You're right. What I was thinking of is more accurately the critique as coming from a professional class of such, and/or from the oppressed class. Not critiques in general. So I amend my statement.
Okay. Well, in this case it's certainly accurate to suggest that the professional class of social/cultural theorists emerged only recently in history, and that this emergence only appeared after the targets of their theoretical critiques had been brought to widespread attention if not already begun to dissipate.
I'm not sure how I feel about this being necessary, however - i.e. that such a professional class could only arise at this point in time. It does make a lot of sense, yes.
But then, I would also repeat my suggestion that these critiques shouldn't be read primarily as political treatises on, or condemnations of, inequality.
Plausible deniability is certainly present, but as soon as we start talking about power structures, politics is involved, whether or not the theorist wants to whip up the common man and lead them in the streets. The claims of Butler were split into two general parts in that SEoP writeup, and you're ignoring the latter. As far as the former goes, it is possible to describe gender as performative since we can only see the actions. It's basically tautological. But the "equally precarious" characterization completely disagrees with the available science, and again, is standard shtick for marginal theorists in approach #2 that I listed before ("there is no margin").
This is true, although Butler's claim, while perhaps somewhat tautological (I don't think we've appropriately handled it here, but I don't think that necessary), is attempting to correct what she perceives as misguided definitions of gender, and that includes definitions from feminists! Her argument is somewhat tautological (A = A), but then she's trying to disillusion people from the belief that gender somehow corresponds to a metaphysics of presence within the body, or some other variation on this theme (i.e. A = X, Y, Z, etc.). You can accuse her argument of being tautological, but then of course the targets of her critique are actually
illogical.
As far as her claim goes about gender being a factor pertaining to the organization of power structures, you're absolutely right that we cannot really dissociate such a claim from politics. But we can dissociate it from Butler's politics, as difficult as that sounds. In other words, this claim could just as plausibly come from a libertarian economist who happens to be tuned in to the social dynamics of gender relations - someone whose politics are, in all likelihood, very different from Butler's.
I think you're right to make the connection between social/cultural theory and political agendas, but I'm only suggesting that the theoretical texts we're discussing are very different from the kinds that appeared during, say, the heyday of abolitionism or the suffrage movement, or some other major social activist movement when the literature actually took the form of "TOTAL SOCIAL OPPRESSION NOW." Butler's books aren't calls-for-action, they're theoretical assessments of how gender dynamics continue to display themselves in nuanced yet significant ways, and how this continuance derives from a widespread misinterpretation of what gender is/how it functions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy
I would say I need to read this, but it seems like I've probably already figured the same stuff out/would simply agree. Preaching to the proverbial choir from the 40s.
This sounds interesting, although I really think it perpetuates a certain notion of post-Marxist cultural theory that is a bit... incorrect, I'll go ahead and say.
Briefly, I think that a LOT of theory since World War Two, the vast majority of French theory and everything derived from it, in fact, doesn't advocate for widespread revolution or political action - or rather, for a specific kind of political action. In fact, I'm of the opinion that it's far less incendiary than most people want to believe. In other words, I don't believe at all that the texts published by figures such as Foucault, Butler, Baudrillard, Derrida, et al are somehow championing revolutionary action or political overthrow, or anything so radical. I think they're very interested in how elements of social marginalization, disenfranchisement, etc. etc. continue to surface within the social field and how possibly we can interpret these appearances and possibly counteract them - but none of this amounts to a call for a full-blown social revolution.
I am of the strong belief that critics of (generally speaking) left-wing academia perceive all its members as closet Marxists who yearn for political rebellion. This is not the case at all. Market relations have afforded them, as you say, the space to function within society. Their goal isn't to destroy or even radically restructure those relations, but to provide a field model, or road map, for how we can operate more consciously within them.
