Judith Butler

A few weeks ago Mark posted an entry on "spiritual entanglement," drawing an analogy from physics. Below are a few quotes that I think speak in the same direction from psychoanalytic philosophy. Judith Butler is discussing the impossibility of fully "knowing your self"/"giving an account of oneself" in language or with a sense of mastery. She says the reason that we can't know ourselves fully is because we (our (un)conscious selves) are in part made up from our relations to others who we also can't know fully.

The book is Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham UP, 2005). Though I find much of the material difficult to understand, these are among a number of quite contemplative sounding statements she makes. She says:

If that which I am defies narrative, compels speculation, insists itself as opacity that resists all final illumination, then this seems to be a consequence of my fundamental relation to a "you"--an other who is interiorized in ways for which I have no account. (80)

And so one might say, reflectively, and with a certain sense of humility, that in the beginning, I am my relation to you. . . (81)

--Paul Corrigan