Here's the passage where Butler talks about "being oppressed" and being "recognized":
To be oppressed means that you already exist as a subject of some kind, you are there as the visible and oppressed other for the master subject, as a possible or potential subject, but to be unreal is to be something else again. To be oppressed you must first become intelligible. To find that you are fundamentally unintelligible (indeed, that the laws of culture and of language find you to be an impossibility) is to find that you have not yet achieved access to the human, to find yourself speaking only and always as if you were human, but with the sense that you are not, to find that your language is hollow, that no recognition is forthcoming because the norms by which recognition takes place are not in your favor. (30)
This is very difficult stuff and you shouldn't feel bad about not totally following it! Butler's argument is that people can be oppressed in different ways; it's easiest to explain with examples. In class we'll talk about Ishiguro, but for now let's say gender. If we live in a sexist society, men are the standard against which meaning is measured. Take Brave New World as an example––sex and culture are defined by a male standard and the women, like Lenina, exist only as objects to be desired, right? They are what Butler calls an "other for the master subject." Within the system of gender in that context, the only recognizable positions are the male or the female. But what if you had someone who wasn't male OR female? They wouldn't have a place within that system at all, and in order to be part of the world they would always have to be pretending to be something they were not. Even to become oppressed as a woman in that sexist culture, they would have to become "intelligible" as a woman. If they were not able to do that, then they would be "unintelligible," not human at all, and so not counted for anything. We could argue that Linda occupies such an inhuman position because she has aged so much she is no longer recognizable as a woman and so there's no place for her in the world any more.
I hope this helps! This is a thought-provoking and interesting blog entry; thanks.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-02-24 03:28 am (UTC)This is very difficult stuff and you shouldn't feel bad about not totally following it! Butler's argument is that people can be oppressed in different ways; it's easiest to explain with examples. In class we'll talk about Ishiguro, but for now let's say gender. If we live in a sexist society, men are the standard against which meaning is measured. Take Brave New World as an example––sex and culture are defined by a male standard and the women, like Lenina, exist only as objects to be desired, right? They are what Butler calls an "other for the master subject." Within the system of gender in that context, the only recognizable positions are the male or the female. But what if you had someone who wasn't male OR female? They wouldn't have a place within that system at all, and in order to be part of the world they would always have to be pretending to be something they were not. Even to become oppressed as a woman in that sexist culture, they would have to become "intelligible" as a woman. If they were not able to do that, then they would be "unintelligible," not human at all, and so not counted for anything. We could argue that Linda occupies such an inhuman position because she has aged so much she is no longer recognizable as a woman and so there's no place for her in the world any more.
I hope this helps! This is a thought-provoking and interesting blog entry; thanks.