Subjected Subjects?

On Judith Butlers Paradox of Interpellation

NOELA DAVIS

Judith Butlers theory of the constitution of subjectivity conceptualizes the subject as a performative materialization of its social environment. In her theory Butler utilizes Louis Althussers notion of interpellation, and she critiques the constitutive paradoxes to which its tautological framing leads. Although there is no pre-existing subject, as it is constituted in the turn to the interpellative hail, Butler nonetheless theorizes a guilt and compulsion acting on an individual that compels his or her turn to answer the hail. There is a price to pay for subjectivity in Butlers schema: the reprimand of the interpellative law that punishes at the same time as it constitutes. But a return to Althussers text nds that he does not rely so much on coercion and guilt in his explanation of the subjects answer to the hail. Althusser can instead be read as suggesting that we are already an instantiation and enactment of power-ideology and, to paraphrase Michel Foucault, are already the principle of our own subjection. This contests the notion that we are in any way compelled to submit to an external, punitive force to become subjects. As subjects, we are always-already the embodiment of the eld of society-power-ideology.

Judith Butlers work presents a continuing challenge to the notion of the subject as a given and self-contained, bounded entity that somehow internalizes an external social system. She instead proposes a subject as a performative (re)materialization of its social environment. Through this she offers the possibility for re-envisioning subjects as intimately entangled within their contexts as performative materializations of social values and norms. In her investigation of the performative materialization of the subject and its entry into intelligibility, Butler examines Louis Althussers notion of interpellation as, she notes, it still underlies much contemporary theorization of subject-formation (Althusser 1971; Butler 1997b, 106). Indeed, a theory of interpellation forms the basis for her own work on performativity and subjectivity.
Hypatia vol. 27, no. 4 (Fall 2012) by Hypatia, Inc.

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Butlers account of Althussers work will be examined, along with my rereading of Althussers own guring of the interpellative process. Butler presents a vision of the subject in Althussers work as a subjugated being, compelled into submission and the acceptance of its subjectifying conditions: paradoxically, at once the site of subordination and, from this, of agency. By going back to Althussers work, can we nd a way to conceptualize subjectivity without the necessarily negative and restrictive vision that is found in Butlers narrative? Can a reconsideration of Althussers essay shed light on what Butler has identied as the constitutive paradoxes of subjection? I argue here that ambiguities in Althussers text enable it to support an alternative view of subjectivity to that of Butler. In so doing, it can allow us to theorize a materialization of subjectivity that does not depend on the notions of subjugation, guilt, and submission that are attendant on Butlers rendition, one that offers a more open, welcoming view of what it is to be a subject.

THE INTERPELLATION

OF THE

SUBJECT

The potential of interpellation as the basis for a performative theory of subjectivity lies in its being a naming that constitutes the subject it so names. There is no subject before this naming; that is, interpellation does not describe a pre-existing or given subject which then internalizes or appropriates its subjectifying conditions. Instead, interpellation gives an account of the genesis of the subject; that is, of the subject as an already subjectied, and thus social, being. In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler examines Althussers scenario of interpellation, aiming to give a symptomatic reading of his text, a reading that will show the invisible within it (Butler 1997b, 113). The scene of interpellation that Butler critiques in Althusser describes a hailing that transforms individuals into subjects (Althusser 1971, 174). In his example, a policeman in the street calls out Hey, you there! The mysterious qualities of this call are revealed as Althusser observes that the one so hailed turns around in response, and nine times out of ten it is the right one who turns. In turning, the respondent becomes a subject by recognizing that the hail was really addressed to him (17475; original emphasis). In her reading, Butler highlights the enigmatic nature of such a suggestion, noting the paradoxical elements of these processes of subject-formation (subjectivation) (Butler 1997b, 1). This arises because, in describing this scene, we must speak as if there is something that responds and turns to answer the hail, yet because interpellation constitutes the subject, there is no subjectno whoto hear and respond to the call. In giving this account we must thus refer to what does not yet exist (4), and are confronted with the difculty of explaining what turns to answer, how it recognizes the call, and why it turns.

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This paradox is found in the very words we must use to talk of subject-formation. The term subjection (or assujettisement)the process of becoming a subjecthas a double meaning. Butler explains that: assujettisement means both subjection (in the sense of subordination) and becoming a subject. It seems as well to contain the paradox of power as it both acts upon and activates a body. If the word subjection (assujettisement) has two meanings, to subordinate someone to power and to become a subject, it presupposes the subject in its rst meaning, and induces the subject in its second. Is there a contradiction here, or is it a paradoxa constitutive paradox? (Butler 2002, 1617; see also Butler 1997b, 83)1 This problem retains a contemporary relevance as it still recurrently structures the debate of subject-formation (Butler 1997b, 10); Butler herself examines and uses such an interpellative scenario in her theorizations of the performative nature of subjectivity. The narrative of subject-formation is thus a circular one that must assume the subject that it seeks to explain (Butler 1997b, 11). To help illuminate this perplexing situation, Butler cautions that we must not suppose that the subject is substitutable for the individual or the person (10). Individuals must be rst established in language to be intelligible; that is, they must become subjected/subjectivated through the interpellative process (11). The interpellative naming is, for Butler, the individuals entry into intelligibility and its guarantee of existence and legibility. Accounts of interpellation present an impossible scene, that of a body or individual that is, strictly speaking, not accessible to us, but that nevertheless becomes accessible on the occasion of an interpellation that does not discover this body, but constitutes it fundamentally (Butler 1997a, 5). Individual is thus not a term we can really make sense of as individuals acquire their intelligibility by becoming subjects (Butler 1997b, 11). Any mention of individuals presents this impossible situation, where we must implicitly presume, in advance, the subjects they will become. In extensive analyses of the interpellative scenario in her works, Butler ably demonstrates the workings of these self-referential circuits in which we become entangled when using a theory of subject-formation based on such a scene. She gives an informed and well argued examination of the difculties and impossibilities encountered when giving this account of subjection; for Althussers scene is enigmatic, and Butler explains its implications with great facility. However, what I want to question in Butlers analyses are the reasons that she puts forward in response to the problem of why the subject turns to answer the call, and of what she sees as implicit in the nature of the naming that constitutes the subject in subjection.

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In her reading of interpellation, Butler concentrates on the implications of the policemanthe lawhailing the passer-by in the street. She considers that Althusser casts the hail as a unilateral act that harnesses the power and force of the law to compel fear at the same time that it offers recognition at an expense (Butler 1993, 121). There is a price to pay for our interpellation as subjects, and it is reprimand and subjugation. Butler asks, does this subjectivation take place as a direct effect of the reprimanding utterance or must the utterance wield the power to compel the fear of punishment and produce a compliance and obedience to the law? (12122). Butlers account conceives the hail as an external, compelling force that comes to us from the law, and constitutes us in subjection and compliance. As Althusser uses the scenario of a policeman hailing, Butler further considers that the call is an authoritative demand to align oneself with the law through the appropriation of guilt (Butler 1997b, 107). Why, though, are we guilty and why would we accept this guilt? And is this guilty imperative necessary to a reading of Althusser? He places much less emphasis on the role of guilt, intimating that interpellation is a much more mysterious operation than simple guilt would suggest (Althusser 1971, 174). Butler herself notes that Althusser does not give reasons as to why the individual turns around (Butler 1997b, 5); the supposition that guilt underlies this turn arises in Butlers own symptomatic reading. In working through the problem of why we turn, Butler proposes that there exists a prior readiness or desire whereby the subject-to-be is already in complicity with the law that brings it into being. She asks [w]hat kind of relation already binds these two such that the subject knows to turn. .. a prior complicity with the law without which no subject emerges? (Butler 1997b, 107). Butler wants to see the motivation for the turn in response to the call as a function of circuits of a prior guilt, in a readiness to accept guilt and retribution as the price of the conferral of identity. Her insistence on this leads her to theorize a founding submission (111, 112) based on this guilt, and it is from this acceptance of guilt that, for her, subjectivity and identity arise. To build her argument for the role of guilt, Butler addresses the failure of interpellationmisrecognitionand the circuits of desire that this encompasses. Misrecognition is always a possibility of the interpellative processes: we may mishear, not hear, fail to turn, turn when it is not us that is called (Butler 1997b, 95). After all, Althusser only vouches that nine out of ten responses are correct (Althusser 1971, 174). The importance of misrecognition for Butler is twofold: the totalizing desire it initiates is necessary for our continued subjectivity; and because we can never be the totalized and completed subject promised by interpellation, the agential gap that is opened by this constitutive failure of interpellation enables not just continued attempts to conrm the interpellation, but also resistance to this naming. The very processes that demand our submission at the same time enable our resistance, with our agency being produced within this

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system of subjection, misrecognition, and desire (Butler 1997b, 12; see also Butler 1993, 122). To further this argument, Butler draws analogies with the misrecognition of the (Lacanian) mirror stage, that desire for the false totalization that she considers is essential to, and initiates, our sociality (Butler 1997b, 112). This desire is for the totalization offered by the law. It is, Butler claims, Althussers implication that social existence can be guaranteed only by the law. Interpellation is the call of/from the law: by this reasoning it was thus not accidental that Althusser chose the policeman to illustrate his account. For Butler, this means that social existence is purchased only through a guilty embrace of the law (112). We are willing to suffer reprimand and accept subjection in return for the intelligibility that subjectivity brings us. As it is the law that makes social existence possible, we, already desirous of existence, will pay the price and admit our guilt (by turning in response to the call). This admission ensures that the law must intervene and so guarantee our existence. We thus must be guilty. Our plea to the law must be heard so that our subjectivity and intelligibility is granted. Has Butler adequately made her case that we must pay a price for the conferral of our subjectivity? In other works Butler also examines our (non) compliance with the terms of our interpellation, and a brief overview of these can illuminate the operations of resistance in her theorizations. It must be stressed that it is not the notion of performativity and resistance per se that is being questioned. Butlers notion of performativity extensively examines the important possibilities that its reiterative nature allows for theorizing disobedience, resistance, and nonconformitythat is, nonacceptance or redirecting of the interpellative naming (see Butler 1993; 1997a; 2004). Butlers argument that precisely because the subject does not perform any iteration exactly allows the subject to embody itself differently is one of the strengths of performativity as a theory of subjectivity. What I want to open to question is Butlers assumption that force, coercion, and totalizing normative imperatives (for instance, the guilty embrace of the punitive law in the Psychic Life of Power or compulsory heterosexuality in Bodies That Matter) necessarily accompany the terms of the hailing and, thus, its performative re-enactments. I would further suggest that the guilt, force, and compulsion that Butler nds in Althusser is not something essential to his text, but comes from Butlers overall investments in her theory of the performative processes of subject-formation. The idea that subjectivity comes at a price is reiterated in works such as Bodies That Matter (1993) and Undoing Gender (2004) where Butler gives us accounts of the lived experience of being subjected to a subjugating regime. In these books, Butler again talks of the coercive nature of the norms that constitute us (that is, name or authorize us and make us intelligible) and at the same time constrain us. Gender norms, she says, have a constitutive and compelling status through which the materiality of sex is forcibly produced. Sex, too, is a normative and

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regulatory practice that produces bodies as it governs them. It is forcibly materialized through time in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative (Butler 1993, 12). Such normative regulations impose compulsory heterosexuality (74). Indeed, the embodying of norms is a compulsory practice (231); it compels the directionality of sexuality and subjectivity such that their productive power is never fully free from regulation (95). Whereas Butler presents an account of norms as productive of, and indeed essential for, our social existence, she sees normativity as having a double meaning, as norms both enable and constrain life. As well as guiding and orienting our aims and aspirations, norms are also, for Butler, imbued with a necessarily negative side: they normalize, govern, and compel us; they do us a constitutive violence. Norms dene what is intelligible and provide coercive criteria for normal men and women. If we defy these norms, Butler claims, it is unclear whether we are still living (Butler 2004, 206). For Butler, the norms that constitute us are regulatory and law-like standards that force compliance by the threat of punishment for noncompliance. Those who successfully approximate the standards, or submit to the law, matter (both materialize and have meaning); that is, they are intelligible subjects. Those deemed to be not properly gendered, for instance, fail to approximate these norms closely enough to matter. So within this regime only some bodies come to matter, and this mattering is produced by the repeated and violent circumscription of cultural intelligibility as it works within heterosexual hegemony (Butler 1993, xxii). It is this that gives subjectivity its constitutive violence for Butler. Yet it is not only those who do not matter properly who suffer it. According to Butlers logic, not-mattering, or abjection, is the constitutive exclusion that gives denition to our (acceptable) subjectivities within the norm. We cannot dissociate ourselves from the brutality of abjection because it is constitutive of our own being. We matter because another does not. The price we pay for our subjectivity is to live as coerced beings with violence at the core of our selves. Butler thus theorizes norms as repressive and somehow purposeful interpellating actions that impinge on the subject and direct subjectivitys development to the norms own violent and constraining purposes. They designate in advance what will and will not be a livable existence (Butler 2004, 206). The suggestion that there exists a prior aim in these subjectivating actions raises another question to consider in rereading Althussers text: is there any sense of determination inherent in his elaborations of interpellation?

ALTHUSSERS PERFORMATIVE I will also approach Althussers text in a symptomatic way to see if it can suggest another way of theorizing subjectivity, one without an inaugural moment that is

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necessarily of compulsion, authorization, and purpose. While Althussers essay does, as Butler points out (Butler 1997b, 116), speak of subjects having to be submitted to the ruling ideology to reproduce or materialize their social circumstances, Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), the instruments of interpellation, work massively and predominantly through ideology rather than coercion. That is, although there may be repression associated with an ISA, it can also be very subtle in its actions (Althusser 1971, 14546). And as Althusser goes on to rene his notion of ideology, ideologys own identity, action, and location becomes open to question. How, then, does Althusser narrate the mysterious events that surround the response to the policemans hail? He knows that the hailing sets up an impossible scene, one that leads to the paradoxical situation that Butler has pointed out (Butler 1997b, 1, 4; see above). As it is his contention that the subject is constituted in the turn (Althusser 1971, 174) and thus cannot pre-exist the call, how does he explain the scene of interpellation? His resolution begins with the observation that the sequential appearance of his narrative was of the nature of a sleight of hand, necessary for our understanding of the initial setting of the scene: [n]aturally for the convenience and clarity of my little theoretical theatre I have had to present things in the form of a sequence, with a before and an after, and thus in the form of a temporal succession. But in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing. (Althusser 1971, 17475) This, obviously, is not the end of the discussion, as this statement on its own does not elaborate on the terms of interpellation, and the paradoxical scene that Butler critiques has not been fully illuminated. This declaration still makes mention of an individual, and there is still the need to explain what ideologythis thing that interpellates usis. So to better understand Althussers position, we need to takes several steps back in his argument, to trace how he weaves these various terms into his theory. The performative nature of his conceptualization is also shown as he works through his arguments. What we nd in Althussers extended thesis is a continuation of the selfreferential circularity of the original scene of interpellation, where there is a tautological character to his elaborations as he renes his denitions of the terms. His conceptualizations confound any ordinary notion of causal sequence, just as was found in the scene of the policemans hailing of the subject. What is given to us is a performative account of the subject and its interpellation by ideology, but without yet a denition of what Althusser means by these terms.

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To arrive at a closer notion of the subject and ideology, Althusser starts with ideas. These, we nd, are not ideal or spiritual (Althusser 1971, 165) but have a material existence; that is, they exist in the actions and ritual practices of the subject said to have these ideas. This, however, is not simply to suggest that the subject has an idea and then acts on it, for this is to write a clear causal chain into the formulation. Instead, ideas are the subjects material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves dened by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject (168 69; original emphasis). There is no one-way causality in this account, as each part of the description already anticipates or assumes its other parts, and each is intimately entangled within the other. Althussers strategy of dening topics of enquiry in terms of other such topics enables him to leave terms out. In further rening his account, he can now leave ideas out of the discussion, for ideas have been restated in terms of actions. Ideas, he now claims, exist in the actions and practices of a subject. A subject acts his ideas as he is acted by them: the subject acts insofar as he is acted by the system [of] ideology existing in a material ideological apparatus, prescribing material practices governed by a material ritual, which practices exist in the material actions of a subject (Althusser 1971, 16970). Althusser has now brought us to the point where we can determine what ideology is: it is the rituals and institutions (ISAs) of a society, and its function is to interpellate individuals/subjects into its society; that is, to make them members of their society. But again, it is not a causal sequence of events that leads to the subjects being interpellated: as ideology constitutes the social subject, so the subject constitutes the ideology of its society. There is a mutual and double performative iteration whereby the subject and ideology are materialized by, through, and as the practices of each other: the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which denes it) of constituting concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of the double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning. (Althusser 1971, 171; original emphasis) Althusser explicitly states the total and productive entanglement of subjects and ideology within each other. They are each mutually reconstitutive of the other; they rematerialize in and through each other. In this dynamic cycle we can appreciate the resemblances between ideology and (Foucauldian) power. Both are elds of action, not entities or possessions; they exist and are continually materialized by and through the practices of the subjects constituted by them and constitutive of them (see, for instance, Foucault 2004, 29).

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However, Althusser has not yet given any clues as to who or what the individual is, and at this point the term is still in his narrative. In recognition that his argument still appears to contain a causal sequence, Althusser then makes it clear that this is not an individual that pre-exists the subject. He is not suggesting that ideology seizes an already existing individual and compels his or her turn to subjectivity. For Althusser declares that in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing (Althusser 1971, 175, emphasis added). To consolidate his argument and to dispel the notion that there is an individual prior to, or separate from, the subject, Althusser stresses that individuals are always-already subjects (176, original emphasis).2 Individual was a term that was necessary to enable Althusser to express the processes of interpellation in a manner that we could grasp, and because of its use, we may have thought that there was an individual before the subject, an individual that became a subject in the turn. It is now revealed that there is only ever the subject. What is more, in this account Althusser does not speculate on why or how the turn works (as Butler notes; see Butler 1997b, 5). He does not introduce notions of submission, guilt, and reprimand, of force and coercion, as Butler does, to explain interpellation. For him, it appears that interpellation just is, or just does. It remains enigmatic, and after reading this section of Althussers essay we still dont really know why, how, or if we submit to our subjection, other than it appears to be the way we are; this is what it is to be a subject.

SUBJECTED SUBJECTS? Butlers description of interpellation as a compulsion, an appropriation of guilt, and a reprimand carries the implication of an external power forcibly acting on the subject-to-be and extracting submission as the price of the bestowal of subjectivity. She paints a grim and overly pessimistic (Mills 2000, 276) picture of a mixed-up and ground-down subject (Macherey 2004, 12), a heavily burdened and essentially subjected subject (Magnus 2006, 83; original emphasis). Butler paints human life, the life of the subject, as one of subjugation and oppression. However, what credible reason is there for us to give in to an external, coercive imposition? The question again arises: does a subject have to be a subjugated being? Vicki Kirby suggests that the operation of interpellation cannot be an external force that commands the individuals obedience because if power is truly alien to the individual before its enforcement then the individuals compliant conrmation of powers intention (to subject him) would not be possible (Kirby 2006, 89). Michel Foucault, too, insists that subjects are never the inert or consenting targets of power. Power/ideology circulates by and through subjects; it is

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not applied to them (Foucault 2004, 29; emphasis added). If we argue that we are not compelled and forced by a prior, complicitous desire for a punitive law, then how can we use Althusser to account for our apparent obedience to ideology and the law? Can his work allow us to propose a different answer to the question of what draws us to answer the policemans hail? Althusser further elaborates on the workings of interpellation in the nal section of his essay, An Example: The Christian Religious Ideology (Althusser 1971, 17783). He explains that, as the structures of all ideologies are the same, he has chosen religion, as it is accessible to everyone (177). Although Butler grants this claim, she is nonetheless critical of Althussers choice of example. To her it suggests that all ideology is necessarily theological, such that the divine power of naming structures the theory of interpellation. By claiming that social ideology works in the same way, Althusser assimilates social interpellation to the divine performative and so institutes a regime of sovereign authorization for all subjectivity (Butler 1997b, 110). Butler contends that it is the divine naming that makes the hail compelling and authoritative. As divine, it is a voice almost impossible to refuse in its command that we must submit. The signicance of this, for Butlers critique, is that this divine authorizing power manifests through each and every interpellative apparatus. State authorities and ISAs such as the law and its representative, the policeman, are conduits for the divine voice. That is, the hailing of the passer-by is a divine imperative made secular, and it works through the same, nonrefusable command as the voice of God (Butler 1997b, 110). This now raises more questions: does interpellation operate through the secularization of a divine authorizing voice? Can Althussers example of religious ideology be read without Butlers supposition of the prior and anticipatory doctrine of conscience, the prior complicity with the law, the prior compulsion to turn to the law, that feature in her analysis? And can we interrogate the authority of the voice of God, which Althusser does indeed introduce? Althusser describes the voice of God addressing a human individual3 and giving him his name: this is who you are: you are Peter! This is your place in the world! This is what you must do! (Althusser 1971, 177). It is a process that tells you God exists and that you are answerable to Him (177). In Althussers explanation of this scene we can see that there are apparently the mechanisms of compulsion and submission on which Butler dwells. Althusser does, it seems, describe interpellation as a naming whose terms we cannot resist, but does it actually play out in these terms in Althussers further elaborations? Althusser continues with the observation that there can only be such a multitude of possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God (Althusser 1971, 178, original emphasis). This new Subject should be written with a capital S, to distinguish it from ordinary subjects (us) (178). There is again in Althusser the (apparent)

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invocation of a divine performative as he contends that religious ideology, in naming people, recognizes that they are always-already interpellated as subjects with a personal identity it interpellates them in such a way that the subject responds: Yes, it really is me! it obtains from them the recognition that they really do occupy the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a xed residence (178; original emphasis). The Subject gives a name and a place to the subject, and so performatively produces this subject as this name and as occupying this position in the world. And more signicantly, the subject is constituted as embracing the fact that this is his or her name and place. But the demand and compulsion are so subtle that we apparently do not even recognize their force, and in fact seem to welcome them. What chance, then, do we have to resist their positioning of us? As Althusser expands his account, he conrms that to be a subject is indeed to submit without question, to be a free subject and a subjected being at one and the same time: In the ordinary use of the term, subject in fact means: (1) a free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions; (2) a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission. This last note gives us the meaning of this ambiguity the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and action of his subjection all by himself. (Althusser 1971, 182; original emphasis) Althusser suggests that subjects are constituted as always-already subjected, and within this same movement is the recognition of this subjection: God interpellates his subject, the individual subjected to him by his very interpellation (Althusser 1971, 179). This is Althussers account of the double meaning of subjection (assujettisement), and it matches Butlers account, examined in a previous section. However, although it is still a mysterious process, it is not entirely evident that subjection does occur through the compulsion that Butler ascribes to it, as Althusser does not offer any conjecture as to why a subject would submit. In Butlers analysis, subjects work because they are coerced by a sovereign voice with which they have a prior complicity, a prior desire for reprimand. Althusser claims that subjects, although apparently commanded, work all by themselves, because this is what it is to be a subject. To stress his point that there is no prior complicity required to explain subjection, Althusser rewords his contention: [t]here are no subjects except by and for their subjection. That is why they work all by themselves (Althusser 1971, 182; original emphasis). Subjects freely submit, not through guilt or a desire for reprimand, but because subject-formation is at one and the same time a constitution of the subject as subjected. It

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is an enigmatic process, and it appears that no explanation we could devise would be adequate to explain it. Butler contends that interpellation revolves around a self-identical subject (Butler 1997b, 108) as, it would appear, does Althusser. He claims that the interpellating God denes himself as the Subject par excellence, he who is through himself and for himself (I am that I am) (Althusser 1971, 179). But can this assertion of a centered, self-present Subject remain uncontested under scrutiny within the context of Althussers extended account of interpellation? Althusser does, as Butler stresses, give a central place to the divine voice, but does his further elucidation of the processes of interpellation reveal it to be the sovereign, unilateral naming that Butler suggests? And is it thus the animating misrecognition that Butler contends? Contra Butler, the workings of this system call into question the absolute selfidentity and exteriority of the Subject. Althusser describes movements of mirroring, reection, and recognition in his commentary. Interpellation is a mirror structure doubly speculary where the Absolute Subject interpellates the multitude of individuals around it in a double mirror-connexion such that it subjects the subjects to the Subject (Althusser 1971, 180; original emphasis). Inversely, in the Subject each subject can contemplate its own image (180). Althusser claims that we are made in the image of God; we are his mirrors and reections. Additionally, God needs men, the great Subject needs subjects. Althusser also recites a fundamental tenet of theology, that those who have recognized God, and have recognized themselves in Him, will be saved (17980). This can lead us to question whether, if the Subject were self-identical, absolute, and exterior to us, as Althusser says, could we recognize ourselves in it, and would it need us? Could we mirror something so incommensurable with our profane selves as the divine Subject reportedly is? Althusser further elaborates his position and contends that subjects are caught in a quadruple system of interpellation, a duplicate mirror-structure of ideology [that] ensures simultaneously their interpellation as subjects and their subjection, as well as the guarantee that this is their position in life. A crucial step in Althussers description is the mirroring whereby we note the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects recognition of each other, and nally the subjects recognition of himself. It is this mutual and simultaneous recognition that provides the guarantee of interpellation, and as long as subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right: AmenSo be it (Althusser 1971, 18081; original emphasis). It is the workings of this quadruple system that Althusser describes that call into question the absolute separation of the identities of subject and Subject. Kirby, in her analysis of Butler, notes the similarities between Althussers scenario of interpellation and Hegels MasterSlave dialectic. Kirby argues that the interpellative scene does not require two people or a temporal separation, as the

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lesson from Hegel is that any appeal to a discrete and autonomous entity [is compromised] because every identity secretly incorporates the difference against which it denes itself (Kirby 2006, 90). She suggests that, in view of this implication of self within other, Althussers policeman need not be seen as a separate subject who pre-exists the one who responds or, indeed, as someone whose action corresponds to coercion (90). This, however, deepens the mystery. If, as Butler contends, the policeman serves the same function as the Subject (in secular form) and, if the policeman also need not be a separate subject, how then is the subject interpellated? What implications does this Hegelian intervention into the scene have for the processes of interpellation? If the scene of the policemans hailing is not a sequential and dyadic moment, yet nonetheless interpellates the subject, can we say that divine naming, that is, subjection by the Subject, is a similarly compromised yet interpellative scene? We see the same blurring and confusion, the same circularity, in the descriptions of subjection by the Subject as was evident in the scene of the hailing. The Hegelian implications, contends Kirby, are that an encounter with an Other is always a form of self-encounter as identity is precarious and paradoxical because its essential being is an alien possession (I am an other) (Kirby 2006, 11). This calls into question a simple reading of the apparently self-contained, self-dening claim of God/the Subject: I am that I am (Althusser 1971, 179). Kirby claims that the I is also other to itself and cannot defend itself from a supposedly alien outside. This suggests that God/the Subjects declaration could be recast as: I am that I am but, at one and the same time, this means that I am an other. God, the Subject, cannot be separated from his reection, the subject. If God/the Subject is also me, the subject, then I (who am also my other) am also the Subject. This also means that I am also the Subject secularized as the law, that is, I am also the law/policeman. It is to the law that Butler suggests the subject is compelled to submit; Althusser suggests that it is to the voice of God that I am subjected. However, if I, the subject, am already my otheralready the law, already the Subjectthen in what way can it be said that subjects submit to their subjection; or that subjection is subjugation? The subject lives the law; the law is the subject; each subject is the law. Subjects work by themselves because they are always-already enactments of the entire system of power/ideology, law and society. The ambiguity of assujettisement is (always) already internal to the subject. The signicance of the suggestion that we are always-already implicated within the values and norms of our particular place and time is that we obey, not because we are compelled, but because these are our constitutive conditions. We performatively re-enact this constitution as we materialize our social/ideological environment. It is thus not a question of obedience or submission. This amended scene of interpellation also shows a t with the Foucauldian claim that power does not work by repression and force, but

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circulates as a dynamic of power-resistance. This power does not subjugate but instead constitutes subjects (Foucault 2004, 28). We do not need to see the policeman as the sovereign Law, compelling, forcing, demanding, as does Butler. If we instead view the policeman as an Everyman and the call as inseparable from the response then power isnt an external force that is pitted against the subject because it is the internal algorithm of the subjects possibility and transformation if the subject is already powers reex, its object and agent, then power is not an instrument or repressive tool of subordination that bears down upon its victims (Kirby 2006, 90; original emphasis). If we are constituted as instantiations of powers/ideologys eld of possibilities, we are particular exercises of the eld. We enact this eld as it is our very being; there is no outside compulsion that forces us.

I AM

THE

PRINCIPLE

OF

MY OWN SUBJECTION

Butler insists that interpellation for Althusser is the secularization of a divine, sovereign naming. Can it, however, be read in purely secular terms: that is, can we question the absolute and divine nature of the Subject and read interpellation without any recourse to religious authorization? In Althussers interpellative scene a multitude of subjects are set out around the central Subject (Althusser 1971, 180). A structurally similar arrangement can be found in Foucaults analysis of the Panopticon (Foucault 1991, 20009). Foucault describes a worldly system that produces results akin to Althussers scene of interpellation: the panoptic schema implies that each subject is powers reex. In the Panopticon, inmates are arrayed around a central tower from which they are always visible (200). It is a system of light and a eld of visibility (202) where all are caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers (201; emphasis added). Each one of us is simultaneously both observer and observed: we are the principle of [our] own subjection (203). This is a power that is neither external to the subject nor coercive, but is weightless, effortless, and everywhere (206). Foucault insists the Panopticon is a model of power in general that has transformed the whole social body into a eld of perception (214). Panoptic power is coextensive with all of society, and within it the power relation has been detached from a lodgment in any particular person or place, and from any specic purpose (205). The subject is shown to be the instantiation and enactment of the eld of panoptic mechanisms and visibility. As panoptic power pervades all society and all subjectivities, there is no force, submission, or external compulsion that would require compliance or obedience. Can it be shown that Althussers religious example of interpellation can be played out according to this secular Foucauldian schema? If so, what implications does this have for Butlers contention

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that the religious example installs a divine authorization at the heart of Althussers theory of subject-formation? Ideology is centered: the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the innity of individuals (Althusser 1971, 180). However, as in the Panopticon where subjects are shown to be both observer and observed, in interpellations quadruple system, its duplicate mirrorstructure (180, 181), we nd that recognition and reection is a simultaneous, mutually constitutive interpellation of subject and Subject where, ultimately, subjects recognize themselves (181). We have the duplication of the Subject into subjects and the Subject itself into a subject-Subject (180; emphasis added). In these double reections, who, then, mirrors whom? Who is made in whose image? These multiple mirrorings confound the notions of original and copy, and cause and effect. The implications of this tautological conceptualization are that Subject and subject are implicated in the constitution of each other, and cannot be untangled. This also suggests that the Subject becomes completely implicated within the eld of powers or ideologys operations. The Subject, Althussers Unique, Absolute and Other Subject who occupies the unique place of the Centre (Althusser 1971, 178, 180) is shown to be dispersed throughout powers eld, just as the central panoptic observation tower manifests in each subject. Each becomes simultaneously both Subject and subject. Each one becomes the center as they fulll the role of always-already constituting themselves and others as subjects within the circulating eld of power or ideology. As with the Panopticon, an ostensibly centered structure has become generalized as the eld of power/ideology with no center. Or, perhaps, there is no one Center, but everywhere there are nothing but centers, constituting and being constituted. Interpellation does not revolve around a separate and autonomous entity, the Subject, dispensing a sovereign authorization, but is a Subject/subject entanglement circulating within and through the eld of power-ideology. Subjects enact the possibilities of this eld and are particular instances of this system, and are thus interpellated by, and enact, their particular social and historical circumstances. As Butler contends, agency arises within systems of subject-formation. But rather than our agency being produced from the circuits of subjection, misrecognition, and desire, as Butler suggests, it arises from this entangled system of possibilities. Subjects are thus constituted as agentialit is part of what it is to be a subject. Agency does not rely on an inevitable failure of ideology, the norm or the interpellative voice to totally dominate and determine us; it does not arise from the constitutive misrecognition that Butler suggests. The interpellative schema has no prior purpose, no particular aim for us, so our agential resistance is not directed against interpellations subjugating purpose, but is a performative materialization of the circulation of power-and-resistance that constitutes, and is constituted by, us.

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This implies that our subjectivity does not have to be theorized as a submission to, or subjugation by, some external, punitive constraint. We are not necessarily the grim and ground-down subjects of Butlers vision, wracked by a desire to be reprimanded for our implicit guilt. This does not mean, however, that there are no negative outcomes in this interpellative schema: the subject who does not matter is a real possibility. The constitutive system of subject-Subject is inclusive of all contingent possibilitiesso the cases of abjection and not-mattering documented by Butler retain their veracity in this rereading of subject-formation. The lived experience is not altered: it is still painful. But a guilt-ridden, ground-down subjectivity found in Butler is not the only and necessary expression of our subjective being; nor are we bent to interpellations subjugating purposes. We become subjects, not by being submitted to an impossible, external constraint that we have difculty resisting, but by being constituted by the contingencies, good or bad, that circulate in and through us and that re-produce us as they are themselves reproduced. The interpellative system of power-ideology is us. So be it, as Althusser says.

NOTES
1. Butler is here referring to Foucaults account of subjection to power, but the formulation used recalls Althussers account of interpellation. This will be elaborated in a later section. 2. Always-already is Althussers expression to capture the inadequacy of causal explanations that rely on linear notions of time (Kirby 2006, 162, n. 1). 3. Althusser explains that, although we know that individuals are always-already subjects, he continues to use the term to make his explanations clearer because of the contrasting effect it produces (Althusser 1971, 178, n. 19).

REFERENCES
Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Trans. B. Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York: Routledge. . 1997a. Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York: Routledge. . 1997b. The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. . 2002. Bodies and power, revisited. Radical Philosophy 114 (July/August): 1319. . 2004. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.

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Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin Books. `ge de France, 197576. Trans. . 2004. Society must be defended: Lectures at the Colle D. Macey. London: Penguin Books. Kirby, Vicki. 2006. Judith Butler: Live theory. London: Continuum. Macherey, Pierre. 2004. Out of melancholia: Notes on Judith Butlers The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Rethinking Marxism 16 (1): 717. Magnus, Kathy Dow. 2006. The unaccountable subject: Judith Butler and the social conditions of intersubjective agency. Hypatia 21 (2): 81103. Mills, Catherine. 2000. Efcacy and vulnerability: Judith Butler on reiteration and resistance. Australian Feminist Studies 15 (32): 26579.

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