Toward the end of the 1990 preface to Gender Trouble, Judith Butler briefly sheds light onto an idea that is fundamental not only to her own text, but to the nature of philosophical writing and theorizing, in general:
“It seems that every text has more sources than it can reconstruct within its own terms. These are sources that define and inform the very language of the text in ways that would require a thorough unraveling of the text itself to be understood, and of course there would be no guarantee that that unraveling would ever stop” (Butler).
I found this idea both thoughtful and incredibly strategic. On some level, the idea of infinite (or untraceable) influence on writing or philosophy is a bit of a given; of course, it would be absurd to assume that one can fully contain every source to have inspired their ideas, in some way. However, I found this outlook to be particularly interesting, in the unique context of Butler’s own text and philosophies. While she seems to be most directly referencing the nature of her own writing, Butler also brings into question the ultimate legitimacy of the positions she’s aiming to counter. The premise of Butler’s work, in this context, is to disarm ideas of gender and womanhood that are widely mislabeled as “natural fact.” Through this “unraveling” philosophy, these gender “facts” are immediately stripped of their first level of legitimacy, before they are even directly explored. Essentially, Butler weakens these ideas before she attacks them.
I didn’t notice these comments of Butler’s as strategic at first, but now I do. She’s definitely trying to make an argument, and, I agree, she weakens these ideas first to make her criticism of them more effective. And the way she does this is very subtle, as I had not even picked up on this the first time I read it. Her mention of “unraveling” seems like an innocuous discussion at first, but it really serves her criticism of gender.