Feminist Theory, Ahead of Print.
Judith Butler contests Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek’s argument that the limits to symbolisation which shape political action are best accounted for through Jacques Lacan’s account of the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real. Butler agrees that we each emerge as social subjects on the condition of foreclosures, but disagrees that such foreclosures are prior to the social or explicable through a universal account of kinship. Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyĕwùmí has a somewhat similar critique of the Eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts. She argues that Western hierarchies, organised through ‘bio-logic’ or ‘body-reasoning’ with an emphasis on the sex/gender binary, are culturally particular. Oyĕwùmí distinguishes between relational, dynamic, fluid social hierarchies organised by seniority, and hierarchies organised by body-reasoning which are orientated towards fixity, and certainties. In this article I outline Bracha Ettinger’s matrixial theory and argue that while it does not do what either Oyĕwùmí (transcend the terms of the nuclear family) or Butler (divest Lacan’s paternal law of its power) advocate, it does provide us with the language to better account for how ‘body-reasoning’ structures our orientations and sets constraints on transformative processes. Through an account of multiple strata of subjectivity, within an expanded Symbolic, inscribed in social life through symbolic filters based on corporeality, matrixial theory enables us to account for the embeddedness of a strong orientation towards constant individuation, alongside a persistent disavowal and fear of processes of co-emergence at a non-cognitive level of subjectivity within Western thought. In their exchange, Laclau theorises social transformation through articulatory logics whereas Butler stresses the need for the work of cultural translation. Drawing on Ettinger’s and Oyĕwùmí’s work, I propose that practices of translation must include a rigorous accounting for our orientations and investments within Subjectivity.