Dba123, Butler and Cixous

Reading Butler and Cixous definitely proved to be a challenge for me, but from what I did understand I thought they both made some interesting connections between feminism and post modernism

 Butler, I especially thought related to some of the previous theorists we have discussed.  On page 192, she refers to Foucault and his ideas of power structures end up creating how subjects present themselves.  “Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative terms—that is, through the limitation, prohibition, regulation, control and even ‘protection’ of individuals related to that political structure though the contingent and retractable operation of choice.  But the subjects regulated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures,” (192).  Not only did I think this related to Foucault concepts, but also Althusser and his notion of the repressive State Apparatuses and Ideological State Apparatuses.  Butler relates how power structures have reinforced what the ideal of women and feminism is what it is today.  Althusser believed our identity is shaped by outside agents, some by force and some that we are not even aware of at all.  Butler applies the same ideas to a larger group instead of individuals themselves, this group being women.  Ideas of how women should be are engrained in everyone, both men and women, due to the power politics have in deciding how we should think women should be.  I think Butler was saying how not all women are the same, so that the common ideology of how women should be cannot be applied to all women, or at all.