from Hypatia Volume 15, Number 1
The Politics of Sex and Gender: Benhabib and Butler Debate Subjectivity
Fiona Webster
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This paper responds to the sense of "crisis" or "trouble" that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It
argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the
sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla
Benhabib and Judith Butler.
A sense of crisis prevails in some contemporary Anglo-American feminist debates, a sense that the instability and indeterminacy of
recent accounts of sex and gender are undermining the very foundations on which feminism is built. There is, as Judith Butler
remarks, "a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism" (1990,
vii). As a movement which has, historically, sought to represent the needs and concerns of the gendered identity category "women,"
feminism has appeared to rely upon a universal, stable, or "fixed" conception of that category in order to ground its theoretical and
political claims. It has relied upon the idea that there is a subject of feminism ("woman") whose needs and concerns can be defined as
subjects of political representation.
In recent years, however, feminism has been criticized for its assumption of authority over the experience of women and for its
general presumption that, simply on the basis of a shared gendered identity, women have immediate access to and knowledge of the
lives of other women. It is by no means clear that all women need or want the same things. The very legitimacy of the political
representation of "women" and "women's concerns" is challenged by contemporary accounts of sex and gender. Such accounts
contest the assumption that reference can be made to any universal notion of what it is to be a "woman" or of what constitutes
"women's concerns." Also subject to challenge is the notion that individuals are at some point "free" from their social construction as
gendered. Women's "agency," and therefore their capacity to actively contest dominant gender paradigms, is conceived as itself
socially constructed, itself a product of highly gendered relations of power in society.
Historically, theorists seeking to draw a distinction between sex and gender have claimed that sex is a wholly natural or biological
category, independent of the cultural construction of gender. On this basis they have claimed that our gender is in no way fixed or
determined by the nature of our sex. The rejection of this distinction by contemporary feminist theorists, accompanied by a shift in
conceptual frameworks, is perceived to have both positive and negative implications for feminism. On the one hand, rejected in the
new conceptual framework is the notion of a wholly "natural" or "fixed" category of sex that somehow pre-exists and is a passive
basis for the cultural construction of gender. It is argued that sex is itself subject to cultural construction. On the other hand, this new
way of construing sex is perceived to be problematic for feminism insofar as it appears that what we mean when we refer to sex is
unstable and indeterminate. That is to say, in the new conceptual framework, not only is gender construed as culturally constructed,
and therefore as unstable, malleable, and negotiable, but so too is sex. This instability in the meaning or content of both sex and
gender is thought to be problematic by those who believe that the feminist movement depends on a stable conception of either sex or
gender.
In this paper, I will argue that this perception of "trouble" or "crisis" for feminism has emerged from a fundamental confusion of
theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. This
confusion is manifest in a debate between two prominent contemporary feminist theorists, Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler, in the
collection of essays Feminist Contentions(Benhabib et al. 1995).
There are two levels at which this debate between Benhabib and Butler serves to illustrate this confusion. At a general level, the
debate between them illustrates precisely how disagreements have emerged in feminist theory about the relation between some
contemporary accounts of gender and the construction of a specifically feminist politics. At a more specific level, the debate between
them provides the basis for a direct critique of Butler's rejection of the sex/gender distinction and her performative account of those
categories. Butler's performative account of sex and gender has been particularly influential in contemporary Anglo-American
feminist theory and is the subject of considerable debate.1
In the first section of the paper I will argue that, despite both rejecting the sex/gender distinction, Benhabib and Butler disagree over
what is lost or gained in moving beyond this distinction. While Benhabib claims that Butler loses an account of agency, Butler
considers herself to gain one. While both agree that some account of agency is politically important for feminism, they disagree over
precisely what sort of agency is required in order for specifically feminist political concerns to be addressed. In the second section of
the paper I will address the issue of how Butler understands her performative account of gender to be responsive to the criticisms
raised by theorists such as Benhabib against her work. I will address how she understands the theoretical imperatives which ground
her work to relate to the broader political concerns of feminism.
Feminist Contentions: Benhabib versus Butler
(i) Benhabib's critique of Butler
Seyla Benhabib's critique of Butler has two principal targets. The first is the critique of identity categories and identity politics which
she understands to be at work in so-called postmodern theory. The second is Butler's account of gender as performance. Her critique
of Butler operates as a specific example of the way in which she understands a postmodern critique of identity categories to give way
to a subversion of the foundations of a feminist politics.
Benhabib claims that the critique of identity categories raised by postmodern theory gives rise to an "identity crisis" for feminism. She
is by no means alone in making such a claim.2 She argues that this identity crisis "may eliminate not only the specificity of feminist
theory but place in question the very emancipatory ideals of the women's movement altogether" (Benhabib 1995a, 20). Her argument
is based on the claim that, in its strong form, postmodern theory promotes a dissolution of the subject which in turn dissolves the
concepts of intentionality, accountability, self-reflexivity and autonomy (1995a, 20). Postmodern theory has debilitating implications
for feminism precisely because the ideal of the autonomous, self-directing subject is replaced with a fractured, opaque self (1992, 16).
Given that women's sense of self is already fragile, that their history has been written by others and that they have not been able to
fully control their lives, Benhabib claims that this fractured, opaque self of postmodern theory can only provide women with a more
fragmented and fragile vision of themselves and their future (1992, 16). As such, it is a particularly damaging account of subjectivity
and one which does not further the emancipatory objectives of the feminist movement. The norms of autonomy, choice, and self-determination in the legal, moral, and political arenas are vital, Benhabib claims, for women's struggles to be successfully voiced and
acted upon (1992, 16). Indeed, she claims that the project of female emancipation is unthinkable without recourse to a regulative
principle on agency, autonomy, and selfhood (1995a, 21).
It is important to note, however, that there are reasons we might want to question Benhabib's arguments even at this preliminary
stage. First of all, we might want to claim that she has mischaracterized postmodernism and has suggested wrongly that its
theoretical imperatives give rise to a dissolution of a conception of the subject. Second, we might want to question her claim that a
feminist politics requires recourse to particular regulative or normative principles in order to support its emancipatory objectives. I will come back to these questions later in this paper. At this stage, it is pertinent that we first consider her critique of Butler's theory of performativity. This serves as an example of how she understands the "dissolution of the subject" and subversion of the
emancipatory objectives of feminism to be operative in postmodern accounts of subjectivity.
Butler outlines her account of gender as performance in her book Gender Trouble (1990). In short, gender is performative, according to Butler, in the sense that it is not a stable or fixed point of agency, but rather is an identity category created and constituted through "a stylized repetition of acts" (1990, 140). Its meaning is constituted dramatically and contingently through sustained social
performances which take place in the context of the regulatory conventions and norms dominant in society (1990, 33). The ultimate
effect of these repeated performances is an appearance of substance, an appearance of gender as a natural expression of particular
bodies. This repetition rigidifies and institutionalizes gender. At the same time, the very activity of this repetition of norms suggests
for Butler the possibility that those norms can be subverted. Indeed, it is precisely in this variation in the way in which subjects
actively repeat norms that Butler locates agency.
Using Butler's theory of performativity as an example of the debilitating implications for feminism of a radical critique of identity
categories and identity politics, Benhabib understands that theory to be an instance of how a "postmodern" account of the subject
disallows or dispenses with the ideals of autonomy, choice and self-determination. She claims that Butler's theory of performative
gender constitution cannot give us "a sufficiently thick and rich account of gender formation that would also explain the capacities of
human agents for self-determination" (1995b, 110). Benhabib explicitly locates her critique of Butler as operative at two levels of
analysis. At one level, she questions the sorts of social research paradigms which Butler relies upon in coming to an account of gender
constitution as performativity. Benhabib argues that Butler's theory of performativity "still presupposes a remarkably deterministic
view of individuation and socialization processes which falls short of the currently available social-scientific reflections on the subject"
(1995b, 110). She therefore understands Butler's theory to go too far in its explanation of subject constitution, insofar as it tends
toward attributing too much power to culture (/society/discourse) as a constitutive force, and too little power to individuals to resist
wholesale cultural determination. The power of individuals to resist such determination is, she claims, evident in contemporary
psycho-sexual developmental accounts of subjects. In this sense, therefore, she is not only making a general claim about such power
being necessary, in her view, to any account of subjectivity, but she is claiming that social-scientific accounts demonstrate the actual
capacity of subjects to assert such power.
At another level, Benhabib questions the conception of agency implied by Butler's theory of performativity (1995b, 111). Ultimately,
she wants to contest Butler's claim that her theory of performativity can, in fact, give an account of agency. She claims that Butler
"wants to extend the limits of reflexivity in thinking about the self beyond the dichotomy of 'sex' and 'gender'" (1995a, 21). Benhabib
is bringing together two issues in making this claim. The first concerns the notion of "reflexivity"; the other concerns "the dichotomy
of sex and gender." The claim that Benhabib wants to make here is that the capacity of subjects or selves for self-reflection (that is,
"reflexivity"), a capacity which she appears to understand to be essential to "agency," is brought into question by Butler's project to
move beyond the sex/gender dichotomy. She understands Butler's project to be, at least in part, an attempt both to get beyond the
binary framework that has supported the categories of sex and gender and to locate agency in that reconfigured space. However,
problems emerge for Butler in providing an adequate account or explanation of agency.
Butler does indeed attempt to make this conceptual shift "beyond the binary frame" in her analysis of the categories of sex and
gender. What exactly, however, is the nature of the relation Benhabib wants to draw between Butler's shift "beyond the dichotomy of
sex and gender" and her account of agency? Does Butler's theory of performativity ultimately disallow an account of agency?
Moreover, do Benhabib and Butler have the same understanding of agency?
Benhabib's critique of Butler is leveled at precisely the point at which Butler collapses the dichotomy of sex and gender--that is, the
point at which Butler seeks to claim that sex is a product or effect of gender, not a basic or originally point on top of which are
imposed various cultural significations.3 Butler's performative theory of gender constitution relies upon an account of sex as "always
already gender." In other words, the category of sex does not pre-exist gender, nor does it provide an ontological foundation for
various gendered significations. In Situating the Self, Benhabib expresses an explicit allegiance to Butler's claim that the category of sex
is not simply an anatomical fact. Indeed, she agrees with Butler, that "the construction and interpretation of anatomical difference is
itself a social and historical process. . . . Sex and gender are not related to each other as nature to culture" (1992, 192). Yet, despite her
claim that the opposition of sex and gender must itself be questioned, she remains highly critical of Butler's reformulation of those
categories in terms of the notion of performativity, and it is precisely in this reformulation that Benhabib understands agency to be
lost.
Butler's theory of performative gender constitution cannot, Benhabib argues, "do justice to the complexities of the ontogenetic origins
of gender in the human person" (1995b, 108). While it gives us some account of how meaning is constructed and how significance
comes to be attached to our gendered identities, it nevertheless fails, according to Benhabib, to give an explanation of the structural
and developmental processes which are in fact involved in individual socialization (and hence in the construction of our gendered
identities).4 It also fails to give an account of the capacities individuals possess for some degree of self-determination. We can begin to
see here the sense in which Benhabib and Butler are at odds with one another. On the one hand, Butler wants to claim that "there is
no ontologically intact reflexivity to the subject which is then placed within a cultural context" (1995b, 46). She is critical of accounts of
the subject (such as Benhabib's) which characterize it as "self-reflective," "self-determining" or "autonomous" on the basis that, in her
view, they presume a subject which has the capacity to deliberate or act outside of its cultural context. Benhabib, on the other hand,
talks about there being "ontogenetic origins" (1995b, 108) of gender in the subject and claims that these origins cannot be explained
or accounted for by Butler. Nevertheless, against Butler's characterization of her, she explicitly seeks to contest the claim that the
subject deliberates or acts outside of its cultural context. Indeed, her aim in Situating the Self is precisely to work against such a claim.
Her argument is rather that subjects have the capacity to challenge their "situatedness," to contribute to the constitution of their own
identity and to their own place in the world (1992, 8), and it is precisely this capacity, captured in part by the term "reflexivity," which
she understands to be lost or disavowed by Butler's theory of performativity. It is clear here that Benhabib and Butler critique one
another on the basis of largely caricatured accounts of the claims each in fact seek to make. As such, the disagreements between them
can be understood to be somewhat hazier than they initially appear. This mischaracterization of the views against which both
Benhabib and Butler formulate their own theoretical and political positions is an important issue and is one which I will come back to
at a later point in the paper.
Nevertheless, what is clear at this stage is that it is at this critical point, this disagreement over the origins or explanation of gender
constitution, that Butler and Benhabib understand each other to diverge. Most significantly, it is at this point that Benhabib
understands Butler to undermine the possibility of autonomy, choice, and self-determination. In providing an account of gendered
identity as performative and so failing, according to Benhabib, to give an account of the capacity of subjects for self-reflection and self-determination, she understands Butler's account of the construction of subjectivity to be ultimately (socially) deterministic. Moreover,
she questions whether the dissolution of the concepts of agency, autonomy, and selfhood is in fact necessary to contesting the
supremacy of heterosexist and dualist positions in the women's movement (1995a, 21). She therefore questions the need for Butler to
take as radical a position as she does in order to achieve particular theoretical ends.
In the context of this paper, the most significant critical outcome of Benhabib's critique of Butler on this issue is the way in which she
relates it to the very possibility of a feminist politics. For Benhabib, the possibility of a feminist politics depends upon an account of
subjects as agents--that is, as capable of self-reflection and some degree of self-determination. Since, for Benhabib, Butler's project
precludes such an account, she also understands it to undermine the possibility of a feminist politics. It is important to note that in
order to make this claim, Benhabib is clearly making three more basic, related, claims. First of all, on the basis of a very brief critical
analysis, she is claiming that Butler's performative account of the categories of sex and gender necessarily gives way to a problematic
political vision. Second, she is clearly making some important assumptions about the nature of a feminist politics and about the sorts
of theoretical projects which feminists ought to pursue (or ought to envisage) in order to support such a politics. Third, she is making
some significant assumptions about what might in fact constitute "agency."
For indeed, it is clear both that a notion of agency is employed by Butler and that this notion is critical to Butler's understanding of the
transformative possibilities of her account of gender constitution. Benhabib and Butler are therefore at odds with each other on a
number of significant points. In Butler's response to Benhabib, it will become even more clear to what extent these points of
disagreement or divergence determine the ultimate force of their critiques of one another.
(ii) Butler's response to Benhabib
In considering the general form of Butler's response to Benhabib, it is apparent, first and foremost, that she takes an
approach very different from Benhabib's toward the "problem of politics" which emerges within debate over the possible
alliance of feminism and postmodernism. Indeed, she would question Benhabib's critical claim that feminism must
articulate a "stable" subject in order to ground a feminist politics. She claims that, rather, "a specific version of politics is
shown in its contingency once these premises are problematically thematized" (1995b, 36). That is, the character of the
political arena is itself brought into question once the premises upon which it is based (premises such as the very "stability"
or "unity" of the subject) are shown to be problematic. For example, once an identity category (such as "women") is no
longer understood to represent a unified, stable, identity ("woman"), then the legitimacy of identity-based politics is itself
brought into question. So, rather than question whether a stable subject is necessary in order for a feminist politics to be
possible, Butler questions the very structure of the political domain which seems to necessitate a stable subject. Indeed, she
claims that the contingency of that very domain is revealed as soon as the stability of the subject is brought into question.
Butler also differs from Benhabib in offering a radical critique and renegotiation of traditional formulations of the
notion of agency.5 specifically, she is critical of the "autonomous," "rational" subject of liberalism, broadly construed. She
is critical of such formulations precisely because, in her view, they disavow both the "situated" and the "constituted"
character of subjectivity. That is, they disavow both the fact that we always act from and within a cultural schema and,
most importantly, that we are constituted by and through those very acts. Indeed, Butler rejects Simone de Beauvoir's
version of the sex/gender distinction on precisely these grounds, that is, on the grounds that it presupposes an account of
the subject as at some point "free" from gender and as capable of deliberately "taking up" their gender.6 She claims that the
idea that there is a "doer behind the deed," an idea she attributes to liberal formulations of agency, is installed by theorists
only in order to "assign blame and accountability" (1995b, 46). That is, it is a fictive structure set up for the purposes of
morality (1995c, 135). For Butler, the "doer" is constituted in and through the "deed." Her theory of performativity is aimed
precisely at capturing the sense in which signification and action are coincident. Yet, significantly, Butler wants to claim,
contrary to Benhabib's criticisms of her, that agency is not lost or disallowed here. "To claim that the subject is
constituted is not," she argues, "to claim that it is determined; on the contrary, the constituted character of the subject is
the very precondition of its agency" (1995b, 46). Butler therefore contests the claim that having an account of subjects as
constituted necessarily gives rise to an account of subjects as determined. Insofar as the subject is the site of endless
transformation and resignification and insofar as its constituted character is never fixed but always in process, Butler
claims that resistance is always possible. "Agency" is therefore located by Butler in the very instability of the subject.
In response to Benhabib, therefore, Butler is evidently highly critical of the claim that a subject must be "stable" or
"grounded" in some way in order for agency to be possible. Indeed, she argues that such stability disavows the constituted
and transformative character of the subject. Butler argues that Benhabib misconstrues her theory of performativity "by
grammatically reinstalling the subject 'behind' the deed, and by reducing . . . the notion of performativity to theatrical
performance" (1995c, 135). It is clear here, then, that Butler and Benhabib fundamentally disagree on how we might
conceive of agency. Moreover, both theorists are guilty of caricaturing, to some extent, each other's conceptions of
agency. While Benhabib wants to claim that Butler's performative theory of gender constitution is ultimately
deterministic, Butler criticizes Benhabib for offering an account of agency which implies that subjects are at some point
capable of action which transcends the limitations of the situation or context from which they act and, most significantly,
through which they are constituted.7 At a later point I will consider in more detail this question of the different
conceptions of agency which inform the critiques of Butler and Benhabib.
A further important and critical disagreement which divides the work of Benhabib and Butler is reflected in their different
approaches to the political domain. Their approaches are different for a number of reasons. First, we have already seen the
sense in which Benhabib and Butler approach the "problem of politics" from different angles. While Benhabib appears to
hold a particular conception of the character of the political arena and deduces from that character the necessary
subjective conditions for political action, Butler appears to look to the conditions which make particular political action
possible and to critically consider from that perspective the character of the political arena. These different angles
inevitably give rise to different understandings of the norms and requirements of the political arena. Butler disagrees with
any project which seeks to set out the norms or requirements of political life in advance of political action.8 These norms
and requirements, she claims, only come to be articulated in and through political action (1995c, 129). Benhabib, on the
other hand, talks about the importance of striving toward autonomy as an ideal in political life (1995a, 21). She also
suggests the importance of "utopian thinking" as a "practico-moral imperative" (1995a, 30). Indeed, as we have already seen,
she claims that "social criticism of the kind required for women's struggles is not even possible without positing the legal,
moral
and political norms of autonomy, choice and self-determination" (1992, 16). Norms, Benhabib claims, facilitate expression of
the demands of justice and human worthiness. Utopias "portray modes of friendship, solidarity and human happiness" (1986,
13). So while Butler claims that the setting up of norms and requirements in advance of political action disavows the sense
in which norms and requirements are constituted only in and through such action, Benhabib claims that we need to set up
such norms and requirements in order for political struggle to be possible and for the demands of political life to be met.
The curious point to note, however, concerning Butler's contribution to this issue is the sense in which she ultimately
confesses the imperative, in the reality of political life, "to set norms, to affirm aspirations, to articulate the possibilities of
a more fully democratic and participatory political life" (1995c, 129). Indeed, she suggests, for example, the strategic and
political importance of retaining the category of "women," a category which she has brought into question, in order to
make particular political claims (1993, 222; 1995b, 49). Whenever this is necessary, she argues, we must simply be aware that
such categories are not fixed or determinate but always sites of contest (1993, 221; 1995b, 50). She therefore wants to claim
that in problematizing that category she does not want to prevent it from being used in order to serve particular ends, but
rather to open it up to the possibility of resignification and transformation. Indeed, for Butler, the problematic character
of the category ultimately enables such resignification and transformation.
How can we understand Butler's critique of identity categories and her critique of identity politics in relation to this
ultimate appeal to the norms and requirements of the political arena? Butler provides very little material which directly
addresses the programmatic implications of her critique of identity categories.9 Indeed, part of the difficulty we have in
assessing her work is working out precisely what her programmatic vision for a feminist politics might be, given the
theoretical imperatives which guide her work.10 Nevertheless, given the criticisms which such theorists as Benhabib raise
against her work, it seems imperative that we question what possible direction a feminist politics would take on the basis of
the various critiques she makes of identity categories and identity-based politics. Does Butler, as Susan Hekman claims,
ultimately give up the basis for a feminist politics (Hekman 1995a, 156)?
To address this question, let us return here to some claims Butler does explicitly make concerning the strategies we might
employ as feminists addressing the concerns of "women" in the political arena. Despite being insistently critical of the
descriptive force of the category "women," Butler endorses strategic use of that category to serve particular political
ends. She claims that "to understand 'women' as a permanent site of contest, or as a feminist site of antagonistic struggle, is
to presume that there can be no closure on the category and that, for politically significant reasons, there ought never to
be. That the category can never be descriptive is the very condition of its political efficacy" (1993, 221). As in the case of her
account of agency, we can see here the sense in which Butler understands categorical instability to give rise to political
efficacy. That is, insofar as the category "women" is always open, always a site of contest, the possibilities for
transformation and resignification, both within that very category and in its deployment in the political arena, are never-ending.11
Butler's claims here are critically informed both by her theory of performativity and by her analysis of Slavoj Zizek's
analysis of political signifiers as "empty signs which come to bear phantasmatic investment of various kinds" (Butler 1993,
191). Butler claims that understanding the category of "women" as a political signifier in this way affirms the sense in which
that signifier unifies the category it seeks to represent and, simultaneously, constitutes that very category. The
performative power of the political signifier therefore lies in "enacting that which it names" (1995a, 150; 1995c, 134). The
critical force of the political signifier consists in its failure, ultimately, to fully or comprehensively describe or represent
that which it names. It is precisely this open-ended character, this inability to ever fully establish or describe the identity to
which it refers which, Butler claims, constitutes the possibility of an "expansive re-articulation" (1993, 218) of that identity.
So, in summary, the performative character of the signifier is the very condition of its agency.
"Agency" is therefore located by Butler in the performative character of the political signifier. It is not an attribute or
"power" of subjects, through which they assert control or "authorship" over action or signification. Indeed, Butler is
highly critical of an account of agency which implies that the subject is somehow the exclusive "origin" or "owner" of
action or signification (1993, 227). The subject, for Butler, is constituted in and by a signifier (such as "woman"), where "'to be
constituted' means 'to be compelled to cite or repeat or mime' the signifier itself" (1993, 220). Agency is located in this very
action of at once being brought into being by and repeating or miming the signifier itself.12 Possibilities for "agency," and
therefore for change and transformation, lie in the very activity of repetition and identification. Furthermore, such
activity is not, for Butler, entered into deliberately or voluntarily but rather is a process which subjects are compelled to
enter into insofar as they are constituted in and through relations of power in society.
At this point it is pertinent that we step back for a moment and consider the accounts against which Butler is formulating
her own position on agency. Butler caricatures traditional, "liberal," accounts of agency insofar as she presumes that
they, necessarily, install a "doer behind the deed." That is, they assume a subject which is at some point capable of acting
outside or beyond the limitations or constraints of the discourse or culture within which they are situated (Butler 1995b,
42). Indeed, Butler accuses Beauvoir of ultimately assuming precisely such a subject in her account of gendered identity.13
Likewise, she is critical of Benhabib for, first, apparently investing subjects with the capacity to deliberate or act outside of
their cultural context and, second, criticizing her own account of performativity with such a conception of the subject in
mind (1995c, 135). Yet both Beauvoir and Benhabib are specifically concerned to "situate" the subject and thereby emphasize
precisely the sense in which subjects act from within a sepcific social and historical context. How are we, therefore, to
understand Butler's critique of their conceptions of agency, and in what sense are those conceptions distinct from her
own?
In assessing Butler's critique it is clear that Beauvoir and Benhabib ultimately differ from Butler in three important ways.
First, they differ in the relative strength of the agency or freedom which they attribute to subjects. Broadly speaking, while
Beauvoir and Benhabib clearly equate agency with subjective capacities for choice or self-determination, Butler locates
agency in resistance, in the "possibility of a variation on repetition" of those various sustained social performances which
constitute our identities (1990, 145). Second, they differ in their accounts of where, in what theoretical and political space,
agency takes place. For Beauvoir and Benhabib, agency is clearly a capacity of the subject, while for Butler, it is an effect of
the subject (Butler 1995c, 134). That is to say, it is not, for Butler, a quality or attribute which subjects somehow possess and
deliberately exercise, but rather is an effect of the very processes through which they are constituted as subjects. Third,
Butler and Benhabib disagree over both the theoretical and political implications of their respective accounts of agency.
While Butler understands both Beauvoir and Benhabib to be guilty of installing a "doer behind the deed," Benhabib is
critical of Butler for apparently doing away with a "doer" altogether (Benhabib 1992, 16). Both Beauvoir and Benhabib
insist on an account of agency in which there is a subject who acts, a "doer" who "does." Insofar as Butler criticizes such a
formulation she is attempting to emphasize the sense in which there can be no separation of the "doer" from the "deed." The
"doer," for Butler, is always constituted in and through the "deed." Yet insofar as she wants to emphasize this
simultaneous "constituting" and "constituted" character of the "doer," she is accused of losing a valuable account of
agency, an account which construes it as precisely about the sort of control the "doer" has over their "deeds."
The characterizations Butler and Benhabib provide of each other's notions of agency inevitably contribute to the
different assessments each make of the political consequences of those notions. Indeed what the debate between them
illustrates so well is how issues in debate over the political consequences for feminism of particular notions of agency
have come to be confused and conflated. Benhabib understands Butler's theory of performativity to have debilitating
consequences for the emancipatory objectives of a feminist politics insofar as she perceives the subjective capacities of
"choice" and "self-determination" to be missing from it. Yet, in response, it seems that Butler is less concerned with the
question of whether or not "choice" or "self-determination" are possible than with the question of how such choice or
self-determination comes about. She is therefore (to some extent) justifiably wary of the very terms through which her work
is assessed (Butler 1995c, 128). The debate is characterized by Benhabib as one about "losing" or "disallowing" capacities for
self-determination and self-reflection, while it is understood by Butler to be about reformulating how agency comes about
and under what terms it is effected or established. As she herself states, the task for feminism is actually to "locate
strategies of subversive repetition" and to participate in those practices of repetition that constitute identity (1990, 147). The
task is therefore to find ways of disrupting and destabilizing the very processes through which we are constructed as
subjects and, in so doing, open up possibilities for change and transformation in our identities.
Despite the very different angles (and apparent cross-purposes) at which Benhabib and Butler enter debate with one
another on this issue, it is abundantly clear that both invest considerable political importance in their respective
conceptions of agency--for both, that importance consists in the possibility for transformation and resignification of the
subject and of cultural and political relations (Benhabib 1995b, 108; Butler 1995b, 46). Ultimately, therefore, we are left
with the question of what sort of account of agency is consistent with the possibility of such transformation and
resignification. Clearly, both Benhabib and Butler consider each other's accounts to be inadequate (or incoherent) with
respect to this possibility.
In summary, three critical issues characterize the debate between Benhabib and Butler. First, there is a fundamental
disagreement between them over how to understand the origins and operation of agency. Second, despite agreement over
the political importance of agency, there is a division of opinion over the question of precisely how it does or ought to
operate in the political domain. Third, there is specific disagreement over the implications for a feminist politics of
particular conceptions of agency.
The primary focus of Benhabib's critique of Butler is the notion of agency which emerges from Butler's performative
account of sex and gender and the inadequacy of that notion for the articulation and representation of what she
perceives to be issues of specifically feminist political concern. However, I want to suggest here that even if we disagree
specifically with Benhabib over the question of precisely what such issues are, or how we might go about addressing them, we
are still left with the question of whether Butler's performative account of those categories provides an adequate
framework in which to address and support either its own implicit political commitments or those issues of political
representation and agency as they are debated in the broader context of the Anglo-American feminist theory in which she
is situated. In the next section of this paper I will begin by considering in more detail precisely what sort of political
commitments are implicit in Butler's work and how she understands the issues of political representation and agency to be
addressed in the context of such commitments.
Butler Theorizes the Political
Aside from Butler's explicit reference to the strategic importance of retaining the category "women" in order to meet
particular political ends, she does make some general comments in her work which suggest that a particular vision for a
"feminist politics" does, at least implicitly, inform her work. First of all, Butler suggests that feminism must engage in a
critical analysis of its own grounds in order to avoid losing its "democratizing potential" (1993, 29). Moreover, she clearly
positions herself in Bodies That Matter in the context of theorists committed to "radical democratic theory." In support of
this suggested commitment to "radical democratic aims," she appeals to "a more fully democratic and participatory
political life" (1995c, 129). In this section I will address three questions. First, what does such a commitment, even if only
implicitly, entail for Butler and how is it to be understood within the terms of her theory of performativity? Second, how is
the issue of political representation addressed within this theory? Third, how might Butler, in response to critics such as
Benhabib, reconcile her account of agency with this apparent commitment to radical democratic aims?
To address the first question here, I will not endeavor to give a comprehensive account of the various aims and objectives
espoused by theorists committed to "radical democratic politics." Rather, I will be concerned to draw out precisely what it
is that Butler draws upon in her own account of such aims and objectives and how she seeks to deploy some aspects of them
within her own vision for a "feminist politics." In drawing upon the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (Laclau
and Mouffe 1985), Butleridentifiess several aspects of their theory for a radical democratic politics which she understands
to be pertinent for understanding her own conception of the performative function of the political signifier.14 For Butler,
as we have seen, the political signifier (such as "women") is politically effective precisely because of its power to produce and
constitute its politicalfieldd and its simultaneous failure to ever fully describe or represent that which it names. Like Butler,
Laclau and Mouffe subscribe to the view that political signifiers are productive and constitutive of the politicalfieldd. They
also claim that all political signifiers are contingently related to one another. Insofar as such signifiers are always in
themselves incomplete (that is, insofar as they always fail to fully describe or represent that which they name), they can
and should be perpetually rearticulated in relation to one another. Laclau and Mouffe claim that this process of
rearticulation is productive of new subject positions and new political signifiers and, consequently, new linkages between
these positions and signifiers, can become the rallying points for politicization (Butler 1993, 193). Laclau and Mouffe
therefore understand politics to be essentially "a practice of creation, reproduction and transformation" (1985, 153). They
insist on understanding the domain of the political as "the space for a game which is never 'zero-sum,' because the rules and
the players are never fully explicit" (1985, 193). Radical democratic theoretical and political potential consists precisely in
this productive and constitutive character of the political domain.
Critical to the aims and objectives of a radical democratic politics is, therefore, an exposure and avowal of "the necessary
error of identity" (Butler 1993, 229). Butler understands the democratizing potential of identity categories to consist in
mobilizing that necessary error and so exposing that which they exclude (the abject). Such exposure and mobilization is
vital, according to Butler, to the very democratizing potential of a feminist politics. It is precisely in this sense, then, that
Butler understands the category of "women" to have "open and democratizing potential" (1993, 221). For this reason, she is
specifically critical of the claim that problematizing the identity category "women" necessarily leads to an "impossibility
of a feminist politics."15 Indeed, for Butler, the problematic character of that category is itself constitutive of its
democratizing potential.16 Leaving that category open, and so never understanding it to have afixedd or determinate set of
references, will leave it open to challenge and therefore open to the sort of change, transformation, andresignificationn
which feminism might seek.
In summary, therefore, it is clear that Butler situates herself in the context of political theorists who see radical
democratic potential in the incompletion of the political signifier and relations between political signifiers. Although
Butler is not explicit in providing us with a programmatic vision for a feminist politics, it is clear that the recognition and
mobilization of "the necessary error of identity" which is operative in Laclau's and Mouffe's radical democratic theory is
pertinent in the context of her own understanding of the possibility and democratic potential of a "feminist politics."
Indeed Mouffe, like Butler, appeals to the (postmodern) critique of identity categories precisely because of the sense in which
that critique demonstrates the multiplicity of subject positions which ultimately contribute to the constitution of a single
agent (Mouffe 1988, 35). Mouffe claims that it is this multiplicity which should be the site of politics--for her, a full
understanding of politics is impossible without a theory of the subject as precisely a decentered, destabilized agent (1988,
35).17
As I have claimed, two issues of specifically feminist political concern emerge in the context of Butler's theory of
performativity and, more specifically, in the context of her theory, outlined above, of the performative function of the
political signifier. Thefirstt is the issue of political representation; the second is that of agency. I will turnfirstt here to the
question of how the issue of political representation is addressed in these contexts.
We have seen here that the content of the identity category of "women" is never stable orfixedd. Insofar as it is "a
performative," or as it functions performatively, according to Butler, it constitutes itself as a category at the point at
which it is "named." Its content is, in this sense, highly malleable and negotiable. Indeed it is this very malleability which, for
Butler, determines its "democratizing" potential. It is, for Butler, a category which is open to a continual process of
transformation andresignificationn. Yet we may well ask what this malleability implies for the question of whether we can
ever talk about there being some meaningful or substantial account of the content of that category. For example, is the
term "women" simply an "empty sign" (Butler 1993, 191) which we invest with whatever meaning we choose at any given time?
Insofar as that category of "women" does operate as such an empty sign, what does this effectively mean for the political
representation by the feminist movement of "women" and "women's concerns"?18 How do such things come to be
represented? Is our representation of them always strategic and temporary? Is this a problem?
One consequence of the way in which Butler construes the gender identity category "woman" as "an empty sign" is that
that category, and those concerns which we might identify as unique to that category, are wholly malleable and
negotiable. According to Butler's account, there can be no meaningful or substantial contentspecificc to or determinate of
that category or concerns except that which we invest in them. Furthermore, even at the point at which we "name" that
category and so invest it with meaning or content, that meaning or content is shifting. That is to say, insofar as it can
never "fully describe or represent that which it names" its meaning can never befixedd and it will mean different things at
different times and in different contexts. For this reason, the political representation of "women" and of "women's
concerns" will always be, for Butler, a slippery affair.
The implications of this "slipperiness" for the feminist movement are, as I suggested in the previous section, different
according to the different political contexts in which they are assessed. For example, insofar as it has historically been a
movement which has specifically sought to represent "women" and "women's concerns," it is clear that for Butler such
representation can never be entirely legitimate. Indeed, Butler specifically seeks to point out that "identity as a point of
departure can never hold as the solidifying ground of a feminist political movement" (1995b, 50). That movement can never
legitimately prescribe afixedd content or meaning to the categories of "women" or "women's concerns." In this sense--that
is, insofar as feminism is understood as primarily a representative movement or lobby group for a particular group or
particular concerns--its political force does appear substantially weakened by Butler's theory of performativity. However,
in the context of her vision for a "radically democratic politics," the open and transformative potential of the category
of "women" appears to provide general support for such "radically democratic" aims. On the one hand, therefore, Butler's
performative account of gender can be understood to weaken identity-based politics. On the other hand, it could be
understood to enrich our understanding of gender and so enrich our understanding of the processes through which
"women" and "men" are constructed in particular ways.
The second issue of specifically feminist political concern that emerges in the context of Butler's theory of the performative
function of the political signifier is that of agency. As we have seen, Butler understands the political domain to be
productive and constitutive of subjects. It is also clear that insofar as this production and constitution is an ongoing and
transformative process, it is one that, according to Butler, gives rise to the possibility of agency or resistance. The question
which arises at this point, therefore, is whether Butler is rightly or wrongly accused by critics such as Benhabib of
ultimately disallowing agency and so "giving up the basis" for a feminist politics. What sort of agency is actually
"disallowed" by Butler and is this the sort of agency feminism actually requires in order tofulfilll its "emancipatory"
objectives? Is Butler's conception of agency ultimately inadequate for accounting for the sort of resistance which might be
required in order for subjects to avoid wholesale social determinism? How is resistance possible? Is such resistance enough
to enable the democratic and emancipatory aims implicit in her political vision for feminism?
Wendy Brown's work offers somesignificantt insights for the purposes of addressing these questions. Furthermore, it
illustrates very well how feminist political concern surrounding the issue of agency has come to be confused because of
disagreement over precisely what sort of agency is necessary in order to ground or support particular political aims.
Brown points out that a problem which is critical for feminists today lies in discerning how we might formulate a discourse
of freedom that is appropriate to contesting antidemocraticconfigurationss of power (1995, 7). In other words, she, like
Butler, posits "democracy" as the ultimate goal of her political vision and asks what sort of account of agency is
necessary for thefulfillmentt of that goal. As a consequence, she focuses specifically on how formations of power in
contemporary society might be "democratized" and how we might contribute to strategies that avoid an account
rendering subjects "unresisting vehicles of its objectionable contemporary functions" (1995, 34). That is to say, she wants to
avoid an account of subjects as constituted and thereby determined by the relations of power in which they are situated
and to think about how subjects might, in practice, resist such determination. significantly, therefore, Brown seeks to think
through just what is actually involved in contesting and subverting those relations of power in which we are situated
while avowing the sense in which those relations are not something we can actually overcome or actively control.
Brown's work issignificantt in bringing into focus two critical issues that are directly relevant to our assessment of Butler's
conception of agency. First, while clearly aligning herself with a conception of power as productive and constitutive of
subjects, Brownaffirmss the necessity ofdefiningg strategies of resistance to such power.19 Second, she explicitly attempts to
articulate the sort of power which is entailed by the actual practice of freedom by subjects.20 Considering her work in
relation to Butler's conception of agency (and the claim that that conception gives rise to a problematic political vision)
yields some important insights. First and foremost, Brown claims that the mere existence of resistance (as a mode of agency
or freedom) is not enough to successfully contest or arrogate power. "[Resistance] by itself," she argues, "does not contain
a critique, a vision, or grounds for organized collective efforts to enact. . . . Resistance-as-politics does not raise the
dilemmas of responsibility andjustificationn entailed in 'afrming' political projects and norms" (1995, 49). In other words,
resistance by itself is not enough to make possible the successful undermining of contemporaryconfigurationss of power,
nor is itsufficientt to raise the moral framework necessary foraffirmativee political action. Furthermore, resistance does
not necessarily give rise to a particular (democratic or emancipatory) political direction (Brown 1995, 22).
As I suggested, the issues raised by Brown here raise some important points that aresignificantt in our assessment of the
political implications for feminism of the performative framework through which Butler develops her account of agency,
an account which, as we have seen, isdefinedd primarily in terms of resistance. In summary, these points principally concern
the need Brownidentifiess for,firstt,definingg strategies of resistance to power; second, establishing grounds for collective
agency; and third, raising the moral framework necessary foraffirmativee political action. All of these points suggest the
need for a stronger account of agency than the notion of resistance which is provided by Butler.21 That is to say, they
suggest the need for a stronger account of what role subjects may actively play in their construction as gendered, on what
grounds they might strengthen that role in the political arena through collective action, and how they might set up
appropriate aims and objectives that contest their determination by the highly gendered relations of power in which they
are situated. I want to suggest here, therefore, that while Butler cannot be accused of disallowing agency or of wholly
undermining the basis for feminist political action, we are neverthelessjustifiedd in considering her conception of agency
inadequate to explain or to provide an account of the actual practice of freedom by subjects or groups of subjects in the
political arena.
It will not have gone unnoticed that the problems associated with Butler's theory of agency bear similarities to thoseidentifiedd by many critics in the work of Michel Foucault.22 Likewise, Brown's response to these problems can also be
perceived as an attempt to resolve some of the issues raised by a Foucauldian model of power in relation to political
activism. Needless to say, while feminism is certainly not left in a state of crisis through an adherence to the theory of
agency emerging from such a model, I have suggested in this paper that too little attention is paid by theorists such as
Butler to two issues:firstt, to identifying the relation between the individual and the processes through which they are
constructed; and, second, to locating points of intervention in those processes.23 There is a reluctance to address explicitly
the questions of how it is that individuals in practice resist determination by dominant gender norms and how such norms
might be actively contested in the context of a feminist political movement. Until such issues are addressed, accounts such
as Butler's risk providing a theoretical framework for feminism which bears little relation to the practical political issues
it faces.
Notes
1. See, for example, essays in Benhabib et al. (1995) and Hekman (1995a).
2. See, to name just a few examples, Alcoff (1988), Bartky (1995), Bordo (1992), Butler and Scott (1992), Hekman (1995b),
Nicholson (1990), Riley (1988), and Schweickart (1995).
3. See Butler (1993, 28) for an example of this claim.
4. This claim is only briey articulated by Benhabib. It seems important to note that it is ostensibly a curious one given that
Butler's theory of performative gender constitution seems to be precisely a theory about the structural and developmental
processes which are operative in the construction of identity (such asidentificationn and repetition). Nevertheless, the point
Benhabib desires to make, over and above her general uneasiness with the social research paradigms which guide Butler's
work, is that Butler's theory of performativity does not provide an adequate explanation of the capacity of subjects for
some degree ofself-reflectionn and self-determination.
5. I have referred here to Butler's critique of traditional, liberal formulations of agency as "radical" in comparison to
Benhabib's own account of agency. Benhabib, however, is not uncritical of liberal accounts of agency. Indeed, insofar as
Butler is construing the liberal account of agency as one in which subjects are somehow "dis-embedded," "disembodied,"
"abstractly rational," etc., Benhabib would concur with Butler in criticizing such an account. Nevertheless, the accounts
of agency which they ultimately provide in response to their critiques of liberalism differ sharply from one another. This
difference in their responses to the liberal account of agency is largely due to their different characterizations of that
account.
6. See Butler (1986).
7. Butler asks, in response to Benhabib's criticism of her, "what notion of 'agency' will that be which always and already
knows its transcendental ground, and speaks only and always from that ground? To be so grounded is nearly to be buried:
it is to refuse alterity, to reject contestation, to decline that risk of self-transformation perpetually posed by democratic
life: to give way to the very impulse of conservatism" (1995c, 132).
8. Indeed, she notes that "any effort to give a universal orspecificc content to the category of women, presuming that that
guarantee of solidarity is required in advance, will necessarily produce factionalization, and that identity as a point of
departure can never hold as the solidifying ground of a feminist political movement. Identity categories are never merely
descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary" (Butler 1995b, 50).
9. Indeed, she explicitly claims in Bodies That Matter that her text "is not intended to be programmatic," but nevertheless
hopes it will be "productive" in some way (Butler 1993, xii).
10. My task in this paper is, in part, to consider how Butler might programmatically theorize a specifically feminist politics.
However, I have chosen not to address here in detail the more general sense in which she perceives some activities to have
political outcomes or to amount to political acts. In Gender trouble, for example, Butler refers to drag as a sort of political
act insofar as it is subversive of what we commonly understand to be gender--that is, as something that is attached to or a
consequence of sex. To the extent that drag "imitates genders," Butler argues, it reveals the sense in which those genders
are themselves imitative and inscribed contingently on the surface of bodies (1990, 136-37). She claims that drag therefore
effectively mocks any appeal to a notion of "true" gender identity. The sort of parody involved in drag is political, or
constitutes a sort of politics, insofar as it brings into question dominant political norms concerning gender--it "bends"
our preconceptions about gender.
11. Butler is not alone in seeing the political importance of retaining the category of "women" while remaining insistently
critical of the character of its possible construction and deployment. Drucilla Cornell argues, like Butler, that leaving
the term open and neverfixingg its constitution "yields endless transformative possibility" (1995, 87). Like Butler, Cornell is
critical of identity-based politics. Cornell relies instead on what she refers to as "an explicitly political enactment of
mimeticidentificationn as the basis for solidarity" (1995, 71).
12. Butler concludes, "[this] marks the workings of an agency that is (a) not the same as voluntarism, and
that (b) though implicated in the very relations of power it seeks to rival, is not, as a consequence, reducible to those
dominant forms" (1993, 241).
13. See Butler (1990, 8) for a further example of this claim.
14. See my reference earlier in this paper to Butler's comments on the performative power of the political signifier.
15. See Butler (1993, 188).
16. Mouffe is also critical of claims that a critique of identity categories necessarily leads to an impossibility of a feminist
politics (1992, 371). In a similar vein to Butler (although with more practical political principles in mind) she suggests rather
that such a critique is necessary in order to reach "an adequate understanding of the variety of social relations where the
principles of liberty and equality should apply" (1992, 371).
17. Mouffe also writes, "we are in fact always multiple and contradictory subjects, inhabitants of a diversity of
communities, . . . constructed by a variety of discourses and precariously and temporarily sutured at the intersection of
those subject-positions. Thus the importance of the postmodern critique for developing a political philosophy aimed at
making possible a new form of individuality that would be truly plural and democratic" (1988, 44).
18. It is important to note here that Butler's theory of the performative function of the political signifier obviously has
implications for all political signifiers, not simply that of "woman." However, I am here thinking quite specifically about its
implications for the political concerns of feminism, and, for this reason, I am focusing on the "political signifiers" of
"women" and "women's concerns."
19. The need todefinee strategies of resistance to power arises in the context of feminist critiques of Foucault's notion of
agency. Indeed, one of the principal criticisms raised by feminists against Foucault's notion of agency is that it fails to
account for or explain strategies of empowerment or emancipation for women. Such an account or explanation is
understood to be critical to the aims and objectives of feminism.
20. Indeed she insists that freedom "requires for its sustenance that we take full measure of power's range and
appearances--the powers that situate, constrain and produce subjects as well as the will to power entailed in practicing
freedom" (Brown 1995, 25; my emphasis).
21. Indeed, Brown argues that "what postmodernity disperses and postmodern feminist politics requires are cultivated
political spaces for posing and questioning feminist political norms, for discussing the nature of 'the good' for women"
(1995, 49). She therefore suggests the importance of,firstt, identifying and critically assessing feminist political norms and,
second, considering the potential common values that might emerge for women in the political arena. significantly,
Benhabib raises a similar "requirement" for feminism. She argues that what is needed in feminist critical theory is to develop
a theory that is both emancipatory andreflectivee. Its task should be twofold:firstt, to explain, through critical,social-scientificc research, the condition of women, and second, to anticipate, normatively and philosophically, a utopian
condition for women (a condition toward which we should strive) (1992, 152).
22. Indeed, in evidence of her theoretical debt to Foucault, Butler herself explicitly states in Bodies That Matter that her
text "accepts as a point of departure Foucault's notion that regulatory power produces the subjects it controls, that
power is not only imposed externally but works as the regulative and normative means by which subjects are formed" (1993,
22).
23. In this paper I have focused on the question of how we might resolve Butler's account of agency in relation to the
development of a specifically feminist politics. I have concentrated on her performative account of gender detailed in
Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. In more recent work, such as The Psychic Life of Power (1997b) and Excitable Speech
(1997a), Butler has expanded her analysis of agency and the relation between agency and political action beyond the more
feminist-oriented concerns of earlier work. Her focus in both of these books is the question of how agency can be thought
of in opposition to the forces of subordination. That is to say, if we agree that the subject is constituted rather than
constituting in relation to its own identity, how might that subject assert political agency? "How can it be," she asks, "that
the subject, taken to be the condition for and instrument of agency, is at the same time the effect of subordination,
understood as the deprivation of agency?" (1997b, 10). Although Butler clearly makes it her task in The Psychic Life of
Power to address the question of "how we might make such a conception of the subject work as a notion of political agency
in post-liberatory times" (1997b, 18), her response in that book is focused more on the aforementioned theoretical paradox
than on some of the practical political issues to which that paradox gives rise. The problem of agency is not addressed in a
specifically feminist political context, and it is largely for this reason that I have not explored these works in detail in the
present paper, the primary focus of which is issues arising from the debate between Benhabib and Butler.
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