It's... sort of like that actually? Have you read Althusser? (I'm sorry, it's going to be one of those explanations.) He has this thing where he says that we come into being as subjects because the state interpellates us --- it calls to us, and we turn around, acknowledging that the state was talking about us in the first place. To not do this is terrifying (at least according to Zizek whose name has a diacritic I can't be fucked to find the UTF-8 for right now, sorry Zizek). Butler then works with this and says some additional things, among which are "we get interpellated all of the time and this is part of how things like gender are produced" (in another paper she also connects this to, like, Bordieu and the habitus and also J.L. Austin and Doing Things With Words and either you see where I am going or you can safely ignore this parenthetival). I dig this, but I sort of want to (a) tell the state to fuck off and (b) make the state interpellate me as I want to be interpellated (as, tongue 75% in cheek, a giant talking fox). You can't tell the state to fuck off because if the state calls to you and you don't respond it hits you over the head with a stick and says "You, you are an X" and well sucks to be you; even if it doesn't bother hitting you with a stick, you know you're an X because people keep calling you one, even if you know you're really a Y and it's all very frustrating. Convincing the state to interpellate you as you want to be interpellated can be awesome --- this is how we get gay rights, trans citizenship, blah blah blah --- but also leads to homonationalism and the construction of a "transsexual patriot" in opposition to a queerly gendered terrorist. (This last bit from a talk I just heard today by Nick Clarkson.) And so right now I'm tempted by learning to not realize when the state is calling me to parliament to testify. But I have no idea how to do that. And also I want other people to call me a fox. And a they. The they part is a little easier to ask for, so I did that.
...hopefully that makes ANY SENSE AT ALL my brain is FULL OF THINGS I want to GO TO SLEEP and not do anything for the next week HAHAHA THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN EVEN IF I WERE TO ASSEMBLE THE COMBINATION I WOULD NEVER DEFEAT THE GUARDIAN.
in short if you want PDFs of the Althusser and Butler pieces I have the hookup
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-10 03:55 am (UTC)...hopefully that makes ANY SENSE AT ALL my brain is FULL OF THINGS I want to GO TO SLEEP and not do anything for the next week HAHAHA THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN EVEN IF I WERE TO ASSEMBLE THE COMBINATION I WOULD NEVER DEFEAT THE GUARDIAN.
in short if you want PDFs of the Althusser and Butler pieces I have the hookup