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http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/8/2/183.weiss

Non-dualism

Non-dualistic SexJosef Mitterers Non-dualistic Philosophy in the

Light of Judith Butlers (De)Constructivist FeminismMartin G. Weiss University of Klagenfurt martin.weiss/at/aau.at

> Context Josef Mitterer has become known for criticizing the main exponents of analytic and constructivist philoso-phy for their blind adoption of a dualistic epistemology based on an alleged ontological dierence between world andwords. Judith Butler, who has developed an inuential model of (de)constructivist feminism and has been labeled alinguistic constructivist, has been criticized for sustaining exactly what, according to Mitterer, most modern philoso -phy fails to acknowledge: namely that there is no ontological dierence between objective facts beyond language andthe discourse about these facts. > Problem In the scholarly discussion on non-dualism, two main questions havebeen raised: Where does Mitterers basic consensus, i.e., the starting-point description, come from? and: What does it

mean, to say that further descriptions change their object? > Method Comparative analysis of the core concepts ofMitterers and Butlers work in the context of the history of ideas. > Results Butlers conception of a performativeproduction of objectivity through discursive and non-discursive iterated practices can be interpreted as an illustrationof Mitterers claim that descriptions change their object. The problem of where Mitterers starting-point descriptionscome from can be solved by adopting Butlers concept of culturally inherited practices. > Key words Non-dualism,constructivism, feminism, body, sex, gender, hermeneutics, performativity, Josef Mitterer, Judith Butler.

Te true world we have abolished. What

world has remained? Te apparent one

perhaps? But no! With the true world we

have also abolished the apparent one.(Nietzsche 1988a: 81)

Introduction

In his recently republished Das Jenseits

der Philosophie(Mitterer 2011a), a program-

matic outline o a non-dualistic approach to

epistemology, first published in 1992, Jose

Mitterer accuses the heroes o contemporary

analytic and constructivist philosophy

rom Ludwig Wittgenstein and Willard van

Orman Quine to Benjamin L. Whor andTomas S. Kuhn o (implicitly) promoting

an inconsistent word-language dualism. Ac-

cording to Mitterer, all the above-mentioned

authors share the basic idea that the objec-

tive world and the language with which we

talk about the world pertain to two different

ontological realms; in other words, that lan-

guage always reers to non-linguistic objects

beyond language. Independently o precisely

how the relation between words and things

may ultimately be conceived as representa-

tion, image, interpretation or even construc-

tion the core dualistic principle remains

the same: words reer (in some way or an-

other) to non-linguistic things.Tis dichotomy, which is at the origin o

all epistemological problems, can be traced

back to at least Plato or its naturalistic ver-

sion, and to Kant or its more constructivist

one (Weber 2005). Plato established the first

systematic doctrine o two worlds by intro-

ducing the ontological distinction between

the realm o unchangeable, everlasting, ob-

jective ideas located in the topos hyperura-

nios, intelligible only rationally on the one

hand, and the realm o their ephemeral ma-

terial representations, accessible only sensu-

ally on the other.A more constructivist version o epis-

temic dualism is offered by Immanuel Kant

in his dichotomy o the inaccessible thing

in itsel (Ding an sich), which lies beyond

all qualities and concepts and the appearing

phenomena shaped by the cognitive appara-

tus o the subject namely its orms o pure

intuition (space and time), and its conceptual

categories (quality, quantity, relation, modal-

ity) , which molds the thing in itsel into

an epistemic object accessible to subjectivity.

Mitterers critiqueof dualism

Mitterer makes the claim that the du-alism underlying modern epistemology is

inconsistent because sel-contradictory

although his critique would also apply to

the historic versions o Plato and Kant. Te

reason or this, according to Mitterer, is that

every orm o epistemic dualism, the natu-

ralistic as well as the constructivist models,

needs to distinguish between the object

and the description o the object, which

ultimately results in a sel-contradictory

conception o the object. In act, dualism

on the one hand defines the object as that

which is completely unknown, i.e., radicallyinaccessible beore its description, but on

the other hand as the entity that the descrip-

tion describes, i.e., as the entity represented

by its description. Mitterer argues that the

object o dualism beyond, i.e., prior to, any

description is simply inconceivable. Tis is

because i we take an object and try to puriy

it rom all descriptions, we will not reach the

objective object beore description but mere

nothing. A similar critique has been put or-

ward by Friedrich W. J. Schelling in relation


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to Kants thing in itsel. Schelling stressed

that the very concept o a thing in itsel

was a contradictio in adjectosince either the

thing in itsel was a thing, i.e., a singu-

lar entity in time and space provided withspecific qualities, or it was in itsel, outside

o time and space and without any qualities,

i.e., nothing at all (Schelling 1968).

A different critique that Mitterer puts

orward regarding the dualistic model o

epistemology argues that the object o a de-

scription does not come beore its descrip-

tion, but is the perormative (a word Mit-

terer does not use, but which describes what

he is describing) result o the description.

Tereore it seems not too ar-etched to

define Mitterers descriptions as Foucauld-

ian discourses, i.e., as practices, that sys-tematically orm the objects o which they

speak (Foucault 1972,49). Tus the object

o description is always the description o

the object (Mitterer 2011a: 12ff). Te

starting-point o a description is thereore

not an object beyond any description but an

antecedent description:

Te object o description is already a descrip-tion, namely the description on hand. In the

non-dualistic parlance the description o a de-

scription is nothing more than the continuation

o the first, i.e., the antecedent, description(Mitterer 2011a: 17)

According to Mitterer, the object o a

description can be conceived only as it had

already been described, i.e., as a descrip-

tion so ar, which then may be continued in

a urther description rom now on (Mit-

terer 2011a: 21). Although Mitterer em-

phasizes that he does not want to claim that

the object o description is no object, but

onlydescription (Mitterer 2011a: 18), and

stresses that the description rom now on

exceeds the description so ar, this does notmean that the starting-point description, or

basis-consensus (Mitterer 2011b: 153 ),

is some kind o extra-discursive object. On

the contrary, Mitterer suggests that the start-

ing-point description is a description and an

object o a description. Te description so

ar is the linguistic object o the descrip-

tion rom now on.

Non-dualism andhermeneutics

Mitterers position thus reechoes the

hermeneutical insight that in everyday lie,as well as in science, we do not deal with

pure, meaningless, i.e., empty, objects,

which are simply inconceivable, but with

meaningul descriptions. Tis is also true or

the extreme case in which the first starting-

point description (the description so ar)

might seem meaningless and lead to a de-

scription rom now on, expressing the act

that the description so ar is not describable

at all. Tis is so, because even i we encoun-

ter a non-urther-describable starting-point

description, to describe it as such is still

a urther description o the indescribableas indescribable. o describe something

as not describable is still to describe it as

something. We always already deal with de-

scriptions and not with pure objects beyond

description. Hermeneutics claims that as ra-

tional beings we cannot escape description,

i.e., understanding. We are doomed to un-

derstand and are surrounded by meaningul

entities, even i we do not know what they

mean. What we cannot encounter is a pure,

i.e., meaningless, object beyond meaning.

Te starting points o descriptions are thus

not meaningless, pure objects, but tacit(Weber 2010: 20), pre-predicative meaning-

ul descriptions (so ar), which may then

in a second stage get explicitly described

in predicative assertions, i.e., descriptions

(rom now on). Explicit asserting descrip-

tions rom now on are about starting-point

pre-predicative descriptions so ar.

But what exactly are these starting-point

descriptions which Mitterer calls de-

scriptions so ar, rudimental descriptions

(Rudimetrbeschreibungen), objects o in-

dication (Angabe Objekte), starting-point

objects (Ausgangs-Objekte) basis-con-sensus (Basiskonsens), and starting-point

consensus (Ausgangskonsens) (Mitterer

2011a: 72ff; Mitterer 2011b: 127, 151,

112) rom which all our urther descrip-

tions start? Mitterer has been criticized or

his strict linguistic approach, which does

not take into account the role practical ex-

perience plays in epistemology (Oner 2008;

Janich 2010; Gadenne 2008). Despite this,

it seems plausible that Mitterers starting-

point descriptions, the pre-conditions o

all urther explicit propositional descrip-

tions, may themselves be unspoken and

resemble tacit practices, although they are

linguistic and have a linguistic structure in

a hermeneutic sense o the word, i.e., theyare meaningul (as language has to do with

the transmission o meaning and cannot be

reduced to mere sound). Te act that prior

to explicit predicative description we always

deal with practical, tacit meaning, which

then can be made explicit in asserting de-

scriptions, is one o the main points made by

Martin Heidegger when he introduces the

concept o a hermeneutic circle in Being and

ime. According to Heidegger, the theoreti-

cal, or logical, description o something

as something (the apophantical as) in an

explicit assertion or description is based ona primordial practical meaning that he calls

hermeneutical as:

Prior to all analysis, logic has already under-stood logically what it takes as a theme under

the heading o the categorical statement or

instance, Te hammer is heavy. Te unexplained

presupposition is that the meaning o this sen-

tence is to be taken as: Tis thing a hammer

has the property o heaviness. In concernul cir-

cumspection [the practical everyday approach to

reality, the author] there are no such assertions at

first. [] Interpretation is carried out primordi-ally not in a theoretical statement but in an ac-

tion o circumspective concern laying aside the

unsuitable tool, or exchanging it without words.

From the act that words are absent, it may not

be concluded that interpretation is absent. []

When an assertion has given a definite character

to something present-at-hand, it says something

about it as a what; and this what is drawn rom

that which is present-at-hand as such. [] Tus

assertion cannot disown its ontological origin

rom an interpretation which understands. Te

primordial as o an interpretation (hermeneia)

that understands circumspectively, we call the ex-istential-hermeneutical as in distinction rom the

apophantical as o the assertion. (Heidegger2005: 200)

I one accepts this hermeneutical in-

terpretation o Mitterers starting-point de-

scriptions, i.e., their identification with the

primordial, practical, implicit, hermeneuti-

cal meaning that represents the condition

or all later explicit predicative descriptions,

one may take this analysis a step urther and


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Non-dualistic Sex Martin G. Weiss

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define these starting-point descriptions (or

hermeneutical-practical interpretations) as

inherited, naturalized norms perormatively

produced by iterated practices, as Judith

Butler has suggested in relation to sexualdifference (Derra 2008).

Working along this line o interpretation

o Mitterers work I will compare Mitterers

non-dualism with Judith Butlers perorma-

tive notion o sex, as she has been criticized

or doing exactly the contrary o what Mit-

terer criticizes in contemporary philosophy,

namely disregarding the categorical distinc-

tion between objective non-linguistic acts

(in her case, biological sex), and subjective

descriptions o these acts (in her case, gen-

der) (Alaimo & Hekman 2008). I will try

to show that Butlers perormative notion osex/gender in many aspects comes close to

Mitterers idea o a non-dualistic philoso-

phy, and may provide answers to two ques-

tions that have been posed in reerence to

his work: namely, where the starting-point

descriptions come rom and how changes

occur in descriptions.

Non-dualism and(de)constructive feminism

As Mitterer notes in the oreword o thenew edition o his Das Jenseits der Philoso-

phie, the philosophical landscape has greatly

changed since the first edition in 1992, as

there has been a considerably strong shif

away rom classical naturalistic epistemol-

ogy towards different orms o more or less

non-dualistic approaches.

Te postmodern heirs o Gadamer, es-

pecially Gianni Vattimo but also the expo-

nents o what has been called post-analytic

philosophy, have initiated widespread criti-

cism o the notion o sel-evident, unques-

tionable acts outside o our minds that areonly waiting to be discovered. What has

become questionable is the very goal o tra-

ditional philosophy, namely the possibility

to know the first principles o ontology and

epistemology: in other words, the first prin-

ciples that philosophy has been eager to gain

possession o at least since Aristotlesprima

philosophia. What is called into question

today is the possibility o an unmediated

knowledge o the eternal truth and the first

causes o reality. Since Heideggers argument

or the historical character o understanding

and Gadamers intimation o the linguistic

mediatedness o every experience amous-

ly expressed in his sentence Being that can

be understood is language (Gadamer 1965:450) it has increasingly become difficult

to argue in avor o nave, or even scientific,

realism. According to Nietzsche (Nietzsche

1988a: 57161), neither the objective object

o natural sciences proessing the para-

doxical ideal o objectivity consisting in see-

ing the object as it is when nobody sees it,

or speaking o it beore anybody has spoken

about it, as Mitterer puts it nor the subject,

which in modernity, at least or Descartes,

became the last fundamentum inconcussum

o knowledge, are accepted as unquestion-

able principles o epistemology. On thecontrary, the ocus lies more and more on

the historical, cultural and linguistic precon-

ceptions and contexts, i.e., the background

and ramework, o contingent truths. Ni-

etzsche, anticipating the basic idea o con-

temporary, post-analytic, postmodern phi-

losophy has written:

Against empiricism, which halts at phenomena Tere are only acts I would say, no, acts are

precisely what there is not, only interpretations.

We cannot establish any act in itsel : perhaps itis olly to want to do such a thing. Everything is

subjective, you say; but even this is interpretation.

Te subject is not something given, it is some-

thing added and invented. Is it necessary to posit

an interpreter behind the interpretation? (Ni-etzsche 1988b: 315)

Although Nietzsche himsel speaks o

perspectivism and o drives that inter-

pret the world, suggesting that his thought

is still within the ramework o dualism,

the quoted paragraph could serve as a de-

scription o the core idea o what has beencalled deconstruction. Although it is not

clear what this method, dating back to the

work o Jacques Derrida, exactly means, it

is commonly accepted that it has to do with

the loss o believing in an objective true

world o objective stable things waiting to

be mirrored in our minds. And i Tomas

Laqueur is right in maintaining that the de-

construction o stable meaning in texts can

be regarded as the general case o the de-

construction o sexual difference (Laqueur

1992: 12), then the work o Judith Butler,

dealing with the deconstruction not only o

sexual difference, i.e., the dualism o male

and emale, but also the deconstruction o

the dichotomy between (biological) sex and(socio-cultural) gender, may be taken as

an example o applied non-dualism, which

could help to shed new light on the general

theory proposed by Mitterer.

Judith Butlers non-dualisticsex-gender theoryCertain eminist thinkers, such as Gale

Rubin (1975), have argued that at the basis

o gender there is some sort o biological

raw material (i.e., sex) that limits its possible

socio-cultural interpretation (i.e., gender),and they have thereore examined how this

interpretation (i.e., gender) is linked to its

object (i.e., sex). Judith Butler on the one

hand takes seriously the notion that gender,

although conceived as mere contingent in-

terpretation, has not lost anything o its con-

straining normativity, i.e., its reality, and

on the other hand does not want to advocate

cultural determinism. Tis leads her to ask a

much more radical question:

I gender is not an artifice to be taken on ortaken off at will and, hence, not an effect o choice,

how are we to understand the constitutive and

compelling status o gender norms without alling

into the trap o cultural determinism? How pre-

cisely are we to understand the ritualized repeti-

tion by which such norms produce and stabilize

not only the effects o gender but the materiality

o sex?(Butler 1993: X)

Hence, whereas Rubin still argues with-

in the ramework o classical dualism, dis-

tinguishing an objective material here, the

biological act (sex) , and a socio-culturalinterpretation o this biological act (i.e.,

gender), Butler questions the alleged objec-

tivity o the biological act, suggesting that

sex is at least as much the product o iterated

practices as gender.

In the wake o Nietzsche, Derrida and

Foucault, Butler advocates the priority o

discourse and language conceived as orm

o practice over alleged objective acts.

Tis is because or her, language represents

the inevitable medium o all experience.


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Tis primacy o discourse over silent objects

becomes evident i one considers the act

that to posit something outside language can

be done only by language and in discourse.

In addition, the object beyond language isa linguistic phenomenon. Every thing in

itsel is in itsel only or consciousness,

as Hegel (2006: 5369) put it. Every descrip-

tion is always a description o a description,

as Mitterer would say. According to Butler,

this is true also or the biological material,

or the body, i.e., or materiality. Te materi-

al conceived as independent rom discourse

is posited as independent rom discourse

by and in discourse. Te objectivity o the

material, its alleged independence rom dis-

course, is itsel a product o the discourse

o and on objectivity. Te discourse on thenon-discursive nature o biology is peror-

mative in so ar as it produces what it masks

as its condition. Biological sex is not the

objective starting-point o the discourse on

biological sex, but its product. Te discourse

is perormative, or it produces what it alleg-

edly describes:

Te body posited as prior to the sign, is alwaysposited or signified as prior. Tis signification pro-

duces as an effect o its own procedure the very

body that it nevertheless and simultaneously

claims to discover as that which precedes its ownaction.(Butler 1993: 30)

In accordance with Mitterer, Butler em-

phasizes that the notion o an object out-

side o discourse is inconceivable because,

i taken seriously, it would be completely

impossible to speak or reer to it in any

way since an object beyond language can-

not be grasped by any concept. Nothing

could be said about the object beyond lan-

guage, not even that it is beyond language.

Every attempt to speak about it would, in

the ramework o dualism, not only be sel-contradictory but also transorm the alleg-

edly objective object beyond discourse into

a linguistic phenomenon. Every reerence

in dualism to an object beyond discourse

paradoxically destroys the idea o such an

object. Objects are necessarily implicitly

conceived as discursive phenomena by ex-

plicit and discursive assertion o their non-

discursive character. Otherwise no linguis-

tic reerence to them would be possible,

not even to say that they are outside o lan-

guage. By an assertion o their exteriority to

language, objects lose this exteriority:

o have the concept o matter is to lose the ex-teriority that the concept is supposed to secure.

Can language simply reer to materiality, or is lan-

guage also the very condition under which mate-

riality may be said to appear? I matter ceases to

be matter once it becomes a concept, and i a con-

cept o matters exteriority to language is always

something less than absolute, what is the status o

this outside? Is it produced by philosophical dis-

course in order to effect the appearance o its own

exhaustive and coherent systematicity?(Butler1993: 31)

Although questioning realism, But-

ler does not advocate a nave linguisticconstructivism, which, as a orm o only

reversed Platonism (Nietzsche), would

remain in the dualistic ramework. On the

contrary, she stresses that to say that ma-

teriality is produced by discourse does not

mean that there is no difference between

materiality and language:

o claim that discourse is ormative is not toclaim that it originates, causes, or exhaustively

composes that which it concedes; rather, it is to

claim that there is no reerence to a pure body

which is not at the same time a urther ormationo that body. In this sense, the linguistic capacity

to reer to sexed bodies is not denied, but the very

meaning o reerentiality is altered. In phi losoph-

ical terms, the constative claim is always to some

degree perormative.(Butler 1993: 10)

In Mitterers terminology, Te non-

dualistic discourse does not claim that

the description constitutes the object. In-

stead, it claims that the description changes

the object (Mitterer 2011a: 71). Every de-

scription o an object, i.e., a description so

ar, is a urther description rom now on othe description so ar, altering the notion o

objectivity. Tis is unmasked by Mitterer as

a pure rhetoric instrument adopted to make

ones position invulnerable as it is impos-

sible to argue over acts. Tis emancipatory

pathos underlying Mitterers attempt to ree

philosophy rom the unquestionable, and

thereore violent, yoke o objective truth

aiming to silence all urther discussion is

also shared by Butler, who stresses that she

does not want to deny the discursive reality

o materiality (and advocate a sel-transpar-

ent absolute autonomous spiritual subject),

but liberate the reerence to materiality o its

violent, silencing aspects, to redefine it as an

ongoing creative process o materialization:

Here it is o course necessary to state quiteplainly that the options or theory are not ex-

hausted by presuming materiality, on the one

hand, and negating materiality, on the other. It is

my purpose to do precisely neither o these. o

call a presupposition into question is not the same

as doing away with it; rather, it is to ree it rom

its metaphysical lodgings (Butler 1993: 30)

Emancipation through non-

dualism?Similarly to Mitterer, Butler also notes

that the assumption o unquestionable al-

legedly objective acts always includes a mo-

ment o violence, as the reerence to unques-

tionable acts silences all urther discussion.

Gianni Vattimo, an author quoted by Butler

on the first pages o her Bodies that Mat-

ter, also stresses the violent character that

the reerence to objective reality entails, or

the assertion o objectivity allows no con-

tradiction. Te violence o this reality, i.e.,

the immediate pressure o the given, the

incontrovertible imposition o the in-itsel(Vattimo 1997: 93), assumes the orm o the

reerence to brute acts, to an ultimate in-

stance beyond which one does not go and

which silences all questioning and thereby

closes the discourse (ibid: 85), stopping all

urther descriptions.

(De)constructivism and hermeneutics

destabilize the notion o unquestionably

true acts by stressing the discursive socio-

cultural conditions o our descriptions. But-

ler stresses that these descriptions, although

contingent, cannot be changed arbitrarily.

Instead they represent a orm o undeni-able preconceptions that we cannot escape

totally, although we can at least weaken their

persuasive orce. We may well know that our

gender is not the necessary result o given

biological acts, but rather the product o

socio-cultural discourse, but nevertheless be

unable to change our sexual behavior arbi-

trarily. But even i we cannot escape gender

and decide arbitrarily whether we want to be

male or emale (or something different alto-

gether), the knowledge that gender is not


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predestined but a product o socio-cultural

discourse destabilizes the notions o sex

and gender, leading to a orm o liberaliza-

tion rom traditional heteronomic gender

norms.Te common conviction that to be a

real man means to have a penis and to de-

sire women, at second glance appears not

to be a natural act but a naturalization o

contingent practices stabilized through con-

tinuous iterations. Te nature o man is the

effect o certain linguistic and socio-cultural

practices and not a given act beyond de-

scriptions. Tereore divergent practices

o desire have the power to undermine the

very idea o sexual difference. Te divergent

practices o homo- and transsexual desire

cause the allegedly unchangeable naturalacts o gender-identity to waver. Te ear

that this destabilization o an important

part o sel-identity produces ofen results

in an aggressive homophobic reaction. Te

mere existence o this aggressive homopho-

bic reaction may serve as proo or Butlers

hypothesis that gender-identity is not a

natural act, not destiny, but the product

o arduously repeated stabilizing practices.

Homophobia, as reaction to divergent sex-

ual practices, is driven by the ear that ones

own gender-identity may not be as stable as

it ought to be. I gender-identities were trulyas unchangeable, as the homophobic stress,

this ear would not exist.

Explaining Mittererwith Butler

Te best possibility to answer two ques-

tions that have been put orward in regard to

Mitterers work (in part by himsel) would

perhaps be to take into account Butlers

theory o perormativity, i.e., the concept

o materialization. Tese two questions are:Where do starting-point descriptions come

rom? and: What triggers the change in their

urther descriptions?

On the origin and mutationof descriptionsTe basis-consensus, i.e., the starting-

point descriptions, are the dominant contin-

gent preconceptions opinions about what

is objective in a given historically and cultur-

ally ramed language community. Tereore,

this starting-point description, commonly

called reality, is not beyond discourse, nor

is it an objective, unchangeable, given act.

Nevertheless, it is by all means real, in the

sense that it is not arbitrarily changeable butexperienced as stable meanings, at least in a

given historic-cultural situation. But as But-

ler has shown, this alleged stability o reality,

i.e., the inherited preconceptions on what is

beyond discourse, is revealed to be unstable

and continuously changing as it is not ob-

jectively given but the product o ongoing

perormative practices that mutate reality

in the attempt to stabilize it. Every attempt

to describe the (starting-point) description

changes the description and becomes itsel a

new (starting-point) description or urther

descriptions, transorming the attempt todescribe the object as it is into an ongoing

process o perormative production o new

versions o the object. Butler calls this ma-

terialization:

What I would propose is a return to the no-tion o matter, not as site or surace, but as a pro-

cess of materialization that stabilizes over time to

produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface

we call matter.(Butler 1993: 10)

Mitterer suggests that constructivism

cannot do without a strong concept o thesubject. He claims that all constructivism,

as radical as it may be, must keep one cri-

terion, one strong principle in place: the

human subject (Mitterer 2011b: 66). But

this is precisely what Butler denies when

she stresses that the subject is a product o

construction no less than objects. Te ways

in which discourse and language shape not

only gender but also sex are reerred to by

Butler as construction, although she stress-

es that by construction she does not mean

an arbitrary action by an autonomous sel-

transparent subject. On the contrary, sheidentifies construction with an impersonal

process, in which the subject is also con-

structed. Te perormative actions through

which gender is constructed are always in-

flected by an unreachable ideal masculinity

and emininity present in a given society.

Te symbolic order, the system o meanings,

the ramework in which the expressions

male and emale make (a certain con-

tingent) sense and the ways in which these

entities are constructed, are always already

established. We are born into a world o pre-

existing starting-point descriptions shared

by the vast majority and thereore common-

ly called acts.

Mitterer raises the question o how theconstructivist position can know when a

construction has come to an end (Mitterer

2011b: 58). Here, Butler would probably

argue that there is in act no end; in other

words, the construction is an ongoing, end-

less process o materialization that evolves

through slightly changing iterations o or-

mer practices, which become mutations o

the description so ar and lead to new unsta-

ble and continuously evolving descriptions

rom now on. Butlers concept o construc-

tion as ongoing mutation through slightly

different repetitions o given practices mayprovide an answer to another question

posed by Mitterer: How do we come rom

one construction to another (ibid: 64)? In

Butlers work this is not a problem at all, but

rather an unavoidable necessity: construc-

tion can be materialized only by trying to

repeat given practices, which will never be

exactly the same. Tereore, the change in

the construction, its mutation, is the un-

avoidable side effect o the process o con-

struction/materialization through iteration.

Te act that gender norms can be de-

stabilized by deviant practices shows thatgender is not a necessary given outcome

o objective biological acts. According to

Butler, gender norms are socio-cultural

constructions that continuously have to be

enacted perormatively in order to maintain

their relative stability:

Perormativity must be understood not as asingular or deliberate act, but, rather, as the reit-

erative and citational practice by which discourse

produces the effects that it names. Te regula-

tory norms o sex work in a perormative ashion

to constitute the materiality o bodies and, morespecifically, to materialize the bodys sex, to ma-

terialize sexual difference in the service o the

consolidation o the heterosexual imperative.(Butler 1993: 2)

Why we cannot do without(a certain kind of) dualismTe kind o epistemological monism

that Mitterer and Butler represent claims to

overcome the strong version o dualism, ar-

guing that an ontological or even epistemo-


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logical difference between words and things

is sel-contradictory and cannot be upheld

without recurring to a sel-contradictingdefinition o the object o knowledge, as

well as o its subject. However, both authors

agree that dualistic speech in everyday lie

and political struggle appears as a persisting

necessity. Butler expressly states thatagainst

the claim that poststructuralism reduces all

materiality to linguistic stuff, an argument is

needed to show that to deconstruct matter

is not to negate or do away with the useul-

ness o the term(Butler 1993: 30). Mitterer

argues thatthere are allegedly objective pre-

suppositions that we have to share to survive

in a given society, but we should thereorenot masquerade as the true World behind

our descriptions:

Part o reality are certainly conceptions wehave to share to survive in our society. But this

should not lead us to speak o the conormity o

our concepts with an independent reality, but o

a consensus between the participants o a conver-

sation, which can only go on as long as the basis-

consensus on which it is based is in place.(Mit-terer 2011b: 154)

Mitterer and Butler, although demon-strating at a theoretical level the inconsis-

tency o dualism, i.e., objectivism, assert

that the reerence to allegedly objective ob-

jects beyond language is (still?) unavoidable

(Mitterer) and perhaps even useul (Butler).

Whereas Mitterers admission that we have

to make concessions to the still dominant

dualistic/objectivistic ideology is compre-

hensible despite the risk o opening an

intellectual gap between philosophy and

common sense within the philosopher her-

sel the concept o useulness advanced by

Butler remains questionable. At first glance

it appears to be an appeal to rhetoric dema-gogy, i.e., to the use o concepts recognized

as sel-contradictory (a certain notion o

materiality beyond language) as a weapon

in the political struggle or emancipation.

However, this is not what Butler intends:

when she claims that there is no material-

ity beyond discourse, she does not mean

that the concept o materiality should be

abolished altogether. Instead, in a similar

vein to Mitterer, she argues or a different

concept o materiality beyond the matter-

language dichotomy. According to Mitterer,

the object o a description can no longerbe conceived as a pure object beyond lan-

guage, but must be recognized as already a

(starting-point) description in itsel. Tis

may then be described urther on by second

order descriptions, which radically changes

the ontological and epistemological status o

the object, insoar as in this perspective the

(allegedly absolute) object o discourse is al-

ways already part o the discourse (in which

it is posited as independent rom discourse).

Similarly, or Butler, the allegedly objective

matter (sex) on which the gender-discourse

relies is not accessible beore this discourse.Tis discourse perormatively produces

continuously what it pretends only to de-

scribe, revealing that objective materiality

is nothing beyond discourse but a continu-

ously produced, and thereore continuously

changing, effect o discourse on materiality.

Discourse and materiality thereore cannot

be seen as distinct entities that may then be

placed in relation to each other, but as co-

products o an ongoing, endless process that

Butler calls materialization.

Conclusion

I have tried to show that Butlers keyconcept o materialization, with which she

describes the perormative (always mutat-

ing) construction o pre-discursive entities

within discourse, means naturalization,

i.e., the gradual solidification or sedimenta-

tion o certain contingent descriptions. But-

lers question is: What are the mechanisms

that transorm a contingent description into

a seemingly unchangeable eternal act? How

are descriptions stabilized, i.e., naturalized,

materialized to the point o being regarded

as unquestionable acts?

According to Butler, the stabilization odescriptions is achieved by means o per-

manent iterations o perormative acts. Te

continuous repetition o the same perorma-

tive act is what produces the effect o objec-

tivity, i.e., materiality.

But the same mechanism that serves to

produce allegedly stable descriptions is also

the archimedic point that enables the desta-

bilization o already naturalized interpreta-

tions. For acts to remain stable, they need

to be iterated continuously and reproduced

in perormative acts, and because no repeti-

tion ever equals its predecessor, the mecha-nisms o stabilization are essentially unsta-

ble. Te necessity to iterate the descriptions

continuously in order to naturalize them

in itsel undermines this attempt, as every

repetition o a description slightly changes

the description. Paradoxically, the same acts

that aim at producing naturalized acts end

up denaturalizing the same acts. Precisely

because the actual must be continually re-

produced, i.e., stabilized by means o the

endless repetition o perormative acts, di-

MARTIN G. WEISS

is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Klagenfurt and member

of the Life Science Governance Research Platform of the University of Vienna. His publicationsinclude: Gianni Vattimo. Einfhrung. Mit einem Interview mit Gianni Vattimo(2012); and Bios

und Zo. Die menschliche Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit(2009).

{


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N-


vergent acts (and every repetition is differ-

ent rom its precursor) can destabilize and

change reality:

Construction not only takes place in time,

but is itsel a temporal process which operates

through the reiteration o norms; sex is both

produced and destabilized in the course o this

reiteration. Tis instability is the reconstitut-

ing possibility in the very process o repetition,

the power that undoes the very effects by which

sex is stabilized, the possibility to put the con-

solidation o the norms o sex into a potentially

productive crisis.(Butler 1993: 10)

It is important to keep in mind that the

epistemic monism proposed by Mitterer

and Butler does not deny reality, dissolvingit into mere discourse or advocating linguis-

tic relativism, or this sort o reversed Pla-

tonism would still remain in the ramework

o dualism. It is possible to accuse Butler and

Mitterer o relativism only rom a dualistic

perspective. Tis is because to say that there

is no objective object beyond description,

i.e., to abolish the true world (o platonic

ideas or scientific acts) beyond the appar-

ent one, does not leave us with merely de-

ficient appearance, or with the true world

we have also abolished the apparent one, as

Nietzsche puts it. Abolishing the true, ob-jective world behind description does not

leave us with mere appearance/description/

discourse, but with the only reality that

there is, i.e., endless descriptions rom now

on, as Mitterer would say, or the process

o materialization, as Butler calls it. o de-

fine descriptions/discourse/appearance as a

somehow deficient orm o truth is possible

only within the dualistic ramework and its

distinction between true objects and more

or less deficient mere descriptions o these

objects. I there is no objective true world

beyond description/discourse/appearance,then description/discourse/appearance is

neither true/objective nor a mere (subjec-

tive) description, but the only thing that

there is beyond dualistic epistemological

distinction.

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R: S

A: F

non-dualistic sex

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