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Subversion despite contingency?

Judith butler's concept of a radical
democratic movement from a system
theory perspective
Christine Weinbach
Published online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Christine Weinbach (1997) Subversion despite contingency? Judith
butler's concept of a radical democratic movement from a system theory perspective,
International Review of Sociology: Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 7:1, 147-153, DOI:
10.1080/03906701.1997.9971229

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03906701.1997.9971229

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 International Review of Sociology—Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1997 147

Subversion Despite Contingency? Judith Butler's

Concept of a Radical Democratic Movement from a
System Theory Perspective

CHRISTINE WEINBACH
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Introduction
How is social criticism possible in a society where every objective perspective has
disappeared? Judith Butler believes to have found the answer for this problem in
discourse theoretical concepts: a discourse not only presents what lifestyles are
possible; at the same time it presents what alternative lifestyles should not be
possible. This power of discourse can be broken indeed, however, as each discourse
is based on the dismissal of other possibilities. If one can successfully retrieve the
dismissed, this means the subversion of the dominant discourse and the destruction
of its definitional power. This makes clear the ideological character of this dominant
discourse, which consists in fact of lending natural-seeming legitimacy to contingent
relationships.
In this article, the Butlerian concept will be closely examined, in order to
determine whether she is actually successful in connecting subversion with the
exposure of contingency. To this end, in the first and second sections, how Butler
uses her central term 'nodal points'1 and its functions will be introduced and, at the
same time, comparisons with system theory concepts will be given.2 The third
section introduces Butler's concept of subversion. In the fourth and fifth sections,
this concept will be critically examined from a system theoretical perspective. The
thesis will be presented that the exposure of contingency in this form is only made
possible within a functionally differentiated society. This leads to the conclusion that
the subversion of the symbolic order cannot be found here.

Nodal Points as Partial Specification

How are gender identities created and how can they be subverted? This question
has occupied Judith Butler since her controversial book Gender Trouble (1990), where
she defended the thesis that not only the cultural gender identities are something
discursively created, but also the bodies that wore such identities.3
Her theoretical starting point is the neo-structural criticism of structuralism:
Structuralism recognizes two variations of signifier with relation to the signified,
although only in a limited sense. What is then the moment that bounds the ''système
de la langue' (de Saussure) and secures the elements of their core identity? Lévi-
Strauss speaks of a 'collective unconscious' that guaranteed common forms in all
cultures, and thereby allowed for contentual variations (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, 1962).
Lacan is also in this structural tradition when he speaks of the phallus as the
privileged signifier or steppoint (Lacan, 1969). The moment of drawing up borders

0390-6701/97/010147-07 © 1997 University of Rome 'La Sapienza'

 148 G Weinbach

and its relative fixing of a gender structure is therefore a priori secured. Thus, even
when there are cultural differences, one always finds the heterosexual two-gender
pattern.
Against such a 'naturalization' and its attendant limiting of possibilities Judith
Butler turns to neo-structuralism.4 'The neo-structuralists' "structure" does not
recognize given limitations; it is open, accessible to unlimited transformations'
(Frank, 1984, p. 37). They see here no internal, and thus, unsolvable connection
between signifier and signified. However, when the signifier's referent is lost, there
must be at least a partial fixation: 'Any discourse is constituted as an attempt to
dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a
centre. We will call the privileged discursive points of partial fixation nodal points'
(Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 112). The nodal point determines the elements of the
discourse with respect to itself: there are identities only in relationship to this
centralized mass, which in turn provides a context for elements and thereby secures
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their further confirmability.

Elements are Differences

As in the above considerations of a discourse theoretical approach, there are in
systems theory, identities only as elements for a system (Luhmann, 1993a, p. 42).
Hence, it is already clear that there must be a definitional mass similar to a nodal
point. We find it in the basic form of the system; for example, in the code in which
each element is rediscovered, as in the nodal point.
The nodal point; or the fundamental form of the system, guarantees that there
can be only connections between one element and another element of the same
type, and constitutes the identity of the discourse or system. The connections from
element to element is, however, not at all purely tautological: the nodal point exists
in 'pure form' as little as 'pure self-reference' does. Both expressions are only used
in an analytic sense in order to make the following clear: they illustrate the borders
of the discourse respective to the system. And while these borders cannot be seen
at static, rather through repetition or operation of the elements and always redrawn
new each time, they must be found in each element for themselves.
In fact, the elements, in discourse as well as in system theory, are to be seen as
differences: on their marked sides, the identity itself can be found; and, on their
unmarked sides, the discourse or system reference. Therefore, each difference
contains, to say this in system theoretic terms, system and environment at the same
time.
Against this background, what is then gender identity? Gender identity is created
as a discourse's or system's performed access in the world with respect to the
'materialism of the body' (Butler, 1995b, p. 21) and thereby allows its 'indetermi-
nancy to be determined' (Luhmann, 1993, pp. 63-64). The body as the
indeterminancy is determined through the performed power of the discourse,
wherein the discourse assigns it a gender role concept.5 In the context of the nodal
point, this is what is seized and thereby creates the marked side of the respective
element, and with reference to the nodal point the unmarked, but constitutive other
side. With respect to their common denominator, all elements are equivalent. This
means that with reference to the nodal point, various elements are given a feminine
or masculine 'character', which in a certain sense makes them replaceable or
exchangeable.
 Subversion Despite Contingency 149

Quote Falsely, Seize the Rejected!

We want to concern ourselves now with Butler's central thoughts: to discover the
contingency of the gender order and, in this way, to subvert it. Butler maintains
that she uncovers the apparently naturalness of gender-specific behaviour in order
to expose their artificial character. How does she do this?
Every element is constituted on the basis of what it is not: therefore every
element is a difference, which would be more exactly determined by the other side
(the equivalences or the nodal point). This applies as well to the nodal point itself;
this is also a difference, which is antagonistically determined through its opposite,
which remains incomplete and also unmarked. Butler refers to these unmarked
components, with reference to Lacan, as 'rejected'.6
Heterosexuality is then defined through the negation of homosexuality.7 A man
is defined through the negation of the feminine, a female by negating the male.
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What happens here, when a man is not defined through the negation of the
feminine, but rather, as a homosexual in the Freudian sense, is 'falsely identified?
What can we say when this man wears women's clothing, as well as in other ways
behaves unlike a man? Thus, not only role-exchange is thinkable. What if we have
a woman who is homosexual, although she does not exactly behave like a man?
Everything, according to Butler, is possible. This is made clear through, for
example, transdressing and makes clear the arbitrary character of the symbolic
order of gender. The exhibition of this contingency through the signifier's wrong
usage is understood as the subversive repetition of the symbolic order.
What does repetition as a subversive act mean? In general, each discourse, like
each system, has to be newly constituted from moment to moment. This does not
mean, however, that it has to be created each time from scratch, rather, it uses
existing elements, and embodies them anew by connecting them to a previous
operation. Subversive could only be, according to Butler, to quote what is rejected
by the discourse.
Subversion can also occur within the discourse, as when the nodal point is not
referred back to as the equivalence point, as it was before. Instead, the rejected that
constitutes it, takes its place. What is the motivation to quote the rejected rather
than the expected?
Judith Butler concerns herself with Slavoj Zizek's concept of the 'political
signifier' (Zizek, 1989). For Zizek, the political signifier is a collection point of
phantasmagoric investment. Zizek demonstrates this against the backdrop of
Lacanian psychoanalysis, which assumes that the rejection of original needs
accompanies the creation of the subject. Left over is the human yearning for the
fulfillment of this never-to-be-symbolized wanted wish, and is expressed in the
search for the lost object. This search will always fail, as only symbolic objects can
be strived for.
Zizek sees in the political signifier such a desired object, which promises to fulfill
this unquenchable desire. The political signifier awakes expectations that will always
be disappointed. At the same time, it is constituted as a nodal point through the
rejection of its opposite; in other words, in its function as the signifier of a political
movement, it creates marginal groups, which are made socially contemptuous and
thus are blocked out by this signifier (e.g. Zizek, 1991).
According to Butler, the symbolic order of the political signifier can now be
subverted by those that are considered contemptuous by grasping the very thing
that makes them contemptuous: the other, rejected side of the political signifier.
 150 C. Weinbach

Butler thinks here of the Queer Movement, which started in the USA and has
spread to Europe. This movement is composed of homosexuals that refer to
themselves with the pejorative term 'queer', a term that should actually make them
contemptuous. Their political tactics consist in their parodying normal gender roles
by exaggerating and perverting them in order to expose their artificiality and
contingency. This is not limited to merely men acting as perfect women and vice
versa. They create alternative collective living situations and new 'relationship
terms' which undermine traditional family structures (Butler, 1993, p. 184). Results
of Queer Politics are gender prototypes which deviate from the traditional, opening
room for new usages of the materialism of the body.
Of central importance to Butler, who wants to propose a political theory for a
radical democratic future-ness, is the view that no political signifier exists without
the rejection of possibilities. This applies also to the Queer Movement. To prove
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to itself its openness for changes through rejected existences makes up, in the first
instance, a movement's democratic character. 'When Queer Politics takes on the
stance, to be independent from these other modalities of power, it would lose its
democratic power' (Butler, 1993, p. 302).

Second Order Observations Subvert the Nodal Point

Judith Butler's search for a theory of subversion is, as mentioned above, founded
in the neo-structuralist's criticism of structuralism and is based further on a critic
of its ontology. This viewpoint she shares with system theory, which also assumes
that everything that is, could have been different. Both approaches see the
temporary creation of identity in the determination of the indeterminate through
the performed power of discourse or system: Identities that would be undermined
by articulatory respective evolutionary processes. The observation of such dynamics
has to occur, however, on a completely other level than the simply operative or
reproducing, according to system theory. Here is where system theory distinguishes
first-order observations from second-order observations.
The first-order observations draw distinction and marks therefore one side, but
not the other. For now, the other side remains unseen. This thought process follows
discourse theory when it speaks of the unmarked side as a constitutive one for the
discourse and yet says nothing of the unrepresentable outside. In this light, Butler
labels homosexuality as the rejected, the necessary complement for heterosexuality.
Heterosexuality can now utilize the homosexuality made socially rejected and newly
signify this in 'queer-ed' fashion. Now it can be loaded with meaning.
However, in order to be able to distinguish what, through the constitution of the
nodal point heterosexuality, is excluded from itself, we need second-order observa-
tions, from which we can see what the discourse does (namely, it marks the one side
and not the other) and what discourse itself cannot see (exactly this, what it does).
Only the second-order observation is able to observe the unity of the difference
(here: of heterosexuality and homosexuality) and to derive action concepts from it.
Let us take a look at the complete concept of the nodal point: the nodal point
'heterosexuality' defines the elements of the discourse, in that it serves them as the
equivalence point. We discover therefore a difference where elements represent the
marked sides and the nodal point the unmarked side: By using elements, the
reference point remains unmentioned. Only with the second-order observations,
can it be seen what the discourse cannot see in the system: that which can be seen
by the discourse and system, are created by themselves. However, one cannot
 Subversion Despite Contingency 151

distinguish without already having made a distinction. Thus, every difference is

paradoxically constituted in a double sense: first, because it concerns the unity of
a difference, and secondly, because this unity itself was distinguished from some-
thing else, which takes away the status of the marked side from this difference.
Butler sees not only the constructed character of elements through reference
points,8 rather she uses this result of her observations on the reference point itself,
and this completes the 'autological circle' (Luhmann, 1993b). First the consequent
character of her considerations breaks with the rest-nature of a sex-and-gender
concept and makes clear her criticism on Zizek, who holds fast to the Lacanian
phallus as a privileged signifier. Such a reification of the unmarked side (the real's)
would 'preclude the very possibility of a future rearticulation of that boundary
which is central to the democratic project that Zizek, Laclau and Mouffe promote'
(Butler, 1993, p. 206).
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Until now, Butler can be followed by system theorists. At the point, however,
where she attributes to the second-order observations subversive power in a political
sense, the system theoretical criticism starts.

Criticism from System Theory

Judith Butler, in one interpretation from system theory, politizes the second order
observations themselves.9 Politics is for her 'an iterable practice that shows that
what one takes to be a political signifier is itself the sedimentation of prior signifiers,
the effect of their reworking' (Butler, 1993, p. 213ff). Politics stands as the subver-
sion of the political signifier through the display of its dependency on the rejected:
Politics happens when what is rejected by the political signifiers contests its
definitional power. Constituted through the signifier, which it overthrows, it raises
itself in the fight over articulation, in order to establish a new signifier, for which
the same thing applies, and so on.
Since the system theory of modern societies makes the second-order observation
into the constitutive moment, inherent in system theory is what Butler holds as the
degree of subversive profiling on contingence. To show that something else could
also be possible, the second-order observation is highlighted, and therefore the
observation of the observer, and this is correlated with the social structure. This is
different than in the stratified society, in which the common reference point (nodal
point) is found in the King as the representative of the divine order, and thus
'prefers' a central perspective. In functionally differentiated society, autonomous,
functionally ordered social systems are found, based on themselves and self-referen-
tially structured. They do not stand in any hierarchical relationship with each other
(Luhmann, 1993a, p. 20ff). We are dealing here with different systems and their
respectively different reference points: every system can distinguish between itself
and other systems; it can observe under which conditions the others operate and it
can observe under what conditions it itself operates. It sees in this way, how it itself
and other systems can reduce complexity by choosing one specific form from a
contingent of possibilities in order to use this to connect it to previous operations.
Thus, it is shown that Butler's considerations are located in the functionally
differentiated society and there her conditions are found. She does not reflect on
this. She overlooks additional fundamental questions in connection with this type of
society, such as that of stability despite contingence—or re-phrased: how social
order is possible.10 The assumption that a discourse could be continuously sub-
verted, does not pose itself, this question. Paradoxically, Butler is assuming that the
 152 C. Weinbach

nodal point, which constitutes the discourse, could be subverted and at the same
time remain a (radically-democrate) unity.
Turning her considerations in a system theoretical direction though, we can
re-interpret the discourse of the political signifier, indeed against Butler's intentions,
but in consideration for the opened problem field. When the subversion of the
political signifier itself is the only moment that resists the constant changes, it could
be understood as its very own secret nodal point: It allows subversion, without
becoming subverted itself.11
We would then have a discourse, whose 'task' it would be to reflect and subvert
its own articulation. This discourse would then be integrated in the modern society,
instead of burying its symbolic order.
If these considerations are half-way correct, then Butler could not have suc-
ceeded in presenting such a thing as a theory of subversion. Butler's term
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'subversion' has to surrender its revolutionary connotations and its proximity,

instead of searching for it within the term of contingency. Her subversive discourse
would then be a discourse that had not as a goal, to bury the dominant social order,
but it would rather be occupied with its very own contingency. Instead, it would be
a part of society and it would deal with its own contingency, and consequently, with
itself.

Notes
1. First and foremost, Butler uses the term 'nodal point' in the form of Zizek's 'political signifier'.
Until this term is defined in this essay, we will concentrate on the nodal point itself and on its
function within the discourse-concept.
2. Urs Stäheli (1996) also has undertaken a comparison of system theory and discourse theory,
specifically in connection with his criticism of Luhmann's term 'code' from the discourse
theoretical perspective of Laclau.
3. Even when this thesis at first sounds a little absurd, Butler actually defends this thesis in her first
book, Gender Trouble, and precisely for the sharpness of her formulations, she became very quickly
famous. In the following work, Bodies That Matter, she modified these thoughts in that she spoke
instead of the materialism of the body being derived discursively.
4. For examples, see Butler, 1990, pp. 68-122 and Butler, 1993, pp. 85-128.
5. In system theory, there is for the system only the possibility to consider bodies as located external
to the system (other-reference) and the role concept as inside of the system (self-reference).
6. Where she interprets the Lacanian consideration, that what is rejected appears later in the 'real',
as follows: 'There are signifiers that have been part of symbolization and could be again, but
have been separated oft from symbolization to avert the trauma with which they are invested.
Hence, these signifiers are desymbolized, but this process of desymbolization takes place through
the production of a hiatus in symbolization' (Butler, 1993, p. 269). And, 'implies that what is
foreclosed is a signifier... that the mechanism ofthat repudiation takes place within the symbolic
order as a policing of the border of intelligibility' (Butler, 1993, p. 204).
7. The following example is expressed in common usage and does not reflect, for example, the
question of when is a man a man. In other words, the categories sex and gender are not
separated here.
8. If one wants, this is foreseen by structuralism, for example in Lévi-Strauss' collective unconscious
or Lacan's phallus.
9. It would be possible, 'that the affirmation of that slippage, that failure of identification its itself
the point of departure for more democratizing affirmation of internal difference' (Butler, 1993,
p.215).
10. And how it can, that the social order is no longer dependent on rigid gender roles. For example,
'Functional differentiation distances the personal inventory of a society: Many complex social
areas are no longer dependent on personally connected situations or conditions. The mainte-
nance of functional systems occurs through long communication chains and communication
 Subversion Despite Contingency 153

sequences' (Pasero 1995, p. 59). She follows this up with, 'Gender differences is only one
ordering principle among others'.
11. In this sense, this can be understood as the Laclauian concept of an empty signifier, which he
understands as a placeholder for changing representations. In addition, we take on the opposing
position of Stäheli, who supports, on the basis of the empty signifier, equipping the unchanging
code of a system with the possibility of subversion (Stäheli, 1996).

References
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Frank, M. (1984) Was ist Neostrukturalismus?, Frankfurt/M., edition Suhrkamp.
Lacan, J. (1969) 'La signification du phallus', Ecrits, Paris, Edition du Seuil, pp. 793-827.
Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflexions on the Revolution of our Time, London and New York, Verso.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962) La Pensée Sauvage, Paris, PLON.
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Luhmann, N. (1993a) Soziale Systeme, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp Taschenbuch.

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