Theory Subject Research Articles

Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics

This article discusses the current ‘popularity’ of trauma research in the Humanities and examines the ethics and politics of trauma theory, as exemplified in the writings of Caruth and Felman and Laub.Written from a position informed by Laplanchian and object relations psychoanalytic theory, it begins by examining and offering a critique of trauma theory's model of subjectivity, and its relations with theories of referentiality and representation, history and testimony. Next, it proposes that although trauma theory's subject matter—the sufferings of others—makes critique difficult, the theory's politics, its exclusions and inclusions, and its unconscious drives and desires are as deserving of attention as those of any other theory. Arguing that the political and cultural contexts within which this theory has risen to prominence have remained largely unexamined, the article concludes by proposing that trauma theory needs to act as a brake against rather than as a vehicle for cultural and political Manicheanism.

Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics

This article discusses the current ‘popularity’ of trauma research in the Humanities and examines the ethics and politics of trauma theory, as exemplified in the writings of Caruth and Felman and Laub.Written from a position informed by Laplanchian and object relations psychoanalytic theory, it begins by examining and offering a critique of trauma theory's model of subjectivity, and its relations with theories of referentiality and representation, history and testimony. Next, it proposes that although trauma theory's subject matter—the sufferings of others—makes critique difficult, the theory's politics, its exclusions and inclusions, and its unconscious drives and desires are as deserving of attention as those of any other theory. Arguing that the political and cultural contexts within which this theory has risen to prominence have remained largely unexamined, the article concludes by proposing that trauma theory needs to act as a brake against rather than as a vehicle for cultural and political Manicheanism.

Writing/Reading Selves, Writing/Reading Race

For several years now, feminist theory and philosophy have been faced with criticisms from African American feminists for not taking race sufficiently into account in discussions of women's issues. This criticism was embroiled in the recent controversies over essentialism in feminist theory. A number of feminist theorists have acknowledged the validity of this criticism and several of those most important to continental thought have given race more attention in their most recent work. Elisabeth Grosz acknowledges that bodies are raced as well as gendered and sexed (Volatile Bodies). Kelly Oliver cites bell hooks as an ally in claiming that the term "woman" (and the idea of sexual difference) needs to be kept in play for the sake of feminism. Oliver argues that dropping "woman" in favor of a generalized humanity would only benefit women whose male counterparts are at the top of the heap; that is, white men (Womanizing Nietzsche). Drucilla Cornell devotes several pages to an analysis of the interaction of race, gender, and sexual desire manifested in a disturbing incident in her own life (Transformations). Three essays in Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter focus on those charged intersections in literary and film settings. Butler and Cornell, no doubt because they give race the most attention, even go as far as to say that it is impossible to understand gender without interrogating race. All these theorists realize that the fact of racial difference poses some fundamental challenges to the way feminism construes its subject. They acknowledge that multiple factors go into the production of any particular woman and argue for the need to think "woman" as multiple. Feminist theory seems to be moving toward what Rosi Braidotti calls the nomadic subject; a subject theorized as constituted by a shifting set of differences (The Nomadic Subject). However, white feminist theory has yet to develop a sustained discussion of race, especially as a factor of white women's subjectivity. Race only becomes an issue when feminist theory confronts the other of its same; that is, when the race of the other woman is in question. Whiteness becomes visible only against the screen of other women's blackness and then disappears. Why is it so difficult for white feminist theory to keep race in view? Tina Chanter argues that Irigaray's analysis shows that sexual difference is to feminism what Heidegger argues that Being is to metaphysics: the assumed foundation of its project whose meaning has yet to be thought out (Ethics of Eros). I would argue that the difference race makes to gender occupies an analogous position in white feminist thought. It is as though the fact of its difference-ing is too obvious to require analysis, on the one hand, and perhaps too threatening to white feminism on the other. For this reason, I am concerned that moving too quickly to an abstractly multiple "woman" will not satisfactorily dislodge feminist theory's dominance by white solipsism. On the other hand, I think a sustained interrogation into the difference race makes to what it means to be a woman would move white feminist theory's subject toward a more genuine and concrete multiplicity. I want to experiment with making the whiteness of feminism's "woman" more visible as a racial mark through a reading of two autobiographical texts, one by African American feminist legal theorist Patricia Williams (Alchemy of Race and Rights) and one by white Radical Lesbian feminist Mary Daly (Outercourse). Turning to autobiography rather than to white feminist theoretical texts might seem an unnecessary detour if my aim is to take white feminist theory beyond the current impasse. However, I would argue that autobiographical texts especially these two texts offer unique resources for the project I am proposing. In "Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex," Judith Butler argues that identifications are multiple and contestatory; that is, they are "in-corporations" of negotiations with multiple "vectors of power" that include sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. …

On Theory's Subject and Subject's Theory: Harvey, Capital, and the Limits to Classical Marxism

In this paper recent considerations of the human subject and of the nature and uses of theory are convened around the work of Marxist theorist David Harvey. This is done to contest two prevailing views of his work and to explore critically two alternative readings. The first view suggests that Harvey is exclusively a theorist of the capitalist space economy; against this it is suggested that he offers one of the most ambitious readings of subjectivity within human geography. The second view suggests that Harvey is a ‘modern’ theorist, whose preoccupation with economy and class leads him into the perils of theoretical authoritarianism, exclusivity, and abstraction; against this it is suggested that Harvey's Marxism claims to be intrinsically reflexive. More particularly, the thesis that there is an essential, rather than contingent, relation between Harvey's theorisation of ‘the subject of capital’ and his own practices as a theorist is explored: given that Harvey claims ‘the subject of capital’ is but one subject-position, to what extent, it is asked, is he in practice aware of the limits of his own theoretical propositions? At the same time, an examination of the degree to which Harvey's reading of subjectivity is sufficiently cogent to contribute to an ecumenical, ‘post-modern’ project to make sense of subjection and agency within contemporary Western societies is presented.