Judith Butler interview

Why did Judith Butler select the language she did to smear women who disagree with her and style them as fascists?

Women who have attempted to discuss girls’ and women's rights and their experience as a sex class in this context have faced concerted attempts to have their meetings shut down and to silence them (Aaronovich, 2018; Kirkup, 2018a). Woman's Place UK was formed after a meeting to discuss proposed legislative reform that was targeted for harassment, and a 60-year-old woman was assaulted by male gender identity activists (Turner, 2017). Yet, women's organisations that campaign within the law to protect women's existing rights, such as Woman's Place UK and Fair Play for Women are slandered and denounced as ‘hate groups’. Accusations of fascism abound, directed at life-long socialists and trade-union activists, in order to justify denying these women a platform by any means. It is worth noting that the traditional left basis for no-platforming fascists is often misunderstood. This rests on the view that fascists will shut down democratic debate and organising through the use of violence against opponents (Trotsky, 1969 [1932]). The argument was not that fascist speakers have dangerous ideas which might influence their audience, but that there is no sense in trying to reason with violent thugs. Careless use of the term ‘fascist’ is far from new (Orwell, 1944), and the parameters of the ‘no-platform for fascists’ policy have been contested throughout its history from the early 1970s (Smith, 2016). But it seems that no-platforming has now been turned on its head, as those who oppose the democratic civil liberties of freedom of speech and association use no-platforming to silence dissent (Ditum, 2014). None of the feminists who have been no-platformed for gender-critical views have committed or incited violent acts. Accusations of fascism and ‘literal violence’ levelled against these women may appear comical, but have real consequences in dehumanising and monstering them, thereby justifying harassment and even violence against them.

SUISSA, J. and SULLIVAN, A. (2021), The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 55: 55-82. doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12549

Very helpful paper from earlier this year.

And @RoyalCorgi, if your deleted post was the one about the Private Eye-style apology, it gave me a laugh and I have no idea why it was deleted.

Thank you! Yes, that was the one. It was intended to be humorous, and I don't know why it was deleted either.

different disciplines use technical terms in different ways. And sometimes in similar ways...

Be careful. "Similar" in geometry, as in similar triangles, means identical in proportion.

And sometimes, social sciences can't make up its mind what a term means, eg 'Liberal' in the political sense, which can mean on the right, the left, or the centre.

@FloralBunting, thank you for your responses. Very informative - this is a very interesting thread. overall.

I have done some post-grad study and some of it involved me reading philosophical guff. I remember reading some PoMo and thinking, 'Well, you say that, but I don't see any of you arguing with material reality to the extent that you are willing to leave your 4th floor offices via the windows'.

Mind you, a lot of what I read struck me as splendidly complicated ways of stating simple ideas.

And @RoyalCorgi, if your deleted post was the one about the Private Eye-style apology, it gave me a laugh and I have no idea why it was deleted.

Why would you explain something metaphorical without using a metaphor?

Electron shells are metaphorical and we teach them to all 10 year olds.

As I said, different disciplines use technical terms in different ways. (And sometimes in similar ways, too - there are plenty of technical terms in specialised bits of the sciences and mathematics which work in a very similar way to philosophical terms, as well).

Off the top of my head, for example, just try explaining what an electron shell or a frameshift mutation is to a layperson - in a way they will actually understand it - and using no metaphorical language. Then report back….

There are massive benefits of using language for reasons other than clarity.

The point made was about this kind of language because difficult to understand because it is technical, and technical language is difficult to understand, which isn’t true.

It may well be difficult to understand for other very important and valuable reasons, but it isn’t homologous to technical language in other disciplines.

Plenty of people find the sciences difficult and have to study them with dictionary in hand for years, though!

There are plenty of technical terms in scientific disciplines you wouldn’t be able to explain very simply to the layperson at all.

Not all disciplines work in the same way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t allowed their own discourse and technical terms, though.

Yeah - all philosophy makes use of the metaphorical qualities of language to convey a slightly more specific meaning. I could use “swappable” or “replaceable” instead of “fungible”, but then the specifically economic aspects of the idea that I need to be there would disappear. I’d simplify it, but lose part of the precision and meaning.

Ironically I’m the biggest advocate ever of the plain style when I’m teaching people to write or argue. 😂 But it does value some aspects of thought and repress others, and isn’t free of its own value-structure. I rather like reading styles of thought that aren’t in that tradition - they can all add to the ways we understand the world. There are important traditions in all areas of global philosophy that aren’t based around logic and clarity but instead about other things.

‘That’s why all disciplines use technical language (though they don’t all do it in the same way). If you study most historical philosophy you have to do it with dictionary in hand for years and years. It’s no different to any discipline in that regard.’

But that isn’t true for other disciplines. As you have said, the meaning of homologous is biology is simple. It is however specific to biology.

So if I wanted to explain what homologous means in biology I could explain very simply using examples that most people can understand.

Because technical language isn’t particularly complex or difficult to understand. It is just subject specific.

It's a bit like abstract painting IMO. It is trying to avoid classical forms to talk about whatever it's trying to talk about, and so give a purer and maybe fresher understanding.

But it also becomes very easy to fake the inner vision, ever to oneself.

(The actual content that she’s writing about in that passage though - about the difference between structuralist Marxism and poststructuralist concepts of social relationships - is not by any means new or radical: it’s basically reheated Foucault.)

It’s by no means a new argument, but it still is about valuing a particular national or cultural style in philosophy as much as it is about audience (by laying claim to a certain worldview about what “concepts” are and what philosophical discourse is).

Yes it is, @irresistibleoverwhelm, but I think there there are pragmatic reasons to value it. It may be that the origin of the clarity preference lies in protestant, and puritan, thought - that's not my area of expertise. But that doesn't mean there is anything inherently puritan about wanting it. Or valuing it.

But thank you for a lovely answer.

It is a technical discourse though: what she’s talking about is an explicit way that structure is understood in Althusserian Marxism (whih is a form of structuralist Marxism - which is reasonably complex).

The term has a simple meaning in biology and mathematics, too, but when it’s used it’s still used in a technical sense.

The use of homologous in that passage is partly metaphorical, too. When you read it, you’re getting a sense of the way that the French structuralists imagine the structures inherent in capitalism to be three-dimensional and almost mathematically uniform, like a crystalline structure in which different spatial and structural junctures replicate each other geometrically, so that you can almost swap in different bits of the structure in and out and it retains a kind of spatial uniformity. Social relationships in this model are essentially relational, but the structure of that relationality is kind of uniform and fungible.

In contrast, she’s saying that once you add time into the structure, you can see that the relational junctures aren’t all alike and endlessly swappable, but that they are more like knotted concentrations of power that change and disperse over time, and don’t remain either static or like you can just swap them in and out and the structure remains the same. So you can’t just say, for example, the relation between structures of oppression is neat and endlessly swappable, and you can map on race-economy-class to sex-economy-law or labour-capital-material. When you input time into the model of the “crystal”, instead you see that there are different densities and networks of power in each relationship, that make them change over time.

That relationship between the spatial and mathematical, and the idea of similarity and equivalence, is being carried by the word “homologous” because she’s making reference to the specific thought-models of structuralist French Marxism. Without it some of the way a specialist might read that passage would be lost. I can boil the essence of it down into a simpler statement, but then it’s missing the explicit connection back to the pseudo-mathematicality of structuralism that the word is telling me about. As I read it, it’s drawing in the specific forms of mid-century theories that she’s talking about. That’s what I mean by a technical discourse - yes, I can rephrase this for a less technical audience, but then it loses something that’s there explicitly for a readership that’s familiar with the tradition she’s writing about.

And you notice that the more I try to explain what the word does, the less easy it is for me to make my prose easy to understand, because I’m trying to translate a very detailed technical concept from French Marxism into different language. And in doing so I’m having to use metaphors of crystals and words like “fungible” because that’s the only way I can quite get close to the meaning. (By the end I might as well just use “homologous”…)

That’s why all disciplines use technical language (though they don’t all do it in the same way). If you study most historical philosophy you have to do it with dictionary in hand for years and years. It’s no different to any discipline in that regard.

I am not tried to be argumentative here, just trying to understand.

“having the same relative position, relation, or proportion; corresponding”.

That is just the ordinary definition of homologous from the dictionary.

How is it a technical meaning in philosophy that only those with knowledge of philosophy would understand?

A technical meaning is like what the word proof might mean in maths or compound in law or base and superstructure in the social sciences. It is when a term has a specific meaning in that subject area that is different to the usual meaning or that is only used in that way in that field. Technical terms explain more precisely something in a particular field.

Using the everyday meaning of a relatively obscure word isn’t technical language.

Ironically, analytic philosophy has managed to create an in-language all of its own so abstruse that no ordinary reader can possibly read it (formal logic); yet still likes to berate the Continental tradition for elitism and obscurantism

But there's a clear point to that - specific specialised notations can make things a lot clearer and more concise, albeit at the cost of an entry barrier to learn that notation.

You could certainly do logic or mathematics in English without any special notation, but the notation ultimately simplifies it, and is more expressive than English. It allows you to run, rather than walk.

There are downsides, but there are very clear upsides.

What's the benefit of the Continental tradition, or Butlerism? You're increasing verbiage, but to what end?

Um, I'd just like to ask anyone claiming that the Puritans were plain-speaking to read some Jeremiah Burroughs or Richard Baxter. (I jest, they're not that bad. Slightly better than Butler)

In English thought, the “the concepts are tough in themselves and the Continental tradition is elitist” claim has been made constantly since the seventeenth century, and was a particular refrain of nineteenth century English philosophers explicitly keen to distinguish themselves from a suspiciously mystifying, Catholic European style. It’s by no means a new argument, but it still is about valuing a particular national or cultural style in philosophy as much as it is about audience (by laying claim to a certain worldview about what “concepts” are and what philosophical discourse is).

Ironically, analytic philosophy has managed to create an in-language all of its own so abstruse that no ordinary reader can possibly read it (formal logic); yet still likes to berate the Continental tradition for elitism and obscurantism 😂

Nothing new about setting out to be a stupid person's idea of a clever person, a poor man's idea of a rich man, or a failure's idea of a sucess.

Reminds me of Enoch Powell with his random Cicero and circumlocutions to cover up the inherent dishonesty and nonsense he was spouting, about West Indians who couldn't speak English except the word 'Racialist!' with and exclamation mark!

I write simply because I write papers in stops and starts. There’s nothing worse than spending a day writing to finally have another day free six weeks later and coming back to what you wrote and not understanding a word of it.