How Normative is Judith Butler’s Desire? Ambivalent Moments of a Critical Social Theory of Subjectivation"

This master thesis examines Judith Butler’s conception of desire and its forms of use that are programmatic for her theory of subjectivation. Such an examination introduces an important reappraisal with regard to existing theoretical attempts in which the normative definitions and justifications of desire have so far received little attention, thereby often assuming the character of a self-evident, irreducible, or indisputable prerequisite. However, with such a foundation for strong notions of individual and collective forms of (well)being becoming the aim of a critique, the conditions of possibilities for a social theory and the subjects ensuing from its conceptions will themselves be put at stake. Instead of referring to desire as a norm which can consistently account for the (self)appreciation and (self)problematization of subjects, I argue that the question in fact begins with desire as the normative ground for a critical understanding of this self. Butler’s special consideration of desire in the processes of subjectivation promises precisely such a reappraisal of the normative assumptions underlying the conditions of possibilities of subjects even though her own notion of desire is dependent on certain ontological placings that result in some ambivalent moments in the constitution of subjects. Accordingly, the thesis will approach these ambivalent moments in Butler’s work from three interdependent normative dimensions of desire: the Hegelian foundations of subjectivity, the juridical field of power, and the question of critique. Ultimately, the overarching aim of this study is not only a reconstruction of Butler’s reception of and argumentation with desire, but to find ways of recognizing desire as a critical paradigm in social theories and of pursuing the project of a critique by first exposing its ambivalent moments in the processes of subjectivation.