Na rrative Identit y and
No rmative F ramew o rks
T o w a rds an Ethics of V ulnerabilit y
v orgelegt v on
M.A.
Lutz F ric k e
geb. in Braunsc h w eig
v on der F akult¨ at I – Geistes- und Bildungswissensc haften
der T ec hnisc hen Univ ersit¨ at Berlin
zur Erlangung des ak ademisc hen Grades
Doktor der Philosophie
- Dr.phil. -
genehmigte Dissertation
Promotionsausc h uss:
V orsitzende: Prof. Dr. Monik a Sc h w arz-F riesel (TU Berlin)
Gutac h ter: Prof. Thomas Gil (TU Berlin)
Gutac h ter: Prof. Iw an-Mic helangelo D’Aprile (Univ ersit¨ at P otsdam)
T ag der wissensc haftlic hen Aussprac he: 26. Oktob er 2017
Berlin 2018

Ackno wledgements
The do ctoral thesis presen ted here w as dev elop ed in connection with the
Marie Curie - Net w ork for Initial T raining lab elled ENGLOBE - En-
lightenment and Glob al History . The program receiv ed funding from the
Europ ean Commission (FP7), it w as scien tifically co ordinated b y Pro-
fessor G ¨ un ther Lottes and managed with diligence b y Professor Iw an-
Mic helangelo D’Aprile. Without the participation in ENGLOBE this the-
sis w ould not ha v e b een p ossible. I w ould lik e to express thanks to m y
sup ervisors Professor Thomas Gil from T ec hnisc he Univ ersit¨ at Berlin,
Professor Vincen t Geoghegan from Queen’s Univ ersit y in Belfast, and
to Professor Iw an-Mic helangelo D’Aprile from the Univ ersit¨ at P otsdam
who ha v e help ed me without hesitation or cease o v er the y ears. I w an t
to thank Professor Ian Gold from McGill Univ ersit y in Mon treal who
in vited me to Canada as a visiting sc holar, and also m y fello w do ctoral
candidates in ENGLOBE for their ric h and div erse in tellectual stim ula-
tions. Without the incessan t supp ort of m y friends and family this thesis
w ould not ha v e b een written. Thank y ou, Alb ert. I am grateful to all of
these sources of guidance and supp ort.
i

Contents
1 Intro duction 2
1.1 Philosophies of P ersonal Iden tit y . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Researc h Question and Outline of Argumen tation . . . . 5
2 Na rrative Opacities and the Ethics of V ulnerabilit y 12
2.1 F rom F ailure to Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2 Corp orealit y , Norms, and Relationalit y . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 V arieties of Opacit y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4 Narrativ e Accoun ting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5 Ethics, Critique, and Non-Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.6 The Claim of Non-Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.7 Rethinking Resp onsibilit y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3 Na rrative Identit y and Mo ral No rms 71
3.1 The App eal of Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.2 Narrativ e, Agency , and Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.3 Tw o Problems with Iden tit y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.4 A Theory of Narrativ e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.5 The T riade: Describ e - Narrate - Prescrib e . . . . . . . . 107
3.6 The Ethical Aim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
ii

4 F rom F ailure to Resp onsibilit y 129
4.1 Ethical Violence and Narration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.2 Narrativ e Unit y and Precarious Iden tities . . . . . . . . . 146
4.3 T o w ards and Ethics of V ulnerabilit y . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
1

1 Intro duction
1.1 Philosophies of P ersonal Identit y
Philosophers ha v e man y reasons to engage with p ersonho o d and p er-
sonal iden tit y . Conceptually this b ecomes apparen t in the differen t terms
used in the resp ectiv e debates, whic h are p opulated b y ‘h uman b eings’,
‘selv es’, ‘sub jects’, ‘p ersons’, or ‘individuals’. These concepts are used
in terc hangeably for the most part. F or the presen t discussion and the
goal to scrutinize p ersonal identit y , ‘p erson’ seems to b e most suitable.
When reconstructing argumen ts b y Butler and other authors who cap-
italize on F oucault, I will join them using ‘sub ject’. A p erson’s iden tit y
is something a h uman b eing acquires o v er time. Some parts of a p er-
son’s iden tit y are not under the con trol of the individual, suc h as the
place of birth, or her paren ts. Others are b y all means go v ernable, suc h
as the decision whic h career to pursue, whic h in terp ersonal relationships
to main tain (and whic h not) etc. Some asp ects of one’s identit y can b e
told to others, some, suc h as traumatic exp eriences, sometimes cannot.
Ev en other asp ects do not seem to b e suitable for sharing due to so cial
con v en tions. Some ev en cannot b e shared, b ecause the p erson do es not
kno w them, but others migh t, suc h as the mother, a close friend, or the
b oss in a w ork en vironmen t. Man y tend to b elief that a p erson’s iden-
tit y sho ws itself esp ecially in b eha vioural traits, suc h as in the w a y she
mo v es, talks, gestures, or what clothes she is w earing, whic h hobbies she
2

pursues, and whic h reasons she offers for actions tak en previously . In a
first appro ximation, all of these c haracteristics are addressed b y ‘p ersonal
iden tit y’.
There are other issues with p erson-related phenomena. F or example,
some philosophers prefer the term ‘p ersonho o d’ o v er ‘p erson’. They are
in terested in the criteria whic h decide what a p erson is, and what is
not. P ersonho o d is a concept whic h often is applied in the third-p erson-
p ersp ectiv e, asking questions lik e ‘Is this a p erson or not?’ or ‘When
will mac hines surpass our cognitiv e capacities?’ or ‘Has this c himpanzee
(non-)h uman righ ts and therefore has to b e released immediately?’. P er-
sonal iden tit y , instead, is mainly b ound to the first- and second-p erson-
p ersp ectiv e. Questions lik e ‘Who am I?’, instead, aim for answ ers that
define what c haracter traits, what biographical facts, what p ersonal ex-
p eriences defines a p erson. Some philosophers engage what they call p er-
sonal on tology , a field defined b y the op ening question ‘What am I?’.
Olsen (Olson 2007), for example, has review ed these on tological debates
and iden tified a v ariet y of quite distinct answ ers to this question. The
sp ectrum ranges from ‘W e actually do not exist at all’, to ‘W e are a col-
lection of men tal things’, to ‘W e are spatial or temp oral parts of animals’
to ‘material things’ or plainly ‘biological organisms’.
A further field of inquiry in to issues of p ersonal iden tit y are questions
of p ersistence and reiden tification. Ho w can w e argue reasonably for a
p erson’s p ersistence in the face of constan t c hange? If a p erson a exists
at time x , and a p erson b exists at time y , in whic h cases can w e establish
the iden tit y of a and b ? Esp ecially in the analytical tradition this question
of the p ersistence of p ersons is p erceiv ed as an in teresting sub division of
the metaph ysical question of the p ersistence of en tities in general, since
p ersons c hange ph ysically and psyc hologically o v er time, to o. Starting
p oin t for man y philosophers in this field is Lo c k e’s definition of a p erson
3

as ‘a thinking in telligen t b eing, that has reason and reflection, and can
consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in differen t times and
places’. This quote dominan tly is in terpreted in a psyc hological w a y , and
one of the most prev ailing strategies to explain the p ersistence of p ersons
dra w up on some v ersion of psyc hological criteria of con tin uit y .
These, admittedly meagre, p oin ters to the v arieties of philosophical
iden tit y researc h ma y create the impression that it is p ossible to break
do wn the complexities and in tricacies of p ersonal iden tit y in to an arra y
of w ell-defined areas of researc h. This impression can b e misleading, to
sa y the least. There hardly can an y doubt ab out the fact that analyti-
cal stringency is a necessary requiremen t to impro v e the understanding
of an y ob ject of study , in general, and p ersonal iden tit y certainly is no
exception to this rule. But from a critical distance one migh t b e con-
cerned that philosophers enact the tale of the blind men in v estigating
the elephan t, eac h a differen t part of its b o dy . Unsurprisingly they come
to quite differen t conclusions ab out the animal they ha v e in v estigated. I
certainly do not w an t to argue in fa v our of a bland holism as the frame-
w ork for the philosophies of iden tit y , but, as I will outline in the subse-
quen t paragraphs, when p ersonal iden tit y is considered in the con text of
moral philosoph y , the supp osedly w ell-defined segmen tation of philosoph-
ical discourses is in jeopardy to collapse. With that said, it is one of the
requiremen ts of this thesis to na vigate the fine line b et w een in tegrating
relev an t asp ects of a wide sp ectrum of discourses but to implemen t the
principle of parsimon y . Still, rather then on tological or metaph ysical is-
sues it is set to explore the m utual dep endence of the concept of p ersonal
iden tit y and normativ e framew orks.
4

1.2 Resea rch Question and Outline of
Argumentation
This thesis will fo cus on narrative accoun ts of p ersonal iden tit y . Narra-
tiv e, as man y theorists claim, is mean t to b e particularly w ell suited for
the exploration of matters of iden tit y and ethics, esp ecially b ecause it
supp osedly in tegrates the dev elopmen tal asp ects of b ecoming a p erson,
enables the individual of k eeping trac k of her exp eriences, and references
m ultiple con texts. So, to what exten t is a narrativ e framew ork qualified
for the philosophical in v estigation of p ersonal iden tit y? Surprisingly , and
despite the fact that the turn to narrativ e to ok place o v er four decades
ago, this questions still a w aits a systematic treatmen t. Whereas there are
man y who argue in fa v our of narrativ e approac hes to iden tit y , basically
b ecause story-telling is p erv asiv e in virtually eac h and ev ery so ciet y , there
is a significan t blind sp ot in man y theories of narrativ e iden tit y , and that
is inquiries in to the capabilities and limitations of narrativ e as a theoreti-
cal approac h, as a metho d and framew ork. In the relev an t literature there
is to b e found a h uge v ariet y of definitions, but these definitions, at b est,
serv e the explanatory in ten tions of the resp ectiv e author, rather than de-
plo ying a structured discussion of the limitations of narrativ e approac hes
in general. This omission will b e addressed in c hapter three.
In addition to the philosophical topics link ed to the concept of p er-
sonal iden tit y in a narro w er sense, prop onen ts of a narrativ e framew ork
ha v e w ork ed on v arious other philosophical topics, suc h as: the formation
of iden tit y; the acquisition of the ev aluativ e and normativ e framew orks
b y the individual or shared b y a comm unit y; the an ticipation, planing
and ev aluation of actions; k eeping trac k of one’s exp eriences; the criti-
cal self-reflexivit y whic h enables the individual to question herself and
established (normativ e) framew orks; b eing able to pro vide a coheren t ac-
5

coun t of one’s b ecoming, one’s actions and in ten tions; the hermeneutical
pro cess of (self-)in terpretation and the need for making sense; narra-
tiv e accoun ting and making one’s motiv es for ev en tually harmful actions
transparen t to others; the temp oral dialectic of b eing and b ecoming; and
lastly , the orien tation of one’s en tire life to w ard the ultimate go o d. In
summary , narrativ e seems to b e crucial and almost without an y alterna-
tiv e to in tegrate all of these asp ects and to develop a theoretical accoun t
of a situated, enacted, and so cially recognized iden tit y .
Within the narro w er b oundaries of ethics and moral philosoph y , for
that matter, narrativ e and narrativit y are understo o d to pla y a crucial
role as w ell, alb eit in quite opp osing, and ev en tually con tradicting w a ys.
Theorists of virtue ethics, suc h as Alasdair MacIn t yre (MacIn t yre 2007),
b eliev e that ha ving a unified and contin uous life narrativ e is imp erativ e
for b oth, the orientation to w ards the ultimate go o d and secondly , to
pro vide evidence and justification that an y giv en action has b een planned
and executed in coherence with this orien tation. A similar approac h is
tak en b y P aul Rico eur, whic h will b e discussed in depth in c hapter 2. In
a n utshell, these accoun ts argue that in order to liv e a go o d life, one has
to ha v e a narrativ e approac h to life and iden tit y , and one should b e able,
at least in principle, to giv e a narrativ e accoun t of oneself. In con trast
to this theoretical camp, in deon tological accoun ts there also is a strong
reference to narrativ es, but in a differen t p ersp ectiv e. The emphasis is
put on normativ ely correct actions, and therefore the claim is that in
order to act morally correct, one has to liv e ones life narrativ ely .
Also, narrativ es and narrations are iden tified in and of themselv es to
b e strongly ev aluativ e, or ‘sedimen tations of normativ e orders’ (F orst
and G ¨ un ther 2011). Com bined with the an throp ological assumption that
the practice of story-telling has b een, is at presen t, and alw a ys will b e
prev alen t in almost eac h and ev ery h uman p opulation, narrativ es con v ey
6

norms and rules of b eha viour. ‘The moral of the story’, hence, denotes an
ethical advise ab out ho w to, or ho w not to b eha v e in a certain situation.
This migh t seem trivial, but it will b e necessary to analyse exactly ho w
stories represen t and con v ey these ethical norms, ho w the audience is
able to adopt them ev en without ha ving b een in a suc h a situation as in
story , and ho w c haracters are formed.
In the face of this gro wing group of prop onen ts of narrativ e accoun ts
of p ersonal iden tit y , it is no surprise that the v ariet y of criticisms is
just as div erse. The criticisms range from outrigh t rejection of narrativ e
and narrativit y tout c ours (Stra wson 2004; Sart w ell 2000), to analyses
of certain asp ects of narrativ e, all of whic h are united in the opinion
that in philosoph y there is to o little atten tion paid to the complexities
and in tricacies of the narrativ e framew ork. These analyses range from a
comparison of the ric h understanding of narrativ e in literature studies
(Lamarque 2007), the questionable concept of the unit y or coherence of
narrativ es (Christman 2004), or that the narrativ e explanation of the
self, sub jectivit y , and p erception do not reac h the explanatory lev el of
phenomenological inquiries in to these topics (Zaha vi 2007), to name just
a few. These v arious criticisms will b e in tegrated in the course of this
thesis where applicable. But the emphasis will b e put on another p osition.
A t the cen ter of this thesis resides y et another criticism of narrativism
whic h is b oth radical and constructiv e. In Giving an A c c ount of On-
self (Butler 2005), Judith Butler explores the structural and situational
disorien tations of the narrator, whic h limits the v ery p ossibilit y of narrat-
ing one’s life. These disorien tations constitute a sev ere problem when it
comes to moral accoun ting. In an in terlo cutory situation where resp on-
sibilit y and forgiv eness are at stak e, it is exp ected that the individual
whic h is accoun ting for her actions deliv ers a narrativ e whic h mak e her
in ten tions transparen t. But what exactly is the problem with this ideal
7

and exp ectation of transparency? Butler differen tiates at least fiv e suc h
problems, whic h she ev en tually calls ‘disorien tations’, or ‘opacities’: the
singularit y of the narrator, whic h for her mainly arises from b o dily exp o-
sure; the primary relations of a y oung c hild whic h ha v e a lasting impact
on its life but whic h cannot b e narrativ ely reco v ered; the historicit y of
p ersonho o d whic h cannot b e fully kno wn to the narrator; the norms that
facilitate the v ery telling and whic h are not authored b y the narrator,
and whic h render the narrator substitutable. And lastly the ‘structure of
address’, whic h consists in the in triguing am biv alence of the narrated ac-
coun t of oneself whic h, in the momen t in whic h it establishes m y accoun t,
immediately is giv en a w a y to the addressee.
These hindrances, in Butler’s view, mak e it imp ossible to main tain a
coheren t and unified narrativ e of one’s o wn iden tit y . They are not only
disorien tations ab out oneself, or ab out the normativ e setting one liv es
in, for that matter. They are at the same time disruptions of the act
of accoun ting and taking resp onsibilit y for one’s actions. The failure to
main tain coherence is first and foremost an ethical failure, since most
moral philosophers render a coheren t and stable iden tit y as the most im-
p ortan t requiremen t for assuming resp onsibilit y . On a v ery basic lev el,
ethical delib eration has to establish the iden tit y b et w een the p erp etrator
and the one who is confron ted with claims of comp ensation. But in But-
ler’s view, in man y o ccasions this demand for self-iden tit y constitutes a
case of what she calls ‘ethical violence’, a term she b orro ws from Adorno
and whic h denotes the oppressiv e situation whic h arises from norms that
are not self-eviden t an y more, but still are so cially shared. Still, they
remain and function as the conditions for b eing recognized and accepted
as a mem b er of so ciet y , and for accoun ting for one’s actions.
What sets Butler’s criticism apart from man y other critics is the scop e
and purp ose of her criticism. She do es not w an t to answ er the question
8

at all if a narrativ e approac h to iden tit y do es or do es not mak e sense. She
accepts the fact that, on an ev eryda y basis, narrativ e ordering of ev en ts
and exp eriences is part of eac h h uman’s life and a necessary means to
surviv e as a relational b eing. But if the disorien tations and opacities of
self-iden tit y are part of the structure of so cial accoun ting, and if the so ci-
etal demand for coherence, stabilit y , and self-transparency are inevitable,
than the w a ys of ho w w e fail also are essen tial of who w e are. Therefore,
the ethical failure itself could giv e w a y to a new approac h to ethics, whic h
dra ws up on h umilit y and generosit y at the same time. Since I and y ou
ha v e structurally the same difficulties with narrating ourselv es, I cannot
exp ect from you what I m yself are not able to do. It is this predicamen t,
i.e. the shared situation of one’s o wn opacit y to oneself, that figures as
a cen tral underpinning for sustaining ethical b onds with others. Whic h
b onds she actually thinks of in this con text will ha v e to b e discussed
b elo w. One, surely , is forgiv eness. F orgiv eness, for Butler, is the ethical
answ er to the structural and theoretical opacities of the self.
In order to assess Butler’s accoun t of the ethics of forgiv eness and vul-
nerabilit y it is necessary to reconstruct in detail what her understanding
of h uman b eing, relational so cialit y and iden tit y is. This will b e the con-
ten t of Chapter 1. Once this accoun t is reconstructed, I will engage in
a double mo v emen t of analysis and argumen tation. In a first step, in
Chapter 2 I will confron t existing narrativ e accoun ts of p ersonal iden-
tit y and ethics with Butler’s concept of opacit y . Besides MacIn t yre, P aul
Rico eur has devised the most comprehensiv e accoun t of narrativ e iden-
tit y in Time and Narr ative and Oneself as A nother (Rico eur 1994), and
therefore will b e discussed in depth. The guiding questions for this part
are: Ho w do they theorize p ersonal iden tit y in terms of narrativ e? What
is their understanding of narrativ e in its double nature as structure and
practice? Wh y , in their view, is the narrativ e approac h to p ersonal iden-
9

tit y most suitable for moral inquiry? T o what exten t ha v e these authors
considered the structural and situational hindrances of story-telling, and
ho w do es this influence their accoun ts of ethics and iden tit y? Finally , all
of these questions will b e discussed against the bac kdrop of Riceurs’s and
MacIn t yre’s notions of relationalit y and resp onsibilit y .
It will turn out that, for a v ariet y of reasons, the understanding of nar-
rativ e itself as a concept and framew ork remains sub par in all of these
accoun ts, and that is true for all the accoun ts discussed in this thesis,
including Butler’s. In reaction to that, I will review the most adv anced
narrativ e framew orks from neigh b ouring disciplines suc h as (linguistic)
an throp ology , so cial psyc hology , literary studies, and ethnograph y . Esp e-
cially insigh tful are the w orks of Ellinor Oc hs, Kenneth Gergen, Mic hael
Bam b erg, and Marie-Laure Ry an. This reconstruction will result in a
systematic and m ulti-la y ered conception of narrativ e as structure and
practice, resonating with some essen tial insigh ts from sp eec h act theory .
The later is helpful since it allo ws for differen tiating the v arious lev els
on whic h narrativ e accoun ting act up on the narrator and the audience.
As it should b e clear b y no w, m y main in terest is to explore the p ossible
opacities of p ersonal iden tit y in general, and their impact and realisation
in situations of failure of narrativ e accoun ting. T o that end, a closer lo ok
at narrativ e as a theoretical framew ork and cultural practice will enable
me to iden tify these opacities more precisely on v arious lev els.
In the last c hapter, I will merge the results of the analysis so far and
discuss the plausibilit y of Butler’s prop osal for a new ethical approac h,
based on the facticit y of narrativ e failures and a relational understanding
of h uman existence. This synopsis will exp ose the argumen tativ e w eak-
nesses and simplifications in Butler’s accoun t in a manner that will also
address shortcomings of the other ethical accoun ts discussed in this the-
sis. T ak en together, these results will suffice to indicate the theoretical
10

w ork whic h has to b e done to dev elop further Butler’s ethical in tuitions,
esp ecially regarding the ethics of vulnerabilit y , and ho w to bring them
to their full dev elopmen t.
11

2 Na rrative Opacities and the
Ethics of V ulnerabilit y
In this c hapter I will reconstruct and discuss Judith Butler’s reflections
on ethical concepts, her problems with narrativ e accoun ting, and her sug-
gestion to redefine resp onsibilit y in terms of ac kno wledged opacit y . This
is a particular cautious w a y of addressing the moral corpus of her phi-
losoph y , and this caution seems to b e mandatory for sev eral reasons. T o
b egin with, large parts of her w ork on gendered iden tities, p erformativit y ,
corp orealit y , language, and on desire, clearly are themed in a gen uinely
p olitical guise. This is to sa y that her philosophical inquiries actually
did initiate a ric h v ariet y of p olitical, feminist and anti-sexist discourses
not only within the narro w b orders of academia, but also in man y femi-
nist and queer mo v emen ts. Metho dologically , these ramifications are due
to her consequen t rejection and deconstruction of essen tialist concep-
tions of (gendered) iden tit y , or her critique of conceptual binaries suc h
as ‘male/female’, ‘gender/sex’, or ‘sub ject/ob ject’. Also, her F oucaultian
understanding of norms and critique p oin t to the concrete transformation
of existing r e gimes of truths , esp ecially the heterosexual matrix. Hence it
is no surprise that she explicitly resisted the turn to ethics within so cial
theory since, in her view, this migh t equate to an ‘escap e from p olitics’
(Butler 2000, p.15).
Besides the alleged dep oliticising effect of the turn to ethics , it is the
12

violen t implications of ethics itself whic h fuel Butler’s sceptical distance
to w ards it. Ethics, understo o d as a cluster or set of normativ e b eliefs,
often giv es rise to what could b e called righ teous den unciations and ev en
to the dev aluation and deh umanization of en tire p opulations in the name
of moralit y itself. Both forms of violence p oin t directly to the problem-
atic connection b et w een iden tit y and ethics. Often, a shared system of
ethical b eliefs and practices establishes a sense of comm unit y and group
cohesion, and, not the least, an individual’s sense of iden tit y . A p erson’s
iden tit y , in this p ersp ectiv e, to a large exten t is constituted b y group affil-
iations. But there is an ethical do wnside to this group-related formation
and stabilization of collectiv e and p ersonal iden tit y . It is only p ossible
at the cost of the exclusion of others, virtually all of them. This is a
problem on man y lev els, e.g. the p olitical, so cial, and cultural. F rom a
philosophical p oin t of view, this differen tiation b et w een group mem b ers
and ‘others’ often is the basis and prerequisite for group-related violence,
as, for example, Amart y a Sen has impressiv ely argued for (Sen 2007).
It is this link b etw een group ethics and differen tiation from others that
informs all sorts of relativistic argumen ts within moral philosoph y .
P ersonal iden tit y in this con text also b ecomes relev an t in another re-
gard here. In the case of moral conflict and criticism, it rarely is merely
a certain course of action or practice that resides at the foundation of
that conflict. Often, the problematization of a giv en action is p erceiv ed
b y the addressee as a critique of her whole w a y of b eing, or her life-form.
A critique of this sort often is p erceiv ed as a threat to one’s iden tit y ,
whic h then, in turn, has to b e defended b y all, and often violen t means.
Or to b e more precise, violen t means of self-defence, i.e. the defence of
one’s iden tit y b y means of violence, b oth the iden tit y and the violence
deplo y ed get ethically justified b y a supp osed threat or harm. This, in
Butler’s view, is accompanied b y a problematic reification and essen tial-
13

isation of this iden tit y whic h is at o dds with her accoun t of p erformativ e
iden tit y and also is apparen tly inapt to consider non-violence in a fruitful
w a y .
This conceptual framing of ethical violence is resonating with a for-
m ulation b y Adorno. In one of his lectures on the problems of moral
philosoph y , he claims that ‘nothing is more degenerate than the kind of
ethics or moralit y that surviv e in the shap e of collectiv e ideas [...] Once
the state of h uman consciousness and the state of so cial forces of pro duc-
tion ha v e abandoned these collectiv e ideas, these ideas acquire repressiv e
and violen t qualities.’ (Adorno 2001, p.17). Adorno, th us, links these vio-
len t asp ects of ethics and iden tit y with t w o lines of confron tation. When
he sp eaks of the degenerate state of ethics at an y one time, he p oin ts to
the anac hronicit y of ethical b eliefs and norms, whic h are violen tly upheld
in the presen t, although they ha v e lost the basis of their initial justifi-
cation. Adorno, just as Butler, certainly nev er b eliev ed that there has
b een an y suc h p oin t in time and history when norms w ere not anac hro-
nistic in this sense. Rather, he implies that with regard to norms there
are t w o differen t regimes of time at w ork, one that is the norm’s o wn
time, with its o wn p olitical, cultural, and theoretical conditions of emer-
gence, and with its o wn strategy of justification. It is in this w a y that
ethics b ecomes a c ol le ctive ide a , an idea whic h is em blematic of its o wn
time of emergence. This time-regime ev en tually collides with a new set of
conditions, whic h themselv es b ear another state of h uman consciousness.
This encoun ter of t w o time-regimes is confron tational, not only from a
philosophical viewp oin t, but from an emancipatory one. The individual
encoun ters outdated norms with outdated justifications, but these norms
still demand compliance as it is the ethical idea of the so ciet y . The norm
has degenerated in to a habitual rule, a tradition, a folklore. F unction-
ally , the norms still imp ose the time regime of its inception, and since
14

it is not apt for the presen t time regime, the norm has to b e enforced
violen tly . Adorno pro vides y et a second form ulation of the violen t c harac-
ter of ethical norms, whic h references the metaph ysical tension b et w een
univ ersalism and the particular and whic h initially giv es rise to the philo-
sophical inquiry in to ethics as a discipline: ‘[T]he so cial problem of the
div ergence b et w een the univ ersal in terest and the particular in terest, the
in terests of particular individuals, is what go es to mak e up the problem
of moralit y’ (Adorno 2001, p.19). This form ulation certainly is compat-
ible with F oucault’s critical exp osition of the disciplinary op erations of
normalization whic h the individual is sub jected to, and whic h are, at
the same time, the conditions of sub jectiv ation itself. But with regard to
moral philosoph y , there also is the task of substan tiation of norms. Since
moral norms demand compliance from individuals, traditions and habits
do not suffice as justification. Just b ecause a comm unit y has follo w ed
certain rules and norms all the while, this do es not guard the individual
from the p ossibly violent and harmful consequences from ob edience to
these norms. With regard to Butler’s accoun t, this op ens the field for
a discussion of the problematic, and ev en tually violen t, tension b et w een
the singularit y of a liv ed life and the v ery normativ e matrix in whic h and
b y whic h this liv e is liv ed. Both asp ects, the anac hronicit y of existing
norms, as w ell as the norms whic h constitute the space of p ossibilities of
b ecoming a sub ject, are at the cen ter of Butler’s ethical accoun t and will
b e discussed in depth b elo w.
That said, it seems natural that, for Butler, the question whic h op ens
the field of critical moral inquiry is not the Kan tian ‘What should I do?’,
but rather a v ariation of it: ‘Who can I b ecome in suc h a w orld where the
meanings and limits of the sub ject are set out in adv ance for me?’(Butler
2002, p.12). With this approac h she c harts the space of ethical inquiry
not in terms of a theory of action. An y fo cus on singular actions do es
15

not seem of particular in terest to her. Instead, she sp eaks of b e c oming
a p erson , whic h denotes not only the actions of an individual, but also
the individual b eing acted up on b y other and b y norms alik e. Moreo v er,
in her opinion ethics is mean t to inquire in to the conditions of acting
and the in telligibilit y of actions, b oth of whic h ha v e sev ere impact on the
space of p ossible iden tities whic h one p erson can acquire, or the space of
p ossible p ersons an individual can b e o v er time.
In order to reconstruct Butler’s ethical attempt of an answ er to this
question, it will b e inevitable to lo ok in to v arious am biv alences within
the topical field of ethics. As discussed ab o v e, one am biv alence o ccurs in
the case of ethical violence, where norms cause violen t relations among
sub jects and b et w een norms and p ersons, although they are mean t to
go v ern a p eaceful and non-violen t cohabitation of sub jects in so cieties.
Ethical inquiry therefore should illuminate or ev en explain to what ex-
ten t norms are, at the same time, claims to violence and non-violence.
Also, norms seem to b e am biv alen t with regard to the sub ject itself. In
Butler’s understanding, norms constitute and structure the space of b e-
coming a sub ject in a genealogical p ersp ectiv e, but also require to b e
appropriated b y the sub ject. T o that end, it will b e necessary to recon-
struct her concept of p erformativ e and relational iden tit y . Thirdly , there
is an am biv alence concerning the ‘meanings and limitations’ whic h sup-
p osedly are set out in adv ance. In what w a y do norms pro duce these
meanings and limits, and ho w are they link ed to ethics? If norms de-
termine these meanings and limits, what are their violen t ramifications,
and ho w can they b e o v ercome, at least philosophically? Lastly , there
is an ethical am biv alence emerging from the theoretical concept of the
sub ject itself. On the one hand, violence is a c haracteristic of a relation
b et w een one sub ject and another, implicating that sub jects themselv es
are capable of b eing violen t. On the other hand, this presupp oses the
16

vulnerabilit y of the sub ject. So ho w can norms b e the cause for violence
and the pro duction of vulnerable sub jects at the same time? And ho w
should w e think ab out the co existence of violence and vulnerabilit y?
I w an t to caution the reader against exp ecting clear answ ers to this set
of am biv alen t concepts. Neither will the reconstruction of Butler’s ethics
amoun t to a fully fledged moral philosoph y with a w ell crafted argu-
men tativ e foundation and a sp ecific set of ethical instructions. Nonethe-
less, Butler’s critical w ork on these ethical concepts suc h as ‘recognition’,
‘norms’, ‘iden tit y’, and ‘resp onsibilit y’ will pa v e a w a y of conceptualiz-
ing ethics in a w a y that reflects up on the blind sp ots of existing ethical
conceptualizations, regardless of their teleological or deon tological ori-
en tation, and whic h connects a relational and p erformative concept of
iden tit y with a shared existen tial claim of h uman vulnerabilit y in a non-
violen t p ersp ectiv e. As it will b e sho wn b elo w, this ethical approac h relies
up on a genuine notion of resp onsibilit y whic h rejects the prev alen t de-
mands for the sub ject’s (self-)transparency and coherence and, instead,
ac kno wledges the limitations and failures whic h these demands generate.
Or to put it in other w ords, it ac kno wledges the limits of ac kno wledge-
men t itself.
In order to to reconstruct Butler’s ethics of vulner ability 1 (Mills 2015,
p.43), Sara Rushing coined to the bulky phrase ‘ethics of generosit y , h u-
milit y , and patience’ (Rushing 2010, p.300). Butler herself considers an
‘ethics of non-violence’ in sev eral o ccasions. These differen t emphases
certainly underline the am biguous and preliminary c haracter of Butler’s
ethics, since differen t p ersp ectiv es on it, all of whic h are fairly plausi-
ble, seem to bring ab out differen t conceptual priorities. I hop e that m y
1 There is a certain con ven tion within philosoph y to attribute catc hy labels to the-
ories in order to mak e them addressable more easily . I ha v e chosen to highligh t
the asp ect of vulnerabilit y in Butler’s accoun t, but others ha ve resorted to other
emphases. Catherine Mills, for example, sp eaks of it as ‘ethics of failure’ in her
informativ e reconstruction of Butler’s ethics.
17

reasons for highligh ting the asp ect of vulnerabilit y will b ecome clear in
the course of this c hapter. A close con tender has b een ‘ethics of opacit y’,
since just as vulnerabilit y , the sub ject’s limited or ‘opaque’ understand-
ing of herself and the normativ e and practical con texts con tribute to
Butler’s concept of resp onsibilit y . That said, this is c hapter is not ab out
the prop er lab elling of a theory , but ab out the theoretical claims ab out
the relation of p ersonal iden tit y and normativ e framew orks. T o this end,
I will subsequen tly lo ok at three ma jor threads in Butler’s thinking. I
will b egin with what could b e called her conception of a c orp or e al ontol-
o gy . This deals with questions lik e ‘What is a sub ject?’, ‘What is a liv e?’,
‘What is a b o dy?’, and also with ‘What coun ts as a full h uman b eing?’. In
this section, her cen tral concepts suc h as vulnerabilit y and relationalit y
will get scrutinized. In the second section of this c hapter, I will consider
her so cial epistemolo gy . Epistemological considerations ev en tually are re-
garded as opp osed to normativ e inquiries, but they assume a prominen t
role not only in Butler’s ethics of vulnerabilit y , but also in the course of
this thesis. It is her critique of narrativ e accoun ting, and esp ecially the
norms and demands whic h go v ern this so cial practice and also establish
certain standards of self-kno wledge and accoun ting, whic h will b e dis-
cussed in depth in the subsequen t c hapters. So cial epistemology , in this
con text, tac kles the question ‘What can I kno w ab out m yself/y ou?’, or
with a sligh tly differen t fo cus, ‘What are the limitations of my kno wl-
edge ab out m yself/y ou?’. Thirdly , Butler links her ethical considerations
in trinsically with so cial the ory and the op er ation of critique . As there
are v arious structural and practical limitations to our kno wledge ab out
ourselv es and the so cietal situations w e liv e in, she thinks it is mandatory
to incorp orate metho dologies from so cial sciences in to ethical con templa-
tion. And when it comes to the practical implemen tation of her ethics,
the cen tral task is to assume resp onsibilit y in a critical manner. Because
18

she thinks that sub jects are formed b y inheren tly violen t norms, to as-
sume resp onsibilit y means not to rep eat the violence of one’s formation.
This is an adv ancemen t of F oucault’s slogan that critique means ‘not to
b e go v erned lik e that’. This st yle of critique has to susp end learned forms
of (normativ e) judgemen t in order to op en up the space for a differen t set
of v alues. Accordingly , it will b e necessary to revisit these topics b efore
a condensed accoun t of Butler’s ethics of vulnerabilit y will b e presen ted
at the end of this c hapter. Before all of that, ho w ev er, I will b egin with
the ‘univ ersal claim’ of Butler’s whic h states the new sense of ethics she
tries to establish.
2.1 F rom F ailure to Ethics
A t the core of Butler’s ethics of vulnerabilit y resides the criticism of
(ethical) violence. There are, of course, man y forms and t yp es of vio-
lence whic h affect h uman liv es, and un til this p oin t, it remains obscure
precisely what the qualit y of this violence is, whic h v arieties exist and
ho w they inform her ethical accoun t. As a matter of fact, a compre-
hensiv e discussion of the concept of ethical violence will require some
preparatory w ork and therefore will not b e p ossible un til the end of this
c hapter. One manifestation whic h is esp ecially relev an t in the con text of
ethics and iden tit y is addressed in this quote: ‘Susp ending the demand
for self-iden tit y or, more particularly , for complete coherence seems [...] to
coun ter a certain ethical violence, whic h demands that w e manifest and
main tain self-iden tit y at all times and require that others do the same.’
(Butler 2005, p.42). T o what exten t this assumption ab out self-iden tit y
o v er time and (narrativ e) coherence really is part of established ethical
accoun ts will b e scrutinized in the next c hapter. F or the time b eing, it
will suffice to recognize that, in Butler’s thinking, there is a categorical
difference b et w een the demand of self-transparency and coherence on the
19

one side, and her o wn demand, namely to susp end this demand itself in
the con text of ethics.
One reason for this difference is established on the grounds of exp ected
success and failure. Seemingly , it is imp ossible, or at least v ery difficult,
to establish and main tain this sort of coherence and transparency of one’s
o wn iden tit y in the con text of a liv ed life. In this sense, this demand asks
for to o muc h and consequen tly prepares the ground for failure. Butler
seemingly en visions situations in whic h one is addressed and ask ed for
giving an accoun t of oneself for the purp ose of negotiating forgiv eness
after harm has b een done. It o v erwhelms the individual precisely in a
situation where she seeks to find recognition or forgiv eness. The reasons
and conditions whic h forestall the success of establishing transparency
and self-iden tit y will b e in tro duced b elo w. Here I w an t to highligh t the
deduction of a new w a y of conceptualizing resp onsibilit y and forgiv eness
giv en the ethical failure whic h en tails this demand ev en tually . So ho w
can a ‘new sense of ethics’ emerge from ethical failure? Butler suggests
that ‘...it w ould b e spa wned b y a certain willingness to ac kno wledge the
limits of ac kno wledgemen t itself. When w e claim to kno w and to presen t
ourselv es, w e will fail in some w a ys that are nev ertheless essen tial to who
w e are. W e cannot reasonably exp ect an ything differen t from others in
return. [...] This can, b y the w a y , constitute a disp osition of h umilit y
and generosit y alik e: I will need to b e forgiv en for what I cannot ha v e
fully kno wn, and I will b e under a similar obligation to offer forgiv eness to
others, who are also constituted in partial opacit y to themselv es.’ (Butler
2005, p.42).
Sev eral observ ations can b e made here. With regard philosophical ac-
coun ts of p ersonal iden tit y and sub jectiv ation in general, this quote is
sligh tly unsettling. Butler seems to state that no matter ho w adv anced
and sophisticated an y giv en accoun t of a p erson’s iden tit y migh t b e, it
20

remains imp ossible for the individual to fully and comprehensibly kno w
herself. It w ould b e premature to conclude that engaging with the task of
theorizing iden tit y in principle w ould b e futile in an y circumstance since,
for reasons y et to b e elab orated, this endea v our w ould b e do omed to fail.
Rather, Butler mak es t w o reserv ations ab out suc h accoun ts. Firstly , an y
accoun t of p ersonal iden tit y whic h claims to ha v e established the ideal
w a y to theorize a h uman’s iden tit y in its en tiret y should b e treated with
caution. As I will discuss in the subsequen t c hapter, man y narrativists
vindicate some v arian t of the claim that a h uman’s iden tity consists in,
or amoun ts to, or is equal to her life-narrativ e. In doing so, they im-
ply that, esp ecially in comparison with other metho dological approac hes,
only narrativist accoun ts of iden tit y can grasp the full ric hness of h uman
existence. Secondly , Butler also addresses the in terlo cutory situation in
whic h an individual pro vides a (narrativ e) accoun t of herself to another
individual. In this situation, not eac h and ev ery detail can b e kno wn
and at hand. Moreo v er, the demand to mak e oneself and one’s goals and
motiv ations transparen t in order to get recognized as a h uman b eing,
and ev en tually b e forgiv en, can b e used b y the in terlo cutor to p enetrate
certain b oundaries whic h are established b y the state of not kno wing, a
use that in man y cases can assume a violen t form.
A second observ ation concerns the startling implication that, despite
the circumstance that one’s iden tit y cannot b e fully kno wn, this v ery ig-
norance, in turn, is supp osed to b e an in tegral part of this iden tity . Here,
it is imp ortan t to notice the shift of reference whic h tak es place within
the quote. Although it seems that Butler sp eaks ab out the in terlo cutory
situation of narrating oneself (and in a sense she do es), she also refers to
an on tological understanding of a p erson’s iden tit y . The failure to kno w
and presen t oneself, in this sense, refers not only to the factual failure
to presen t oneself prop erly when b eing addressed, but also to the on-
21

tological h uman condition of b eing disorien tated ab out one’s b ecoming
and b eing. It is in this sense that failure can b e view ed as ‘essen tial to
who w e are’. This, ho w ev er, do es not implicate that Butler establishes
some sort of metaph ysical ground within her ethics whic h w ould link
abstract on tological assumptions with a preconfigured notions of resp on-
sibilit y and forgiv eness. Instead, she fashions her corp oreal on tology in
a strictly so cial manner. Cum Adorno, she is con vinced that ‘an ything
w e call moralit y to da y merges in to the question of the organization of
the w orld.’(Adorno 2001, p.176), and that the on tological predicamen ts
of h uman b eings are inextricably connected and in termingled with this
so cial domain, with its prev ailing schemes of intel ligibility , and with its
normativ e outfit in general.
A third observ ation touc hes the question of the scop e of these ethics.
Here I use ‘scop e’ rather than ‘domain of applicabilit y’, since, at least for
the time b eing, Butler seemingly establishes a critical matrix for ques-
tioning ethical theories ab out their capabilit y of coping with the limits of
(self-)kno wledge and the violen t and disorien ting c haracter of norms in
general. Also, her ethical reflections clearly are a resp onse to the massiv e
dev aluation and deh umanization of whole p opulations in the course of
the preparation of w aging w ar against these p opulations. The shaping
of hostile iden tities b y attribution of certain ‘underdev elop ed’ c haracter-
istics to these p eople d o es not only justify violence and destruction b y
means of iden titarian differences, but also disa v o ws the p ossible exp o-
sure to violence and the precarit y of eac h and ev ery h uman b eing as a
h uman b eing. It is in this sense that the equalit y of precariousness can
b e theorized as an ethical principle: ‘The apprehension of precarit y of
others - their exp osure to violence, their so cially induced transience and
disp ensabilit y - is, b y implication, an apprehension of the precarit y of
an y and all living b eings, implying a principle of equal vulnerabilit y that
22

go v erns all living b eings.’(Butler 2010, p.xvi). Ultimately , this principle
of e qual vulner ability resides at the cen tre of Butler’s so cial on tology and
pro vides the foundation of her moral philosoph y .
2.2 Co rp o realit y , No rms, and Relationalit y
In this section, I will trace ho w these on tological assumptions ab out cor-
p oreal vulnerabilit y con tribute to a concept of p ersonal iden tit y . Instead
of asking ‘What is iden tit y?’ or ‘What is a h uman?’ as in the previous
part, the area of inquiry here, for Butler, is op ened b y a sligh tly differen t
set of questions. She asks ‘What is a liv e?’, ‘What is a b o dy?’, ‘Ho w is
iden tit y p erformed?’, and ‘Who coun ts normativ ely as a full h uman b e-
ing?’. In order to articulate answ ers to these questions, and thereb y to
substan tiate this on tological dimension of her normativ e pro ject, Butler
inquires in to a set of relational concepts whic h resonate with the exis-
ten tial vulnerabilit y of a liv ed h uman’s life: ‘[I]f w e are to mak e broader
so cial and p olitical claims ab out righ ts of protection and en titlemen ts
to p ersistence and flourishing, w e will first ha v e to b e supp orted b y a
new b o dily on tology , one that implies the rethinking of precariousness,
vulnerabilit y , injurabilit y , in terdep endency , exp osure, b o dily p ersistence,
desire, w ork and the claims of language and so cial b elonging.’(Butler
2005, p.2).
There are three topics in this quote whic h need to b e addressed. First
of all, this set of concepts includes b oth, concepts whic h emphasise the
relational asp ects of a lived life as w ell as concepts whic h rather address
disp ositions of the individual b o dy . Precariousness, in terdep endency , ex-
p osure, and desire, only exist and mak e sense in a so cial con text, whereas
p ersistence, vulnerabilit y and injurabilit y are disp ositions of a living
b o dy . One of the p ending questions here is to what exten t do es it mak e
sense to think of this b o dily on tology as a comp osite of individual and
23

in tersub jectiv e or relational features, or if all of them are relational in a
gen uine, meaningful w a y . With regard to a p erson’s iden tit y , this ques-
tion has quite radical implications. Mo dern philosophical anthropology
has op erated on the strong assumption that the individual is on tologically
prior to so cial relations. It is theorized as the atom whic h, in aggrega-
tion, constitutes cultural forms of co op eration and so cial institutions. It
is ob vious that Butler tak es a critical, if not opp osing stance to w ards
individual atomism b y highligh ting relational concepts. Still, since she
allo ws for disp ositional concepts as part of her on tology , it could turn
out that she main tains some of the assumptions whic h she claims to
o v ercome. Secondly , the sheer group of concepts seems to pa v e the w a y
for a concept of p ersonal iden tit y whic h is quite distinct from most of
the theories of p ersonal iden tit y discussed in philosoph y in general. As I
will sho w in the next c hapter, neither the b o dy itself, nor its vulnerabil-
it y constitutes the outset of philosophical reasoning nor the foundation
of ethical obligations to w ards others. Thirdly , the reference of norms is
remark able. Ob viously , Butler tries to establish the claim that from vul-
nerabilit y , exp osure, and in terdep endence claims ab out the p ersistence
and flourishing of an individual arise, whic h constitute a strong moral
stance due to its implied univ ersalit y . Y et it remains to b e seen ho w the
transition of existen tial predicamen ts to normativ e claims is reasoned for.
Also, it still has to b ecome more eviden t what relationalit y actually
means in this con text. Without ha ving lo oked closer at the resp ectiv e
meaning of this concept in Butler’s ethics y et, it is noticeable that it
implies v arious t yp es of relations. It seems natural, prima facie , to think
of relations whic h exist b et w een sub jects, and I m yself ha v e talk ed ab out
relationalit y in this in tersub jectiv e w a y . And it seems to b e adequate to
do so. It is sub jects who can injure eac h other, who are exp osed to eac h
other, and who are existen tially in terdep enden t. Precarit y is unequally
24

distributed among and within p opulations, a fact that is directly dep en-
den t on the so cial and normativ e situations within these groups. But the
discussion will sho w that the relation to other sub jects only con tributes
in part to this b o dily on tology . Within the con text of ethical considera-
tions, t w o other domains of relations are equally imp ortan t, namely the
sub ject’s relation to herself, and her relations to norms. The former is
what commonly is denoted b y reflexivit y , i.e. the abilit y to mak e oneself,
or at least parts of oneself, the ob ject of ethical consideration, to put it in
F oucaultian terms. F urther, the relation of the sub ject to norms do es not
only mean the mere appropriation of certain ethical, so cially prev alen t
b eliev es, as man y ethicists do. F or Butler, the situation is far more in tri-
cate. Since it is norms whic h go v ern the formation of sub jects, there is
a necessary en tanglemen t with norms righ t from the coming in to b eing.
Ev en reflexivit y , often view ed as the crucial facult y to distance oneself
from oneself and so cial pathologies as w ell, is merely one manifestation
of a historically con tingen t regime of truth. In other w ords, norms go v ern
ho w to b e reflexiv e in the first place.
All three dimensions of relationalit y seem to b e relev an t, and certainly
need to get fleshed out in the course of this reconstruction. Also, since
all three dimensions of relationalit y seem to co v er a v ast area of a h uman
life, suc h as b ecoming, acting, and reflecting, one could assume that rela-
tionalit y , at least in Butler’s ethics, is the source of resp onsibilit y and, in
this regard, the foundation for her ethics in total. This assumption, ho w-
ev er, w ould miss the crucial p oint. Catherine Mills, for example, p oin ts
out that relationalit y in itself is not the source of resp onsibilit y in But-
ler’s ethics, but its ‘v en ue’. Just as a concert hall is not the reason for
concerts, but the v en ue for them, relationalit y constitutes the space for
ethical conflict and resp onsibility 2 .
2 Butler herself considers relationalit y in many occasions, but she would not refer to
it as the source of her claims ab out iden tit y and ethics. F or her, relationality is
25

So what do es b o dily on tology mean, and ho w is it related to the con-
cept of h uman vulnerabilit y? Butler hardly is motiv ated b y metaph ysical
curiosit y , but rather b y the apparen t hierarc h y of what coun ts as a ‘full
h uman life’. In the aftermath of the terrorist attac ks in New Y ork in 2001,
esp ecially regarding the practices and rituals of mourning ab out the liv es
lost in these attac ks, it b ecomes ob vious that there are substan tial differ-
ences in these practices, and b y implication also substan tial differences
in who coun ts as a liv e that can b e lost and mourned. In other w ords, the
liv es whic h ha v e b een destro y ed in the attac ks on 9/11 are incomparably
more mourned and griev ed than an y liv e whic h has b een destro y ed in the
course of the wars on terr or whic h ensued the attac ks. F or Butler, this
sho ws that not all h uman liv es are regarded as equal. It is this exp erience
of dev aluation, or ev en deh umanization, of h uman liv es whic h establishes
the p olitical, so cial, and ethical bac kground of her accoun t of a b o dily
on tology . Also, it informs her analysis of the differen tial distribution of
mournabilit y .
There are certain assumptions ab out the b o dy against whic h a b o d-
ily and relational on tology is p ositioned against. F or man y , the b o dy is
merely a biologically giv en fact whic h, regardless of the cultural and so-
cietal conditions and constitution. A b o dy th us theorized app ears to b e
un touc hed b y cultural b eliev es, norms and practices. As an ev olv ed or-
ganism, for instance, the b o dy’s functions and purp ose w ould only mak e
sense in accordance with the needs and pressures of ev olutionary theory ,
completely indep enden t of what culturally coun ts as living a life in a
meaningful w a y . This p ersp ectiv e often is accompanied b y individualistic
presupp ositions ab out a p erson’s iden tity . No matter ho w man y roles an
itself just as am biv alen t. ‘It w on’t even do to sa y that I am promoting a relational
view of the self o ver an autonomous one or trying to redescrib e autonom y in terms
of relationalit y . Despite m y affinit y for the term relationality , w e ma y need other
language to approac h the issue that concerns us, a wa y of thinking ab out ho w w e
are not only constituted b y our relations but also disp ossessed b y them as w ell’
(Butler 2004, p.24). It is this language of disp ossession which is at stak e here.
26

individual assumes in the course of her liv e, no matter ho w man y trans-
formations the b o dy is sub jected to, the b o dy itself is seen as the site
and authorit y to individuate and differen tiate p ersons. Butler, instead,
argues for a quite differen t concept of b o dily existence, one that opp oses
b oth reductionist materialism and anthropological atomism.
‘The b o dy is not a self-iden tical or merely factual materialit y; it is a
materialit y that b ears meaning, if nothing else, and the manner of this
b earing is fundamen tally dramatic. By dramatic I mean only that the
b o dy is not merely matter but a con tin ual and incessan t materializing of
p ossibilities. One is not simply a b o dy , but, in some v ery k ey sense, one
do es one’s b o dy and, indeed, one do es one’s b o dy differen tly from one’s
con temp oraries and from one’s em b o died predecessors and successors as
w ell’ (Butler 1988, p.521). Sev eral readings of this quote are p ossible here.
The b o dy as a materialit y of meaning could still supp ort the essen tial
division of a text, or text-analogue, and its in terpretation, as uphold in
hermeneutics. The b o dy , in this sense, could b e regarded as a material
en tit y whic h eludes understanding systematically and therefore is in dire
need for in terpretation and actual sense-making. But this is not what
Butler en visions here. F or her, in terpretation itself is a so cial and cul-
tural practice whic h, qua practice, is brough t in to b eing b y norms, is in-
dividuated and structured b y them, and whic h imp oses these norms on to
the b o dy-as-text and the in terpreter alik e. Also, hermeneutics’ promises
to rev eal sense and meaning where b oth are merely sedimen ts in the
primary text. Butler disb eliev es this hermeneutic commitmen t to in ter-
pretativ e progress and meaning. Norms, in her view, are the sources for
opacities and disorien tations, i.e. things whic h cannot b e understo o d or
kno wn completely , and whic h renders the hermeneuticist endea v our to
mak e sense out of one’s b o dy and p ersonal iden tit y as futile.
The b o dy itself is, then, is a ‘historical situation [...] and is a man-
27

ner of doing, dramatizing, and repro ducing a historical situation’ (Butler
1988, p.521). It is an in tegral feature of the b o dy th us conceptualized
that for the individual the historical situation itself will, more or less,
remain obscure and opaque. The rules and norms whic h define the space
of p ossible actions, and, in a p erformativ e framew ork, the p ossibilities of
b eing a p erson, are not authored b y the individual herself and therefore
ha v e to b e reiterated without b eing fully kno wn or comprehended. Also,
the history and genealogy of the language whic h establish the medium in
whic h actions and p erformances are made in telligible to others also re-
main obscure to the p erformer. Consequen tly , the b o dy ‘is not passiv ely
scripted with cultural co des, as if it w ere a lifeless recipien t of wholly pre-
existing cultural relations. But neither do em b o died selv es pre-exist the
cultural con v en tions whic h essen tially signify b o dies’ (ibid., p.526). Do-
ing one’s b o dy as a historical situation, therefore, means that an y giv en
p erformance of iden tit y is an (re-)enactmen t of pre-existing scripts and
p ossibilities of b eing in the w orld. It is imp ortan t to note that p erfor-
mance and reiteration do not concur with in terpretation at all. Instead,
these p ossibilities themselv es are pro ducts of in terpretations whic h are
shared within a giv en culture in whic h the p erformance tak es place: ‘Ac-
tors are alw a ys already on the stage, within the terms of the p erformance.
Just as a script ma y b e enacted in v arious w a ys, and just as the pla y re-
quires b oth text and interpretation, so the gendered b o dy acts its part in
a culturally restricted corp oreal space and enacts interpretat ions within
the confines of already existing directiv es’ (ibid., p.526). Opacit y arises
from the obscure reasons and causes for wh y exactly the corp oreal space
is culturally restricted, and who authored these directiv es, and whose
in terpretations get enacted in an y giv en situation.
T o b e exact, the previous paragraphs established Butler’s on tology of
the b o dy , but not y et her corp oreal on tology in the con text of ethical
28

considerations. The conceptualization of the b o dy as p erformed, and a
p erson’s iden tit y as p erformed, is mean t to opp ose v arious binary op-
p ositions whic h ha v e dominated the discourses on these topics. In its
an ti-essen tialist imp etus, this accoun t sho ws that a philosoph y of p er-
sonal iden tit y can op erate without the implication that b esides its fac-
tual o ccurrences, there is some an throp ological constan t, some inalter-
able essence, or deep er truth ab out h uman b eings. Just as the actor on
stage, the stage itself, and the space of p ossible actions on this stage,
finally , even the text and in terpretation of the pla y p erformed, all exist
prior to the actor’s enactmen ts. Con v ersely , the actor is not an acting
essence, but an instan tiation of pre-defined scripts in a space of p ossibili-
ties, whic h ev en tually gets enacted. This do es not imply that these scripts
are esp ecially p ersisten t, or unalterable, since the applying norms are not
deterministic in this strict sense. As w e will see later, it is the v ery de-
viation from normativ e imp erativ es that mak e c hange and impro v emen t
p ossible in the first place. Secondly , ‘the b o dy’ in Butler’s philosoph y is
not mapp ed on to the biological, or ph ysically giv en en tit y , whic h ‘liv es
a life b esides the p erson’s iden tit y’ and whic h gets in terpreted once the
life-form has dev elop ed the cultural means for in terpretation. Ph ysics and
biology are b oth what F oucault has called r e gimes of truth . And as suc h
regimes, they merely add to the normativ e space of p ossible forms of ex-
istence for a b o dy . In Butler’s view, there is no need for the distinction,
or dualism, of a first and second nature; there is only one heterogeneous
normativ e space of p ossible w a ys of existence. The p opular and common
assumption that the b o dy is unam biguously describ ed and iden tified b y
the natural sciences hence is sub v erted, or, in this sense, que er e d . But
ho w do vulnerabilit y , injurability , and relationalit y come in to pla y? Ho w
do these concepts in tersect with corp oreal on tology and ethics?
The vulnerabilit y of a h uman b eing is easy to grasp in an infan t. Long
29

b efore she gro ws up and matures in to fully dev elop ed p ersons, the infan t’s
surviv al necessarily dep ends on b eing tak en care of b y others. Only under
this condition an infan t can b e exp ected to surviv e. One could ob ject that
this example ma y sho w the existen tial dep endency of c hildren, but that
this precarious state will b e ov ercome when the c hild b ecomes an adult
p erson. Suc h p ersons are supp osed to b e capable to main tain themselves,
and who probably can c ho ose and decide with whom to build relation-
ships. But is that plausible? According to whic h criteria w ould it b e
p ossible to determine the precise p oin t of time when a dep enden t infan t
b ecomes indep enden t in this sense? And w ould this demarcation really
susp end what Butler rep eatedly lab els ‘b eing giv en o v er to others’ ?
There is another regard in whic h b eing giv en o v er to others as a b o d-
ily constituted sub ject connects the individual to violence, and thereb y
establishes the ethical dimension of vulnerabilit y not only for c hildren,
but for eac h h uman b eing. Ev en once one has gotten past the pro cess
of individualisation, the sub ject still is relian t on the in teraction with
others, and as a b o dy , it is alw a ys exp osed to the touc h of others. These
in teractions with other h uman b eings can result in a sp ectrum of p ossible
outcomes, whic h range from lo ving and caring con tacts through to b o dily
harm, torture, and ev en b o dily destruction and m urder. Whatev er the
result of suc h in teraction will b e, it is imp ortan t to note that this primary
vulnerabilit y , whic h implies a primary helplessness as w ell, constitutes an
existen tial so cial predicamen t whic h c hallenges ev ery conception of p er-
sonal iden tit y that o v erstates the individual’s autonom y and argues in
fa v our of a fundamen tal mastery of life. I will return to this asp ect, the
asp ect of an illusion of ‘mastery by iden tit y’, in the discussion-section
in the last c hapter. The initial infan t’s dep endency on primary so cial
relations for surviv al is, in fact, not susp ended b y whatev er it means to
establish p ersonalit y and b ecoming an adult p erson. Surviv al dep ends on
30

successful relations to others, and these relationships can b e ev erything
b et w een abusiv e and lo ving. It is this sp ectrum of h uman relationships
whic h con v erge in to the concept of primary vulnerabilit y .
The exp osure to the touch of others is sup erimp osed, or realized, in
so cial relations with other human beings. T o understand a p erson’s iden-
tit y as relational means it is relations whic h constitute a p erson’s iden tit y ,
and nothing else. This b ecomes ob vious when one considers p ersonal or
emotional loss and its ramifications for iden tit y . If a lo v ed p erson dies, or
a partner just parts w a ys, this loss will alter the w a y of ho w the p erson
who suffers the loss will think ab out herself. Often, the direct exp erience
of loss will result in an temp oral insecurit y ab out one’s iden tit y , b ecause
at the p oint of time in whic h the loss o ccurs, it remains opaque, or un-
kno wn, to what exten t and ho w this loss will c hange the p erson’s iden tit y
who suffers the loss. Loss, therefore, is one striking example for the rela-
tional vulnerabilit y whic h b ecomes apparen t once one has adopted this
relational understanding of p ersonal iden tit y . This vulnerabilit y cannot
b e ‘willed a w a y’ (Butler 2004, p.XIV) without ceasing to b e a h uman
b eing. In conclusion, ‘[l]oss and vulnerabilit y seem to follo w from our
b eing so cially constituted b o dies, attac hed to others, at risk of losing
those attac hmen ts, exp osed to others, at risk of violence b y virtue of
that exp osure.’ (ibid., p.20).
The p ersp ectiv e of the first p erson plural, the ‘our’, seems to implicate
that Butler thinks of this disp osition of vulnerabilit y only from the p er-
sp ectiv e of the p erson who suffers loss and whose vulnerabilit y is realised
in a harmful w a y . This understanding w ould b e fla w ed. Butler adopts
the p ersp ectiv e of the ‘w e’ b ecause she w an ts to mak e on tological claims
ab out ev ery h uman b eing. This do es not imply that she thinks of vio-
len t relations only in terms of exp osure and passivit y . In the con text of
ethics it is imp erativ e, not only for Butler, to consider the other side
31

of the violen t relation as w ell, namely that eac h relational h uman b eing
can exert violence and aggression to w ards others. This is not only imp or-
tan t b ecause the plausibilit y of ethical accoun ts highly dep ends on their
implemen tation of m utualit y and recipro cit y of ethical norms, or so cial
relations, for that matter. In the narro w er con text of the reconstruction
of the corp oreal on tology , the aim here is to consider h uman relationalit y
and vulnerabilit y as the foundation for ethical reasoning, and esp ecially
to criticise existen t accoun ts of what a h uman b eing actually is once they
fa v our the individual, or her autonom y , o v er relations in an essen tialist
w a y . V ulnerabilit y not only is an essen tial feature of eac h individual’s
existence, a mere disp osition whic h one could harden oneself against,
or ma yb e ev en dump completely . V ulnerabilit y is a cen tral asp ect not
only of one h uman b eing or another, but one whic h is constituted b y the
corp orealit y of h uman existence, or to b e more precise, of eac h h uman
b eing qua h uman b eing, and whic h sho ws itself in the v ery relations with
others. It is in this sense that vulnerabilit y is an on tological feature of
h uman b eings.
T o a large existen t this concept of corp oreal vulnerabilit y is co extensiv e
with the concept of precariousness, although the latter puts emphasis on
the so cial, rather than the corp oreal dimension of h uman b eings. ‘Precar-
iousness implies living so cially , that is, the fact that one’s life is alwa ys
in some sense in the hands of the other. It implies exp osure b oth to those
w e kno w and to those w e do not kno w; a dep endency on p eople w e kno w,
or barely kno w, or kno w not at all. Recipro cally , it implies b eing im-
pinged up on b y the exp osure and dep endency of others, most of whom
remain anon ymous. These are not necessarily relations of lo v e or ev en of
care, but constitute obligations to w ard others, most of whom w e cannot
name and do not kno w, and who ma y or ma y not b ear traits of familiar-
it y to an established sense of who “w e” are.’ (Butler 2010, p.30). It has
32

to b e p ostp oned exactly ho w particular obligations to w ards others arise
from the m utual relation of b eing in the hands of others and b eing this
hand, to sta y in the picture. There is a categorical difference b et w een
precariousness and precarit y , a conceptual difference that unfortunately
is not rigorously sustained b y Butler herself in her writings. Whereas
precariousness denotes the risk to engage in violen t relations with oth-
ers, precarit y addresses the p olitically fabricated economic and p olitical
conditions whic h k eep p eople in a precarious condition. In this sense,
precarit y can b e differen tially distributed among p opulations. As a p olit-
ical b eing, Butler opp oses those p olicies as w ell as the p olitical strategies
whic h corrob orate precarit y of an y giv en sub-p opulation. Precariousness,
ho w ev er, is an on tological attribute of b eing a h uman, or, the other w a y
round, b eing a h uman b eing means to b e existentially exposed to others
and b eing at the risk of exp eriencing or violence.
As w e ha v e seen so far, Butler argues in fa v our of a corp oreal and
p erformativ e understanding of enacted iden tit y . In the remainder of this
section, it is vital to rev eal ho w these on tological presupp ositions are the-
oretically b ound to a) Butler’s relational conception of p ersonal iden tit y ,
b) the role of norms within this on tological framew ork, and c) the ac-
tual ethics of vulnerabilit y . Not un til then it will mak e sense to inquire
in to the epistemological considerations. As cited ab o v e, relationalit y in
Butler’s philosoph y migh t b est b e view ed as the v en ue for ethics and
resp onsibilit y , rather than its source or ev en foundation. Mills metaphor
is mean t to caution against the misunderstanding that relationalit y itself
migh t b e the source and rationale for corp oral iden tit y , for an ethics of
vulnerabilit y , and for a consequen t shift in the meaning of resp onsibilit y
itself. In this sense, the metaphor has b een w ell c hosen. Still, relationalit y
assumes differen t p ositions in the theoretical arc hitecture of Butler’s phi-
losoph y . As it will turn out, relationalit y itself sligh tly shifts its meaning
33

in dep endence of to what precisely an individual is related to. This do es
not undermine the cogency of the term ‘relationalit y’, but instead rather
strengthens it.
The individual, accordingly , is deeply enmeshed in relations. As men-
tioned ab o v e, the most plausible, but prima facie also most trivial, set of
relations are those relations whic h exist b et w een h uman b eings. Success-
ful relations with others are view ed to b e essen tial for surviv al righ t after
birth, and remains to b e in the later stages of adultho o d. Also, from an
ethical p oin t of view, it is the relations with others, as w ell as the so cial
and p olitical conditions in whic h these relations are liv ed and ev aluated,
whic h are the essen tial topic of ethics itself. It ma y app ear plausible to as-
sume that Butler aims to con tribute critically the concept of recognition,
as it has b een discussed o v er the last t w o decades. But relationalit y , from
an on tological p oin t of view, is mean t to address ‘something fundamen tal
ab out the so cial conditions of our formation’ (Butler 2004, p.22). It is
part and parcel of her answ er to the question ‘Ho w ha v e I b ecome who
I am?’ rather than to ‘Ho w should w e treat eac h other?’. Note that this
genealogical p ersp ectiv e on sub ject formation is in itself merely a transi-
tional stage for what Butler understands as the crucial ethical question,
namely ‘Who can I b e?’.
The space of p ossible w a ys of b eing a h uman b eing, th us, is op ened and
structured, but also limited and confined, b y norms. These norms pre-
pare a place within the on tological field of a sub ject. Butler clearly tries
to enhance the F oucaultian understanding of the relationship b et w een
norms and b ecoming a sub ject. She concurs with F oucault’s concept of
disciplinary normalization, according to whic h the formation of a sub-
ject is a norm-go v erned pro cess on man y lev els. These lev els include the
normalization of p ostures and gestures, the acquisition of a certain so-
ciolect, but also, ho w to think ab out oneself and others, and ev en ho w
34

to b e reflectiv e and critical. In the F renc h texts of F oucault’s, he prefers
to sp eak of normation rather that of normalization. This is of imp ort
b ecause normalization could b e understo o d in t w o differen t w a ys. First,
it could b e understo o d descriptiv ely , in the sense that sub jects exist prior
to the norm. According to this view, the norm w ould merely establish
the normal distribution of p ossible b eha viours, traits, or opinions. Nor-
malization as the translation of the F renc h normation , instead, puts the
norms themselv es in the primary p osition. Theorized in this w a y , norms
assume a pro ductiv e facet. This is completely differen t than just sorting
existing sub jects according to certain la ws statistical distribution and
deviation from a v erage. Norms establish the space of in telligibilit y for
b ecoming a normal sub ject. P art of these norms are ethical norms in a
stricter sense, but there are man y more. Only in the cognitiv e appropri-
ation and practical reiteration of these norms one can b ecome a sub ject.
And it is through these norms, that the ‘the illusion of an abiding [...]
self ’ is generated. ‘Suc h lives do no t simply conform to moral precepts or
norms in suc h a w a y that selv es, considered preformed or ready-made, fit
themselv es in to a mold that is set forth b y the precept. On the con trary ,
the individual fashions herself in terms of the norm, comes to inhabit
and incorp orate the norm, but the norm is not in this sense external to
the principle b y whic h the self is formed.’ (Butler 2002, p.197).
This concludes the reconstruction of this concept of corp oreal ontology ,
whic h is the first out of three constitutiv e parts of Judith Butler’s ethics of
vulnerabilit y . As it has b ecome eviden t, this on tology is not to b e confused
with a metaph ysical pro ject, it is not mean t to accoun t for all en tities
as en tities and as an answ er to the formal on tological question of what
there is. Rather, it is an on tology whic h is concen trated on philosophical
issues of p ersonal iden tit y , suc h as its formation, its p erformance, and its
relation to norms and ethics. This on tology is based up on a set of concepts
35

whic h seman tically o v erlap eac h other quite substan tially . V ulnerabilit y ,
injurabilit y , and precariousness, all three concepts try to delineate v ery
basic w a ys of b eing link ed, and related, to oneself, to others, and to
norms.
The plausibilit y of this approac h mainly lies in the w a ys in whic h cor-
p orealit y resides at the core of this on tology . The b o dy is not the ‘other’
of p ersonal iden tit y , a first natur e whic h is more or less detac hed from
the culturally acquired se c ond natur e . It is p erformed just as an y other
asp ect of a p erson’s existence is p erformed. As a p erformance, similar to
pla ys on a theatre stage, it is go v erned b y norms and directiv es, it is an
em b o dimen t of an in terpretation. Also, it is the corp orealit y of a h uman’s
existence that implicates its o wn vulnerabilit y and precariousness, and
its dep endence on others. It is b ecause of these shared conditions that
the apprehension of this common ground is p ossible. The core claims of
the corp oreal on tology constitute an attempt delineate crucial asp ects
of h uman existence whic h are apt to coun ter o v erly individualistic ac-
coun ts of p ersonal iden tit y , and whic h frame the task of ethics to coun ter
repression, violence, and normativ e force. This is an aim whic h struc-
turally reapp ears in the next section on the fundamen tal limits of what
w e can kno w ab out us and the w orld, and ho w this opacit y has crucial
impacts for moral philosoph y .
2.3 V a rieties of Opacit y
In the previous section on Butler’s corp oreal on tology it has b ecome evi-
den t that there is an inescapable enmeshmen t of norms and p ersons. The
space of p ossible iden tities an individual ma y or ma y not acquire o v er
the course of her lifetime is op ened and structured b y norms. Moreo v er,
the corp orealit y of h uman b eings matters in the con text of moral philos-
oph y b ecause it establishes the principle of shared vulnerabilit y and pre-
36

cariousness. This principle, in turn, giv es testamen t to the fundamen tal
relationalit y of h uman existence. Humans dep end on successful relations
with others righ t from their birth, and they main tain to b e dep enden t in
suc h a w a y for their en tire lifespan. These relations are ethically relev an t
b ecause the interactions with others can succeed or fail, they often are
harmful and destructiv e. Human b eings also ha v e relations with norms
themselv es. This holds true, at least in a F oucaultian p ersp ectiv e, since
norms prepare the space of p ossible iden tities for an individual, and they
do so establishing a discursiv e regime of rules for b eha viour, for in tel-
ligible actions, and for enacting a particular iden tit y . The relev ance of
these relationships with norms is eviden t in the narro w er sense of asking
‘Ho w ha v e I b ecome who I am?’. But this relev ance p ersists for the en-
tire life, since iden tit y , as sho wn ab o v e, is theorized as p erformativ e. The
p erformance itself is go v erned b y ev en more rules and norms. Lastly , the
individual is in a relations with herself in man y w a ys. Again, in a F ou-
caultian w a y , the sub ject considers and forms herself as the ‘ob ject of her
o wn moral practice’. All three domains of relations are connected to the
complex liaison of p ersonal identit y and normativ e framew orks.
Nonetheless, the on tological and corp oreal plain is not the only com-
plex whic h constitutes the ethical dimension of h uman b eings. Ev en if
this corp oreal on tology has established the manifold in terrelations of sub-
jects with norms, nothing is said y et ab out the impact this ubiquitous
enmeshmen t with norms has on the individual. V ulnerabilit y and rela-
tionalit y in and of themselv es do not en tail a sp ecific ethical approac h.
The guiding question for this section, therefore, is to whic h exten t it is
p ossible for the sub ject to mak e the en tanglement with norms explicit,
i.e. transparen t to herself and others. One of the goal of this section is
to elab orate the v arious ‘opacities’ b y whic h the individual gets disori-
en tated, in Butler’s jargon. As I will discuss b elo w, there are v arious
37

sources for this particular opacit y , whic h all are iden tit y-related. No w,
what ab out Butler’s resort to this term in the context of self-kno wledge?
Opacit y can b e read in t w o differen t w a ys. First, it is a vision-related
c haracteristic of certain ph ysical en tities. A frosted windo w, for exam-
ple, can b e hard to see through, and many crystals also only let through
a certain amoun t of ligh t. Opaque, in this sense, can b e virtually ev-
erything b et w een ‘transparen t’ and ‘non-transparen t’. Secondly , opaque
often is used figurativ ely for ev erything that is difficult to understand
or to explain. Both manners of use are accompanied b y a ric h group of
seman tically affine terms, suc h as ‘hazy’, ‘m urky’, ‘blurred’, or ‘cloudy’.
So in whic h w a y is a p erson’s iden tit y ‘opaque’ ? Certainly , this will b e
the cen tral topic of the subsequen t paragraphs, if not the en tire thesis,
but t w o remarks migh t b e useful here. First, whereas ‘cloudy’ or ‘hazy’
denote momen tary or transitional states, ‘opacit y’ often is a p ermanen t
feature. This is congruen t with Butler’s assessmen t of crucial features
of who a p erson is. Secondly , the opacities of p ersonal iden tit y are not
only due to a situational uncertain t y or an y lac k of kno wledge, alb eit
b oth can b e presen t in an y giv en in terlo cutory situation. The opacities
of iden tit y migh t get cleared in certain details, but nev er all of them.
Some asp ects ab out ho w a p erson has come in to b eing simply cannot
b e kno wn. Therefore, these opacities constitute a v ery fundamen tal con-
dition of what it means to exist as a h uman b eing 3 . A t the same time,
epistemic opacit y alw a ys is partial. Although seman tically opacit y is the
an ton ym of transparency , it do es not mak e sense to sp eak of complete
opacit y when it comes to kno wledge. Ev en if things are not kno wn, there
alw a ys has to b e kno wn something whic h can p oin t to the unkno wn. But
these are fairly general remarks. So as to reconstruct the theoretical and
3 Hermeneuticists could easily agree here. P ersonal identit y and its relation to norms
and ethics are in dire need of in terpretation. But for Butler, the resort to hermeneu-
ticist in terpretation will not disp el the existen tial situation of opacit y . Eac h in ter-
pretation merely sets another mark in the fog.
38

argumen tativ e structure of Butler’s claim of opacit y , I will again review
the conceptual cluster she dev elops in order to substan tiate the claim.
This is quite similar to the pro ceeding of the last section. Just as it has
b een the case with vulnerability , injurabilit y , and precariousness, Butler
establishes a cluster of seman tically adjacen t concepts, whic h are mean t
to address the limitations of what can b e kno wn ab out p ersonal iden tit y
and norms, and what not.
The manifold en tanglemen t with norms is the source of a set of epis-
temic problems whic h result from the differences b et w een the cognitiv e,
practical, and so cial characteristics of h uman encoun ters, and the tra-
jectories or mo des of op eration of norms. The tension b et w een these
t w o sides most considerably culminates in the concept of recognition. Of
course, there has b een put m uc h sc holarly effort and dispute in to the
concept of recognition, and it w ould certainly b e far to o extensiv e for
the presen t purp ose to pro vide a comprehensiv e reconstruction of these
debates, and esp ecially the definitional differences these debates ha v e
resulted in. F or now, it will suffice to fo cus on Butler’s ‘p ost-Hegelian’
conception of recognition as she discusses it in Giving an A c c ount of
Oneself .
What do es ‘p ost-Hegelian’ mean? F or Hegel, h umans only gain self-
consciousness through a pro cess of m utual recognition. This claim rev er-
b erates with Butler’s convictio n that h umans as corp oreal en tities are in
need for successful relationship with others in order to surviv e and to
dev elop a full p ersonalit y . Also, the notion of m utualit y implies that it is
necessary to differen tiate terminologically b et w een the sub ject of recog-
nition and its ob ject. Mutualit y can only b e established if one sub ject
recognizes another sub ject as, for example, an autonomous agen t. In the
con text of this thesis, of course, the question is ho w the sub ject emerges
and in whic h w a ys it relates to norms. Recognition as a so cial practice
39

is dep enden t on a set of norms whic h address who can b e the sub ject of
recognition, and what ob jects of recognition are acceptable. One has to
b e recognizable in order to receiv e recognition. Butler emphasises that
although one sub ject w an ts to receiv e recognition for v ery p ersonal fea-
tures, or ev en for her singularit y , the v ery norms of recognition exist prior
to the encoun ter. This causes disorien tation b ecause the norms are not
crafted for a certain individual, but rather for the sub ject of recogni-
tion. Instead of b eing recognized for what a p erson is, she has to b ecome
the sub ject of recognition, a role or p osition that is normativ ely defined.
Consequen tly , the individual has to presen t herself as substitutable in the
sense of the norm. Her recognition as a singularit y dep ends on the norms
of recognition, and these norms define who and what is recognizable, and
who is not. ‘There is a language that frames the encoun ter, and em b ed-
ded in that language is a set of norms concerning what will and will not
constitute recognizabilit y’ (Butler 2005, p.30). Whereas recognition de-
notes an act, a scene, or an encoun ter b et w een sub jects, recognizabilit y
prepares the individual for recognition: ‘If recognition c haracterizes an
act or a practice or ev en a scene b et w een sub jects, then “recognizabilit y”
c haracterizes the more general conditions that prepare or shap e a sub-
ject for recognition - the general terms, con v en tions, and norms “act” in
their o wn w a y , crafting a living b eing in to a recognizable sub ject, though
not without errancy or, indeed, unan ticipated results. These categories,
con v en tions, and norms that prepare or establish a sub ject for recogni-
tion, that induce a sub ject of this kind, precede and mak e p ossible the
act of recognition itself. In this sense, recognizabilit y precedes recogni-
tion’ (Butler 2010, p.5). The tension b et w een the sub ject and pre-existing
norms, as w ell as the tension b et w een individualit y and recognizabilit y
is just one go o d example for the disorien tating effects of norms. Butler’s
conceptual reforging of recognition is p ost-Hegelian in the sense that the
40

sub ject’s opacit y to herself systematically o ccasions the p ossibilit y to
confer recognition to others.
Before w e can turn to the structural problems of narrativ e accoun t-
ing in the con text of resp onsibilit y and forgiv eness, I will ha v e to exp ose
the limitations of (self-)kno wledge whic h Butler addresses with the no-
tions of opacit y and disorien tation. So in what precisely do the opacities
and disorien tations actually consist? What exactly are the limitations of
kno wing oneself ?
As it has b een presen ted in the last section, the opacit y of the sub ject
for herself and others is strongly link ed to the relationalit y of p erson-
ho o d, i.e to other p ersons and to sets of norms. Within the totalit y of
all relations an individual en ters o v er the course of her lifetime, it is the
primary and highly formativ e relations in early c hildho o d whic h consti-
tute the primary op acity : ‘This p ostulation of a primary opacit y to the
self that follo ws from formativ e relations has a sp ecific implication for
an ethical b earing tow ard the other.’ (Butler 2005, p.20). As it will turn
out, the ethical b earing to w ards others do es not exclusiv ely stem from
the opacit y caused b y these early relations. A sceptic could ask for further
explanation precisely ho w this opacit y is brough t in to b eing, and if this
opacit y really holds true for eac h and ev ery p erson. Ma yb e there ev en are
psyc ho-therap eutic practices suc h as h ypnosis or regression that could lift
the v eil of time and oblivion. But these sceptical ob jections w ould miss
the p oin t whic h is at stak e here. Ev en if the primary relations could b e
retriev ed, this w ould c hange almost nothing ab out the predicamen t of
not kno wing exactly ho w one has b ecome the p erson who one is. F ull
kno wledge is not a v ailable in this regard. A second argumen tativ e strat-
egy could b e launched against the sceptic from the rev erse implication
that ev en if one kno ws oneself as limited it still is kno wing something
ab out oneself, ev en if one’s kno wing is ‘afflicted b y the limitation that
41

one kno ws’ (Butler 2005, p.46). That is to sa y that ev en if it w as not for
the primary relations whic h cause opacit y , there are other genealogical
pro cesses whic h remain opaque.
But the limitations of kno wing are not solely constituted b y the pri-
mary opacit y of early relations. There are sev eral other hindrances whic h
mak e narrativ e accoun ting of oneself in the con text of negotiating issues
of resp onsibilit y and comp ensation difficult. These hindrances are dubb ed
disorientations , and Butler iden tifies fiv e suc h disorien tations, only one of
whic h is the primary opacit y . Another of these had b een in tro duced in the
discussion of a corp orealit y , namely the exp osur e to others. ‘There is (1)
a non-narrativizable exp osure that establishes m y singularit y , and there
are (2) primary relations, irreco v erable, that form lasting and recurren t
impressions in the history of m y life, and so (3) a history that establishes
m y partial opacit y to m yself. Lastly , there are (4) norms that facilitate
m y telling ab out m yself but that I do not author and that render me
substitutable at the v ery momen t that I seek to establish the history of
m y singularit y . This last disp ossession in language is in tensified b y the
fact that I giv e an accoun t of m yself to someone, so that the narrativ e
structure of m y accoun t is sup erseded b y (5) the structure of address in
whic h it tak es place.’ (ibid., p.39).
Ob viously , these fiv e limitations of kno wledge ab out oneself are b y no
means limitations of epistemological accoun ts of ho w kno wledge could
b e differen tiated from opinion in general, or what a prop er definition or
criteria for kno wledge could b e found. Again, it is crucial to bring to
mind that these limitations b ecome ethically effective in the con text of
negotiating resp onsibilit y and forgiv eness, whic h is, generally sp eaking,
a situation of in terlo cution. As w e will see in the next section, these lim-
itations jeopardize the utilit y of narrativ e approac hes to theorize resp on-
sibilit y . The disorien tations and opacities whic h are the consequences of
42

the structural limitations of kno wing oneself, largely affect the in terlo cu-
tory situation in whic h resp onsibilit y is at issue. In order to dra w nearer
to the finalization of this reconstruction of Butler’s ethics of vulnerabil-
it y , I will no w discuss the structural as w ell as the pragmatic problems
of narrativ e accoun ting.
In addition to the b o dily exp osure to the touc h of others and the pri-
mary relations, Butler expands the list of p ossible disorien tations whic h
impact the capabilit y to narrate oneself. With (4) and (5) she puts em-
phasis on the disorien tating effect of norms themselv es. These are not eth-
ical norms in a strict sense, but rather con v en tions ho w an y accoun t in a
situation of ethical delib erations should b e presen ted and told. Adorno’s
topic of the tension b et w een univ ersal and singular in terests reo ccurs
here. There certainly are norms that go v ern the w a ys in whic h a narra-
tiv e accoun t should b e brough t forw ard, but they immediately render the
teller’s in ten tion to narrate her singularit y futile. Since norms are crafted
in a w a y that go v ern cases rather than p ersons, the teller has to mak e
herself substitutable to the norm. T elling the singularit y of one’s b ecom-
ing consequen tly only can succeed if the singularit y is traded for the
accoun t’s in telligibilit y . The compliance with these norms transforms the
individual’s singularit y in to a sequence of narratable ev en ts, sub v erting
the singularit y itself. The ‘structure of address’ addresses the situation-
ist c haracter of the in terlo cutory episo de in whic h at least to p ersons
negotiate ethical demands. In this situation, there is a sp ecific hierarc h y
b et w een the t w o. The p erson asking for an accoun t of problematic or
harmful actions has the p o w er to inquire endlessly . This is the pragmatic
dimension of the ideal of the transparen t ‘I’. The asking p erson alw a ys
ma y opt to con tin ue asking, to inquire further, and to refuse to b e sat-
isfied with the degree of transparency of the motiv es whic h are mean t
to explain the p erson’s actions. Although b oth refer to the in terlo cutory
43

situation of actually giving an accoun t of one’s actions, the difference
b et w een (4) and (5) consists in the distinct wa ys that the narrator is dis-
orien ted. Whereas (4) addresses the norms for giving an accoun t that are
shared b y a collectiv e, a Spr achspiel that ev eryb o dy kno ws ho w to pla y ,
(5) exp oses the differen tial distribution of p o w er b et w een the inquiring
p erson and the one whose actions are under scrutin y .
2.4 Na rrative Accounting
A t the core of Butler’s con v ersion of the notion of resp onsibilit y from
the ethical ideal of the transparen t ‘I’ to w ards the ac kno wledgemen t of
limited self-kno wledge and the existen tial disorien tation of h umans as re-
lational b eings, there resides a profound critique of narrativ e accoun ting.
In order to assess the capabilities and incapabilities of an y narrativ e ap-
proac h to ethical accoun ting, and to p ersonal iden tit y , for that matter, it
is essen tial to carefully dev elop and denominate what narrativ e is, ho w
narration and narrativ e relate to eac h other, and also ho w b oth figure in
situations of ethical in terlo cutions. Since it is the purp ose of this c hap-
ter to reconstruct the ethics of vulnerabilit y , the systematic analysis of
narrativ e framew orks will ha v e to b e p ostp oned un til c hapter three.
T o clarify one p oin t ex ante , Butler is far from rejecting narrativ e alto-
gether. She states that ‘no one can liv e in a radically non-narratable w orld
or surviv e a radically non-narratable life.’ (Butler 2005, p.59). There are
sev eral reasons for that. Giv en that h umans are alw a ys in relations with
eac h other, and supp osedly ev en surviv al dep ends on this essen tial rela-
tionalit y , it is absolutely imp ortan t that the individual’s actions can b e
understo o d and recognized b y fello w b eings. Narrativ e accoun ting is one
mo de of establishing the intellegibilit y of actions. ‘[W]hen w e do act and
sp eak, w e not only disclose ourselv es but act on the sc hemes of in tel-
ligibilit y that go v ern who will b e a sp eaking b eing, sub jecting them to
44

rupture or revision, consolidating their norms, or con testing their hege-
mon y .’ (Butler 2005, p.132). These sc hemes constitute what coun ts as an
understandable action, and what do es not. Or to put it another w a y , the
sc hemes of in telligibilit y define and establish the p o ol of p ossible actions
whic h are a v ailable to an y given comm unit y , and narrativ e seems to pla y
a crucial role when it comes to revise motiv es, consider in ten tions and
consequences, and reconstruct so cially prev alen t norms. In ev eryda y life,
actions are often easy to lo cate within this p o ol. But in those cases whic h
giv e w a y to ethical delib eration, the in ten tions, motiv es, consequences
etc. of an action are problematic and therefore ha v e to b e thematized
in a scene of address. In hermeneuticist terms, the action in question
has to b e in terpreted b y putting it in the con text of the agen t and her
in ten tions. Making sense lik e that often tak es the form of a narrativ e.
Butler concedes that surviv al dep ends on a narratable w orld. Still, she
insists on the claim that there are certain asp ects of h uman existence that
are non-narratable, and among these it is the concept of the ‘transparen t
I’, i.e. the notion of a fully narratable iden tit y of a p erson whic h disrupts
the narrativ e accoun ting. In her opinion, it is the this notion whic h es-
cap es narrativ e in tegration, at least more so than ev en ts or actions, alb eit
p ossibly only in degree. This claim surely is quite coun ter-in tuitiv e, so
ho w can w e mak e sense out of this claim? In order to mak e this palpable,
it migh t b e helpful to b egin with the role of narrativ e in the con text of
moral allegations. In Butler, giving an accoun t of oneself, in narrativ e
terms or not, is preceded b y an inquiry b y another p erson. The I is ad-
dressed b y another p erson and ask ed to giv e an accoun t. In the con text of
the clarification of resp onsibilit y the in terlo cution is mean t to figure out
if the p erson addressed is the same p erson as the p erson who did harm to
the inquirer. Only if this n umerical iden tit y b et w een these t w o p ersons is
established, claims for assuming resp onsibilit y , pro viding comp ensation,
45

and ev en tually ac hieving forgiv eness b ecome p ossible. This, of course,
presupp oses that the addressed self has a causal relation to the suffering
of the inquirer. In order to establish this iden tit y b et w een addressee and
harm-causing agen t, the addressed p erson is exp ected to mak e herself,
her in ten tions and motiv es, and also her normativ e con victions transpar-
en t. It is this exp ectation held b y the inquirer that underpin the talk of
the ‘transparen t I’ as an ethical ideal.
But again, wh y is it a p erson’s iden tit y , her self, that disrupts narrativ e
accoun ting? This is ho w Butler en visions narrativ e accoun ting in resp onse
to an ethical allegation: ‘...as I mak e a sequence and link one ev en t with
another, offering motiv ations to illuminate the bridge, making patterns
clear, iden tifying certain ev en ts or momen ts of recognition as piv otal,
ev en marking certain recurring patterns as fundamen tal, I do not merely
comm unicate something ab out m y past, though that is doubtless part
of what I do. I also enact the self I am trying to describ e; the narrativ e
“I” is reconstituted at ev ery momen t it is in v ok ed in the narrativ e itself.’
(Butler 2005, p.60). One approac h to understand this enactmen t of the
self could b e the temp oralit y of accoun ting and p erforming. Whereas the
scene of address alw a ys tak es place after the harm has b een done, and
therefore the narrativ e accoun ting for in ten tions, motiv es, and the lik e
tak es place after the fact, the v ery practice of narrating oneself tak es
place in the actual presen t. Hence the ‘I’ assumes four differen t functions
at differen t times. It is (1) assumed as a stable and comprehensible agen t
who migh t or migh t not ha v e done harm; it is (2) presupp osed as the
narrator who resp onds to the ethical allegation and giv es an accoun t of
oneself in narrativ e terms; and (3) the narrating ‘I’ acts up on herself and
her audience in b oth senses (1) and (2) and therefore creates, alters, or
mo difies older v ersions of oneself; lastly (4), due to the unin terrupted
relationalit y whic h influences the in terlo cutory situation of accoun ting,
46

the ‘I’ is acted up on b y the audiences rev ersely , for instance through ex-
p ectations, or the m utually accepted norms whic h go v ern the practice
of narrativ e accoun ting itself. ‘I also enact the self I am trying to de-
scrib e; the narrativ e “I” is reconstituted at ev ery momen t it is in v ok ed
in the narrativ e itself. That in v o cation is, parado xically , a p erformativ e
and non-narrativ e act, ev en as it functions as the fulcrum for narrativ e
itself. I am, in other w ords, doing something with that “I” — elab orat-
ing and p ositioning it in relation to a real or imagined audience — whic h
is something other than telling a story ab out it, ev en though “telling”
remains part of what I do.’ (Butler 2005, p.66)
A second approac h to this enactmen t of p ersonal iden tit y , whic h do es
not con tradict the first one, but rather complemen ts it, w ould fo cus on
the normativ e dimension of narrativ e accoun ting. T o this end, it is pro-
ductiv e in a first step to analyse the practical domains of narrativ e ac-
coun ting and the v ery p osition or space the norms define for the ‘I’ in
these domains. Butler sp eaks of the ‘in v o cation of the self ’ b y narrativ e
itself, and certainly this in v o cation is enabled and regulated b y narrativ e
norms. Unfortunately , Butler misses the opp ortunit y to elab orate the
m ultiple w a ys in whic h the self is in v ok ed b y narrativ e. Within the p er-
sp ectiv e of her accoun t, it is plausible to discern tw o differen t p ositions
of the self. Firstly , there is the self who compiles and arranges the ev en ts,
and who offers motiv ations for past actions. This self equates to the au-
thor of the narrativ e accoun t. In order to b e the author of a narrativ e,
one has to mak e oneself eligible to fill this functional p osition, and the
eligibilit y , in turn, is defined b y norms. In the narro w er con text of nar-
rativ e accoun ting and the negotiation of resp onsibilit y , it seems almost
trivial that that the author, narrator, and agen t all coincide in exactly
one p erson. Or to put it sligh tly differen t, author and narrator are sup-
p osedly iden tical with eac h other, and the purp ose of the in terlo cution is
47

to establish the iden tit y b et w een these t w o and the agen t of the harm-
ful actions whic h initiated the accoun ting in the first place. Then again,
there are man y normativ e requiremen ts to b e met in order to b e regarded
as an author, or narrator. Secondly , there are norms whic h go v ern the
in v o cation of the self as an effect of the narration itself, as Butler p oin ts
out. But again, the plain assertion of this in v o cation do es not explain
prop erly ho w this in v o cation, and also the reconstitution, tak es place.
F or instance, there is the ‘I’ whic h is established b y the norms whic h are,
explicitly or implicitly , addressed within the narrative itself. But this po-
sition often is con tested b y the exp ectations of the audience, whic h has
its o wn set of normativ e b eliev es ab out whic h iden tit y is acceptable, or
eligible, and whic h is not. Ev en if the reconstitution tak es place as a
com bined effect of b oth normativ e realms, it remains obscure precisely
ho w b oth ha v e a disorien tating effect on the individual. But progress in
this regard will only b e p ossible after the concept of narrativ e, and the
practice of narrativ e accoun ting will b e analysed systematically later on.
One narrativ e norm migh t serv e as an example for ho w norms can
put accoun ting in to jeopardy , and ho w they restrict ethical delib eration.
Whenev er someone tells a story ab out their b ecoming the p erson they
are, it is exp ected that the story they tell is sufficien tly coheren t. That
means that the ev en ts, commen taries and links b et w een ev en ts fit w ell
together. That do es not necessarily imply that there is no rupture or even
discon tin uities in that story . As a matter of fact, the in teresting stories
are those whose plot has unexp ected t wists and turns. But coherence as
a narrativ e norm, i.e. a norm that go v erns the story-telling itself, has a
sev ere impact on the selection of ev en ts, and ho w the ev en ts and actions of
the c haracters in that story are c hained together. In other w ords, a story
that lac ks a certain degree of coherence will not b e regarded as plausible,
or in the case of ethical delib eration, will b e regarded as sub v erting the
48

in telligibilit y of actions and motiv es. F rom a critical p oin t of view, the
demand for coherence collides with the disorien tations an y giv en p erson
finds herself in: ‘[N]arrativ e coherence ma y foreclose an ethical resource —
namely , an acceptance of the limits of kno w abilit y in oneself and others.
T o hold a p erson accoun table for his or her life in narrativ e form ma y ev en
b e to require a falsification of that life in order to satisfy the criterion of a
certain kind of ethics, one that tends to break with relationalit y .’ (Butler
2005, p.63). Again, it will ha v e to b e examined closely in the next c hapter
if the prop onen ts of narrativ e iden tit y , most of whom indeed argue in
fa v our of narrativ e coherence, really are blind to the disorien tating and
violen t undertones of this criterion of coherence.
When examining Butler’s criticism of narrativ e accoun ting, it quic kly
b ecomes ob vious that she is not in terested at all to lo ok closer at what
narrativ e actually is. She restricts narrativ e to the in terlo cutory practice
of narrativ e accoun ting. This limitation migh t b e b eneficial in order to
fo cus more prominen tly on the v arious problems of narrativ e accoun ting
in a scene of address. But there are some do wnsides to this. F or instance,
it w ould b e helpful to trace the violen t asp ect of norms in more detail.
T o that end, the concept of norm is in need of an in ternal, seman tic
differen tiation. But more imp ortan tly , a more sophisticated analysis of
narrativ e not only as an in terlo cutory practice, but also as a fully fledged
metho dology w ould greatly con tribute to impro v e the understanding of
exactly ho w norms in v arious domains ha v e detrimen tal effects on giving
an accoun t of oneself. This also could help to help the explanatory task to
clarify the p ossibility of ho w norms could ha v e less violen t ramifications.
This more thorough analysis has to b e p ostp oned to the next c hapter.
49

2.5 Ethics, Critique, and Non-Violence
So far, the essen tial concepts of this ethics of vulnerabilit y ha v e b een re-
constructed, as w ell as Butler’s scepticism ab out the practical prosp ects
of making oneself transparen t in an y giv en situation of narrativ e accoun t-
ing. The presupp osed ethical ideal of the ‘transparen t I’ is supp osedly
imp ossible to fulfil due to the v arious disorien tations whic h arise from
the fundamen tal corp orealit y and the existen tial relationalit y of h uman
life. F urther disorien tations supp osedly arise out of the inescapable en-
meshmen t with norms and normativ e framew orks. Relationalit y and dis-
orien tations lead to a partial blindness ab out ourselv es, and, at least for
Butler, this predicamen t of partial blindness is supp osed to b e in v ariable,
i.e. shared b y all h umans as h umans. When narrating, the ethically the
b est one could do w ould b e talking ab out these blind sp ots, but one could
nev er narrate what cannot b e seen. This predicamen t also constitutes the
foundations for an accoun t of ethics whic h migh t b e capable to a v oid the
ethical violence whic h ensue from an unquestioned application of the
ethical ideal of an ‘transparen t I’, mainly b y reframing resp onsibilit y and
forgiv eness in terms of opacit y .
In the remainder of this c hapter, I will attempt to carv e out exactly
what Butler’s accoun t of ethics consists in. W e already ha v e established
that from an epistemic p oint of view, h umans liv e in a hazy and foggy
w orld. Corp orealit y and living in and b y normativ e matrices structurally
lead to p ermanen t opacit y . Ethics, therefore, ‘...requires us to risk our-
selv es precisely at momen ts of unkno wingness, when what forms us di-
v erges from what lies b efore us, when our willingness to b ecome undone
in relation to others constitutes our c hance of b ecoming h uman. T o b e
undone b y another is a primary necessit y , an anguish, to b e sure, but
also a c hance – to b e addressed, claimed, b ound to what is not me, but
also to b e mo v ed, to b e prompted to act, to address myself elsewhere,
50

and so to v acate the self-sufficien t “I” as a kind of p ossession. If w e sp eak
and try to giv e an accoun t from this place, w e will not b e irresp onsible,
or, if w e are, w e will surely b e forgiv en.’ (Butler 2005, p.136). This is the
v ery last sen tence of Giving an A c c ount of Oneself , and it condensates
the shift of ethics from the ideal of transparency to w ards the recognition
and offering of one’s o wn state of unkno wingness. With regard to the
role of p ersonal iden tit y within ethics she ob viously endorses an accoun t
of ethics whic h features a vulnerable, disorien tated and fluid concept of
p ersonal iden tit y . Vic e versa , an y stabilized and fixed iden tity only can
b e uphold b y violen t means, with violen t ramifications not only for the
individual, but all individuals whic h are related to that fixed iden tit y .
This concept of p ersonal iden tit y starkly con tradicts almost all ma jor
accoun ts of ethics, no matter if they are of teleological or deon tological
pro v enance. The ‘the self-sufficien t I’ gets abandoned completely , for rea-
sons of its violen t implications. It is in this sense, that Butler argues in
fa v our of ‘risking oneself ’.
In the narro w er con text of ethical delib eration, the unkno wingness im-
plies that the sub ject is disorien tated b y its o wn b ecoming, esp ecially b y
the norms whic h define and demarcate the p osition of it. F or Adorno,
this situation is the v ery lo cus where ethical violence unfolds, caused b y
the circumstance that for the sub ject, the norms are not self-eviden t an y
more. F or Butler, this gap is the reason wh y ethical delib eration b ecomes
necessary in the first place. Ethical delib eration, itself, cannot b e merged
with narrativ e accoun ting, or vic e versa . Ethical delib eration, hence, is
a reaction to the v arious predicamen ts whic h are addressed ab o v e. It ex-
ceeds narrativ e accoun ting since ev en the ev en tual failure of narrating
oneself has to b e part of it. In order to finalize the reconstruction of
this accoun t of ethics, then, w e ha v e to in v estigate ho w it is is mean t to
a v oid the violen t consequences of p ersonal iden tit y and normativ e frame-
51

w orks. The v en ues b y whic h Butler tries to establish the plausibilit y of
this seman tic shift with regard to p ersonal iden tit y and resp onsibilit y ,
are so cial theory and the liaison of ethics with critique. Lastly , it has to
b e stated more precisely in what sense Butler’s ethics is non-violen t, and
what non-violence from an ethical p ersp ectiv e actually means.
Ho w, then, is ethical delib eration as a normativ e practice connected
with or ev en dep enden t on critique, and with the sub ject? And what do es
‘critique’ exactly mean in this con text? As it has b een sho wn ab o v e, the
nexus of b ecoming and b eing a sub ject on the one side, and norms and
normativ e framew orks on the other side, do es not lend itself w ell to b e
easily undone from one side or the other. Ethical delib eration ‘is b ound
up with the op eration of critique. And critique finds that it cannot go
forw ard without a consideration of ho w the delib erating sub ject comes
in to b eing and ho w a delib erating sub ject might actually liv e or appro-
priate a set of norms. Not only do es ethics find itself embroiled in the
task of so cial theory , but so cial theory , if it is to yield non-violen t results,
m ust find a living place for this ”I”’ (Butler 2005, p.8). Butler’s accoun t
is F oucaultian inasm uc h she agrees with him that the v ery norms that
define the space of p ossible wa ys of b ecoming and b eing a sub ject are not
just imp osed on one’s existence, since the existence do es not on tologically
come in to b eing prior to the norms, but instead, these norms pro vide ‘the
terms within whic h existence will or will not b e p ossible’ (Butler 2002,
p.12).
T o engage with critique means to question these norms in an in ter-
lo cutory situation. This p ositions the critic immediately outside of the
prev alen t sc hemes of in telligibilit y , or at least puts her at risk of doing
so. This, an yw a y , is a first meaning of critique in Butler, namely that the
critic distances herself from what is regarded as giv en, as culturally and
ethically shared con victions etc. The critique ma y aim in t w o directions.
52

First, the distance enables the critic to scrutinize the so cial con text of
an y giv en practice that she problematizes. ‘So cial con text’ is as v ague a
term as it can get within the h umanities, but with regard to the prac-
tices of critique and critical theories this v agueness at the same time
demands and p ermits the critical inquiry of the ob ject of in terest, suc h
as normativ e matrixes, shared b eliev es, traditions that seem to b e out
of time. Secondly , philosophical critique also has to b e directed at the
critic herself. Although the widening of the critical horizon is essen tial,
critique at once dev aluates itself if the critic do es not include herself in
the critique, questioning to what exten t she herself concurs practically
or theoretically with what she w an ts to criticise. It could b e argued that
Butler’s ethical accoun t so far has mainly assumed the reflexiv e stance.
But this self-related analysis w ould not b e complete without the inclusion
of the so cietal conditions whic h supp ort the notions of a stable p ersonal
iden tit y and the transparen t I.
Both p ersp ectiv es of critique, the con textual and the reflexiv e, w ould
b e arbitrary without justified goals or ends. Since critique in this sense is
an argumen tativ e strategy , its plausibilit y dep ends on ho w w ell it argues
for the direction of c hange it prop oses. Historically , this notion of critique,
whic h had b een crafted b y think ers of the enligh tenmen t in reaction to
the p olitical ab olishmen t of authorities, has b een dev oted to the goals
of impro v ed emancipation and self-determination. The autonomous self,
whic h b y means of its facult y of reason emancipates herself from self-
imp osed nonage, still is the ultimate goal of ethics in W estern philosoph y .
In Butler, this argumen t assumes a particular shap e. F or her, living in a
violen t so ciet y , b eing brough t up in it and ha ving learned to exert violence
on oneself and others, is the ma jor imp edimen t for living autonomously . It
also denies the existen tial relationalit y whic h she grounds in an corp oreal
53

on tology . But the question here has to b e exactly ho w and to what exten t
critique in tegrates itself in to the broader ethical accoun t of Butler’s.
There is a practical effect of critique whic h o ccurs in an y giv en in-
terlo cutory situation. T o question these norms is often p erceiv ed as and
equated with questioning the whole p erson, her form of life, her ‘Leb ens-
en twurf ’. W e ha v e already seen that the existen tial en tanglemen t with
these norms, or to put it sligh tly stronger, to liv e b y and through the
norms, causes v arious disorien tations, whic h are, in fact, residua of un-
kno wingness and unsp eak abilit y . When ev en a single problematic action
is addressed b y a critic, these opacities are traded for a stabilized, trans-
paren t and defendable v ersion of p ersonal identit y . Psyc hological researc h
has in v estigated this b eha viour amply on the individual as w ell as on the
collectiv e lev el. But the p oin t here is another one, namely ho w to cop e
ethically with these stabilized iden tities in the face of a normativ e cor-
pus whic h is not of the making of the individual, but whic h allo w these
norms to b e used as means of imm unisation against critique, and as a
justification of ethical violence. The critic th us aims for the exp osure of
ho w the ordering system of kno wledge, norms and p o w er w orks, but in
a w a y that at the same time follo ws its breaking p oin ts whic h mark the
system’s historical emergence and finalit y .
Indeed, Butler suggests a certain direction for critique. If criticizing
the norms means to risk one’s iden tit y , then instead of the reification
and fortification of one’s (p ersonal or collectiv e) iden tit y , it is ethically
mandatory to mak e oneself fluid, and to admit one’s o wn opacit y to
oneself and others. T o distance oneself from the ideal of a stable and
transparen t iden tit y , and to presen t oneself as opaque to others, means to
disrupt the reiteration of violen t action patterns whic h ha v e b een learned
in earlier y ears, and b y doing so to mak e p ossible the transformation of
the status quo for the b etter. It is imp ortant to note that Butler’s notion
54

of critique has no privileged access to or insigh t in to a more fundamen tal
p olitical or moral order. Her notion of critique rather suggests some to ols
and p ersp ectiv es whic h migh t help to c hange h uman in teraction from
violen t to less violen t, whic h she considers essen tial for the emancipation
of a so ciety and their constitutiv e mem b ers.
As Butler deplo ys it, her notion of critique is particularly p olitical.
Rather than inquiring in to the realm of p ossible actions an individual
could resort to, p erhaps in order to adapt more prop erly to the so cial
conditions she finds herself in, Butler insists on the transformation of the
so cietal conditions the individual liv es in. Regarding the in tersub jectiv e
arc hitecture of her corp oreal and relational on tology this hardly is a sur-
prise. She stresses the constitutiv e force of the so cietal conditions ev en
for actions: ‘There are so cial con texts and con v en tions within whic h cer-
tain acts not only b ecome p ossible but b ecome conceiv able as acts at all.
The transformation of so cial relations b ecomes a matter, then, of trans-
forming hegemonic so cial conditions rather than the individual acts that
are spa wned b y those conditions. Indeed, one runs the risk of addressing
the merely indirect, if not epiphenomenal, reflection of those conditions
if one remains restricted to a p olitics of acts.’ (Butler 1988, p.525). This
seemingly implies that ev en the distinction b et w een the individual p er-
son and the so cietal con texts is arbitrary to the exten t that itself should
b e o v ercome ev en tually .
Butler tries to argue for the crucial role so cial theory and critique ha v e
to pla y in an ethical accoun t that’s aiming for the in terruption of the
automatisms of violence and the p erp etuations of violen t b eha viour in
h uman in teractions. In order to ac hiev e this, the critic has ‘...to isolate
and iden tify the p eculiar nexus of p o w er and kno wledge that giv es rise
to the field of in telligible things, but also to trac k the w a y in whic h that
field meets its breaking p oin t, the momen ts of its discon tin uities, the sites
55

where it fails to constitute the in telligibilit y for whic h it stands.’ (Butler
2002, p.14). But this constitutes merely the first step of critique. Since
for Butler and F oucault alik e there is no action without a normativ e ma-
trix whic h w ould endo w in telligibilit y to it, the practice of critique also is
part of the existing regime of truth. In order to sub v ert or transform this
existing regime of truth the critic has to establish her o wn p osition at the
margins of this regime. Moreo v er, she has to risk her o wn in telligibilit y
and credibilit y in order to p erformativ ely enact the norms of critique in
a sligh tly differen t w a y . Only in this w a y she is not as sub jugated b y
the norms as b efore, and she already has engaged in a certain w a y of
self-forming: ‘...if that self-forming is done in disob edience to the princi-
ples b y whic h one is formed, then virtue b ecomes the practice b y whic h
the self forms itself in desub jugation, whic h is to sa y that it risks its
deformation as a sub ject, o ccup ying that on tologically insecure p osition
whic h p oses the question anew: who will b e a sub ject here, and what will
coun t as a life, a momen t of ethical questioning whic h requires that w e
break the habits of judgemen t in fa v our of a riskier practice that seeks
to yield artistry from constrain t.’ (ibid., p.20). The concept of ‘so cial
theory’ remains hollo w and bleak, Butler seems to presupp ose a general
understanding what ”so cial theory” amounts to in v arious con texts.
2.6 The Claim of Non-Violence
Giv en that Butler’s argumen t for the in trinsically violen t c haracter of
norms is strong, then there emerges a significan t problem for ethics, or
rather a family of problems. First of all, the virtual ubiquit y of violence
in norms, in individuals and in h uman relationships seems to render an y
accoun t that opp oses this violence as futile. Either non-violence is an
ideal whic h starkly th w arts the violen t asp ects of factual life, a philoso-
pher’s dream ab out an utopian vision of p eaceful cohabitation. Or, giv en
56

that all norms are, at least in part, violen t, non-violence is just another
moral cypher for more violence. Both v en ues w ould cast the whole ethi-
cal approac h in to doubt, allo wing only for nihilist, v olun tarist, or cynical
conclusions. Butler certainly is a w are of this theoretical quandary , and it
is in elab orating on the claim of non-violence where she presen ts a helpful
condensation of her ethical con victions.
It has b een amply dev elop ed that Butler thinks of the formation of a
p erson’s iden tit y in F oucaultian terms. Norms pla y a part in eac h and
ev ery asp ect of c haracter formation. They constitute a normativ e ma-
trix whic h, as a regime of truth, proliferate a fundamen tal distinction
b et w een what is righ t and what is wrong. This holds true for ethical
delib eration in a narro w er sense, but also expands in to the non-v erbal
or enacted comp onen ts of iden tit y . Ho w an individual sp eaks, or w alks,
or what clothing seems to b e adequate, all of these asp ects are go v erned
b y these norms. All of these norms are ‘disciplinary’ in the sense that
they normalize devian t b eha viour, they cut a w a y or sanction devian t b e-
ha viour. Their violen t c haracter partly is founded in this normalization,
partly in the opaque pro v enance of their conditions of emergence, and
partly in the collision of time regimes, that of the norm itself, and that
of the individual. So ‘...when one is formed in violence [. . . ] and that for-
mativ e action con tin ues throughout one’s life, an ethical quandary arises
ab out ho w to liv e the violence of one’s formativ e history , ho w to effect
shifts and rev ersals in its iteration.’ (Butler 2010, p.170). The ethical an-
sw er to this question, i.e. ho w to liv e one’s formativ e history of violence,
consists in non-violence. But what do es this mean exactly? And ho w
do es this concept of non-violence correlate with Butler’s new definition
of resp onsibilit y?
It is ob vious that non-violence cannot b e a principle in the sense of
a strong rule for virtually eac h and ev ery situation an individual finds
57

herself in. First of all, non-violence as a norm among other norms w ould
inherit or uphold the violence it exerts in v arious w a ys. One could think
of v arious cases in whic h self-defence seems to b e legit, ev en if it in-
cludes the deplo ymen t of violence; but more imp ortan tly , as a principle,
it will suffer the same detac hmen t in terms of temp oral regime and the
tension b et w een its o wn univ ersal applicabilit y and the particular situ-
ation. Both w ould uphold the violen t c haracter of the norm, a feature
whic h is esp ecially problematic in the con text of non-violence. Secondly ,
non-violence as a principle whic h demands compliance in eac h and ev ery
situation w ould hardly b e advisable in man y o ccasions. Instead of fash-
ioning non-violence as a principle, Butler construes it as a ‘claim’. The
crucial question accordingly is ‘Under whic h conditions are w e resp on-
siv e to suc h claim?’ (Butler 2010, p.165). There is plen t y to analyse ab out
the conditions of resp onsiv eness to suc h a claim, and its connection to
resp onsibilit y . F or one, the individual or group who resp onds to suc h a
claim is crafted b y violence and hence is disp osed to a certain kind of
violence to w ards others. In p erforming one’s iden tit y , and thereb y iter-
ating the commandmen ts of the normativ e matrix, one is brough t up in
a w a y that mak es it lik ely to exert violence to w ards others.
That said, it is no w p ossible to to la y op en the core of this accoun t
of ethics. Precisely b ecause one is normativ ely formed through violence,
resp onsibilit y has to framed as not to rep eat that violence. This is the
difference b et w een ‘b eing resp onsiv e’ to the claim of non-violence and
‘assuming resp onsibilit y’ vis-` a-vis the violence of one’s o wn b ecoming.
Although there is a common et ymological ro ot to b oth, resp onsiv eness
and resp onsibilit y , b eing resp onsiv e only asks for an y resp onse, whereas
the concept of resp onsibilit y asks for a sub class of these resp onses, namely
those whic h resp ond to this claim in a particular, ma yb e ev en non-violen t
w a y . In order to illustrate the p ossible wa ys of b eing resp onsiv e tot his
58

claim, it is helpful to lo ok at what psyc hoanalyst Melanie Klein has ad-
dressed with ‘moral sadism’. With this concept she aimed to theorize
certain moralizations of aggressiv e b eha viour. Without going in to fur-
ther, mainly F reudian detail here, at the core of moral sadism resides
the justification of aggression and violence on the grounds of previously
suffered harm. Because someb o dy has h urt me, I am morally justified to
retaliate in violen t w a ys 4 .
When taking resp onsibilit y for oneself is defined as ‘... to a v o w the
limits of an y self-understanding, and to establish these limits not only
as a condition for the sub ject but as the predicamen t of the h uman
comm unit y .’ (Butler 2005, p.83), the relational reference to the ‘h uman
comm unit y’ is aimed to forestall the dev aluation of others and its moral-
ization, whic h in fact w ould constitute moral sadism. The sp ecific mor-
alization tak es place when violence is seen as legitimate or ev en as virtu-
ous. The previous exp erience of harm, or violence, whic h initializes moral
sadism, also is an exp erience of the lac k of con trol, of h umiliation, and
of sub jugation. T o resp ond to this exp erience in that w a y is not so m uc h
a philosophical op eration of justifying violence, but on a psyc hological
lev el, an op eration ‘...to secure an imp ossible effect of mastery , in viola-
bilit y , and imp ermeabilit y through destructiv e means’ (Stonebridge and
Phillips 1998, Butler p.178 in:). In this sense, violen t acts are an attempt
to relo cate the capacity to b e violated elsewhere, and it pro duces the im-
pression that the sub ject who enacts violence is imp ermeable to violence
herself. It should b e clear by no w that moral sadism is not the fa v oured
4 Moral sadism th us defined has v arious impacts on p ersonal identit y as w ell. As it will
b e discussed in Chapter 4, the notion of a stabilized and rigid iden tit y often serv es
a similar purp ose of the fortification of the self. Once harm has b een exp erienced,
the need for a stabilized iden tit y reflects the wish of the harmed p erson not to
b e harmed in that w a y again. The more rigid one’s o wn iden tit y is p erceiv ed b y
others, the less lik ely is it that they w ould do harm to this iden tit y . There is a lot
of psyc hological research whic h substan tiates this morally sadistic link b et w ee n
solid iden tities and the dev aluation of others b y means of that v ery identit y . F or
the presen t interest it ma y suffice to p oint to this link.
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resp onse to violence, and certainly not the prop er resp onse to the claim
of non-violence.
So again, if non-violence is neither a virtue, nor a p osition, nor a set of
principles that are to b e applied univ ersally , what is it then? Butler of-
fers t w o definitions, and I will presen t b oth here: Non-violence ‘...denotes
the mired and conflicted p osition of a sub ject who is injured, rageful,
disp osed to violen t retribution and nev ertheless struggles against that
action.’ (Butler 2010, p.172). The injured and rageful sub ject ‘...seeks to
limit the injury that she or he causes, and can do so only through an
activ e struggle with and against aggression.’ If this struggle is mean t not
to b e decided in the sense of moral sadism, this ‘...necessitates a moral
struggle with the idea of non-violence in the midst of an encoun ter with
so cial violence as w ell as with one’s o wn aggression (where the so cial
encoun ter and the ”one’s o wn” transitiv ely affect one another)’. F ramed
in this w a y , this concept of non-violence ac kno wledges three fundamen tal
tenets of Butler’s moral accoun t. First, it thinks of individuals as impure.
This means that due to the genealogical origins of sub ject in a regime of
truth, there is a deeply ingrained tendency to act violen tly . This sub v erts
a plethora of stratifications of h uman cultures and practices, in whic h
some are regarded as civilized and non-violen t, whereas others ha v e re-
mained on the stage of barbarism and displa y p o or impulse con trol when
it comes to violen t b eha viour. Secondly , this definition substan tiates But-
ler’s claim that h uman relations and in teractions nev er are completely
willed b y the individual. Certainly some relations are willed, but most
encoun ters are outside the domain of con trol an individual migh t ha v e in
certain asp ects of her life. That is to sa y that the claim of non-violence,
since it is not answ erable in principle, ma y o ccur in eac h and ev ery so cial
encoun ter, actualizing itself in these v ery situations. Thirdly , it incorp o-
rates the assumption that aggression is not an encla v e of so cial life, only
60

to b e encountered when one in tendedly engages with it. The realm of
so cial in teraction, whic h is co extensiv e with the space of p ossible truths,
p ossible actions, and p ossible in telligibilities, and whic h is generated b y
the normativ e matrixes, is itself, b y virtue of the norm’s innate violence,
a domain where aggression and violence alw a ys are presen t. This coun ters
the p ossible assumption that violence migh t only b e one option among
others.
It almost seems lik e violen t retaliation is the default reaction to ex-
p erienced aggression in so cial in teractions. Since the individual has b een
forged as a sub ject or p erson b y in trinsically violen t norms, the discon-
tin uation of iterating the learned violence is far from to b e tak en for
gran ted. And as I ha v e sho wn in this reconstruction, Butler indeed seem-
ingly adv ances this thinking, displa ying her resonances with Levinasian
ethics 5 , who stated that violence alw a ys is a ‘temptation’ (Levinas 2012).
Accordingly , it is no surprise that she argues in fa v our of the necessit y
for resistance to this violen t temptation, a necessit y whic h only can b e
satisfied b y engaging in critical struggle with so cial practices. This strug-
gle’s ultimate goal migh t b e conceptualized as the individual struggle of
a p erson who tries really hard not to retaliate violen tly to harm. But it
is her pro claimed emphasis to mak e clear that the parameters of that
struggle p ermeate p olitical situations, where retribution is made quic kly
and often accomanied with moral certitude. It is this juncture of violence
and moralization that Butler explicitly w an ts to undo with her ethics of
vulnerabilit y (see for example (Butler 2010, p.172)).
F rom a more practical p oin t of view, the p ossibilit y of an y break age
b et w een the violence that has b een part of the sub ject’s formation, or
the violence she conducts herself on herself or others in so cial situa-
5 In Giving an A c c ount of Oneself Butler discusses the ethics of Levinas’ in length. I
ha ve opted to not follo w her in this direction, since Levinas has little to sa y ab out
narrativ e accounting. Still, I will elaborate on Levinas in the last chapter when
discussing vulnerabilit y as a foundation for ethics
61

tions, is at the v ery cen ter of this accoun t. This claim presupp oses a
non-deterministic notion of (moral) norms. Although norms demand and
determine compliance for certain actions, they rely on their iterated in-
stan tiation b y agen ts. The norm’s material con ten t needs to b e iterated
b y sub jects in eac h situation whic h the norm claims compliance for. If a
norm ceases to demand compliance, if the norm is no longer obligatory ,
the norm ceases to exist in practice. Here, the transformatory dimen-
sion of Butler’s accoun t sho ws itself. Since norms dep end on iteration,
and the individual sub ject ma y opt to not iterate the norm an y more,
i.e. to discon tin ue the violen t imp erativ es of norms, and thereb y shift-
ing the prev alen t configuration of the normativ e matrix in a non-violen t
direction.
The claim for non-violence th us conceptualized has to b e further in-
v estigated. I will fo cus this in v estigation on three topics. The first topic
aims at the functional in terdep endence of normativ e determinism and
p erformativ e iteration; the second will bring in to question the claim that
norms are violen t; and the third will lo ok at the role of the sub ject itself
in analysing and c hanging the violence of norms. Only after this ground-
w orl it will b e p ossible to finalize this c hapter with a discussion of the
seman tic shift of the concept of resp onsibilit y itself. Seemingly , the idea if
the iterabilit y of norms is crucial to understand wh y norms do not act in
a deterministic w a y , at least genealogical and ethical norms. F or a norm
to act deterministically w ould imply that the range of actions whic h are
in the scop e of the norm is defined min utely , precisely , and without an y
am biguit y . It w ould ha v e to address eac h and ev ery situation in whic h it
demands compliance, and also prescrib e in detail ho w to act. F or man y
norms, this clearly is not the case, and it cannot b e so in principle. In
order to b e applicable in man y situation, a norm has to b e a com bination
of a material prescription of what to do, and a formal abstraction from
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the v ery situations at the same time. Both asp ects of norms constitute
the space of p ossible enactmen ts of the norm, and it is b oth where the
claim for non-violence has to b e encoun tered. The material prescription
of a norm, lik e ‘thou shalt not kill’, or ‘it is wrong to steal’, prima facie
seem less am biguous when it comes non-violen t and iterated enactmen t.
The acting sub ject ma y alw a ys opt to either follo w or disregard the norm,
in this sense the norm is either enacted or not. F ar more problematic,
but also more promising in the con text of non-violence, is the formal ab-
straction. Here the sub ject has to inquire in to the con textual details of
the situation she finds herself in. It will dep end on these con texts, alb eit
opaque in and of themselv es, if there is an op ening for enacting the norm
in non-violen t w a ys. Since con texts and situations are c hanging p erma-
nen tly , the iterated p erformance of the norm nev er will b e iden tical with
former p erformances. The non-iden tit y of ho w norms are enacted via p er-
formativ e iteration solely sho ws that it is p ossible at all to alter norms in
an y direction. Here, w e cannot substan tiate the claim for non-violence,
but demonstrate its p ossibility .
It w as Adorno’s claim of ethical violence that norms need to b e col-
lectiv ely enforced once the norm has ceased to b e ‘self-eviden t’ and has
turned in to a collectiv ely shared ideas. This, in Hegelian terms, is the
conflict b et w een customs and morality , Sitten and Sittlichkeit . A t once
it b ecomes clear that norms are not inherently violen t, it is not one of
their necessary constituen ts. When Adorno describ es this transition from
moral norms in to customs in terms of degeneration, he do es so b ecause he
kno ws ab out the violence whic h often is used to k eep sub jects iterating
the customs. Suc h degenerated norms p oison the so cial relationships, and
the violen t enforcemen t of norms b ecomes an end to itself. Butler elab-
orates on this claim b y scrutinizing the violen t asp ects of the normativ e
claim for self-iden tit y . The manifestation and main tenance of self-iden tit y
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and coheren t narrativ es, for her, is the main v en ue for debates ab out eth-
ical violence. When so cial and moral recognition necessitates to comply
with this demand, and b y implication exp ecting the same from others,
the v ery p ossibilit y to b e recognized for inconsistencies in one’s narrativ e,
or for rev ealing one’s opacities ab out oneself or external affairs, is pre-
cluded in principle. Moreo v er, again with recourse to Adorno, coherence
and transparency are imp ossible to enact or to liv e, due to the conflict-
ing temp oralities of norms, but also b ecause of the opacities whic h arise
from the prev ailing normativ e matrix. The normativ e discourse (whic h
for Butler consists of b oth customs and moralit y) has a differen t temp o-
ralit y than the first-p erson-p ersp ective of the sub ject. The relation and
m utual impact of these t w o temp oralities cannot b e transparen t for the
individual, a circumstance whic h immediately undermines the claim to
self-iden tit y in the con text of recognition: ‘it follo ws that one can giv e
and tak e recognition only on the condition that one b ecomes disorien ted
from oneself b y something whic h is not oneself, that one undergo es a
de-cen tering and ”fails” to ac hiev e self-iden tit y’ (Butler 2005, p.42).
If it holds true that norms can b e enacted in a v ariet y of fashions, a
sub-class of whic h can b e non-violen t enactmen ts, and if it also holds
true that norms are not essen tially violen t, but acquire this feature as
so on as their legitimacy b ecomes obfuscated, the question then is wh y
sub jects w ould aspire to act in a more non-violen t manner at all. What
are the motiv ations for not resorting to violence? In moral philosoph y ,
and moral psyc hology as w ell, there traditionally are t w o stances on this
question. The deon tological approac h w ould argue in fa v our of recipro-
cal duties and obligations to w ards others. Since ev ery h uman b eing is
furnished with the facult y of reason, and reason itself leads to the cat-
egorical imp erativ e, h uman b eings should resp ect the univ ersal la w and
act accordingly . Without going into detail here, the motiv ation for acting
64

morally correct is to b e found in the op eration of generalization. It is rea-
son that motiv ates sub jects to liv e up to their p oten tial as h uman b eings
and th us should act in accordance with the imp erativ e. Also, the cate-
gorical imp erativ e pro vides a consequen tialist test when it demands the
sub ject to c hec k the maxims of her actions in terms of their aptitude as
univ ersal la ws. Also, there is an op eration of substitution at w ork in the
Kan tian imp erativ e. In the form ulations whic h demand to treat others
alw a ys as ends and nev er as means to other ends, Kan t asks the sub ject
to constitute herself as a h uman b eing precisely b y treating herself and
others, and therefore h umanit y itself, as ends. Non-violen t b eha viour is
mandatory exactly b ecause the op eration of substitution. The general-
ization of the maxims of one’s o wn violen t actions imply that others ma y
legitimately use the same violence against oneself. This, admittedly , is a
consequen tialist reading of the categroical imp erativ e, but for the presen t
purp ose, this seems to s uffice to illustrate the p oin t.
The second approac h is the teleological accoun t of virtue ethics. Here,
the case for non-violence is not as ob vious. A t the core of this accoun t is
the presupp osition that eac h sub ject has a primordial orien tation to w ards
the ultimate go o d. The idea of the ultimate go o d has man y sources, one
of whic h is the facticit y of ev aluativ e distinctions h uman b eings mak e on
a daily basis. As Charles T a ylor has put it, eac h individual necessarily has
to ha v e a ‘map of the moral w orld’ in whic h she liv es (see (T a ylor 1989).
On this maps, lik e on an y top ological map used for na vigating terrain,
the relativ e p eaks c hart what is regarded as b etter, or of higher moral
v alue. Also, this map has the function to pro vide orien tation for the in-
dividual, so she can lo cate herself on this moral map. If it is p ossible, in
eac h situation, to tell go o d from bad, this is p ossible only b ecause of the
idea of the ultimate go o d. Here, the op eration of substitution is not nec-
essary . Since the sub ject or individual is able to mak e strong ev aluations
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in eac h situation, in tersub jectiv e substitution and consequen tialist con-
siderations are not mandatory . The motiv ation to act less violen t than
b efore has to b e deriv ed from the quest for the ultimate go o d, which
eac h individual is mean t to engage in, in order to liv e a full life. This
topic will b e discussed in depth in the next c hapter, but the p oin t here is
that in a teleological framew ork the v ery motiv ation for non-violen t b e-
ha viour is strongly link ed to the hermeneuticist primacy to making sense
of life, and b y doing so, living a life that can b e view ed as fulfilled. This
hermeneuticist motiv ation for ethical b eha viour, for living a fulfilled life
whic h is orien ted to w ards the go o d unfortunately cannot, at this stage,
inform on the issue of ho w to rethink resp onsibilit y in a w a y that Butler
en visions. This discussion will tak e place in c hapter 4.
So what is the theoretical relation of violence and ethics, or violence
and resp onsibilit y? Butler disagrees with Nietzsc he, for example, who
understo o d ethics as a cultural practice as the result of the fear of ph ys-
ical punishmen t. Em blematically , ethical violence in her accoun t is not
so m uc h a ph ysical sanction but a confirmation, or ev en a testamen t of
the inescapabilit y of ph ysical vulnerabilit y . Often, certain notions of col-
lectiv e or p ersonal iden tit y are mean t to eradicate this vulnerabilit y , and
as sho wn ab o v e, a direct reaction to suffered damage. But to b e at eac h
other’s mercy , precisely b ecause it is an inescapable condition of h uman
life, constitutes the horizon in whic h h umans can assume resp onsibil-
it y . ‘Violence is neither a just punishmen t w e suffer nor a just rev enge
for what w e suffer. It delineates a ph ysical vulnerabilit y from whic h w e
cannot slip a w a y , whic h w e cannot finally resolv e in the name of the sub-
ject, but whic h can pro vide a w a y to understand that none of us is fully
b ounded, utterly separate, but, rather, w e are in our skins, giv en o v er, in
eac h other’s hands, at eac h other’s mercy . This is a situation w e do not
c ho ose. It forms the horizon of c hoice, and it grounds our resp onsibilit y .
66

In this sense, w e are not resp onsible for it, but it creates the conditions
under whic h w e assume resp onsibilit y . W e did not create it, and therefore
it is what w e m ust heed.’ (Butler 2005, p.101).
2.7 Rethinking Resp onsibilit y
In the remainder of this c hapter, w e finally are in the p osition to lo ok at
the conceptual transition of resp onsibilit y itself, namely from its asso cia-
tion with the ideal of transparency to w ards an ac kno wledgemen t of one’s
o wn limitations and opacities. It has b ecome clear during the course of
this reconstruction that the philosophical problem of resp onsibilit y only
can emerge in a moral theory in whic h h uman existence substan tially
dep ends on successful relations with others. This immediately b ecomes
ob vious when one lo oks at the formational p erio d of the individual’s life,
a c hild only surviv es in a comm unit y of carers. In a purely individualistic
w orld, the problem of resp onsibilit y w ould b e non-existen t since, in But-
lerian terminology , this w ould mean to tak e oneself out of the ‘scene of
address’, i.e. b eing addressed or addressing the other. Humans dep end on
so cial relations b ecause of their corp orealit y and the needs whic h result
from it. Again, these needs are only satisfiable in a so cial setting.
But relationalit y and precariousness, at the same time, mo del the indi-
vidual vulnerable to harm. The relations to other h umans are necessary
for surviv al, but they onstitute the situation in whic h the other can do
harm, or h urt, or ev en kill, or in whic h the sub ject can harm, h urt, or ev en
kill others. This is where the question of non-violence en ters the discus-
sion, but also where our understanding of what it means precisely to tak e
resp onsibilit y actually means. What Butler is criticising is the ‘grandiose
notion of the transparen t “I” ’, whic h is link ed so in timately to the prev a-
len t understanding of resp onsibilit y . When h urt has b een done, and the
sub ject is addressed b y the aggriev ed p erson, taking resp onsibilit y often
67

means to mak e one’s motiv es, the con text, etc. transparen t, or at least
comprehensible for the other. But as discussed ab o v e, there are v arious
sources for a v ariet y of opacities and limitations of self-kno wledge that
imp eril the task of making oneself transparen t. F or example the primary
relations of the infan t to others is one source, but also the disorien tations
whic h arise of the opaque nature of norms themselv es. In the end, the
inescapabilit y of opacities threatens the sub ject’s capabilit y of assuming
resp onsibilit y for harmful actions. And since relations are crucial for sur-
viv al, these opacities also threaten the sub ject’s life: ‘If I am not able to
giv e an accoun t of some of m y actions, then I w ould rather die, b ecause
I cannot find m yself as the author of these actions, and I cannot explain
m yself to those m y actions ma y ha v e h urt.’ (Butler 2005, p.79).
A t its core, the seman tic shift consists in the redefinition of resp onsi-
bilit y in terms of unkno wingness. The sceptic reader could easily argue
against the inclusion of opacit y in to the moral Spr achspiel of resp onsi-
bilit y . ‘Indeed, to tak e resp onsibilit y for oneself is to a v o w the limits of
an y self-understanding, and to establish these limits not only as a con-
dition for the sub ject but as the predicamen t of the h uman comm unit y’
(ibid., p.75). She w ould argue that esp ecially when resp onsibilit y and for-
giv eness are at stak e, then transparency is of great imp ort. There is the
risk that an y p erp etrator could reference her unkno wingness ab out her
o wn motiv es ev en if she w as a w are of these in the first place. By doing
so, she w ould activ ely sub v ert the in terlo cutory episo de of resp onsibilit y
and stabilize her violen t b eha viour. Butler could reply that this ob jection
is based on a confusion ab out these opacities. The opacities she argues
for are not merely slips in the memory of the addressed p erson, but arise
from the existen tial conditions whic h mak e a h uman life p ossible in the
first place. ‘[E]thics requires us to risk ourselv es precisely at momen ts of
unkno wingness, when what forms us div erges from what lies b efore us,
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when our willingness to b ecome undone in relation to others constitutes
our c hance of b ecoming h uman. T o b e undone b y another is a primary
necessit y , an anguish, to b e sure, but also a c hance — to b e addressed,
claimed, b ound to what is not me, but also to b e mo v ed, to b e prompted
to act, to address m yself elsewhere, and so to v acate the self-sufficien t
“I” as a kind of p ossession. If we sp eak and try to giv e an accoun t from
this place, w e will not b e irresp onsible, or, if w e are, w e will surely b e
forgiv en.’ (Butler 2005, p.136). Ev en tually , Butler links the honouring of
the precarious life to a claim of lo v e, and it surely w ould b e in teresting
to trace her argumen ts in this field, since the conceptual arra y she estab-
lished, esp ecially opacit y , the limitations of self-kno wledge etc. are w ell
suited for this kind of analysis. But for the presen t purp ose, I will omit
this part delib erately .
In conclusion to this c hapter, I w an t to suggest the implication of this
ethical accoun t for the philosophical understanding of p ersonal iden tit y .
This foreshado ws the discussions of the next c hapter in whic h v arious
accoun ts of narrativ e iden tit y and its link to resp onsibilit y will b e recon-
structed. As cited ab o v e, ethics requires ‘to risk oneself ’, the goal is to
‘b ecome undone in relations to others’ and ultimately ha ving the c hance
of ‘b ecoming human’. It is imp ortan t to note that Butler deplo ys the
generic noun ‘h uman’ and not ‘iden tit y’. Often, theories of iden tit y seem
to ha v e the goal of theorizing the self-sufficien t ‘I’ whic h is sufficien tly p er-
sisten t and iden tifiable in order to tak e resp onsibilit y and b eing accoun t-
able in so cial conditions. These t yp es of accoun ts get turned upside do wn
b y Butler. Instead of lo cating the h uman condition in self-sufficiency , she
in vites us to do the opp osite, namely to v acate an y notion of a stable
iden tit y , esp ecially when it comes to in terp ersonal and so cial relations.
‘T o b e undone b y another is a primary necessit y , an anguish, to b e sure,
but also a c hance — to b e addressed, claimed, b ound to what is not me,
69

but also to b e mo v ed, to b e prompted to act, to address m yself elsewhere,
and so to v acate the self-sufficien t “I” as a kind of p ossession.’ (Butler
2005, p.136). The accoun ts of narrativ e iden tit y of the next c hapter will
ha v e to answ er the question to what exten t they allo w for the v acating
of the self-sufficien t ‘I’, or ho w they conceptualize resp onsibilit y in a w a y
that a v oids the p erp etuation of ethical violence.
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3 Na rrative Identit y and Mo ral
No rms
3.1 The App eal of Na rrative
In c hapter 1, I ha v e established the core tenets of Butler’s ethics of vulner-
abilit y . She argues that the ideal of a coheren t and transparen t I, whic h
supp osedly regulates narrativ e accoun ting in ethical in terlo cutions, can
only lead to failure. This failure is primarily of ethical nature due to her
assumption that an y giv en accoun t ab out oneself has to b e partial, and
therefore will b e ‘haun ted’ b y that for whic h one cannot devise a defi-
nite story . But instead of marking this structural partial blindness ab out
one’s o wn b ecoming and acting as ethical failure, she prop oses to regard
this blindness as a shared h uman condition and, as suc h, as the founda-
tion for giving recognition to others. Moreo v er, susp ending the demand
for narrativ e transparency , coherency , and o v erall, self-iden tit y , coun ters
ethical violence in an imp ortan t w a y . T o main tain one’s self-iden tit y and
demanding to do so from others implies and upholds violen t relation-
ships. Instead, the rejection of violen t traditions is a moral imp erativ e,
and Butler construes her ethics in an essen tially non-violen t w a y . With
regard to a p erson’s iden tit y , this equates to liquefy one’s o wn iden tit y ,
esp ecially where it participates in ethical violence.
This treatmen t of ethical violence, the instalmen t of the failure of nar-
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rativ e accoun ting as the foundation for new conceptions of recognition
and resp onsibilit y , is directly in opp osition to most philosophical accoun ts
of narrativ e iden tit y and ho w they theorize its role in ethical delib eration.
Ov er the last decades, the philosophical debates ab out the pros and cons
of narrativ e approac hes to iden tit y and ethics ha v e b een structured to
the effect that they often gra vitated around the question to what exten t
a narrativ e framew ork could cop e with the complexities of p ersonal iden-
tities, cultural con texts, and moral systems. As will b e demonstrated in
the course of this c hapter, the opp osing camps in these debates gathered
neatly around the question of ho w imp ortan t narrativ e and story-telling
actually is, in ev eryda y life and from a philosophical p ersp ectiv e. In this
sense, Butler’s prop osal is as pro v o cativ e as fertile. Although she migh t
reject most of the tenets of strict narrativists, she allo ws narrativ e to la y
bare a h uman predicamen t whic h is essen tial to giv e and receiv e recog-
nition, and to assume resp onsibility .
This particular in terpretation of ethical failure, whic h also app ears to
b e a failure of the narrativ e framew ork, sets her apart from the large
group of critics of an y narrativ e framew ork just as w ell. With the adv en t
of the narrativ e turn in the late 1960s and its impact in man y disciplines
of the h umanities, the emergence of critical stances, whic h aimed to re-
pulse the imp ortance of narrativ e esp ecially for philosophical reasoning,
can b e no surprise.
After ha ving solely fo cussed on the reconstruction of Butler’s ethics
of vulnerabilit y in c hapter 1, it is the purp ose of this c hapter to situate
Butler’s accoun t within the broader field of narrativ e accoun ts of p ersonal
iden tit y and normativ e framew orks. Whereas she dev elops her ethical
accoun t against certain core tenets of narrativ e theories, she omits to
discuss an y sp ecific narrativ e accoun t, nor do es she reference an y accoun t
in whic h the ideal of the transparen t I is put forw ard. This clearly is
72

detrimen tal to the plausibilit y of her o wn theory , since it could turn out
that she has not tak en notice of some essen tial dev elopmen ts within the
field of narrativ e iden tit y and ethics, or that she tilts against narrativ e
windmills, as it w ere.
The question, then, is whic h accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y I will use to
con textualize and con trast Butler’s accoun t. The desired accoun t should
meet some requiremen ts, i.e. it should b e capable of answ ering a set of
questions. First, concerning the narrativ e approac h in a narro w er sense, it
should pro vide a concise y et comprehensiv e definition of narrativ e itself.
Up to this p oin t, and only based on the remarks of Butler’s, it largely
remains obscure what narrativ e actually is. As a practice, it certainly is
norm-go v erned, but this do es not say m uc h. Narrativ e might also address
the structure of stories, and the in terlo cutory scene etc. Only with a
ric h definition and understanding of narrativ e w e will b e able to assess
Butler’s problems with it, and if her accoun t is promising. Second, it
should mak e clear ho w p ersonal iden tit y dep ends on, or is constituted by
and through narrativ e. As outlined ab o v e, Butler p ositions herself in a
F oucauldian tradition of though t when it comes to b ecoming a sub ject. A
theory of narrativ e iden tit y should b e compatible with this genealogical
understanding. Third, what is the role of norms and rules in narrativ e
accoun ts of iden tit y? In whic h w a y are ev aluations part of stories, and
are there sp ecific narrativ e v ersions of resp onsibilit y and recognition to
b e found? Only after a comprehensiv e accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y will
b e at hand, it will b e p ossible to address the set of issues raised b y Butler
explicitly . Among these, the question of opacit y figures prominen tly , but
also what role em b o dimen t and vulnerabilit y ma y pla y in a narrativ e
theory .
With this demanding set of requiremen ts, some recen t con tributions on
narrativ e iden tit y can get ruled out immediately . This is due to sp ecific
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differences regarding the framew orks and particular the questions whic h
philosophers ha v e elab orated on. There are v arious w a ys to address these
differences. Narrativists, according to P eter Goldie, hold one ore more
views ab out the role of narrativ e in a p erson’s life: ‘Our liv es are, in
some sense, liv ed narrativ es of whic h w e are the authors. Our liv es are
someho w only comprehensible through a narrativ e explanatory structure.
Our liv es b ear close similarities to (or are ev en fundamen tally the same
as) the liv es of c haracters in literature. Our ha ving the righ t kind of
narrativ e of our liv es is, in some sense, in tegral to or constitutiv e of our
b eing the p ersons that w e are. Our v ery surviv al dep ends on our ha ving
suc h a narrativ e.’ (Goldie 2012, p.1).
Not all philosophers subscrib e to eac h and ev ery claim of this list,
whereas others w ould ev en add more claims to it, as it will b e sho wn
b elo w. Goldie himself w an ts just to ‘find the righ t place for narrativ e in
our liv es’, and it is of no surprise that he p osition himself somewhere
in-b et w een the camp of the so called ‘strong narrativists’ and the group
of critics, who den y the imp ortance of narrativ e to v arious degrees. Con-
ceptually , Goldie mak es this in termediary p osition comprehensible b y
sp eaking of a ‘narrativ e sense of oneself ’, rather than promoting the
claim that p ersons, or selv es, are constituted b y and through narrativ e.
He observ es that this narrativ e sense of oneself has to b e articulated from
the first p erson p ersp ectiv e, that it enables self-reflexiv e questioning, that
it can or cannot lead to the individual’s iden tification with past actions,
and that the narrativ e sense is essen tial to a non-presumptuous notion
of coherence, that organizes one’s exp eriences in terms of temp oralit y
and qualit y . This p ositioning has substan tial conceptual ramifications re-
garding the definition of narrativ e itself, but also for the applicabilit y of
these accoun ts on the questions Butler has p osed. Despite its elegance
and plausibilit y , Goldie’s accoun t seems to b e confined to an individu-
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alistic reading of narrativ e, o ddly neglecting the relational dimension of
in terlo cution and b eing in the w orld.
Another narrativ e accoun t of the self has b een devised b y Mary a
Sc hec h tman. Her b o ok The Constitution of Selves has b een discussed
widely , esp ecially since she tac kles the analytical approac h to p ersonho o d,
whic h, in reference to Hume, dev otes itself to the question of psyc holog-
ical con tin uit y and the iden tit y-criteria for ob jects o v er time, of whic h
p ersons merely constitute a sub-class. The reason wh y Sc hec h tman turns
to narrativ e is founded in this critical purp ose. F or her, p ersonho o d is
not only ab out consciousness, but ab out the v ery w a ys p ersons organize
their exp eriences. Individuals substan tially constitute themselv es as p er-
sons b y coming to think of themselv es as p ersisten t ob jects who ha v e,
ha v e had, and will ha v e said exp eriences. Consequen tly , ‘... a p erson’s
iden tit y is constituted b y the con ten t of her self-narrativ e, and the traits,
actions, and exp eriences included in it are, b y virtue of that conclusion,
hers.’ (Sc hec h tman 1996, p.94). By expanding the notion of p ersonho o d
b y narrativ e organization of exp eriences in this w a y , the ultimate goal
of the narrativ e self-constitution view is to capture the in tuitiv e relation
b et w een p ersonal iden tit y and what Sc hec h tman calls the ‘four features’.
According to these, p eople are a) in terested in their o wn surviv al and fu-
ture, b) are moral agen ts who ma y assume resp onsibilit y , c) they displa y
self-in terested concern and d) en ter in to relations of comp ensation.
Narrativ e, in this view, is mainly an organizing principle for exp eri-
ences. When questioned ho w this principle ma y come in to existence, and
according to whic h norms and criteria it selects and organizes exp eri-
ences, Sc hec h tman’s argumen tation b ecomes sligh tly ev asiv e. She com-
plemen ts her notion of narrativ e with t w o constrain ts, namely the articu-
lation constrain t and the realit y constrain t. The former allo ws for narra-
tiv es that remain implicit or non-articulated, alb eit they m ust not remain
75

completely ‘subterranean’. They should b e p ossible to b e articulated lo-
cally , this means ‘...that the narrator should b e able to explain wh y he
do es what he do es, b eliev es what he b eliev es, and feels what he feels.’
Here, it b ecomes ob vious that Sc hec h tman dra ws up on hermeneuticist
accoun ts of narrativ e iden tit y , which similarly underscore the reflexiv e
v alue of narrativ e. Also, b eing able to articulate one’s narrativ e endo ws
in telligibilit y to past actions and in terpretations. T o accoun t for one’s ac-
tions and exp eriences precisely means to sho w to others ho w one is part
of an in telligible life story with a ‘comprehensible and w ell-dra wn sub-
ject as a protagonist’ (Sc hec h tman 1996, p.115). Here, her subscription
to what Butler has coined the ‘ideal of transparency’ b ecomes ob vious.
The second restriction for life narrativ es is the so-called realit y-con-
strain t. There has to b e a ‘[f ]undamen tal agreemen t on the most basic
features of realit y [that] is required for the kinds of in teractions that tak e
place b et w een p ersons to b e p ossible’ (ibid., p.94). This is quite self-
explanatory , but it gets more in teresting when it comes to errors with
regard to realit y . F or Sc hec h tman, there are t w o kinds of errors. First,
there are errors of fact. When a self-narrativ e con tains clearly inacurate
views of the w orld, if it fails to appreciate ob vious and observ able facts,
the narrativ e is fla w ed. It is remark able that Sc hec h tman in tro duces a
constrain t that is link ed so in timately to the problematic notion of re-
alit y . On a common sense basis, of course it is clear to ev eryb o dy what
realit y actually is. Gra vit y p oin ts do wn w ards, rain w ets streets etc. But
she completely lac ks the critical sense that is required to elev ate this con-
strain t ab o v e the lev el of common sense. Instead, she allo ws for factual
errors as long as the narrativ e coheres with the ‘basic con tours of realit y’.
Here it w ould ha v e b een helpful if she had discussed cases in whic h these
basic con tours are con tested.
The second kind of errors are errors of in terpretation. Sc hec h tman
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immediately admits that the demarcation b et w een the t w o kinds of errors
is far from precise, but main tains that errors of in terpretation can lead to
the complete dev aluation of one’s life-narrativ e. She presen ts a couple of
examples from psyc hology , where p ersons fail to in terpret their abilities,
p o w ers, or so cial status, but the whole p oin t seems to fall flat since, from
a hermeneutical p ersp ectiv e, the difficult y to mak e sense is the starting
p oin t of in terpretation itself, so errors are needed in order to engage
pro ductiv ely in the practice of in terpretation.
Sc hec h tman’s narrativ e self-constitution view, more than Goldie’s, puts
emphasis on the so cial dimensions of p ersonho o d. ‘The v ery concept of
p ersonho o d in v olv es a so cial dimension – to b e a p erson is to b e able to
engage with others in particular w a ys.’ (Sc hec h tman 1996, p.113). This
engagemen t with others means that so cialit y in general requires that p er-
sons can reiden tify eac h other. With regard to the four features, it is easy
to see that they all are link ed to the so cial in teraction of reiden titifica-
tion. But there is more to b e found on the link b et w een self-narrativ es
and so cialit y , and it is here where Sc hec h tman’s accoun t disqualifies as
an accoun t with whic h Butler’s scepticism ab out narrativ e accoun ting
could b e impro v ed. So what happ ens exactly when p ersons assess eac h
other’s narrativ e accoun ts? According to Sc hec h tman, they share exp ec-
tations ab out the in telligibilit y of narrations, and therefore lo ok for the
linearit y of the story recoun ted. An y self-conception has to b e sufficien tly
similar to traditional linear narrativ es of p ersonho o d, to what she calls
‘standard narrativ es of mainstream culture’ (ibid., p.102). This view can
easily lead to a set of problems. If iden tit y and the in telligibilit y of one’s
actions dep end on a linear and coheren t narrativ e, but also on tradi-
tions and w orld-views of a so ciet y , the accepted narrativ es migh t merely
represen t the w orld-view of a dominan t group. Sc hec h tman is at least
a w are of this problem, but the rationalizations she offers are far from
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plausible. She admits that devian t life-narrativ es should b e accoun ted
for, but only if they are part of a family of mostly o v erlapping narrativ e
forms and practices. On tologically , alien narrativ e cultures ma y exist in
an y giv en so ciet y , but if narrativ es deviate substan tially from the stan-
dard narrativ es of mainstream culture, the narrativ es cease to constitute
an in telligible iden tit y and therefore are detrimen tal in p erforming the
four features. Besides that, Sc hec h tman neglects the corp oreal asp ects
of h uman existence, a circumstance that forestalls an in-depth discus-
sion of relationalit y and corp oreal precariousness. It is the lac k of critical
consciousness what mak es it difficult to discuss Sc hec h tman an Butler
together.
Let’s turn, then, to the so called strong narrativist theories, and let
me outline wh y they app ear to b e suitable for the presen t purp ose. One
author who also has turned to the w orks of P aul Rico eur is Kim A tkins.
F or her, a narrative approac h to p ersonal iden tit y , ethics, and the com-
plexities of b eing an agen t is sup erior to psyc hological accoun ts of p er-
sonho o d in the tradition of Hume. The narrativ e approac h, in her opin-
ion, gains its sup eriorit y for man y reasons. Esp ecially if one is in terested
in the ethical implications of p ersonho o d, it is crucial to ‘preserv e the
first-p erson-p ersp ectiv e’ (Atkins 2004, p.341), whic h, with regard to the
ethical or practical p ersp ectiv e, she considers essen tial. Narrativ e itself
is, in reference to Aristotle, an imitation of acts and liv e, and b ecause of
this imitating relationship is capable of the in tegration of suc h div erse
en tities suc h as c haracters, actors, motiv es, places, ev en ts, p ersp ectiv es,
and ev en differen t orders of time (A tkins 2008, p.4). A tkins notes that
in this sense narrativ e ‘shares with action a common seman tic net w ork’
and links together the ‘who?’, ‘what?’, ‘ho w?’, ‘wh y?’, ‘when?’, and ‘with
whom?’, of action. But this constitutes merely half of what is necessary
to main tain the first-p erson-p ersp ective. Narrating agen ts ma y giv e an-
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sw ers to all of these asp ects of a giv en action. But this seman tic w eb itself
has its basis in h uman em b o dimen t, or resp ectiv ely in the liv ed b o dy .
Quite similar to Butler, A tkins w an ts to emphasise the relational as-
p ects of h uman existence that arise from the condition of the liv ed b o dy .
Accordingly , the en tanglemen t with others is not merely external, but
o v er time, essen tially in ternal. It is in ternal b ecause h uman b eings come
in to b eing literally through the b o dies of others, and, just lik e Butler has
p oin ted out, eac h h uman b eing’s surviv al dep ends up on the most in timate
h uman in teractions. These in teractions and relations will ha v e a lasting
impact on the individual’s life. The question here is, if these early forma-
tiv e relations can b e retriev ed b y an y means, or if they necessarily will
remain opaque. Differen t from Butler, A tkins has a rather non-critical
assessmen t of these early relations. The early exp eriences with others set
up psyc hological, affectiv e, ph ysical, agen tial, and moral structures, that
tie h uman b eings for their en tire liv es to those they dep ended on. It is
b ecause of that, that questions ab out who one is need to b e addressed
in the con text of an in terp ersonal, cultural, and historical setting. Here,
A tkins do es not displa y the concerns of Butler’s, who is sceptical ab out
the retriev abilit y of these early relations. W e will ha v e to p ostp one the
discussion of this topic.
So ho w do es a narrativ e framew ork establish the links b et w een p ersons,
their resp ectiv e iden tit y (or iden tities), and ethics in A tkins’ accoun t?
Who a p erson is ‘is the named sub ject of a practical and conceptual
complex of first, second and third-p erson p ersp ectiv es whic h structure
and unify a life grasp ed as it is liv ed.’ (Atkins 2004, p.347). This defini-
tion is rather bulky , but it is w orth to b e analyses further. The ‘practical
and conceptual complex’ denotes a wide v ariet y of c haracteristics and
practices whic h can b e attributed to the individual. Among these are the
sp ecific date and place of birth, particular ph ysical traits, w eaknesses and
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abilities, but also the qualitativ e w a y ho w she acted and suffered. Also,
A tkins includes successful or denied recognition and so cial status. Here,
the need for a hermeneutical framew ork b ecomes apparen t. If a p erson,
and her iden tit y , is constituted b y suc h a v ariet y of c haracteristics, and
this constitution tak es place b y means of conceptualizations and in ter-
lo cution, then this pro cess of constitution can only b e understo o d b y
means of p erp etual in terpretation. Or to put it in other w ords: Under-
standing a p erson requires the pro cess of making sense of the ric hness of
c haracteristics and practices of a p erson’s life.
But there is a second asp ect of this hermeneutic engagemen t, that
will ha v e to b e discussed not only here, but whic h is a guiding thread
throughout this whole thesis: The coherence or unit y of a life as a neces-
sary requiremen t for determining and understanding a p erson’s iden tit y .
A tkins is explicit on this topic: ‘Understanding who a p erson is, then,
requires coherence and con tin uit y in the psyc hological, ph ysical, so cial,
cultural and historical asp ects of a p erson’s life’ (A tkins 2004, p.346).
No w, this coherence supp osedly is crucial on t w o planes. First, it has to
b e grasp ed and endorsed in the first-p erson-p ersp ectiv e, the individual
has to understand herself as the sub ject of a certain liv e. But since re-
lations with others are imp ortan t for b oth surviv al and recognition, this
coherence has to b e graspable b y others as w ell. This is where the second-
and third-p erson-p ersp ectiv e b ecome relev an t.
Again, making sense of m yself and others requires a narrativ e and
reflexiv e engagemen t with oneself and others, and only narrativ e sup-
p osedly can pro vide the unit y and coherence whic h are required to b e
in telligible. In this sense, narrativ e coherence is an essen tial asp ect of
the individual’s answ er to the question ‘Who am I?’, resp ectiv ely ‘Who
are y ou?’. But it is also essen tial to the ethical dimension of living a
liv e among others, or to the question ‘Wh y ha v e y ou done this?’. This
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is a question for the reasons whic h ma y or ma y not ha v e motiv ated an
ethically problematic deed. F or a reason to ha v e normativ e w eigh t, ‘that
reason m ust in v olv e the mobilisation, co ordination and direction of a
whole net w ork of p erceptions, b eliefs, though ts and feelings; it m ust mo-
bilise a seman tic w eb of action.’ (A tkins 2004, p.362). And, of course, it
has to b e a narrativ e iden tit y through whic h it is p ossible to determine,
or ‘iden tify’ the relationships, roles, and capacities that giv es direction to
a life. A tkins links this narrativ e accoun t of p ersonal iden tit y to the con-
cept of autonom y as it is presen t in the Kan tian philosoph y of Christine
Ko orsgard. But this topic has to b e p ostp oned to the last c hapter.
As men tioned ab o v e, A tkins builds up on the philosoph y of P aul Ri-
co eur’s, and it is his accoun t that will b e discussed in depth hereafter.
What is left to note is that A tkins considers narrativ e failure, i.e. the
failure to establish coherence of one’s life, as a threat to her strong claim
for narrativ e iden tit y . She ob viously kno ws ab out the p ossibilit y of narra-
tiv e failure when she differen tiates ph ysiological, psyc hological and so cial
pathologies, all of whic h ‘in terfere with the afflicted p erson’s when it
comes to form an in tegrated and p ositiv e self-conception.’ (ibid., p.347).
Unfortunately , she merely men tions these pathologies and p oin ts out that
there are w ell-kno wn ‘dangers of delusional men tal states’, but she ne-
glects to in tegrate these critically and pro ductiv ely in to her accoun t of
narrativ e iden tit y . By doing so, she implicitly imp oses a notion normal-
it y on to her o wn conception, since only the non-pathological individuals
seem to b e capable of establishing the morally mandatory coherence of
life. I will return to this line of though t later on when I discuss the one
particular criticism of narrativ e iden tit y , namely the threat of the imp osi-
tion of a generic form of life via narrativ es whic h is liv ed and main tained
b y dominan t groups within a certain comm unit y .
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3.2 Na rrative, Agency , and Cha racter
A tkins has referenced t w o features of Rico eur’s w orks on narrativ e iden-
tit y that she not only considers crucial, but that she sees sp elt out esp e-
cially w ell in his w orks. First, there is the asp ect of narrativ e coherence.
As this concept is essen tial to link and understand questions of p ersonal
iden tit y to normativ e issues suc h as resp onsibility , recognition, and au-
tonom y , it will b e vital to lo ok closely at ho w exactly Rico eur establishes
the concept of narrativ e coherence and unit y in his accoun t, and what
role it assumes in his ethical considerations. Secondly , she highligh ts the
requiremen t of narrativ e unit y . Supp osedly , only narrativ e is capable of
the unification of the three p ersp ectiv es of the first-, second-, and third-
p erson.
If A tkins is righ t in her ev aluation of Rico eur’s accoun t of narrativ e
iden tit y , esp ecially ab out its capabilit y to inform disputes in moral philo-
soph y , will ha v e to b e discussed later on. A tkins herself p ositions herself
in alignmen t with Christine Korsgaard’s accoun t of practical iden tit y ,
whic h is tigh tly link ed, or ev en emerges from the individual’s reflectiv e
capacities found in Kan t and therefore references mainly the first p erson
and a p erson’s will. But for no w, w e will engage with Rico eur and his
elab orate tak e on narrativ e iden tit y . There are v arious approac hes to
this complex theory , but I consider it most suitable to b egin with his
definition of narr ative identity head-on. ‘The p erson, understo o d as a
c haracter in a story , is not an en tit y distinct from his or her “exp eriences”.
Quite the opp osite: the p erson shares the condition of dynamic iden tit y
p eculiar to the story recoun ted. The narrativ e constructs the iden tity
of the c haracter, what can b e called his or her narrativ e iden tit y , in
constructing that of the story told. It is the iden tit y of the story that
mak es the iden tit y of the c haracter.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.147).
In this quote, sev eral crucial features of Rico eur’s narrativ e approac h to
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p ersonal iden tit y b ecome apparen t. The relation b et w een a p erson and
the c haracter of a story , prima facie supp osedly is one of understand-
ing and in terpretation. The rationale b ehind this assumption is that all
kno wledge of the self is in terpretation, and this in terpretation of the self
finds narrativ e, among other signs and sym b ols, to b e a privileged medi-
ation. (Rico eur 1991, p.188). This holds ev en more so since Rico eur has
engaged himself in depth with narrativ es in history , i.e. historiograph y ,
and fiction. Therefore, it is no surprise that he regards a liv e-story as ‘a
fictiv e history or [...] an historical fiction’ (ibid., p.188). This allo cation
of iden tit y-constructing narrativ e in close pro ximit y to historiographical
and fictiv e story-telling is t ypical for hermeneuticist p ersp ectiv es on that
sub ject. F or example, it also structures Charles T aylor’s study on the
Sour c es of the Self , and assumes a cen tral role in Ha yden White’s anal-
ysis of the v alue of narrativ e in the represen tation of realit y . White con-
cludes his analysis of v arious historiographical metho dologies and their
resp ectiv e relationship with narrativ e with the observ ation that ev en the
most ob jectiv e and realistic metho dological framew orks turn to narra-
tiv e in their ‘...desire to ha v e real ev en ts displa y the coherence, in tegrit y ,
fullness, and closure of an image of life that is and can only b e imag-
inary .’ (White 1980, p.24). Most hermeneuticist think ers agree on the
p oin t that a p erson’s iden tit y is a text-analogue in dire need of p erma-
nen t in terpretation. Narrativ e, understo o d as a formativ e heuristic whic h
helps to organize exp eriences along a plot whic h endo ws the sequence of
ev en ts and exp eriences with the (imaginary) features suc h as coherence
and closure, seems to meet the h uman’s need for self-understanding and
in terlo cution.
The definition, secondly , establishes an irritating link b etw een a p er-
son and narrativ e iden tit y . Exactly ho w the iden tit y of a story ‘mak es’
the iden tit y of the c haracter has to b e analysed hereafter. Also, the du-
83

plication of the p erson as a character is far from in tuitiv e. Certainly , it
is common sense that the c haracters in stories are agen ts, therefore are
the ones who do things, and who ma y or ma y not relate to eac h other.
But unless the transition from p erson to c haracter has b een clarified, it
remains questionable under whic h conditions it is viable to equate real-
life-p ersons with ch aracters in stories.
As a further signifier of his hermeneuticist stance, it is of crucial imp ort
for Rico eur that the op ening question ab out p ersonal iden tit y is and
remains ‘who?’, instead of ‘what?’ or ‘wh y?’. There are four dimensions
of selfho o d in whic h the priorit y of the who has to hold, namely the
linguistic, the practical, the narrativ e, and the ethical dimension. On the
linguistic plane, one has to ask of whom do es one sp eak in designating
p ersons, as distinct from things. Who designates herself as the sp eak er in
an in terlo cution? On the pragmatic plane, the resp ectiv e question is who
is the agen t of action? In terms of narrativ e, this ascription of agency is
extended to the broader concept of the acting and suffering individual.
Here, the question is who (no w understo o d as a c haracter in a story) is
suffering from what? Lastly , the ethical plane, whic h in tricately is link ed
with the goal of living a go o d life with and for others in just institutions,
has at its cen ter questions lik e ‘Who is the sub ject of autonom y?’, whic h
Rico eur will answer in a w a y that is tigh tly b ound up with solicitude
for one’s neigh b our and with justice for eac h individual. A t this stage, it
b ecomes apparen t that in this particular accoun t a philosophical theory
of action assumes the role of a propaedeutic to the question of iden tit y
and its implications with ethics.
With regard to Rico eur’s ethics, it is helpful to notice that he do es not
understand his w ork to culminate in an y form of narr ative ethics in the
sense that a narrativ e approac h to ethics w ould necessarily indicate a cer-
tain moral framew ork or theory . This not only differen tiates his w ork on
84

narrativ e iden tit y from philosophers lik e T a ylor or MacIn t yre, who explic-
itly adv o cate a teleological and therefore Aristotelian approac h to ethics,
i.e. v alue-ethics. Nonetheless Rico eur indeed do es argue in fa v our of the
primacy of Aristotelian teleological ethics o v er Kan tian deon tic moral
philosoph y . But his core ethical form ula reads that the ethical in ten tion
of h umans is ‘aiming at the “go o d life” with and for others in just insti-
tutions’ (Rico eur 1994, p.172) and seemingly aims to incorp orate b oth
ethical traditions and a Hegelian relationalit y and in tersub jectivit y in to
an inclusiv e hierarc h y of ev aluative prin ciples. This issue will b e discussed
in the last c hapter b y reference to the argumen ts of Dieter Thom¨ a, who
has put forw ard an in triguing set of argumen ts against the usurpation of
narrativit y b y the deon tological or the teleological camp (Thom¨ a 2007).
This supp osed equi-distance of narrativit y from ethical theories also has
its foundation in the mediating functions of narrativ e b et w een in terlo cu-
tory mo des of description on the one side and the realm of norms on the
other side. It is Rico eur’s professed goal to in v estigate and clarify what
he calls the ‘triad’ of description - narr ative - pr escription . T o b e more
precisely , narrative theory , for him, finds its justification as the middle
ground b et w een the descriptiv e viewp oin t on actions on the one side,
and the prescriptiv e viewp oin t on the other. In order to b e that middle
ground, narrativ e theory will ha v e to b e suitableto cop e with, and p ossi-
bly o v ercome, certain conceptual confusions ab out iden tit y in ethics and
moral philosoph y . Moreo v er, narrativ e theory only can b e the mediator
b et w een description and ethics if its practical field is greater than the
seman tics and pragmatics of action of the on hand, and that the actions
recoun ted in a narration an ticipate ethical considerations structurally ,
i.e. they are implied in the v ery structure of the act of narrating. But
b efore w e can delv e in to the ethical and moral implications, w e ha v e to
85

reconstruct Rico eur’s understanding of the problems of p ersonal iden tit y ,
and his ric h concept of ‘narrativ e theory’.
3.3 Tw o Problems with Identit y
Rico eur’s philosoph y of narrativ e iden tit y tak es it start with the analysis
of the conceptual am biguit y of the notion of iden tit y itself. With regard
to the iden tit y of a h uman b eing, there are t w o p ossible meanings of iden-
tit y , namely iden tit y as sameness, and iden tit y as selfho o d. The former
he has lab elled idem -iden tit y and the later ipse -iden tit y . It is Rico eur’s
h yp othesis that man y of the problems with p ersonal iden tit y arise from
the failure to distinguish these t w o seman tic domains of iden tit y . This
conceptual obfuscation dra ws up on the fact that idem - and ipse -iden tit y
b oth relate to an en tit y’s p ermanence o v er time. Let us lo ok at ho w
exactly p ermanence in time is topical here, and in what regards b oth
v ersions of iden tit y differ from eac h other.
Idem -iden tit y defines iden tit y as p ermanence o v er time in the sense of
sameness. Sameness is a concept of relations and relations of relations.
One w a y to understand sameness is as n umerical iden tit y . If an en tit y o c-
curs at t w o differen t times it ma y p ossible to reiden tify the en tit y whic h
o ccurred at t 1 with an en tit y that o ccurs at t 2 . This op eration of re-
iden tification is ab out oneness, and its an ton ym w ould b e pluralit y . In
addition to this quan titativ e reading of n umerical iden tit y , it is p ossible
to conceptualize it in terms of qualit y . Here, the issue at hand is similar-
it y . T o establish iden tit y along the lines of similarit y means to iden tify to
en tities with eac h other that are so similar that they could b e substituted
without seman tic loss. This sense of iden tit y has its opp osite in differ-
ence. It is apparen t that n umerical iden tit y only can b e attested once
it is p ossible to devise a criterion for this iden tit y . T o a certain degree,
similitude can b e established as a criterion for n umerical iden tit y , but this
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w ould only transfer the need for a criterion in to this seman tic field. Both,
the op erations of reidentification and similitude b ecome w eak er as more
time has passed since the first o ccurrence. Also, it remains obscure ho w
exactly p ermanence o v er time is explained without p ositing an y essence
or substratum that could facilitate criteria for p ermanence o v er time.
Thirdly , there is another criterion for n umerical iden tit y , and that is un-
in terrupted con tin uit y . This, in turn, feeds in to the second criterion of
similitude, since it demands that in order to establish the unin terrupted
con tin uit y , one has to divide the temp oral existence of an en tit y in to a
series of small c hanges that, in ordered pairs, do not break the relation of
similitude. Again, Rico eur maintains the categorical difference b et w een
‘what?’ and ‘who?’. But for b oth it is true that this analysis of p erma-
nence in time as n umerical iden tit y establishes a cen tral demand for an y
theory of narrativ e iden tit y . ‘The en tire problematic of p ersonal iden tit y
will resolv e around this searc h for a relational in v ariant, giving it the
strong signification of p ermanence in time’ (Rico eur 1994, p.118).
When it comes to selfho o d, or ipse -iden tit y , it is crucial to find a form
of p ermanence in time that is an answ er to the who-question. Rico eur
differen tiates t w o mo dels of p ermanence in time that are at hand from
so cial in teractions, t w o mo dels that at the same time are descriptiv e and
em blematic: char acter and ke eping one’s wor d . In b oth mo dels there is
a presupp osition of p ermanence in time that are said to b elong to the
p erson sp eaking. Imp ortan tly , there is a qualitativ e difference in these
mo dels of p ermanence. Whereas in the term ‘c haracter’ there is an al-
most complete o v erlapping of idem and ipse , faithfulness marks an ex-
treme gap b et w een the p ermanence of the self and that of the same. This
p olarit y ‘...suggests an in terv en tion of narrativ e iden tit y in the concep-
tual constitution of p ersonal identit y in the manner of a sp ecific mediator
b et w een the p ole of c haracter, where idem and ipse tend to coincide, and
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the p ole of self-maintenance, where selfho o d frees itself from sameness’
(Rico eur 1994, p.118). In other w ords, idem -iden tit y is a sort of iden tit y
that nev er c hanges o v er time, whereas ipse -iden tit y is a form of iden-
tit y that endures c hange o v er time. So b efore w e can reconstruct ho w
narrativ e iden tit y in terv enes in the constitution of selfho o d, and ho w it
connects with ethics, w e ha v e to lo ok at the underlying theory of action
in Rico eur’s theoretical framework of narrativ e iden tit y .
A t the cen ter of Rico eur’s theory of action resides the op eration of
ascription. As stated b efore, it is helpful to inquire in to a theory of ac-
tion precisely b ecause it remains unclear up to this p oin t ho w it can b e
conceiv ed that p ersons and selv es are c haracters in a story told. Or in
other w ords, the transition from What has happ ene d? to Who has done
it? needs further elab oration. T o b egin with, ev en the question What is
he doing? is rather difficult to answ er. Alasdair MacIn t yre uses the ex-
ample of a man standing in the garden of his house, ob viously w earing
the prop er attire for gardening. This observ ation of this b eha viour can
lead to v ery differen t answ ers to the question what this p erson is doing.
It could b e, that she aims to prepare the garden for the win ter. But it
could also b e true that this p erson w an ts to use the gardening to w ork
out, b ecause someone might ha v e told her that w orking out impro v es
the general health. Or the p erson w an ts to please her partner etc. The
logical space of p ossible answ ers to the question what is happ ening in
that garden cannot b e answ ered without shifting from the What? to the
Who? . Although philosopher ha v e attempted to establish an ‘agen tless’
seman tics of action, Rico eur utilizes some observ ations of P .F. Stra wson’s
to exp ose the imp ortance of an agen t. Stra wson insisted on the relev ance
of a particular linguistic op eration, namely ‘attribution’. F ollo wing the
question what differen tiates p ersons and b o dies in the con text of actions,
Stra wson distinguishes three suc h attributions. Firstly , p ersons are what
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he calls particulars, and an attribution of a predicate is made either in
resp ect of b o dies or p ersons, although the attribution of certain predi-
cates to p ersons cannot b e translated in terms of attribution to b o dies.
Secondly , it is p ossible to attribute ph ysical and psyc hological predicates
to p ersons. Thirdly , men tal attributes, suc h as motiv es and in ten tions,
‘are directly attributable ’ to oneself and someone else. Rico eur condenses
these three asp ects in to what he calls ascription , a term that he con-
siders to designate the critical p oin t of the transition from the domain
of What? -questions to the domain of Who? -questions.
It w ould b e premature to assume that b ecause of the on tological and
linguistic considerations of Stra wson’s or Rico eur’s, the concept of p erson
and agen t w ould ha v e b een established prop erly . In fact, the op eration of
ascription is on of the cen tral p oin ts of this whole en terprise. Ev en if it is
tak en for gran ted that p ersons are particulars in Stra wson’s sense it is not
clear exactly ho w the transition from What has happ ene d? to Who has
done it? takes place. Certainly , in order to iden tifying an action needs
to start with a collection of observ able b eha viour and the mov emen t of
ob jects. All of these constituen ts can b e assigned a place and a time. But
for actions to b e understo o d, it is necessary to iden tify the agent as w ell,
b y w a y of the op eration of ascription. This means that w e need to iden tify
the agen t, and her motiv es. Rico eur observ es that whereas getting hold
of the agen t often is quite easy , whereas the iden tification of her motiv es
is an op eration that is prone to in terpretation, and therefore virtually
in terminable: ‘On the one hand, searc hing for the author is a terminable
in v estigation whic h stops with the designation of the agen t, usually b y
citing his or her name: ”Who did that? So and so.” On the other hand,
searc hing for the motiv es of an action is an in terminable in v estigation,
the c hain of motiv ations losing itself in the unfathomable haze of in ternal
and external influences...’ (Rico eur 1994, p.95).
89

It is precisely b ecause of this unfathomable haze of in ternal and ex-
ternal influences that con tributes strongly to the turn to narrativ e, since
only narrativ e is supp osed to enable to in tegrate all of the con textual
asp ects that a relev an t to understand the motiv es of an agen t. But what
is topical here still is the question exactly ho w the iden tit y of a p erson
is mean t to b e constituted b y a story in whic h she figures as a c harac-
ter, as quoted ab o v e. W e ha v e seen ho w a p erson is the en tit y to whic h
men tal states and motiv es can b e attributed or ascrib ed. But this only
in tro duces the concept of p erson in to the philosophical theory of action.
Additionally , the op eration of ascription allo ws for the transition from
the p erson to the agen t of a giv en action. Still, it has y et to b e clarified
exactly ho w Rico eur establishes the iden tification of ‘p erson’ and ‘c har-
acter’. In order to reconstruct this transition, it is essen tial to lo ok at
Rico eur’s theory of narrative and story-telling.
3.4 A Theo ry of Na rrative
Up to this p oin t, the theory and concept of narrativ e in Rico eur’s phi-
losoph y has to satisfy manifold exp ectations. It is mean t to constitute a
p erson’s iden tit y while in tegrating the t w o v arian ts of iden tit y , namely
ipse - and idem -iden tit y; it supp osedly constitutes a heuristic framew ork
to understand actions as sequences of ev en ts that are situated in mean-
ingful con texts; and since there is no suc h thing as an ethically neutral
narrativ e, it con tains a plethora of ev aluativ e distinctions on v arious lev-
els, suc h as the ethical, the moral, and the in terlo cutory . Before it is
p ossible to assess its capabilities against the bac kground of all of these
philosophical topics, it is no w imp erativ e to reconstruct Rico eur’s theory
of narrativ e to its full exten t.
Rico eur approac hes the topic of narrativ e from pragmatics. Pragmat-
ics, for him, is a transcenden tal p ersp ectiv e to the exten t that it explores
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the conditions that go v ern the use of language and esp ecially the con tex-
tualit y of this use. Of course, there are man y , if not an infinite num b er of
con texts that migh t matter here, but righ t no w the fo cus is on those con-
texts that connect with the philosophical in terests sk etc hed out ab o v e.
This also connects to the hermeneuticist framew ork of Rico eur’s inas-
m uc h understanding language in general, and stories in particular, is a
reflexiv e endea v our. It requires not only to trace links to the relev an t
con texts of an utterance, but also to rev erse the p ersp ectiv e and tak e
a lo ok at the understanding p erson’s o wn in v olv emen t with the v arious
con texts. Pragmatics, therefore, is ‘...a theory of language as it is used
in sp ecific con texts of in terlo cution. This shift of approac h should not,
ho w ev er, lead us to abandon the transcenden tal viewp oin t: pragmatics is
in tended to undertak e not an empirical description of acts of comm uni-
cation but an in v estigation in to the conditions that go v ern language use
in all those cases in whic h the reference attac hed to certain expressions
cannot b e determined without knowle dge of the con text of their use, in
other w ords, the situation of in terlo cution.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.40).
In order to main tain this pragmatic p ersp ectiv e on language, Rico eur
hea vily builds on the sp eec h act theory as it has b een devised b y J.L.
Austin and later on, John Searle. A t the cen tre of the sp eec h act theory is
the linguistic utterance. But in difference to the ‘sen tence’ as the cen tral
concept in analytical philosoph y of language, the utterance is not merely
a v ehicle to comm unicate an y prop ositional con ten t. It puts emphasis on
the in tersub jectiv e, or to b e more precise, the in terlo cutory asp ects of
the situation in whic h the utterance o ccurs. Borro wing from information
theory , sp eec h act theory tak es in to view not only the v ehicle of repre-
sen tation, but also the sender and receiv er of the utterance. By doing
so, it is p ossible to distinguish hierarchical lev els in all statemen ts or
utterances. These lev els are themselv es regarded as acts. Austin differ-
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en tiates three suc h lev els or acts, namely the lo cutionary , illo cutionary ,
and p erlo cutionary acts. The lo cutionary act consists in the predicativ e
op eration itself. It is sa ying something ab out something, lik e ‘There sits
a blac k cat.’ The illo cutionary act consists in what the sp eak er do es
with sa ying something. This could b e either merely stating something,
or commanding another p erson to do something, or to giv e advice, or
to promise something to someb o dy . The p erlo cutionary act refers to the
consequences of the statemen t. When said to a quite sup erstitious p er-
son, the hin t at the blac k cat sitting there migh t scare the addressee, or
a cat-lo ving p erson migh t b e deligh ted to b e p oin ted to a cat nearb y etc.
The consequences also could b e p ersuading, or enligh tening, or inspiring
and man y others. By adopting the sp eec h act theory it b ecomes apparen t
that using language is, of course, an action in and of itself but not only
that. It is a comp ound or hierarc h y of actions that tak es place all at once.
Rico eur adds the canonical list of sp eec h acts the lev el of interlo cution
(ev en tually he sp eaks of al lo cution , but I consider in terlo cution to b e
the prop er term here, since it puts more emphasis on the relational and
in tersub jectiv e dimension of comm unication). On this lev el, the general
exp ectation of mutual understanding is cen tral. ‘F acing the sp eak er in
the first p erson is a listener in the second p erson to whom the former
addresses himself or herself - this fact b elongs to the situation of in ter-
lo cution. So, there is not illo cution without allo cution and, b y implica-
tion, without someone to whom the message is addressed. The utterance
that is reflected in the sense of the statemen t is therefore straigh t a w a y
a bip olar phenomenon: it implies sim ultaneously an “I”: that sp eaks and
a “y ou” to whom the former addresses itself.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.43). As
I said, m utual understanding is of imp ort here, and this addendum fits
neatly in to the matrix of the other three lev els. Commanding exp ects
ob edience, someone giving advise exp ects gratitude etc. F or the discus-
92

sion of Butler’s moral philosoph y this is a v alid p oin t of connection, since
it seems to corresp ond to her concept of relationality , but this will b e dis-
cussed b elo w.
It has to b e noted here that the integration of speech act theory in to
a broader accoun t of the narrativ e constitution of selfho o d and iden tit y
migh t not b e that substan tial. In effect, this theory do es not pro vide us
in this resp ect with an y more than the dialogic sk eleton of highly diver-
sified in terp ersonal exc hanges. But ev en b efore the theory of narrativ e
will ha v e b een presen ted here, this in tegration is a substan tial step in
the direction of relationalit y and so cialit y . As explained in the part on
Sc hec h tman and others, there seems to b e an implicit individualism in
narrativ e accoun ts of p ersonal iden tit y . F or Sc hec h tman, ha ving a life-
narrativ e mainly serv es the purp ose of k eeping trac k of one’s o wn exp e-
riences. It w as demonstrated that based on this claim, it is not p ossible
to discuss ethical violence at all, and neither the opacities ab out one-
self that emerge from so cial in teractions and norms. Here, in terlo cution,
and narration, for that matter, not only constitutes the selfho o d of the
sp eak er and the iden tit y of the agen t, but they also place the ‘I’ and
the agen t in a so cial situation in whic h discourse necessarily is dialogue
and comm unication with others. Or, as Rico eur sa ys ‘...ev ery adv ance
made in the direction of the selfho o d of the sp eak er or the agen t has as
its coun terpart a comparable adv ance in the otherness of t he partner.’
(Rico eur 1994, p.44). The meaning of the otherness of the partner will
b e discussed in the section when I confron t Butler with Rico eur.
So what exactly means to tell a story to someb o dy? And what is nar-
rativ e, narration, and so on 1 ? ‘T elling a story is sa ying who did what
1 Although it is regarded as one of the strengths of Rico eur’s theory of narrative
that it co vers the structural constituen ts of narrativ e as well as the practice of
story-telling vis-a-vis the other, his accoun t pivots to w ards structure in total. The
shortcomings with regard to the practice of story-telling, esp ecially with regard to
the normativ e asp ects of it, will b e discussed in the next c hapter.
93

and ho w, b y spreading out in time the connection b et w een these v ari-
ous viewp oin ts.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.146). W e kno w already that the act of
story-telling tak es place in a so cial situation, it is not an individualistic
monologue. Still, the individual is v ery imp ortan t since she condenses a
course of action in to one more or less coheren t narration. In doing so, she
will ha v e to in tegrate a substan tially div ers set of en tities, suc h as the
ascription of agency to certain individuals, certain qualities and quali-
fications ab out the actions recounted, and establish a temp oral matrix
of ev en ts. W e will discuss eac h of these topics separately , but here it is
crucial to address the connection of these ev en ts. F or Rico eur, and man y
other narrativists, it is the connections b et w een ev en ts, ho w they are or-
dered, and in what succession the o ccur within that story . It ev en is sup-
p osed to b e the ‘...essen tial difference distinguishing the narrativ e mo del
from ev ery other mo del of connectedness’ (ibid., p.142). Alternativ e mo d-
els of connectedness could b e a causal one, in whic h the ev en ts are strictly
ordered along the principle of causalit y , i.e. causes are alw a ys follo w ed b y
results. A second alternativ e is the c hronic, in whic h the ev en ts are listed
in order of their c hronological succession. The crucial difference to the
status of ev en ts in a narration consists in the circumstance that in b oth
mo dels, the causal one and the c hronic, it is imp ossible to distinguish
b et w een an ev en t and its o ccurrence. The o ccurrence of the rain is the
cause for the street b eing w et, and Jane Seymour app ears on the list of
the wiv es of Henry VI I I after Anne Boleyn but b efore Anna v on Klev e.
In comparison to the narrativ e mo del, these mo dels of connectedness are
considerably parsimonious, the o ccurrence is iden tical with the ev en t. Or
in other w ords: There is a clear principle whic h go v erns whic h ev en ts are
to include, and whic h are not. This is a stark difference to the narrativ e
mo del.
In order to understand what mak es the narrativ e mo del differen t from
94

all other mo dels of connectedness we ha v e to lo ok at the status of ev en ts,
or to b e more precise, ho w a narrativ e ev en t is defined: a ‘narrativ e ev en t
is defined b y its relation to the v ery op eration of configuration’ (Rico eur
1994, p.142). So what is this op eration of configuration? T elling a story
surely is sa ying who did what when and ho w. But in order to gather
all of these asp ects in one story , it is necessary to imp ose a plot on the
constitutiv e parts of the story , i.e. an ordered transformation from an
initial state to a terminal state. Clearly , a plot co v ers the causal series
of ev en ts as w ell as their temp oral order. Sometimes, plot is understo o d
as the selection of those ev en ts in a story that driv e the story forw ard,
an understanding that is close to a causal p ersp ectiv e to the exten t that
it only selects those ev en ts in a story that are necessary to approac h the
end of the story . Others put emphasis on the structure of the plot, suc h
as tragedy or comedy . In general, there are t w o w a ys of understanding
plot. The one regards plot as the story’s global structure. Hence, it is the
aggregate of all ev en ts and actors. The second regards plot mainly as a
sort of progressiv e structuration. With the reader in mind, in this case
plot is defined as the connections b et w een story ev en ts, consequences and
motiv ations of the c haracters in that story .
The op eration of configuration, whic h defines the narrativ e ev en t, in te-
grates all of these asp ects. But what Rico eur really is in terested in is ho w
the configuration is undertak en. This migh t not b e answ ered in general,
since there are quite differen t con v en tions for historiographic narrativ es,
or for fictional narrativ es. Of course, here are those narrativ es imp ortan t
that constitute narrativ e iden tit y . The op eration of configuration is what
Riceour addresses with the term ‘emplotmen t’. Prima facie , emplotmen t
imp oses an order on the elemen ts of a situation or ev en a whole story .
But this order is a fragile one. This is due to t w o p oles that impact the
configuration sev erely , the p ole of concordance and the p ole of discor-
95

dance. The demand of concordance is conceptualized in reference to the
Aristotelian notion of the ‘arrangemen ts of facts’. The ev en ts, situations,
motiv ations, and in ten tions of the story ha v e to answ er the demand of
concordance, they should b e arranged in a w a y that driv es forw ard the
story , step b y step from the b eginning of he story to its end. The p ole
of discordance giv es consideration to the fact that there are ruptures,
unexp ected turns of ev en ts, and con tingencies within the course of the
story . Rico eur sp eaks of the ‘rev ersal of fortune’. Both p oles are prev alen t
in eac h story . Imagine y ourself b ecoming acquain ted with someb o dy new
on a train-trip. When y ou start to tell that p erson asp ects of y our life,
b oth p oles will ha v e to b e addressed. There is one asp ect to y our story ,
that co v ers y our education and v o cational training (esp ecially in Ger-
man y , that is). This sequence of life-ev en ts ma yb e are easy to bring in to
a sequen tial order. But then there are also unexp ected turns of ev en ts,
ma yb e y ou w an ted to b ecome X, but b y coincidence y ou ran in to an old
classmate and she in vited y ou to w ork in a completely differen t area.
The p oles of concordance and discordance stand in a dialectical relation
with eac h other. Dialectical, in this con text, do es not merely denote a
conflict of argumen ts, but an in ternal tension of organizing principles.
W e will see b elo w, that for Rico eur, this parado x assumes a crucial role
when it comes to the transition from the plot to the c haracter. A t the
core of this conflict resides the tension b et w een necessit y and con tingency .
This results in a feature of narrativ e emplotmen t that Rico eur phrases
discordan t concordance. This notion aims to highligh t the syn thesis of the
heterogeneous that is the aim of ev ery narrativ e comp osition: ‘...b et w een
the manifold of ev en ts and the temp oral unit y of the story recoun ted;
b et w een the disparate comp onen ts of the action — in ten tions, causes, and
c hance o ccurrences — and the sequence of the story; and finally , b et w een
pure succession and the unit y of the temp oral form, whic h, in extreme
96

cases, can disrupt c hronology to the p oin t of ab olishing it.’ (Rico eur
1994, p.141). A t this p oin t, Rico eur is con ten t to state that narrativ e
can mediate b et w een all of these asp ects. Exactly ho w and wh y this
in tegration or syn thesis succeeds remains to b e discussed. But first, some
remarks on the relation of agency to con tingency and necessit y .
T elling a story means not only to sa y who did what, when, and wh y .
It also means to pro duce an interlocutory episo de in a w a y that con v eys
crucial asp ects of the ev en ts recoun ted, esp ecially in self-related narra-
tions. First and foremost, that requires to select the relev an t ev en ts. But
when it comes to the asp ect of discordan t concordance, the men tioning
of necessit y and con tingency is just as imp ortant. Ricoeur is justified
to in tro duce discordan t concordance. This can easily b e made clear b y
imagining the same situation of a train-trip and the casual con v ersation
with another p erson. If one’s past or b ecoming is topical, a lac k of discor-
dan t concordance w ould seem to b e off the mark. Giv en that the accoun t
w ould lac k necessit y completely , that is, that all the ev en ts are explained
to b e random or acciden tal, the in terlo cutor w ould ha v e to assume that
the narrator has no sense of agency in her life whatso ev er. The opp osite
w ould b e just as irritating. A narrativ e accoun t of one’s b ecoming that
is v oid of an y con tingencies w ould establish a c haracter who either is
completely in con trol of just eac h and ev ery asp ect of her life. Or the
sup erh umanly lev el of con trol is just is handed do wn to a sup ernatural
en tit y . The dialectic of concordance and discordance hence corresp onds to
the theoretical in tuitions and practical exp eriences with h uman agency .
Some things can b e in tended and th us realized, whereas the c hancy turn
of ev en ts is part of ev ery h uman endea v our. But this merely is a con v en-
tional observ ation that do es not determine the v alidit y of the concept p er
se. Esp ecially the use of ‘dialectical’ is an indication that it migh t turn
out to b e a device to diminish the impact of opacities and disorien tations
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in the con text of narration and narrativ e comp osition, or ev en to neglect
them altogether.
Rico eur’s firm b elief in narrativ e’s capacit y to mediate the heterogene-
it y of actions, ev en ts, temp oralities and alik e arises from a close reading
of Aristole’s accoun t of the mythos and its function as mim ¯ esis pr axe¯ os ,
i.e. the imitation of action. The question w as what a tragedy lik e Oedipus
Rex or an epic suc h as the Iliad are represen ting. He came to the conclu-
sion that these texts are imitations of actions, and there is a high degree
of plausibilit y to this conclusion. Rico eur expanded this line of though t
and the v ery concept of imitation, or mimesis. Against Aristotle, and
Plato as w ell, Rico eur freed the concept of mimesis from the con text of
art in a narro w sense, esp ecially from the analysis of tragedy , whic h is the
main part of Aristotle’s w ork in p oiesis. By doing so, he is able to frame
culture as a certain, historically con tingen t sym b olic order, and mimesis
b ecomes an arc of op erations whic h he addresses with the three v arian ts
of mimesis, namely mimesis 1 , mimesis 2 , and mimesis 3 .
Mimesis 1 is the op eration of the prefiguration of the field of action.
The field of h uman action is preconfigured in the sense that one has to
ha v e certain basic comp etencies in order to understand actions as ac-
tions. Among these one is the comp etency to understand the seman tics
of actions b y means of a conceptual net w ork. This means that there is
a basic understanding of the structure and constituen ts of actions, and
therefore one can ask questions of who, ho w, when, wh y , against or with
whom etc. Additionally , there is the comp etency of using sym b ols and
the comp etency in the temp oral con v en tions that go v ern the syn tagmatic
order of narration. Narrations are comp osita and the temp oral con v en-
tions are ab out the follo w abilit y of a narrativ e. Ov erall, mimesis 1 is ab out
ho w individuals are able to understand the sign system of their resp ectiv e
culture. In this sense, this first notion of mimesis co v ers the pre-narrativ e
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lev el of understanding. ‘[T]he comp osition of the plot is grounded in a
pre-understanding of the w orld of action, its meaningful structures, its
sym b olic resources, and its temp oral c haracter. These features are de-
scrib ed rather than deduced. But in this sense nothing requires their
listing to b e a closed one’ (Rico eur 1984, p.141). P ossibly , it is in this
place where w e can find a useful in tersection b et w een the w orks of Ri-
co eur’s and Butler’s. The pre-understanding Rico eur sp eaks of has to b e
acquired b y eac h and ev ery individual, but w e ma y assume with Butler
that the genealogy of this acquisition of pre-narrativ e comp etencies migh t
remain obscure, a circumstance that Butler, as argued ab o v e, brings in to
p osition against the principle of transparency in the con text of moral
delib eration, resp onsibilit y , and recognition.
Mimesis 2 instead is the configuration of the field of action. It is the
piv otal notion of mimesis of the three discussed here, at least for Rico eur,
since it supp osedly mediates b et w een the other t w o. The configuration
of the plot, as w e ha v e seen, figures as ‘emplotmen t’, b ecause it is the
dynamic c haracter of these op erations that Rico eur w an ts to highligh t.
The mediating function of mimesis 2 is threefold. Firstly , the plot is a
mediation b et w een the individual ev en ts and inciden ts and the story
tak en as a whole. The ev en ts are turned in to a narrativ e, and the narrativ e
dra ws from the div ersit y of the ev en ts. Here, the difference b et w een simple
succession of ev en ts and configuration b ecomes clear. The configuration
is the result of the op eration of emplotmen t. Also, an ev en t has to b e
more than just an o ccurrence, b ecause in a story the ev en t is mean t
to con tribute to the in telligibilit y of the whole story . This is the main
difference to ev en ts in a c hronic, or in a causal series.
F urthermore, the emplotmen t brings together the highly heterogeneous
factors suc h as agen ts, goals means, inetractions, circumstances and un-
exp ected results. This has b een elab orated on ab o ve. And thirdly , the
99

plot is mediating in a third w a y , namely that of its temp oral c haracter-
istics (Rico eur 1984, see pp.64-68). This is a topic that Rico eur adds to
Aritotle’s w ork on tragedy and plot, and he differen tiates t w o temp oral
dimensions, on of whic h is c hronological, whereas the other is not. The
c hronological dimension consists in the episo dic dimension of narrativ e,
i.e. that the story is made up of ev en ts that are brough t in to the order
of succession. The second dimension is ab out the ‘grasping together’ of
the story’s inciden ts. This function of emplotmen t results in the unit y of
the story as a temp oral whole. In Time and Narr ative , Rico eur iden tifies
this parado xixal unification of the t w o dimensions of temp oralit y as the
p o etic act itself. But this emphasis is remo v ed from the theory of nar-
rativ e in Oneself as A nother . What remains is the con viction that the
emplotmen t has to exert its unifying effects for the sak e of the follo w a-
bilit y of the story . ‘T o understand the story is to understand ho w and
wh y the successiv e episo des led to this conclusion, whic h, far from b eing
foreseeable, m ust finally b e acceptable, as congruen t with the episo des
brough t together b y the story .’ (ibid., p.67).
When w e think of emplotmen t, it is v ery m uc h in the direction of
mimesis 2 b ecause it denotes the comp osition of the story in a narro w er
sense. Whereas mimesis 1 is ab out the conditions of the p ossibilit y of
telling and understanding stories, Mimesis 3 to o is ab out something b e-
y ond the v ery op eration of comp osing a story from the heterogeneit y of
ev en ts and in ten tions. It ‘...marks the in tersection of the w orld of the
text and the w orld of the hearer or reader’ (ibid., p.71). W e will ha v e
to see if talking of t w o w orlds, the one established b y the story and the
w orld wherein real action o ccur really mak es sense in the case of those
stories that are supp osed to constitute an individual’s p ersonal iden tit y .
Nonetheless, just as mimesis 1 , mimesis 3 also will b e quite useful for the
purp ose of discussing Rico eur against Butler. By expanding the scop e of
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the notion of mimesis from the confinemen t of story-telling in a narro w
sense on the conditions of understanding stories and the in tersection of
story-telling and real actions, it will b e p ossible to question him ab out the
obstructiv e asp ects of b oth of these extra-narrativ e realms on the v ery
p ossibilit y of telling a story ab out oneself. Seemingly , the demarcation
of p o etic, historic, and biographical stories as Rico eur has established
in Time and Narr ative no longer can b e main tained with regard to nar-
rativ e iden tit y . Still, the conceptual framew ork of mimesis is helpful to
understand the complexities of story-telling.
Up un til here, w e ha v e reconstructed what a narrativ e is, and esp e-
cially ho w it differen tiates itself from other collections of ev en ts. W e ha v e
learned that narrativ e emplotmen t is an imitation of action in the sense
of Aristotle. Rico eur has widened the theoretical horizon of Aristotle
to the effect that the parado xical op erations of emplotmen t and con-
figuration are not merely imitations of actions, but also refers to the
pre-configurativ e understanding of the sym b olic structure of h uman ex-
p erience as well as an understanding of the structure of actions. Also, the
configuration of ev en ts is em b edded in and en tails the reconfiguration of
the field of action, i.e. the impact and consequences no only of action
itself but of actions recoun ted in a narrativ e ha v e ramifications for and
connections with real actions. This groundw ork is necessary in order to
understand the p eculiarities of Rico eur’s accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y ,
and its moral and ethical implications. And in order to approac h the
cen tral claim ab out the in tricate relationship of narrativ e and p ersonal
iden tit y , it is no w imp ortan t to lo ok more closely at actions and the
protagonists of these actions as the figure in narrativ e accoun ts of these
actions.
The question is then to determine what ho w the discussion of p ersonal
iden tit y is link ed to narrativ e in the first place. T o b egin with, sp eaking
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of the ‘op eration of emplotmen t’, it is immediately clear that this implies
a sub ject of emplotmen t, i.e. the individual who c ho oses the ev en ts and
elemen ts of the action recoun ted, and who tells it to someb o dy else. W e
already ha v e seen that the ascription of agency is a crucial op eration,
and that it migh t b e p ossible to iden tify the author of a giv en narrativ e,
or the narrator of a narrativ e accoun t as its protagonist. And Rico eur
do es not lea v e m uc h ro om for scepticism when he states that ‘...[t]he
decisiv e step in the direction of a narrativ e conception of p ersonal iden-
tit y is tak en when one passes from the action to the c haracter.’ (Rico eur
1994, p.143). The question hence is what, or to b e more precise who, ex-
actly the c haracter is. The c haracter is defined as ‘...the set of distinctiv e
marks whic h p ermit the reiden tification of a h uman individual as b eing
the same.’ (ibid., p.148). Moreo v er, for him the c haracter is the one who
p erforms an action in a narrativ e. The cen tral question is ho w the nar-
rativ e category of c haracter can con tribute to the discussion of p ersonal
iden tit y .
In a narrativ e that is neither fictional nor historiographical, in other
w ords, a narrativ e that is ab out the actions, in ten tions and exp eriences of
a living h uman b eing, there hardly can b e action without a protagonist,
or c haracter. No w, the first step in the direction of the iden tification of the
c haracter of a narrativ e with the p erson who is telling the story consists in
the assumption that the c haracter is a set of distinctiv e marks whic h p er-
mit the reiden tification of a h uman individual as b eing the same. These
features can b e describ ed explicitly or arise from the prenarrativ e under-
standing of the audience. What is striking here is the observ ation that
the c haracter in a story , the individual will comp ound n umerical iden tit y
and qualitativ e iden tit y , an unin terrupted con tin uit y and p ermanence in
time. The sameness of the p erson is ‘designated em blematically’, whic h
means the c haracter of a story , more or less, designates the set of lasting
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disp ositions b y whic h a p erson is recognized. Th us conceptualized, the
c haracter of a story comp ounds all of the crucial structural features of
a story in and of itself. Also, b oth the stable p ole of the c haracter and
the her v arian t p ole need to b e illustrated b y a series of ev en ts, motiv es,
in ten tions etc. Therefore, a c haracter com bines all of the heterogeneous
features that ha v e b een discussed in the con text of the emplotmen t of
narrativ es. When Rico eur states that ‘...[t]he thesis supp orted here will
b e that the iden tit y of the c haracter is comprehensible through the trans-
fer to the c haracter of the op eration of emplotmen t, first applied to the
action recoun ted; c haracters, w e will sa y , are themselv es plots.’ (Rico eur
1994, p.143), it b ecomes apparen t what the core of Rico eur’s narrativ e
accoun t of p ersonal iden tit y is. Characters are themselv es plots, ergo the
three op erations of configuration apply to them. Moreo v er, the sub ject
of this configuration, the protagonist of the actions recoun ted, and the
narrator can get iden tified with eac h other.
So far, w e ha v e gathered Rico eur’s argumen ts with whic h he estab-
lishes the cen tral role that narrativ e supp osedly assumes with regard to
the constitution of p ersonal identit y . This gathering has mainly fo cussed
on the role that narrativ e pla ys with regard to the meaning of actions,
and ho w to understand them. In fact, the ascription of agency and in-
ten tions to an individual, who also is the author of stories that recoun t
these actions and who is the protagonist in these stories is essen tial to
understand the slogan that c haracters are themselv es plots. But this ori-
en tation to w ard actions falls short with regard to higher-order practical
units suc h as practices. W e no w ha v e to turn to these practical units b e-
cause they op en the field for sev eral cen tral asp ects of Rico eur’s account,
esp ecially concerning the unit y life-narrativ es and the ethical implications
of k eeping trac k of one’s exp eriences b y means of narrativ e.
So what exactly is a practice? A game is a practice, or a profession, or
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an art, but there are inn umerably more examples. A practice is a second-
order unit whic h, other as an action, is not only in ten tional, but also ruled
go v erned. Practices amongst eac h other and practices and actions ha v e
nesting relations. That is to sa y that their descriptions and definitions
o v erlap with eac h other. A certain action ma y b e executed in the con text
of a practice, and whole sets of practices can, in turn, b e part of other
practices. F or example, setting one fo ot in front of the other are actions
that accum ulate in w alking on a trail, whereas this ‘w alking on a trail’
can b e part of the practice called moun taineering, a recreational sp ort
that, in turn, p ossibly is a part of the practice of ‘going on v acation’,
that, again, ma yb e is part of a certain organisation of lab our in a giv en
comm unit y . Or think of v o cations: driving a tractor engine is part of
‘b eing a farmer’. Certainly , these are merely an in tro ductory example of
practices, and in order to trace ho w the reference to practices pa v es the
w a y for the claim for the unit y of a life and teleological ethics, w e need
to analyse it closely .
Rico eur discusses three features of practices. Firstly , there is an in ter-
mingling of finalit y and causalit y in practices. This means that an agen t
is able to engage in certain actions, or start a c hain of actions in order to
partak e in a certain practice. In this case, the linking principle consists in
the ongoing assessmen t of the actions’s outcomes b y the agen t, whereas
the in tended or unin tended outcomes of certain actions w ould again start
new causal series. Or to put it in other w ords, these c hains of actions do
displa y the systemic and causal segmen ts of practices. Of course, what is
lac king here is a kind of configuration that sets apart practices suc h as
professions, arts, or games.
A second feature is the nesting relations b et w een actions and prac-
tices. F or example, holding office in the go v ernmen t denotes man y other
practices, suc h as giving a sp eec h, or organizing ma jorities, or spinning
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campaigns. Although it is not quite clear if the nesting relations of prac-
tices and actions, or practices and practices alw a ys are hierarc hical, they
are in most of the cases. This can b e easily sho wn b y rev ersing the p osited
hierarc h y , or nesting relation. Giving a sp eec h do es not coun t as holding
office, and neither do es spinning a campaign. Clearly one has to lo ok at
the con text of these resp ectiv e actions in order to determine if an y giv en
action con tributes to a practice or not.
The b est w a y to approac h practices conceptually , for Rico eur, consists
b y means of the concept of constitutiv e rule. This term has b een tak en
from game theory and has b een imp orted in to the theory of sp eech acts
b y Austin and Searle, and also helps to refine the theory of action. The
cen tral function of the constitutiv e rule in the con text of actions is to
giv e an action a meaning. The canonical example is the mo v emen t of a
pa wn on a c hess b oard. The mo v emen ts of the b o dy parts of the play er
that lead to the mo v emen t of the piece of w o o d that o ccurs eigh t times
on the b oard has no meaning at all. The function of the constitutiv e rule
is to define these mo v emen ts as a step in a c hess game. ‘The rule, all
b y itself, giv es the gesture its meaning’ (Rico eur 1994, p.154). Rico eur
stresses the fact that constitutiv e rules are not moral rules. They simply
rule o v er the meaning of particular gestures and mo v emen ts, and merely
determine what ‘coun ts as’ what. But they certainly lead the w a y to
moral rules, and this is the reason w e ha v e to discuss this notion here.
F or example, there is a constitutiv e rule for what coun ts as ‘promising’, it
defines whic h sp eec h acts ha v e this meaning, and whic h do not. But this
rule, tak en as suc h, has no moral signification, although it con tains some
sort of obligation. The moral rule, that one has to k eep one’s promises,
has a deon tological status, i.e. it is link ed to moral principles whic h also
ha v e to negotiated.
A final imp ortant feature of constitutiv e rules consist in the fact that
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they underscore the in teractiv e asp ect of most practices. Due to the prag-
matic (i.e. non-analytic) framew ork that Rico eur deplo ys it is p ossible to
in tegrate the in tersub jectiv e, and in terlo cutory asp ect of h uman actions
in to the concept of practices. ‘Practices are based on actions in whic h an
agen t tak es in to accoun t, as a matter of principle, the actions of others’
(Rico eur 1994, p.155). This certainly is a w elcomed extension of the an-
alytical approac h to the notion of action in whic h mostly an atomistic
and highly individualistic view of action is conceptualized.
There is another asp ect to practices whic h is made particularly clear
in After Virtue b y Alasdair MacIn t yre. He p onders the same problems as
Rico eur, he is in terested in the systematic relations b et w een the constitu-
tion of a self and its iden tit y , ho w a moral iden tit y is acquired, and what
role narrativ e pla ys in h uman existence. His argumen ts will b e referred
to in man y w a ys in the remainder of this c hapter, but what is of imp ort
here is that he adds the asp ect of history to to the feature-list of practices
that Rico eur has outlined: ‘[P]ractices alw a ys ha v e histories and at an y
giv en momen t what a practice is dep ends on a mo de of understanding
it whic h has b een transmitted often through man y generations.’ (MacIn-
t yre 2007, p.221). Again, this mo de of understanding p oin ts inheren tly
to the in tersub jectiv e and normativ e dimension of h uman acting. In this
case, it is not so m uc h ab out the consequences that arise from the v ery
action itself. Rather, what a p erson is, to a large exten t, dep ends on the
historical tra jectories of practices the individual is part of, and in this
sense p ersonal iden tit y constitutes itself b y the traditions that the indi-
vidual is a b earer of. This also means that the standards of excellence, in
an y giv en practice, originate m uc h further bac k than the solitary practi-
tioner. Ob viously , there is a conflict of temp oralities at w ork in whic h the
temp oralit y of a tradition collides with the temp orality of the individual.
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This is precisely one of the sources for the opacities of the self ab out
itself.
The expansion of the concept of action in terms of practices and ev en
traditions is an in tegral part of the theory of narrativ e. The lev el of com-
plexit y the op eration of configuration, as established b y Rico eur in the
threefold concept of mimesis, is v ery similar to the degree of complexit y
that needs to b e in tegrated in to stories. There is a structural similarit y
to b oth. Also, practices ha v e nesting relations with eac h other. This is a
second similarit y with narrativ es. In some cases and domains it is p ossi-
ble to determine these relations as hierarc hical. This is p ossible in cases
in whic h the global in ten tion of a practice structures the succession of ac-
tions that are required to aspire to that in tended goal. But in most cases,
the nesting relations are in need of in terpretation and ev aluation. Hence,
the agen t whic h reflects on her actions and goals has to order the man y
practices and traditions she is part of. Moreo v er, practices and traditions
as concepts are inheren tly in tersub jectiv e en tities. An agen t alw a ys has
to tak e in to accoun t the consequences of her actions on others, and suf-
fers the outcomes of other p eople’s actions. This in tersub jectivit y is not
necessarily ethically or morally relev an t, but it op ens the whole field of
practices to ethical considerations. And this is what will b e discussed
next.
3.5 The T riade: Describ e - Na rrate - Prescrib e
W e already hav e seen that in order to tell a story ab out oneself it is nec-
essary to select ev en ts, exp eriences, motiv ations, con texts, affects, and
man y more suc h ingredien ts. In Rico eur’s theory of narrativ e this pro-
cess of selection, emplotmen t, pla ys a crucial role since the meaning of
ev ery single part of the narration arises from its p osition with resp ect to
the others, whic h finally culminates in the meaning of the whole story .
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The pro cess of emplotmen t is inheren tly dialectical, b ecause there are
t w o conflicting principles of order, discordance and concordance. The
one, concordance, co v ers the story-driving ev en ts, sometimes called the
fabula , whic h con tributes to the transition from the story’s initial state to
its conclusion. The other principle, discordance, is all ab out the ruptures,
t wists, and unexp ected turns that the course of the story tak es. The rea-
son wh y Rico eur c ho oses to address this conceptual tension as dialectical
and not, for example, an tagonistic or problematic is b ecause he argues
that it alw a ys is p ossible to in tegrate partial actions in to one story , in to
one narrativ e. This claim is based on the argumen t that since w e w e
kno w what it means to comp ete an action, and narrativ e has a mimetic
relation to actions, it alw a ys is p ossible to establish narrativ e closure.
In this resp ect it do es not matter if the principle of narrativ e comp osi-
tion is though t of as a top-do wn-concept or a b ottom-up-concept: ‘...the
practical field is not constituted from the ground up, starting from the
simplest and mo ving to more elab orate constructions; rather it is formed
in accordance with a t w ofold mo v emen t of ascending complexification
starting from basic actions and from practices, and of descending sp ecifi-
cation starting from the v ague and mobile horizon of ideals and pro jects
in ligh t of whic h a h uman life apprehends itself in its oneness’ (Rico eur
1994, p.158). The in terpla y of ascending complexification and descend-
ing sp ecification will result in the oneness and unit y of the h uman life,
no matter ho w substan tial the an tagonistic or discordan t p ortion of the
liv ed exp eriences are.
The top os of unity is a recurren t sub ject in man y theories of narra-
tiv e, and esp ecially within the hermeneuticist v ariet y . But what exactly
is this unit y? F urther inquiry is vital not only for a b etter understanding
of the accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y as discussed here, but also to discuss
Butler’s criticism of the ideal of transparency and coherence in moral
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accoun ting later on. Hence w e will analyse the concept of narrativ e unit y
in three steps. First, w e will reconstruct the concept as it is mo delled
in Rico eur’s philosoph y , with ev en tual side glances at other authors who
also deplo y this concept, esp ecially Alasdair MacIn t yre. Esp ecially in-
teresting is ho w this unit y is defined and practically ac hiev ed, but also
what has to b e left out of the real course of ev en ts for the sak e of unit y .
Secondly , we will retrace ho w the concept of narrativ e unit y figures as
the cen tral bridge from the narrativ e constitution of p ersonal identit y to
a teleological notion of ethics and moralit y . Only b y then, thirdly , it will
b e p ossible to lo ok at the argumen ts that link narrativ e unit y , ethics,
and resp onsibilit y whic h is a prerequisite in order to compare the t w o
differen t concepts of resp onsibilit y of Rico eur’s and Butler’s.
So whic h status has narrativ e unit y in Rico eur’s theory of narrativ e,
and ho w do es it con tribute to the notion of p ersonal iden tit y? It turns
out that first w e ha v e to ask what exactly gets unified? On the lev el of
the an y story told to someb o dy else, of course there is the unit y of the
story inasm uc h it has a b eginning, a middle section, and an end. It is
one story , and unit y here means oneness. This is a structural claim that
migh t hold true o v er the whole range of t yp es of stories, suc h as fictional,
historiographic, and autobiographical stories. But what Rico eur thinks
of when he sp eaks of unit y , is not this structural feature of the unit y of
the narrativ e, but rather the narrativ e unit y of a life. But again, what is
in need of unification, and wh y do es unit y matter that m uc h? W e already
ha v e seen that the ev en ts and exp eriences recoun ted in a p erson-related
narrativ e often are part of wider practices, i.e. a comp ositum of actions
and b eha viours. This w as the first widening of the concept of action that
w as necessary in terms of narrativ e. A third lev el is the life plan. With
this concept Rico eur aims to in tegrate an ev en wider area of practices, an
area that he claims to b e nothing but the ‘global pro ject of an existence’.
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Life plans are v ast practical units, suc h as the professional life, the family
life, leisure time, or, as Charles T a ylor w ould certainly add, the spiritual
life. The shap e of a life plan is malleable, it is mobile and op en to c hange
at an y time.
T o establish a life plan, or to c hange a life plan according to resp ec-
tiv e exp eriences, migh t they b e link ed to success or failure, to p ersonal
fulfilmen t or stark alienation of oneself, means to ev aluate these plans
according to certain ideals. This ev aluation is the imp ortan t p oin t here.
Just as w e ha v e seen in the case of actions and practices, it is the con-
stitutiv e rule that confers meaning to them. And in parallel to this, it is
the more or less distan t ideals that confer meaning to an y giv en life plan.
The function of the constitutiv e rule on the lev el of actions and practices
is the same as that of ideals on the lev el of life plans. But the aggregation
of t yp es of actions on the practical field do es not stop here. The next step
w ould b e to assume that there is a life plan in singular. This life plan
could tak e the shap e of of a mere concatenation of the v arious life plans
pursued b y the individual. But this is not what MacIn t yre has in mind
with that concept, and neither do es Rico eur. The life plan of a whole life
has to b e orien ted not to w ards c hanging ideals, but ultimately to w ards
the ‘go o d’ life.
The narrativ e unit y of a life as adv o cated in After Virtue b y MacIn-
t yre and adopted b y Rico eur, has to b e fleshed out in more detail here,
esp ecially b ecause it assumes a cen tral role as a bridging concept as it
links narrativ e practices and ethics. F or MacIn t yre, to o, the unit y of a
life consists in the unit y of a narrativ e em b o died in a single life. The cen-
tral practical question of teleological ethics, namely ‘What is the go o d
for me?’ is ‘...to ask ho w I b est migh t liv e out that unit y and bring it
to completion.’ (MacIn t yre 2007, p.218). W e ha v e to lo ok v ery closely
at the concept of the go o d, whic h is the ultimate go o d, the telos of all
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actions. But w e ha v e not established the concept of narrativ e unit y fully
y et. An essen tial feature of the narrativ e unit y is that in MacIn t yre, it is
conceptualized as a quest for the go o d. This is a pro cedural fashioning
of this concept, whic h is helpful to confron t sev eral ob jections that ha v e
b een brough t forw ard against it. F or instance, some w ould dem ur that
mo dernit y itself, and certainly p ost-mo dernity has partitioned eac h h u-
man life in a v ariet y of segmen ts, eac h with their o wn norms, b eha viours,
and practices. Exemplarily , one could name Erving Goffman, who holds
this view in The Pr esentation of Self in Everyday Life , but also Sartre
or Dahrendorf. By resorting to the metaphor of a quest it is p ossible for
MacIn t yre mak e a strong p oin t against the argumen t of scattered roles
resulting in a scattered life: ‘Quests sometimes fail, are frustrated, aban-
doned or dissipated in to distraction; and h uman liv es ma y in all these
w a ys also fail. But the only criteria for success or failure in a h uman
life as a whole are the criteria of success and failure in a narrated or
to-b e-narrated quest.’ (MacInt yre 2007, p.219). The prosp ect of failure
should b e em braced, according to MacIn t yre. Only b y coping with harms,
dangers, temptations and alik e, it b ecomes p ossible to understand finally
the goal of the quest. Life as a quest alw a ys is an education of the one
engaged in it ab out the ends and goals of the whole quest. Moreo v er,
MacIn t yre rev erses the p ersp ectiv e on what comes first, acting or narrat-
ing. He considers all h uman transactions to b e enacted narrativ es, and
except of the case of fiction ‘...stories are liv ed b efore they are told’ (ibid.,
p.212). W e will return to MacIn t yre once more when w e will discuss the
(co-)authorship of narrativ es and the ethical v alence of narrativ e itself.
No w, w e will return to Rico eur.
Rico eur adopts the notion of the narrative unit y of a liv ed life b ecause
it serv es him to iden tify the agen t of a narrativ ely recoun ted action, or
the agen t in a set of practices, and the agen t pursuing life plans pre-
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cisely with the sub ject of ethics. ‘The idea of the narrativ e unit y of a
life therefore serv es to assure us that the sub ject of ethics is none other
than the one to whom the narrativ e assigns a narrativ e iden tit y’ (Rico eur
1994, p.158). Again, narrativ e imitates actions, here understo o d in a v ery
broad w a y including practices and life plans. Because of pre-configuration
or mimesis 1 , w e kno w that there has to b e someb o dy acting. Because w e
are able to ascrib e motiv es and in ten tions to the agen t, and to lo ok for
the setting and con texts in whic h the action tak es place, w e can correlate
the meaning of an action with the ev aluation of (constitutiv e) rules on
the part of the agen t. And b ecause meaning here is conceptualized from
the p ersp ectiv e of hermeneutics, w e kno w that actions are enacted narra-
tiv es, since w e need narrativ es in order to plan and enact actions. Agen t,
narrator, and the sub ject of ethics all fall in to one en tit y , or are iden ti-
fied as the same en tit y . That said, the theoretical imp erativ e of narrativ e
unit y b ecomes apparen t. If the individual do es not seek narrativ e unit y ,
or do es not engage on the quest for it, the whole concept of narrativ e
iden tit y w ould fall apart. The op eration of iden tification w ould p oin t to
ev er differen t iden tities, ma yb e link ed to certain so cial roles, or p erio ds of
existence, or c hanging sets of ethical norms. This w ould render the whole
theory of narrativ e iden tit y completely sterile when it comes to its core
tenets, namely that it is capable of establishing p ersonal iden tit y and
accoun t for moral accoun ting. The claim of the narrativ e unit y will b e
the cen tral starting p oin t for discussing Butler’s criticism and Rico eur’s
theory of narrativ e iden tit y . As I ha v e reconstructed it th us far, it seems
lik e the asp ects of ethical violence and genealogical opacit y ab out oneself
are merely tasks or p ossibly obstacles in the quest of a liv ed life. They
ha v e to b e o v ercome, and no matter ho w man y there are, or whic h effects
they ha v e on the questing p erson, she has to hold on to the idea of unit y .
What remains to b e reconstructed now is the question exactly ho w
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the unit y of life narrativ es is theoretically asso ciated with the ethics in
Oneself as A nother . Besides the great imp ort of the narrativ e unit y of a
liv e, w e already ha v e hin ted at t w o more theoretical pillars of this ethical
accoun t ab o v e. The one is the p ostulate that ‘narrativ e’ assumes the role
of an imp ortan t mediator or as the middle ground b etw een description
and prescription. Secondly , the core ethical in ten tion of h uman b eings
as p ersons and narrativ e c haracters is that w e are aiming at the go o d
life with and for others, in just institutions (Rico eur 1994, p.172). This
in ten tion is tripartite and w e will ha v e to lo ok at eac h part separately ,
w e will ha v e to understand what aiming at a go o d life means, ho w it is
feeds in to a relational understanding of ethics, and lastly , what exactly
is mean t b y just institutions.
F or Rico eur, narrativ e theory finds one of its ma jor justifications in
the mediating and in termediary p osition b et w een description and ethi-
cal ev aluation. He calls it the triad of describ e, narrate, prescrib e. Eac h
momen t of the triad, for him, implies a sp ecific relation b et w een the
constitution of action and constitution of the self. W e hav e learned that
narrativ e mimics actions, it em b o dies structural similarities b et w een the
narrated plot and the action recoun ted. The c haracter in the story can b e
attac hed to the narrator who recoun ts her actions. In this sense the story
has to con tain sufficien t information that it is p ossible to answ er b oth
questions ‘What has happ ened?’ and ‘Who did it?’. The op eration of as-
cription allo ws for the iden tification of motiv es and goals that prompted
the action, or series of actions, as in practices or MacIn t yrean settings.
All of these questions co v er the descriptiv e asp ects of the action. But
in order to in terpret and understand the action recoun ted in a narra-
tion, the descriptiv e asp ects are not enough, at least for Rico eur, whose
o wn hermeneuticist stance often is highligh ted against the bac kground of
the analytical fashion to theorize actions, agen ts, and agency . Narrativ e
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theory , how ev er, an ticipates and supp orts ethical questioning in v arious
w a ys. So, ho w exactly do es it do this?
One feature that p ositions narrative at the crossroads b et w een the
theory of action and moral theory and that mak es the transition b et w een
them seemingly natural is that it enables the narrator as w ell as the
audience to test certain ethical precepts. ‘T elling a story [...] is deplo ying
an imaginary space for though t exp erimen ts in whic h moral judgmen t
op erates in a h yp othetical mo de.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.170). That do es not
imply , as it seems, that all stories necessarily are fictitious. Rather, this
statemen t refers to the in terlo cutory situation in whic h the sp eech act
tak es place b et w een at least to individuals. Neither do es it imply that
moral judgmen t migh t not ha v e detrimen tal effects, similarly to what
Butler addresses with the notion of ethical violence. If it is plausible
that ev en ts and exp eriences gain their meaning in a narrativ e from their
relations with eac h other in a story , than the the ev aluation of the actions
and motiv es in this story will b e conducted not only b y the narrator
herself, but also b y the audience. This is to sa y that since the in telligibilit y
of an y giv en action dep ends not on on the shared conv en tions and pre-
configurations in the comm unit y of sp eak ers and listeners, a narrativ e
accoun t will b e fashioned to w ards the exp ectations of in telligibilit y . The
op eration of emplotmen t therefore will instan tiate a h yp othesis ab out
the conditions and traditions of in telligibilit y . Or in other w ords: The
narrator will tell her story in a w a y that she hop es will mak e her actions
in telligible.
A second underpinning of the triad-claim is that, since narrativ e re-
quires to widen the notion of action and the practical field in terms of
practices and settings, and since telling a story it is an in terlo cutory
and relational practice, it is not solely ab out the agen t. It is just as
m uc h ab out the individuals that get acted up on. Something is done to
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someone, and what happ ens on the receiving or suffering part is just as
imp ortan t than what the agen t did and wh y . So, an essen tial part of the
information con v ey ed b y a narrativ e accoun t is ab out who had to endure
or suffer what. Rico eur states that at this p oin t ‘...the theory of action
is extended from acting to suffering b eings. This addition is so essen tial
that it go v erns a large part of the reflections on p o w er as it is exerted
b y someone on someone, as w ell as the reflections on violence as the de-
struction b y someone else of a sub ject’s capacit y to act’ (Rico eur 1994,
p.157). The asp ect of p o w er will b e discussed b elo w, since it is one of the
essen tial topics of Butler’s. But what is relev an t here is that the widening
of the practical field in terms of relationalit y p oses immediately the eth-
ical question of who is affected b y what. Esp ecially these latter asp ects
establish the mediating function b etw een description and prescription
that only narrativ e is able to fulfil. These features of actions, suc h as
the impact they ha v e on others, the differen tial of acting and suffering,
and the con v en tions of in telligibilit y could not get dev elop ed themati-
cally without recourse to narrativ e, resp ectiv ely the expanded concept of
action that resulted from it.
Rico eur ob viously is not con ten t to stop here. He pro vides a com-
prehensiv e ethical framew ork that can b e condensed in the claim that
p ersons aim at the go o d life, with and for others, in just institutions.
The order of these three asp ects do es matter here, as it denotes the hi-
erarc h y that Rico eur establishes. Quite similar to Adorno, he traces the
common et ymology of ethos and mores, and reserv es the former for the
practical aiming at an accomplished life in the sense of teleological ethics.
T o morality , instead, he assigns the deon tic emphasis on autonom y , dut y ,
and justice, clearly in a Kan tian line of tradition. Moralit y aims at norms
that are at the same time a claim to univ ersalit y and an effect of con-
strain t. The division of heritages, whic h sho ws itself in the opp osition
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of aim and norm, or Aristotle and Kan t, constitutes a large part of the
second half of studies in Oneself as A nother . But in the con text of this
thesis, this opp osition is not topical. The close reconstruction of Rico eur’s
ethics serv es the single purp ose of preparing a discussion of his adv anced
accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y and normativ e framew orks with the one of
Butler’s.
The hierarc h y consists in a sequence of assumptions, namely that (1)
ethics actually do es ha v e the primacy o v er moralit y , (2) that there is the
necessit y for the ethical aim to pass through the ‘siev e of the norm’, and
(3) that the legitimacy of recourse b y the norm to the aim whenev er the
norm leads to impasses in practice. It is Rico eur’s p osition that moralit y
ma y b e a limited, although legitimate and indisp ensable actualization of
the ethical aim, and in this sense ethics alw a ys accompanies moralit y .
The in tegration of b oth lines of traditions, rep ectiv ely the ethical aim
and the moral obligation b egins on the lev el of predicates. Applied to
actions, this means that some actions are regarded as go o d, whereas
others are predicated morally obligatory . On the lev el f self-designation,
these predicates get transp osed in to self-esteem, whic h corresp onds to the
ethical aim, and self-resp ect with regard to the deon tological momen t.
Accordingly , the hierarc h y on the lev el of self-designation is tripartite as
w ell, and Rico eur states ‘...(1) that self-esteem is more fundamen tal than
self-resp ect, (2) that self-resp ect is the asp ect under whic h self-esteem
app ears in the domain of norms, and (3) that the ap orias of dut y create
situations in whic h self-esteem app ears not only as the source but as the
recourse for resp ect, when no sure norm offers a guide for the exercise
hic et nunc of resp ect. In this w a y , self-esteem and self-resp ect together
will represen t the most adv anced stages of the gro wth of selfho o d, whic h
is at the same time its unfolding.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.171).
In order to comprehend these hierarc hies and ho w exactly they ma y
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or ma y not figure as the most adv anced stages of the gro wth of selfho o d,
as Rico eur, hardly mo dest, pro claims, w e ha v e to lo ok closely at the
concepts he in tro duces. So, what exactly is self-esteem, and ho w is it
part of the plane of the ethical aim? It dra ws ‘...its initial meaning from
the reflexiv e mo v emen t through whic h the ev aluation of certain actions
judged to b e go o d are carried bac k to the author of these actions, this
meaning remains abstract as long as it lac ks the dialogic structure whic h
is in tro duced b y the reference to others. This dialogic structure, in its
turn, remains incomplete outside of the reference to just’ (Rico eur 1994,
p.172). Self-esteem hence is the result of an in terpretativ e engagemen t
with one’s o wn actions and with orien tation to w ards the go o d. The crucial
step is tak en when the agen t of the in terpreted action is iden tified with
the in terpretor. The ongoing assessmen t and in terpretation of one’s o wn
actions needs to b e conducted with reference to a normative framew ork,
and that is the go o d life. The guiding question is to what exten t, if at all,
the in ten tions, the actual acting, and the consequences for oneself and
others are con tributing to the realisation of the go o d itself. The more
there is an alignmen t of these action-related asp ects with the ethical aim
of the go o d life, the stronger is the sense of self-esteem.
There is another meaning to the claim that self-esteem has a reference
to others. Whereas the actual in terpretation demands that one distances
oneself from oneself and b y doing so op ens the space for critical assess-
men t and reflection, the concept of acting and engaging in practices is
itself established so cially . T o the exten t that practices are co op erativ e
en tities whose constitutiv e rules are established so cially , and self-esteem
stems from the successful alignmen t to w ards the ethical aim, whic h also
is established so cially , there hardly is ro om for a solipsistic understanding
of self-esteem. The orien tation to w ards the go o d life ma yb e is a univ ersal
feature of h uman b eings, at least in the ey es of Rico eur and other teleo-
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logical think ers, but the con ten t of the go o d life itself is for eac h of us neb-
ulous. The v ery ideals and dreams of ac hiev emen ts with regard to whic h
a life is held to b e fulfilled or not v ary not only from p erson to p erson,
but from time to time within a single life. So ev en if self-in terpretation
b ecomes ev en tually self-esteem, it ‘...follows the fate of in terpretation,
[...] it pro v ok es con tro v ersy , dispute, riv alry — in short, the conflict of
in terpretations — in the exercise of practical judgmen t’ (Rico eur 1994,
p.172). Therefore, self-esteem requires p ermanen t self-in terpretation, and
hence is p ermanen tly dialogic in structure. Later on, w e will the require-
men ts for self-esteem, and the detrimen tal consequences of violence on
self-esteem in the con text of Butler. But for no w, w e will turn to the
second part of the normativ e form ula, to the ‘with and for others’.
The reason for underscoring the non-solipsistic and dialogic c harac-
ter of self-esteem is to b e found in the danger that self-interpretation is
conducted in a w a y that ‘turns in up on itself ’, or closes up, or excludes
ev erything that is not within the narro w b oundaries of the self, or her
p ersp ectiv e. This emphasis on the essen tial so cialit y of self-esteem has
b een necessary b ecause the ethical in ten tion of aiming for the go o d life
with and for others in just institutions constitutes a coheren t practice
of living. The so cial or in tersub jectiv e dimension of the ‘...with others...’
p oin ts to the dialectic of capacit y and realization. The individual migh t
incorp orate b oth, but in order to ac hiev e full realization, the in tegration
of others and their participation in action is inevitable. Moreo v er, the
reflexivit y from whic h self-esteem stems remains abstract without the
other, since it do es not mark the difference b et w een me and y ou. Ac-
cordingly , Rico eur aligns the concept of solicitude to self-esteem on the
lev el of the go o d life: ‘m y thesis is that solicitude is not something added
on to self-esteem from outside but that it unfolds the dialogic dimension
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of self-esteem, whic h up to no w has b een passed o v er in silence’ (Rico eur
1994, p.180).
Solicitude, therefore, ensures that the ethical aim is not understo o d as
an aim that can b e achi ev ed solitarily , or ev en solipsistically . It adds the
dimension of the v alue of the other, whereb y eac h p erson is irr eplac e able
in our affection and our esteem. This notion of solicitude is mo delled after
the concept of friendship. T o self-esteem, whic h is the reflexiv e momen t
of the wish for a ‘go o d life’, solicitude adds the dimension of lac k. It is
friends that w e need, and these friends are, just as one p erceiv es oneself
as w ell, others among others. It is precisely here where A tkins finds the
theoretical basis for the in tegration of the first, second, and third p erson
p ersp ectiv e. When a p erson addresses anotehr p erson with ‘y ou’, that
p erson understands ‘I’ for herself, and rev ersely , when the the p erson is
addressed in the second p erson, she feels that she is implicated in the
first p erson.
It w ould b e fla w ed to think of the friend merely as a role that an-
other p erson assumes in m y life. Certainly , it is p ossible to think of the
in terlo cutors in a discourse as sp eak er and listener, or as sender and
receiv er. These are roles that are, in principle, rev ersible. F riendship,
instead, adds the feature of nonsubstitutibilit y to the recipro cal relation-
ship with others. Only under this assumption, namely that the other
cannot b e replaced b y just another individual that happ ens to b e func-
tionally equiv alen t to the former, the other is tak en in to accoun t as a
p erson in the fullest sense. Certainly , nonsubstitutibilit y is assumed in
discourse and in terlo cution as w ell. During in terlo cution itself, tak en as
the practice of language, the agen t and the patien t are caugh t up in re-
lationships of exc hange. But again, this is not a functional accoun t of
friendship, b ecause in these relationships of exc hange, the rev ersibilit y
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of roles and the nonsubstitutibilit y are joined together. The other is m y
friend precisely b ecause she is in m y affection and m y esteem.
Ab o v e the ideas of rev ersibilit y and nonsubstitutibilit y , Riceour places
the concept of similitude. It supp osedly is the result of the exc hange
b et w een esteem that one holds for oneself, and the solicitude for the
unique other: ‘This exc hange authorizes us to sa y that I cannot m yself
ha v e self-esteem unless I esteem others as m yself. “As m yself” means
that y ou to o are capable of starting something in the w orld, of acting
for a reason, of hierarc hizing y our priorities, of ev aluation the ends of
y our actions, and, ha ving done this, of holding y ourself in esteem as I
hold m yself in esteem.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.193). Again, this w ould not b e
p ossible if the ethical aim could b e ac hiev ed solitarily . On the con trary ,
it is the recognition of one’s similitude with the other, and the insigh t
that without the other the transition from capacit y to realization of the
ethical aim is practically imp ossible. It is imp ortan t to emphasize the
practical p ersp ectiv e, b ecause, for example, ideally it migh t b e regarded
as p ossible. The feelings tow ards oneself and to w ards the other b elong
to what Rico eur calls the ‘phenomenology of recipro cit y’. And it is here
where the title of Oneself as A nother achiev es its full meaning: ‘Becoming
in this w a y fundamen tally equiv alen t are the esteem of the other as a
oneself and the esteem of oneself as an other ’ (ibid., p.193). This clearly
resonates with Butler’s remarks on substitutabilit y and the imp ort of the
m utual ac kno wledgemen t of b eing enmeshed with opacities. But b efore
w e can start this discussion, w e ha v e to summarise the third part of the
ethical in ten tion, i.e. living in ‘...just institutions’.
The third part of the ethical in ten tion con tin ues to expand the p er-
sp ectiv es of self-esteem and solicitude. Whereas self-esteem is asso ciated
with the first p erson p ersp ectiv e, and solicitude with the second p erson
p ersp ectiv e, justice transcends b oth and is mean t to b e more than what
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happ ens in face-to-face encounter s. This third expansion of the ethical
in ten tion is necessary due to t w o presupp ositions in Rico eur’s ethics so
far. The first is that living w ell amoun ts to more than than in terp ersonal
relations. It extends to the life of institutions. But this expansion not
ab out institutions p er se, but ab out just institutions. Therefore one can
assume that justice adds ethical features to the ethical in ten tion that
exceeds the ethical aim, self-esteem and solicitude. Essen tially , it adds
the requiremen t of equalit y , a requirement that is not already presen t in
the former t w o. W e will lo ok at what institutions are, and ho w exactly
justice is mean t to ensure equalit y . Only after that w e will b e able to
apply these results to the question if this third dimension of the ethical
in ten tion reorganizes the determination of the self, or p erson. One could
exp ect that it is ab out the in tegration of the third-p erson p ersp ectiv e,
but the details are more imp ortan t than the structural symmetry of the
ethical in ten tion.
So what is an institution, and what is the difference b et w een just insti-
tutions and those who are not? ‘[W]e are to understand here the structure
of living to gether as this b elongs to a historical comm unit y — p eople,
nation, region, and so forth — a structure irreducible to in terp ersonal
relations and y et b ound up with these in a remark able sense whic h the
notion of distribution will p ermit us later to clarify . What fundamen tally
c haracterizes the idea of institution is the b ond of common mores and
not that of constraining rules’ (Rico eur 1994, p.194). This is a remark-
ably wide definition of institutions, it co v ers ev ery w a y and st yle of living
together, and also ev ery lev el of organization. As this domain of insti-
tutions basically con tains ev ery organization of p ersons with more than
t w o mem b ers, the imp ort of issues of justice is just as wide. Justice is
topical wherev er there are common mor es .
The primacy of living together o v er constraining rule is imp ortan t for
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Rico eur’s ethics. F ollo wing Hannah Ahrendt, he stresses the emphasis of
p ower in c ommon o v er constrain ts related to the judicial system and the
p olitical systems. As he has gone through the individual and in terp ersonal
plane, there are sp ecific differences on the so cietal plane. On the one
hand, there is the asp ect of the third other. In face-to-face interacti on, it
is ethically indicated to see oneself as the other, and vic e versa . But on
the so cietal plane, the third other is not presen t, but she is part of the
pluralit y of so ciet y . In this sense, the ‘...pluralit y includes third parties
who will nev er b e faces’ (Rico eur 1994, p.195). Pluralit y also constitutes
the abilit y to act in concert, and this is one w a y to define p o w er, or
at least, a certain st yle of p o w er. In a more Hegelian view, it w ould b e
p ossible to b egin with the ethical implications of p o w er already on the
in tersub jectiv e plane, since he discusses the dialogic and dy adic relations
b et w een master and slav e. But here, the common mores get translated
in to w an ting to liv e and acting together. And the question of ho w this
co-habitation and co-op eration can succeed without dominating the third
other gets answ ered with the concept of justice. Justice can b e understo o d
in b oth Ra wlsian v ersions of reparativ e justice or distributiv e justice,
what matters to Rico eur most is that b oth ha v e the same ethical core,
and that is equalit y . And the concept of equalit y is to life in institutions
what solicitude is to in terp ersonal relations, and what self-esteem is with
regard to one’s relation with oneself.
Within philosophical discourses, there is a long tradition of dispute
o v er whic h moral framew ork is to b e preferred, teleological accoun ts in
the tradition of Aristotle, or deon tological accoun ts in the Kan tian tra-
dition. This dispute do es not inform the presen t study since it do es not
sp eak directly to the usefulness of a narrativ e approac h to p ersonho o d
and its implications for ethical reasoning; neither is it relev an t to clarify
the concepts of ethical violence or genealogical opacities. It migh t suffice
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to p oin t out that while man y of those engaged in this dispute feel com-
p elled to tak e either side, or to solv e the conflict b y in tegrating the one
as a supplemen t for the other. A t the core of this conflict is the question
if or ho w the moralit y of obligation, whic h stems from the categorical im-
p erativ e, and the orien tation to w ards the ultimate go o d can b e brough t
in to coherence. Rico eur, of course, clearly stands in the teleological camp,
but b y means of the tripartite ethical aim or in ten tion he vividly aims to
in tegrate the Kan tian obligation to follo w the imp erativ e in to his ethical
accoun t. The st yle of moralit y of obligation can b e c haracterized b y ‘...the
progressiv e strategy of placing at a distance, of purifying, of excluding,
at the end of whic h the will that is go o d without qualification will equal
the self-legislating will, in accordance with the supreme principle of au-
tonom y .’ (Rico eur 1994, p.207). According to the Kan tian deduction of
practical reason from the F aktum der V ernunft , self-esteem and the aim
of the go o d life do not meet the requiremen ts of univ ersalit y of pure rea-
son. Also, the ethical aim, as it is constituted partially as w an ting to liv e
with others, and to share a common ethos, is regarded as impure since
it could b e deriv ed from mor es , instead of autonom y , here understo o d
as the abilit y of self-legislation and a free will. Only under the condition
that autonom y substitutes the ob edience to another, ob edience has lost
its c haracter of submission and dep endence. Or as Rico eur summarizes
it, ‘true ob edience ... is autonomy’ (ibid., p.210). Ricoeur is not con ten t
with the Kan tian formalism that regards the practical field of in terp er-
sonal in teraction as matter, or pluralit y . He main tains the argumen t that
the foundations of deon tology lie in the desire to liv e w ell with other in
just institutions, and has to tak e the bac k seat b ehind the ethical aim,
whic h is teleological.
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3.6 The Ethical Aim
F or the discussions to come ab out the v alidit y of Butler’s claims, suc h
as the opacit y of the self for itself, and her prop osal for new concept of
resp onsibilit y based on the m utual ac kno wledgemen t of opacit y , it will
b e b eneficial to lo ok at whic h concept of resp onsibilit y Rico eur deplo ys
in his ethical accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y , and if there is a theoretical
op ening in whic h the failure to giv e a narrativ e accoun t of oneself can b e
discussed. Let us b egin with the concept of resp onsibilit y . Rico eur ap-
proac hes the topical field of resp onsibilit y b y a discussion of the t w o p oles
of iden tit y , character and self-constancy . The phenomenon of c haracter
denotes the features and traits b y whic h the p erson can b e iden tified
and re-iden tified. The second p ole w as the asp ect of self-constancy . This
is an ethical notion in a narro w er sense b ecause it denotes the demand
that a p erson conducts herself in a w a y that other are able to coun t on
this p erson. Because someone can coun t on me, I am accoun table for my
actions. This is where resp onsibilit y as a concept en ters this theory: ‘The
term “resp onsibilit y” unites b oth meanings: “coun ting on” and “b eing
accoun table for”. It unites them, adding to them the idea of a resp onse
to the question “Where are y ou?” ask ed b y another who needs me. This
resp onse is the follo wing: Here I am! a resp onse that is a statemen t of
self-constancy’ (Rico eur 1994, p.165).
This concept of resp onsibilit y clearly originates in the sp eec h-pragmatist
and in terlo cutory fo cus that Rico eur establishes in his theory . And as a
matter of fact, this connects quite w ell with what Butler has named the
‘scenes of address’. With b eing asked to giv e an accoun t of oneself, esp e-
cially in situations when harm has b een done, and forgiv eness and com-
p ensation are at stak e, it is exp ected to b eing able to giv e this accoun t
ad ho c . Rico eur ev en p oin ts to the et ymological ro ot of resp onsibilit y
in terms of b eing able to giv e a certain resp onse. In his framew ork, the
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crucial asp ect of giving the resp onse ‘Here I am’ is to reassure and in-
stan tiate the exp ectations of the other ab out the self-constancy of the
p erson addressed. The other alw a ys can coun t on the fact that the c har-
acter that has acted in a harmful w a y is self-constan t in the sense that
she can b e addressed and ask ed ab out her motiv es. It is in this sense that
‘coun ting on’ and ‘b eing accoun table for’ coincide.
But here the t w o accoun ts part their w a ys. Butler’s definition of re-
sp onsibilit y is that ‘...to tak e resp onsibilit y for oneself is to a v o w the
limits of an y self-understanding, and to establish these limits not only as
a condition for the sub ject but as the predicamen t of the h uman com-
m unit y .’ (Butler 2005, p.83). This definition seems to b e at o dds with
the one pro vided b y Rico eur. He do es not problematize the issue of the
failure of ethical accoun ting, b ecause he seems to equate it with the fail-
ure to main tain self-constancy . Or do es he? As stated ab o v e, he adopts
the Aristotelian phrase that narrativ e mimics action, but he extends the
concept of action in terms of practices, settings and traditions. And as it
surfaced in the con text of narrativ e pre-configuration, his claim is that
h umans are in need of, but actually alw a ys do ha v e a preliminary un-
derstanding of what an action is, and what is needed to understand the
motiv es of an agen t, its meanings, and the ethical implications that arise
from that course of action. It seems that Butler w ould ob ject on the lev el
of mimesis 1 . She w ould question that precisely in the situation of ethical
address, it is quite uncertain what the ‘I’ in ‘Here I am’ actually denote.
And on a more basic lev el, she w ould ob ject that this pre-configurativ e
kno wledge is sufficien tly ric h enough to answ er the ethical address. As
elab orated ab o v e, one of the sources for opacit y is the conflict of temp o-
ralities, esp ecially the conflict b et w een the temp oralit y of the sub ject in
opp osition to the temp oralit y of the norm. Due to the latter, it often is
imp ossible to know exactly ho w has authored the norm in question.
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In terestingly , here surfaces a w eakness of Rico eur’s accoun t. He mainly
is concerned with the question of ho w a comm unit y is constituted, and
that there exist common ethics that are essen tial to this pro cess of
comm unit y-constitution. He sp ends plen t y of though t in order to demon-
strate that narrativ e really assumes a mediating role b et w een the domain
of descriptions and those of prescriptions and ethical ev aluation. Addi-
tionally , authorship is only of in terest to him to the exten t that it can
b e iden tified with the agency of a c haracter in a story narrated. He ev en
incorp orates the theoretical framew ork of sp eec h-acts b ecause he w an ts
to establish the practice of narrating in parallel to the actions that are
told. But what he omits to do is to widen the circle of p ossible authors
to those who ha v e authored certain norms. Because of that, he almost
is incapable to answ er to Butler’s criticism of self-transparency . He just
cannot see the source for opacit y here.
But he seems to agree with Butler that the question ‘Who am I?’
can b e problematic, and sev erely so. When he discusses v arious limiting
cases of the main tenance of selfho o d in literary fiction, he do es seem to
giv e expression to certain in tuitions that migh t p oin t in a v ery similar
direction than Butler’s. He admits that the question ‘Who am I?’ can
b e ev en ‘tormen ting’ (Rico eur 1994, p.168). Ho w do es he arriv e at this
judgmen t? He follo ws the question ho w the problematic c haracter of the
ipse can b e maintained on the narrativ e lev el. W e kno w that his concept
of c haracter, defined as the sum of acquired disp ositions and sedimen-
tations, is fashioned in that w a y precisely to answ er that problematic
nature of ipse-iden tit y . He can think of a p erson that is absolutely im-
p ossible to recognize ‘...b y his or her lasting manner of thinking, feeling,
acting, and so on...’ (ibid., p.167). But he do es not really b eliev e that
this can happ en in the real w orld, since he contin ues that this is ‘...not
demonstrable in practice, but it is at least think able in principle’. So, in
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this though t-exp erimen t, he con tin ues, what is practicable ‘...lies p erhaps
in ac kno wledging that all the attempts at iden tification, whic h form the
substance of those narrativ es of in terpretiv e v alue [...] are do omed to fail-
ure.’ (Rico eur 1994, p.167). It is unfortunate that he resorts to this stark
con trast of demonstrabilit y in practice. He sk etc hes the picture of an all-
or-nothing-iden tification, that is incapable to answ er to Butler. Still, he
underlines that he is not after o wnership of selfho o d. rather, he suggests
that there is a ‘...dialectic of o wnership and of disp ossession, of care and
of carefreeness, of self-affirmation and of self-effacemen t. Th us the imag-
ined nothingness of the self b ecomes the existen tial “crisis” of the self.’
(ibid., p.168). It is unfortunate that he merely hin ts at these p ossibilities,
instead of recognizing the crises of the self not only in limiting cases in
literary fiction, but also as a predicamen t of the h uman comm unit y , as
Butler coins it.
In summary , A tkins’ assessmen t migh t b e true, Rico eur indeed do es
dev elop a v ery sophisticated accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y . He do es so
b y adv ancing the conceptual framew ork of Aristotle, and enric hes it
b y the asp ect of sp eec h-acts, in itself merely a to ol with whic h he ex-
pands the concept of action itself. He main tains Aristotle’s claim that
m ythos/narrativ e is in a mimetic relation with action. This allo ws him
to establish a theory of narrativ e that is more extensiv e than most other
accoun ts to b e found in philosophical discourse. Of course, he stic ks to the
quite simple definition of narrativ e b y stating that to tell a story means
to narrate who did what when and wh y . But in addition to that, he truly
augmen ts narrativ e philosoph y b y his inquiries in to the constitution of
meaning in stories, and the in tricacies of emplotmen t. Ev en ts and exp e-
riences recoun ted in stories ac hiev e their meaning b y their constellation
with eac h other, what is imp ortan t is the c hoice of ev en ts themselv es,
but also their o v erall arra y . Cen tral to this part of his theory is that it is
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p ossible to iden tify the c haracter of a story with b oth the narrator and
the p erson who actually has figured as the agen t in the story told.
Cen tral to the transition from the op eration of emplotmen t to the eth-
ical implications of this theory has b een the concept of narrativ e unit y . It
is the v ehicle that allo ws said iden tification, and for him, that leads to an
ethical accoun t that is mainly teleological in nature. It will b e discussed
later on that there are v ery few argumen ts that mak e the transition from
a narrativ e accoun t of p ersonal iden tit y to this teleological accoun t ap-
p ear as necessary or, at least, mandatory . But it rev eals that it is his
con viction that the p ersonal, the in tersub jectiv e and the so cietal lev el
ha v e to b e incorp orated in to this accoun t. That, at least, resonates with
Butler’s insistence on critique. Unfortunately , it is not w ell suited to im-
pro v e the clarit y of Butler’s claims substan tially , whic h w as the reason to
turn o his w ork in the first place. There are v arious p oin ts of intersection
b et w een the t w o, but w e will ha v e to lo ok at ev en more adv anced accoun ts
of narrativ e and ho w they constitute p ersonal iden tit y , and on whic h lev-
els exactly norms ma y or ma y not mak e narrativ e accoun ting imp ossible.
Only after that w e will b e able to approac h an informed opinion on the
core concept of Butler’s, and that is ethical violence.
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4 F rom F ailure to Resp onsibilit y
In reconstructing Butler in c hapter 1 it b ecame apparen t that her critique
of narrativ e accoun ting op erates with a v ague concept of narrativ e. She
mainly opp oses narrativ e accoun ting, whic h she conceptualizes as b eing
addressed b y another h uman in order to pro vide a narrativ e accoun t of
oneself, one’s motiv es, and explanations for a, in man y cases harmful,
course of actions. Instead of delving in to the plethora of philosophical
accoun ts of narrativ e iden tit y and narrativ e accoun ting, she opted to
concen trate her analysis mainly on the man y disorien tations and opaci-
ties that hinder the individual or sub ject to giv e an exhaustiv e narrativ e
accoun t of oneself. W e remem b er, she differen tiates fiv e suc h disorien ta-
tions, namely the non-narrativizable exp osure to others that establishes
the individuals singularit y , the primary relations with others, that inher-
en tly are irreco v erable, a history of partial opacit y to oneself, also the
norms that facilitate the actual telling ab out oneself, but whic h are not
authored b y the narrator herself, and lastly , the structure of address,
whic h denotes the p ermanen t p ossibilit y to b e ask ed to giv e an accoun t.
All fiv e of these disorien tations hinder to giv e a narrativ e accoun t of one-
self that fulfils the exp ectations of the in terlo cutor and therefore pa v es
the w a y for comp ensation and, even tually , forgiv eness.
In the ligh t of these disorien tations and opacities, Butler questions
the prev alen t concepts of p ersonal iden tit y . Man y of those, she supp oses,
imp ose the ideal of a transparen t ‘I’ on to ev ery one who has to answ er
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the request for giving an accoun t of oneself. Again, she do es not opp ose
narrativit y as suc h. She admits that it is imp ossible to liv e a radically
non-narratable liv e in a w orld that is so filled with stories. What she
do es opp ose, then, is the presupp osition that it is p ossible, at least in
principle, to establish and main tain an transparen t and stable iden tit y
that can cop e with said exp ectations.
Instead, she demands the apprehension of the precarit y of others, whic h
means to recognize that the others also are, just as an yb o dy else, ex-
p osed to violence and in this sense so cially disp ensable. Once this shared
predicamen t of an y and all living b eings, whic h is the principle of equal
vulnerabilit y , has b een established as the foundation for an y philosophical
accoun t of ethics, it is mandatory to question conceptions of resp onsi-
bilit y that rely on transparency and stabilit y of p ersonal identit y . A t
this p oin t, she argues in fa v our of the ac kno wledgemen t of the principle
of equal vulnerabilit y and a concept of resp onsibilit y that incorp orates
these insigh ts.
She then con tin ues to apply these insigh ts to the question of what
to do. Here, the concept of ethical violence, whic h she adopted from
Adorno, gets utilized as a lens of critique. There are t w o v ersions of ethical
violence in Adorno. The first defines ethical violence as the violence that
is deplo y ed in order to defend an y system of norms, or ‘collectiv e ideas’,
whose justifications ha v e v anished. This sp eaks to the temp oralit y and
authorship of norms. They need to b e justified in a w a y that demand
ob edience from the agen ts without force, or, as Hab ermas has put it, only
the unforceful force of the b etter argumen t is acceptable. The second de-
finition framed the concept in terms of the metaph ysical confron tation of
univ ersal in terests and particular in terests. If it is true that norms en tail
these v arieties of violence, then it is imp erativ e to inquire the p ossibilities
ho w not to con tin ue to repro duce these forms of violence. Hence, the
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core of Butlers ethics of vulnerabilit y consists not only in the demand to
liquidify a p erson’s iden tit y , but also to engage with so cial theory and
critique in order to cop e with the disorien tations and opacities. Only in
this w a y it is p ossible to ac kno wledge the univ ersal precarit y of living
b eings, and to w eak en the violen t implications of a coheren t and stable
self. Her ethics is all ab out the disruption of normativ e tra jectories of
violence, and of the violence exerted b y norms themselv es.
These definitions of ethical violence as devised b y Adorno lea v e m uc h
ro om for in terpretation. But the crux of Butler’s ethics of vulnerabilit y
is the claim that there are v arious sources of disorien tation and opacit y ,
whic h in trinsically are link ed to narrativ e practices. The corp oreal exp o-
sure to others that constitutes the individual’s singularit y is what is in
conflict with the norms that facilitate narration and moral accoun ting.
And giv en that narrativ e is regarded as a prop er framew ork to organize
one’s exp eriences, as b oth Rico eur and Sc hec h tman w ould claim, there is
a problem with the irretriev able exp eriences made in the early and forma-
tiv e times b efore the ‘p erson’ b ecomes consciousness. And exactly these
claims, whic h directly are aimed at core tenets of narrativ e accoun ts of
p ersonal iden tit y and moral reasoning, ga v e reason to the reconstruction
of Rico eur’s comprehensiv e accoun t of narrativ e and the constitution of
iden tit y .
And in fact, Rico eur’s w ork on narrativ e iden tit y allo ws to reform ulate
the argumen ts of Butler in an adv anced w a y . This is p ossible due to t w o
features of his accoun t. First, he dev elops his narrativ e accoun t of iden tit y
and ethics strictly around the theory of action and practices. Narrativ e is
in a mimetic relation with actions and practices, and b ecause of that it is
appropriate to recoun t actions and exp eriences in a narrativ e framew ork.
Also, he refers to the sp eec h act theory . This in terlo cutory dimension is
missing in man y comp eting accoun ts of narrativ e and iden tit y , esp ecially
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in those who are in fa v our of what sometimes is called ‘minimal’ con-
cepts of narrativ e. As sho wn ab ov e, Sc hec htman, for example, is con ten t
to claim that narrativ e is mainly a to ol for the (re-)organization of ex-
p eriences. As suc h, she is able to neglect the in terlo cutory dimension of
telling a story to others in a sp ecific situation. The sp eec h-pragmatist
con textualization of narration and narrativ e is esp ecially suited to con-
nect with Butler’s claim that the unkno wn authorship of the norms that
facilitate the narration of an accoun t of the self is one source of disori-
en tation. So in principle, w e could try to reform ulate Butler’s claim in
the language of sp eec h-acts. And this w ould b e an impro v emen t in itself,
since Butler omits to pro vide a more detailed accoun t of ho w exactly the
lac k of kno wledge ab out who authored a giv en narrativ e norm (whic h,
in this con text, is a norm that go v erns narrativ e accoun ting) actually
stands in the w a y of kno wing oneself.
According to the theory of sp eec h acts, there are more c hannels of com-
m unication than one w ould exp ect. When w e engage in a sp eec h act, w e
do not only comm unicate some information. W e also c ho ose from a v ari-
et y of p ossible forms of sp eec h acts, and w e also address the consequences
in that sp eec h act. Certainly , this four-lev el mo del of comm unication can
b e used to demonstrate that there are man y exp ectations on the side of
the recipien t or listener when in terlo cution tak es place. But in order to
trace Butler’s claim ab out ethical violence in Rico eur, w e ha v e to lo ok
in to his argumen ts ab out norms, rules, and ho w ethics should cop e with
violen t b eha viour. After that w e ma y return to the practice of telling
stories, view ed as a sp eec h act.
One problem with Rico eur’s accoun t consists what tasks he actually
w an ts to ac hiev e with certain concepts. Narrativ e, as w e ha v e discussed
ab o v e, for him has to cop e with the differen t temp oralities of stories and
p ersons. Also, the op eration of configuration of emplotmen t is able to ne-
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gotiate the t w o philosophical definitions of iden tit y , namely ipse -iden tit y
and idem -iden tit y . It ac hiev es this goal precisely b ecause via emplotmen t
it is p ossible to conciliate the necessit y of plot, i.e. the ev en ts that driv e
the story from its b eginning to its end, with the man y ruptures, or con tin-
gencies, that are part of the story , and in man y cases, the most in teresting
part of the story . Emplotmen t establishes the unit y and coherence of the
story recoun ted, and this unit y can b e transferred to the lev el of a whole
life. It is here where Rico eur and Butler con tradict eac h other directly .
Whereas Rico eur adopts the argumen ts b y MacIn t yre and claims that
the narrativ e unit y of a life is the ultimate requiremen t for a fulfilled
life. Con v ersely , a life that cannot b e brough t in to a unified condition
nev er can b e regarded as p ersisten tly orien ted to w ards the go o d. Butler,
instead, allo cates here the most fundamen tal condition of h uman b eings,
namely the opacities and disorien tations mak e it imp ossible to acquire
unit y for one’s o wn life. Or in terms of the principle of the transparen t ‘I’:
Rico eur kno ws that transparency is not alw a ys ac hiev able when it comes
to the t wists and turns of a liv ed life. But he immediately has the prop er
remedy at hand, and that is the hermeneuticist con viction that more
kno wledge alw a ys is p ossible, if only w ould b e more self-reflexiv e and
w ould engage in ev en more in terpretation. This, at least in the con text
of ethical violence, is a hermeneuticist fallacy .
In this regard, there is a remark able gap in Rico eur’s philosoph y . He
assigns certain tasks to narrativ e, and he also pro vides a quite complex
definition of what a narrativ e is, ho w it gets configured, and whic h role
it pla ys with regard to ethics. Narrativ e unit y of a life is the ethical aim
translated in to the sphere of in terlo cution. But outside of that, he is quite
una w are of the man y norms and rules that go v ern these practices. And
it is precisely the degree of scepticism ab out the violen t implications of
norms in general that Butler puts to w ork in her philosoph y , and that Ri-
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co eur lac ks completely . Ob viously , he pursued t w o in terests in Oneself as
A nother . Firstly , he w an ted to demonstrate that the conceptualizations
of p ersonho o d found in the w orks of analytical philosophers is deeply
fla w ed and misguided when it comes to the concept of c haracter, and
when it comes to the ethical dimension of existence. This is what the
first half of that b o ok is all ab out. In the second half, he tries to de-
fend his v ersion of the ethical in ten tion that all h umans aim to liv e w ell,
with and for others, in just institutions. As it has b een sho wn in the
previous c hapter, the order of these concepts is what matters b esides the
material con ten t of this ethics. The order establishes and confirms the
insigh t that teleological ethics is sup erior to deon tological v arieties, that
the con ten t of what is go o d is sup erior to the Kan tian formalism, and
that in conclusion the ethical aim is more capable on all three planes,
the individual, the in tersub jectiv e, and the so cietal. But again, these are
t w o in terests that determine the argumen tativ e strategy of the whole
b o ok. And arguably he deliv ers a plausible accoun t in that regard. But
what he omits to do is to question some of the presupp ositions that these
t w o in terests en tail. And one of these presupp osition is that norms are
needed b ecause of the violence in in terp ersonal or group settings. But the
idea that norms themselv es could b e regarded as violen t, and that vio-
lence often is used to k eep an outdated (i.e. lac king rationalization) set of
norms in place. In this sense, one migh t remem b er the argumen t of Wil-
iams’ who claims with regard to iden tit y that since stories can b e ab out
virtually ev erything, and one needs to pic k the subset ab out iden tities
of the narrators, one has to kno w what a p erson is b efore one engages
with narrativ e. Rico eur has failed to refute this argumen t. He seemingly
had certain concepts at hand, and he used narrativ e to corrob orate these
claims.
A second w eakness of Rico eur’s accoun t is the dialectical heuristic that
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he imp oses on the an tagonistic asp ects of story-telling. He is righ t when
he inquires in to the t w o, often con tradictory logics that unfold in stories.
The one is the logic of the fabula that requires the story to con tain those
ev en ts that transform the initial state of affairs in to the state of the con-
clusion. The second logic is the in tegration of unforseeable ev en ts, that
coun ter the logic of the fabula. The dialectical in terpretation of Rico eur’s
results in the conclusion that b oth logics can b e in tegrated in to one story-
And in case that it migh t not b e p ossible, the ideal of the unit y of a h u-
man life is basically the ideal of engaging in quests ev ery time these logics
do not fit w ell. Again, b y doing so he precisely co v ers up what Butler has
unearthed in her b o ok, and that is the observ ation that the co ercion to
establish unit y and transparency is not only what mak es it difficult to
follo w narrativist argumen ts, or to giv e a narrativ e accoun t of oneself,
but that that this ideal renders the prev alen t concepts of resp onsibilit y
dangerous and useless. F or b oth claims w e need to lo ok deep er at what
exactly happ ens in narrating oneself, and what the norms that facilitate
narrativ e accoun ting actual are. The r ´ esum ´ e regarding Rico eur’s con tri-
bution has to b e am biv alen t. He truly has devised the most in tricate
and elab orate accoun t of narrativ e iden tit y , at least in philosophical dis-
courses. But at the same time his theory is impractical when it comes
to questions the v ery norms that underpin his theoretical in terest. With
regard to the ethics of vulnerabilit y that means that w e ha v e to lo ok out-
side the disciplinary b oundaries of philosoph y and ethics. It is a fact that
in neigh b ouring disciplines suc h as so cial psyc hology , moral psychology
and literary studies, the conceptualizations of narrativ e, narration, and
sometimes ev en ethics is more sophisticated than the philosophical in v en-
tory . In order to clarify the connection of ethical violence and narration,
w e will lo ok mainly in to the w ork of Ellinor Oc hs. In her b o ok Living
Narr ative , the trained linguistic an throp ologist offers a concise arra y of
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concepts with whic h narrativ e practices can b e analysed in more detail.
Although Oc hs is not in terested in (ethical) violence, her theory fits the
presen t purp ose quite w ell.
4.1 Ethical Violence and Na rration
It is one of Butler’s core in tuitions that ethical violence, i.e. the violence
used in order to main tain a normativ e order despite its loss of justifica-
tion, should b e av oided and coun tered. Or in Adorno’s terminology , their
is a violen t asp ect to the confron tation of particular in terests and uni-
v ersal in terest. Violence in general, but ethical violence in particular, has
man y detrimen tal affects not only on individuals, but also on comm u-
nities. According to her analysis, ethical violence undermines precisely
those relationships and practices that ethics is mean t to sustain. The
effects of ethical violence on the individual can b e demonstrated with
regard to t w o asp ects. F or one, it leads to the stabilization of a certain
v ersion of p ersonal iden tit y that in turn is violen t in c haracter. As Butler
has found in F reud and Klein, psyc hological injuries ma y con tribute to
the acquisition of what migh t b e called a fortified iden tit y . This iden-
tit y is mean t to forestall an y further w eakness and injury in the future.
These forms of iden tit y are more effectiv e the more it is reduced to one
asp ect, or a small set of asp ects. This psyc hological correlation, then,
con tributes to the p erp etuation of violence. A second op ening ethical
violence utilizes is that it sub v erts the comm unication in in terp ersonal
relationships. This second asp ect refers directly to the second form ula-
tion of Adorno’s, where univ ersal and particular in terests collide, to the
detrimen t of the particular. In h uman comm unication, esp ecially when
it comes to harm, affects, and moral accoun ting, it is imp ortan t that
the in terlo cutors feel safe enough to share in timate details. This ev en
is exp ected and demanded in situations of moral delib eration and the
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clarification of accoun tabilit y . When harm has b een done, the agen t has
to mak e transparen t her motiv es and the con texts she considered herself
to b e in. In this preliminary w a y it is comprehensiv e that some v ersion
of the ideal of transparency is in effect. But what is ev en more imp or-
tan t for Butler, that is that first, due to opacities and disorien tations,
transparency nev er is p ossible to ac hiev e completely . The insistence on
it, the demand to explain eac h and ev ery asp ect of a harmful action,
cannot b e fulfilled. It is exactly this what constitutes the p erp etuation of
ethical violence. Here, the claim to non-violence p oin ts in to the direction
of the mo dified concept of resp onsibilit y . It is based on the m utual ac-
kno wledgemen t that precariousness and disorien tations and is the equal
predicamen t for all h uman b eings. The second problem that arises in the
con text of narrativ e accoun ting and the principle of the transparen t ‘I’ is
that the p erp etrator can frame her motiv es and con texts in a w a y that is
lik ely to b e excepted b y the in terlo cutor. That is to sa y that since giving
a narrativ e accoun t of oneself is a shared practice in an y giv en comm u-
nit y , the individuals kno w exactly ho w to shap e their narrativ es in a w a y
that meets the exp ectations of the other p eople in v olv ed. One could call
these fashioned narrativ es ‘narrativ e ready-mades’. These are templates
for narrativ e accoun ting, or merely certain categorizations, ascriptions,
norms, and moral commitmen ts. Again, this is an instan tiation of ethical
violence, or rather a consequence of it, since it giv es preference to the
univ ersal in terests of the comm unit y o v er the particular in terests of the
individual. The uniqueness, or singularit y that eac h p erson is, and that
eac h ev en t in this p erson’s life is, gets v eneered with conceptual to ols
that op erate within what is commonly kno wn as normal or accepted.
Still, although these claims ab out ethical violence are plausible, the
question still remains to what exten t narrativ e really is inappropriate
in the w a y she outlines. This question could b e put just the other w a y
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around: Ho w could narrativ e accoun ting b e part of a moral practice that
orien tates itself to w ards non-violence, precariousness, and vulnerabilit y?
Rico eur could not answer to these questions although he con tributed
man y insigh ts ab out ho w iden tit y can b e understo o d as to b e constituted
b y narrativ e, and ho w narrativ e iden tit y in trinsically is a normativ e con-
cept to the exten t that the quest for narrativ e unit y is a prerequisite to
aiming for a go o d life. And b y this omission, he lines up with the man y
philosophers that seem to presupp ose that narrativ e, due to its ubiquit y ,
is a commonly kno wn fact. Others, mostly analytically trained philoso-
phers suc h as Goldie, do actually care for a ric h and op erational concept
of narrativ e, but at the same time try not to inflate the concept. These
lean definitions of narrativ e often are useful to highligh t one function
of narrativ e, suc h as k eeping trac k of one’s exp eriences, or in tegrate an
emotional comp onen t in to our understanding of h uman b eings. But these
definitions are not at all useful when it comes to trace the disorien tating
asp ects of narrativ e itself. In other w ords, many philosophers use a tool,
without assuring themselv es ab out the structural fla ws and shortcomings
of this v ery to ol. Butler is to b e included in to this group, but at least she
p oin ts the w a y in a fruitful direction. The ideal of the transparen t ‘I’,
and the often unclear set of norms that facilitate narration and narrativ e
accoun ting, are just t w o examples of ho w narrativ e sub v erts the v ery idea
of ethics. Still, her concept of narrativ e is fragmen tary and sk etc h y . This
is wh y w e will lo ok in to ideas of narrativ e outside of academic philosoph y .
As it will b ecome clear at the end of this section, there is more to find
than one w ould exp ect.
The heuristic of narrativ e, as it is presen t in the man y w orks that
ha v e b een discussed ab o v e, often seems to remain on a sup erficial lev el,
the definitions are ab out narrativ es as a theory ab out story-telling, and
ab out narration, whic h is a theory ab out the practice of story-telling.
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But when it comes to an analysis of the norms that facilitate narrativ e
in terlo cution, these accoun ts often are coarse, they do not allo w for a
fine-grained analysis of the man y p ersp ectiv es, roles, and practices that
are addressed b y narrativ e. F ortunately , this is not true for some disci-
plines in the vicinit y of philosoph y . F or example, in literary studies, there
is narratology , the scien tific inquiry in to story-telling. But also, there are
man y empirical researc hes within so cial psyc hology and transcultural an-
throp ology that ha v e had the need to impro v e their empirical findings b y
honing the theory of narrativ e and story-telling. W e will lo ok in to three
suc h conceptual w orks, namely that of Kenneth Gergen in R elations and
R e alities (Gergen 1997) and prominen tly in to the w ork of Elinor Oc hs
and her seminal b o ok Living Narr ative (Oc hs and Capps 2001). W e will
lo ok through their accoun ts on narrativ e and narrativ e constitution with
Butler’s claim in mind that there are man y asp ects to a life and to story-
telling that mak e self-narration difficult and sometimes imp ossible.
On first sigh t man y of the asp ects in Gergen’s w ork lo oks familiar to
what w e ha v e encoun tered in Rico eur and Butler. He agrees that there
is a hermeneutic b enefit to self-narration b ecause it helps to put an ac-
tion in to the con text of preceding and subsequen t ev en ts. He defines
self-narrativ e as an individual’s accoun t of the relationships among self-
relev an t ev en ts across time, and the presen t life, in its totalit y , is not a
m ysterious or sudden ev en t, but a sensible result of a life story . That
is all w ell kno wn and compatible with what w e already kno w. What is
in teresting in Gergen is his understanding of what self-narrativ es ulti-
mately amoun t to: ‘I w an t to consider self-narrativ es as a form of so cial
accoun ting or public discourse. In this sense, narrativ es are con v ersational
resources, constructions op en to contin uous alteration as in teraction pro-
gresses. P ersons [...] do not in terpret or “read the w orld” through narra-
tiv e lenses; they do not author their o wn liv es. Rather, the self-narrativ e
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is a linguistic implemen t em b edded within con v en tional sequences of ac-
tion and emplo y ed in relationships in suc h a w a y as to sustain, enhance,
or imp ede v arious forms of action. They are cultural resources that serv e
suc h so cial purp oses as self-iden tification, self-justification, self-criticism,
and so cial solidification’ (Gergen 1997, p.188). This is a substan tial shift
compared to what w e ha v e discussed so far. Here, self-narrativ es can b e
used to quite differen t ends, they are a resource that is a v ailable for all
mem b ers of a language-comm unit y , and that are used in certain rela-
tionships with others. This is just opp osite to what Butler and Rico eur
think ab out narrative. Relationships are not constituted b y narrativ e
in terlo cution, but are formed in adv ance, they are expressions of that
relationship. But what really is helpful in Gergen is that he asks what a
‘w ell-formed’ narrativ e is, and who has to determine this qualit y , or who
decides what coun ts as a go o d narrativ e, and what not. This is esp ecially
imp ortan t since it allo ws us to translate Butler’s criticism of the demand
for transparency as just one case among others, that all are candidates
for w ell-formed, or not-so-w ell-formed narrativ es. Narrativ es that fail to
appro ximate con v en tional forms are regarded as nonsensical. And in that
regard, telling someb o dy that one is not able to giv e a coheren t narrativ e
of oneself, b ecause one is substan tially and existen tially disorien tated,
surely will b e regarded as nonsensical. Or think of Rico eur’s remark that
narrativ e unit y is a necessary prerequisite of taking resp onsibilit y for
one’s actions. That is sensible, whereas the failure to establish this co-
herence often is regarded as nonsensical, if not pathological. There are
v arious remarks to b e found in Sc hec h tman where she clearly states that
the failure to establish normal narrativ es often is a sign of insanit y and
psyc hological illness.
F or Gergen, who p ositions himself clearly as a constructionist, the
prop erties of w ell-formed narrativ es are culturally and historically con-
140

tingen t. That almost is common sense to da y , but at this p oin t of our dis-
cussion, it is a p ointer that is helpful. F or Gergen, it is of great imp ort to
inquire in to con temp orary narrativ e con v en tions: ‘What are the require-
men ts for telling and in telligible story within the presen t-da y culture of
the W est? The question is particularly significan t, since an elucidation
of these con v en tions for structuring stories sensitizes us to the limits of
self-iden tit y’ (Gergen 1997, p.189). And the limits of self-iden tit y is top-
ical for Butler, as w e ha v e sho wn ab o v e.Gergen do es not stop here, but
devises six suc h con v en tions, and it is w orth recoun ting them. He starts
with the con v en tion that narration incorp orates establishing a v alued
endp oin t, that means the endp oin t is v alued or desirable. He p oin ts out
that these v alued endp oin ts are deriv ed from the culture’s on tology and
construction of v alue. Secondly , there is the demand to select endp oin ts
that are relev an t to this endp oin t. it is the endp oin t that dictates the
selection of the ev en ts, and in this sense this is a substan tial reduction of
the candidates from whic h one can c ho ose. Thirdly , he iden tifies certain
con v en tions that determine ho w to order the ev en ts in the narrativ e. This
ordering should b e linear and temp oral, in most cases. F ourthly , there is
a general tendency to exp ect the stabilit y of the iden tit y . Once the iden-
tit y is defined b y the story-teller, the individual will retain this iden tit y
or function within the story . This observ ation, again, is quite helpful. If
stabilit y is what is exp ected b y the listener, the teller will tend to select
only those v alues and ev en ts, that feed in to this image of stabilit y . Also,
and w e will discuss this in the last section of this c hapter, it is not alw a ys
true that the teller of the story , the agen t or c haracter in that story , and
the p erson whose identit y is mean t to b e constituted b y this narrativ e
are iden tical. As MacIn t yre already knew, w e are merely co-authors of
our life-narrativ es, and in order to answ er the questions ‘Who am I?’
and ‘What should I do?’, w e first ha v e to find out part of whic h pre-
141

existing stories w e are. Giv en that an individual figures not only in her
o wn life-story , but in man y narrativ es of other p eople, the stabilit y of that
narrativ e iden tit y b ecomes problematic. One example w ould b e stigma-
tization. Once one is categorised in to a p opulation that displa ys stigma
X, for example, not b eing able to tell a story from b eginning to end, this
stigma will not fade, and the stigma will b ecome one asp ect of the th us
stabilized iden tit y . Gergen adds t w o further con v en tions, causalit y and
linguistic mark er to b egin and end the in terlo cutory episo de of telling a
story . But we ha v e discussed these con v en tions elsewhere in depth. What
Gergen adds to our presen t discussion is a reflectiv e and critical treat-
men t of the con v en tions of narration that ha v e not b een discussed in the
authors I ha v e elab orated on. The space of p ossible iden tities an individ-
ual can or cannot assume in a giv en comm unit y is limited b y these v ery
con v en tions. There are not an infinite n um b er of p ossible iden tities, or
selv es. Instead, these p ossibilities are con tained b y the imp erativ e to sta y
within the culturally prev alen t con v en tions of in telligibilit y: ‘...in order
to main tain in telligibilit y in the culture, the story one tells ab out one-
self m ust emplo y the commonly accepted rules of narrativ e construction.
Narrativ e constructions of broad cultural usage form a set of ready-made
in telligibilities’ (Gergen 1997, p.199).
Narrativ e constructions, for Gergen, are linguistic to ols with imp ortan t
so cial functions. They establish what he calls the capacit y for relatedness.
He also is a w are of the fact that narrativ es of self-stabilit y pla y a crucial
role within a culture. Relationships tend to stabilize themselv es, and it is
only b ecause of this that w e can sp eak of institutions, cultural patterns,
and individual iden tities. This is where the so cial demand stems from,
and consequen tly one m ust b e capable of making oneself intelligible as
enduring, in tegral, and endo w ed with a coheren t iden tit y . But iden tit y in
this p ersp ectiv e is not an ac hiev emen t of the mind, but the v ery result of
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