an “Ideal I” which it aspires to in itself. To resolve all these tensions, the baby assumes

the specular image by imaginary identification. This is a jubilant moment for the baby as it

evokes an imaginary mastery over its body, even though the ego is fundamentally split. The child

after fixing on itself this specular image will then try to resolve this lack of unity in him for the

rest of his life.

Lacan through his ‘mirror stage’ is thus attacking the notion of an autonomous innate

ego. According to him, dialectical relationship between recognition and misrecognition is what

brings forth the ego in a person.

The mirror stage then makes way for the child’s entry into the symbolic order, i.e., world

of language. On entering this world of language and narrative, the child accepts the rules and

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dictates of society and is able to identity with others. This is closely linked to the Oedipal

Complex in which the child identifies with his father. "It is in the name of the father that we must

recognize the support of the symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified

his person with the figure of the law". Through the recognition of the father, the child now enters

into a community of others and thus becomes “social”, as opposed to the identification with the

specular image in the mirror stage which was “pre-social”. The Oedipal Complex stage also

marks the institution of an unconscious in the child. Lacan here is arguing against the notion of

an unconscious that is inherent in us as a primordial entity. He further goes on to equate the

symbolic unconscious to language and claims the unconscious as structured like language.

Louis Althusser develops the work of Lacan to understand how “ideology” functions in

society. Althusser draws on the structuralist arguments of Lacan, namely the dialectic of

recognition and misrecognition (misrecognition function) to argue how Ideology manufactures

subjects. In doing this, Althusser is going against the earlier Marxist understanding of Ideology

as “false consciousness”. The false consciousness thesis posits that ideology misrepresented

reality, creating an illusion, which finally ensured that the subject accepted his subjugation. As

can be seen, the false consciousness theory pre-supposes a subject prior to ideology and is thus

issuing from the tradition of metaphysics of presence.

Ideology, according to Althusser, however, doesn’t misrepresent reality or falsify reality;

it only (mis-)represents the imaginary relationship between the subject and its conditions of

existence. Althusser here is drawing from his understanding of the imaginary order in Lacan. Just

as the baby assumes the specular image in the mirror, “men represent to themselves” in ideology

their imaginary relationship to their conditions of existence. Ideology is also all-pervasive so

much so that nothing appears more natural a fact than this ideological self-construction.

The main function of Ideology is to produce concrete individuals as subjects. Individuals

are interpellated into being concrete subjects through “rituals of ideological recognition”. For

example when a policeman calls out “hey, you there!” on the streets, you instinctively turn your

head and look. The fact that you recognize this ideological interaction is proof of your existence

in ideology. Although this interpellation is in the temporal form, Althusser makes it clear that

this interpellation can happen even before one is born. “Before its birth, the child is therefore

always-already a subject, appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological

configuration in which it is 'expected' once it has been conceived". For example engendering

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starts even before birth. Even before we are born a special role is created for us in society which

we are supposed to fill and in the case of engendering, it would be the gender roles assigned to

both male and female.

The most important point we have to keep in mind about interpellation is that it works

best when it is subtle; when it seems like a natural fact for the individual who is interpellated. It’s

in effect coaxing an individual to accept a role, which the individual will do willingly. This is

what Althusser means when he says, “we are free to accept our subjection”. We have freedom

but only insofar as to subject ourselves to ideology. The freedom that one experiences (in the

only choice that one is allowed—subjection) is, however, a result of the ideological

misrecognition function; that is, it’s an imaginary relation.

At this point, Althusser does initiate a break from the structuralist tradition albeit not so

much, when he says ideology has a material existence. Ideology manifests itself only when it is

inserted into practice. Further, it’s only through this practice that ideology and subjects come into

being. For example, Pascal's formula for belief: "'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you

will believe'". It is not necessary that one believes in God to pray. Praying is a practice. The

practice of prayer creates the believer and the God. Hence, the ideology and its subject mutually

reinforce each other through practice. Thus ideology is by the subject and for the subject.

A crucial break from the structuralist tradition was introduced here after the idea of

subjectivity as social practice. Later theorists like Foucault and Butler would develop on these

ideas to postulate a new theory of subjectivity that will be called “performativity”. The first shift

from structuralist understanding of subjectivity owes to the notion that structure is

omnihistorical. Structuralist understanding of subject was always based on a suppression of the

diachronic. In Saussure we see this in the distinction between langue and parole. While parole is

willful and individual, Langue is pre-existing and is not affected by the “will of the

depositories”. The language structure for Saussure is thus a static, unchanging, omnihistorical

entity. In Benveniste, synchronicity is privileged when I in inter-subjective communication has

no value except in that instance of discourse. Althusser describes ideology in general as having

no history; in other words, ideology is eternal. As it follows then, one is always already a subject,

a clear suppression of the diachronic. Closely related to this problematic was the question of

freedom or agency of the subject under the structures. Challenging the liberal humanist tradition,

the structuralists defined the subject as a product of structures and hence understood as an effect

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rather than a cause. The post-structuralist theories that emerged later challenged the conception

of a subject that was exhaustively determined by a unitary structure existing outside. Thus post-

structuralists refute both notions of subjectivity: subjectivity as internally generated or externally

imposed.

In Michel Foucault, subject formation is inextricably linked to the concept of power

relations. Subject forms at the intersection of individualizing and totalizing forms of power.

Totalizing forms of power are different forms of domination and exploitation. The

individualizing form of power, on the other hand, is linked with the production of truth about the

individual himself. It’s different from totalizing forms of power in that it ties the individual down

to his own identity. In short, it’s what submits him to a particular kind of subjectivity. This is a

chief characteristic of the modern western state that is modeled on an old political technique

called “pastoral power”. Pastoral power, Foucault explains, is not something that simply

commands as opposed to royal power or juridical power. It acts on the individual’s conscience

and seeks to direct it. This individualizing form of power doesn’t demand renunciation of

freedom or transfer of rights to a delegated few. Instead it is inscribed under certain “fields of

possibilities” made available under certain structures. It involves a relationship of power that

doesn’t act directly or immediately on others; instead it acts on their actions. This is different

from a relationship of violence where any resistance is quelled forcefully by acts of violence. “It

operates on a field of possibilities in which the behavior of active subjects is able to inscribe

itself”. Thus it is a “conduct of conducts”, a “government” of this open field of possibilities—

meaning, to structure and manage this field of possibilities. Government here, thus, refers to the

way in which the actions of individuals are directed. However, such a conception of subject

formation implies there is an element of freedom involved. The structure can only act on the

actions of the active subject and thereby doesn’t determine it fully. Therefore, contained in the

power structure itself is the possibility of struggle against the subjectivity imposed by the

structure. If such a struggle against the structure is possible, the structure cannot be eternal. It’s

historical.

Building on Foucault’s critique of structuralism, Judith Bulter mounted a gender

performativity theory about the constitution of a gendered subject. Butler argues that gender is

not an attribute of the individual, but a doing (performative). The subject for Butler comes into

being through bodily acts and practices and thus is an embodied subjectivity. One does one’s

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body and one’s doing will be different from one’s contemporaries. As can be seen, the meaning

of performative changes from ‘saying something’ in Benveniste to ‘doing something’ in Butler.

For Butler, gender is not some core essence that is manifested then in social life but is

an iterated doing under certain norms with punitive consequences. That is, the gendered being is

instituted through the stylization of the body. Stylization is the “mundane way in which bodily

gestures, movements and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding

gendered self”. It’s important here to keep in mind that the repetition of these acts under the

structural norms creates and maintains the subject while at the same time reproducing the

structural norms themselves. Thus performativity is indispensible to the reproduction of

structural norms. Further, these stylized acts are temporal processes and hence “tenuously

constituted in time”. However, bodies are not ahistorical entities. Body is the legacy of

sedimented stylized acts mediated over time by historical convention.

Butler then problematizes the social constructivist model of gender, which thinks of

gender as a cultural inscription on a naturally sexed body. To assume the body as naturally sexed

and a passive receptor of cultural norms, Butler argues, is to deny the historicity of the sexual

difference itself. It’s an institution of a reciprocal opposition: sex and gender; nature and culture.

The category sex, in fact, is governed by a regulatory framework which gives its materiality,

forcibly materialized through time. According to butler, sex and gender cannot be distinguished

from each other. Once a subject is constituted, the materiality of the body cannot be understood

apart from the materialization of the regulatory norm. The materialization of these norms,

however, can only take place in certain bodies that are qualified in the domain of cultural

intelligibility. The hijda who doesn’t belong to the male/female binary of the heterosexual norm

will be excluded from this domain of cultural intelligibility; Hijda will thus come under the

domain of abnormal ‘abject’ as opposed to the normal ‘subject’.

Finally gender identities are instituted through the repetition of certain acts under certain

discursive practices which in themselves are internally discontinuous, meaning the relationship

between these acts are arbitrary. Thus gendered identity is not a seamless identity and in it is the

possibility of gender transformation, such as in the possibility of reiteration of a different set of

acts which will break or subvert the repetition of acts under the previous norm. Thus provided in

the structure itself—as an unintended consequence—is the possibility of intransigence, which

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politically translated is the opportunity to mount a political organization against the same

structure.

Towards the end of his life, Michel Foucault was mainly concerned with this aspect of

human freedom. He explores these conditions of agency or freedom under moral structures in his

book The Use of Pleasures. According to Foucault, there were two levels to a moral structure.

First, there was the set of values and rules of action that was given to the individual by various

perspective agencies which will constitute the “moral code”. Second there was behavior of the

individuals in relation to these rules recommended to them which Foucault called the “morality

of behaviours”. The latter implies the degree to which individuals adhere to rule or transgress it;

that is, morality of behaviour is the conduct measured against the rule. This involves how

individuals “conduct themselves”, making them “ethical subjects” in reference to the code. For

example, for a married couple, there are many ways to be faithful, observe conjugal fidelity.

Conjugal fidelity can be observed as part of controlling your “desires”; alternatively, it may be

reciprocity of feelings between the partners. Thus there are different ways in which the

individual can establish himself in relation to the code and this Foucault called the different

“modes of subjection”. According to Foucault, there are two elements to morality. First, an

individual’s action has to be in integration with a “pattern of conduct”. This conduct even as it

ties an individual to the actions of others, however, is also what encourages him to be an ethical

subject. Second, morality is not just an action or series of actions that conform to a particular

rule, it involves a relationship with self—that which drives the self-formation of an ethical

subject. In short, “morality is indissocialble from … forms of self-activity”. According to

Foucault, every morality has these two elements: codes of behaviour and forms of subjectivation

by which the individual becomes an ethical subject. Some moralities place more importance to

the different codes of morality. They are called code-oriented moralities, e.g., Christian morality

which has a quasi-juridical form with well-defined strictures and rules of conduct. That morality

which gives more importance to the self-formation of the ethical subject is called ‘ethics-oriented

morality, e.g., Greco-Roman morality

The theory of performativity is now applied to diverse field including Science Studies

and Anthropology. Clifford Geertz, in Interpretation of Cultures uses performativity in

anthropological study of culture. According to Geertz, the “object of ethnography” is a hierarchy

of meaningful structures which he calls “thick description”. Analyzing these structures of

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signification will then reveal the cultural codes in a particular society, whose import and social

ground is to be determined. Culture for Geertz is a multiplicity of complex structures entwined

together which is at first inexplicit and irregular. To grasp these conceptual structures it has to be

contrived and rendered visible. What the ethnographer does is the “constructing a reading of” the

transient examples of shaped behaviour influenced by the structures.

Culture, according to Geertz, is an “acted document”. It only exists in the public domain.

Geertz rejects the notion that culture as coming from an occult entity and thus rejects the

tradition of metaphysics of presence much like Foucault and other post-structuralists. In this

public domain, in which culture is constituted, human behaviour is read as symbolic action—just

as phonation in speech—for the patterned conduct of culture. Geertz uses this idea of culture as

an acted document to analyze religious symbols. He noted that religious symbols denote

historically transmitted patterns of meaning. It is a system of shared conceptions embodied in

symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate and develop their outlook towards life.

These symbols also fashion people’s ethos, their morals, aesthetic principles and their world

view.

Religious symbols, however, manifest only in religious performances and like culture, is

a public event. For Geertz it is a symbolic fusion of ethos and other dispositional and conceptual

aspects of religious life. For most believers, religion comes to be encapsulated in these

performances. The rituals are models of what its practitioners believe and models for believing

of it. Thus we see a mutually reinforcing relationship between the two models just as in Butler

where the reiteration of normative acts help in reproducing the same cultural norms. Geertz cites

the example of Rangda-Barong ritual from Bali, in which nearly almost everyone who sponsors

it participates in it bodily.

Richard Schechner defines this performance as ritualized behaviour conditioned and

permeated by play. ‘Play’ is what maintains the balance between improvisational quality and

orderliness. Thus play is improvisational way of making order out of disorder. Schechner

showed this improvisational quality in pre-historic theatre. In pre-historic theatre, there was a

script to maintain order, but it manifested only as far as it was contained in the dance. An

example of this is the Natyashastra tradition, which is oral and corporeal. There is no text for

Natyashastra. It is present in the performers, the teachers and the performances. Unlike the

Poetics, it is more danced than read.

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This purely corporeal style of performance can be observed in non-european cultures. Dr.

Venkat Rao makes the distinction between Lithic and Alithic cultures. Lithic cultures are those

that prescribe writing and nmemotechnical modes of memory while alithic cultures are those that

are indifferent to writing and follow mnemocultural modes of memory. The old Sanskrit

traditions were non-narrative and alithic. Cultural memory in alithic cultures is retained through

embodied performance where the body becomes substrate on which memory is inscribed. This is

because memory has no espistemic status in Indian traditions; only articulations of memory

received attention. It is literacy which made possible mnemotechnical cultures. It’s through

reflection of the practices during colonialism that mnemotechnical cultures came to exist.

Production of texts on practices happen when there is anxiety regarding the remembrance of

practices. With the coming of colonialism, many of the practices that were preserved in the body

were disavowed as it was then lablelled barbaric and uncivilized. For example, the head hunting

by Nagas was banned by the colonialists as it was deemed savage and uncivilized. In the Naga

head hunting dance, the human head is now replaced with beet head. Now the anxiety to bring up

Naga difference has emerged due to cultural and national homogenization.