Approaching the limits of intelligibility

This paper considers the challenge in poststructural theorizing of attempting to approach ‘the limit of intelligibility’ (Butler 2006, 2004; Derrida 2001). This challenge is situated in my own dissertation work on the incest taboo, where I through a deconstructive approach trace the discursive function of the incest taboo in structural anthropology and psychoanalysis, specifically in Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Claude Lévi-Strauss. In this paper I consider what it means to critically intervene against the unintelligibility of incest, because such an intervention of trying to challenge the incest taboo poses questions of an ethical, normative and political nature. But it also poses methodological challenges: what does it mean to approach the limits of (sexual) intelligibility in comprehensible and coherent way? Much of the critique which have been directed towards poststructuralists such as Derrida, Butler and Spivak concerns their inaccessible writing. But is it even possible to make the unintelligible efficiently intelligible? I will use parts of my ongoing dissertation work to theoretically discuss these challenges of poststructural theorizing, but the aim of this paper is to reflect methodologically and theoretically on the issue of the limits of intelligibility. The purpose of my dissertation is to critique the incest taboo; a taboo whose authority is often defined as universal in social theory (Lévi-Strauss 1969). I consider how the power of the taboo makes it so difficult to not only speak, but also to think, of incest (Butler 2000; 2004). This regulation of thinkability, specifically in the realm of sexuality, is my concern here. I approach these challenges through queer theory, because of queer theory’s ambition to trouble limits and normativity and its commitment to the excess of the signifier (Britzman 1995; Kosofsky Sedgwick 1994). In this sense the paper continues to explore the fruitful conversation between poststructuralist theory and queer theory and how it might further poststructuralist thinking in political science. References: Britzman, Deborah P. (1995). “Is there a queer pedagogy? Or, stop reading straight.” In Educational Theory, vol. 45(2): 151-165 Butler, Judith. (2000). Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press. Butler, Judith. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. (2006 [1990]). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. (2001[1967]). Writing and Difference. London: Routledge. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1994). Tendencies. London: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1969). The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press.