Psykoanalyyttinen teoria ja performatiivinen politiikkakäsitys: ruumis ja sukupuoli polittisena merkitsijänä Judith Butlerin mukaan

Authors

• Jiri Nieminen

Abstract

In this article I focus on psychoanalytical theory and the concept of performative politics, both of which have been unexplored areas in the Finnish political science. I concentrate mainly on one of the leading post-modern political thinker, Judith Butler and especially her way to read Lacan’s psychoanalytical concepts and the meaning of political signifier. Her best-known thesis is the idea of identity as free-floating, not connected to an essence, but instead to a performance. This is one of the key ideas of the queer theory: our identities, gendered and otherwise, do not express some authentic inner ”core” self but they are the dramatic effect of our performances. I argue that Butler’s way to read psychoanalysis and her political thinking is relevant to political science more generally than only to the theory of gender. In Butler’s point of view, body and gender are a part of any political question.