I've been reading Judith Butler again recently (as you might've guessed from some of my posts); and I am enthralled yet once again by her thought, the starting points of her critique and particularly the way she writes. Interestingly enough, in Undoing Gender, she seems to directly or indirectly reveal lots of autobiographical stuff, for whatever reason.
What I find most intriguing as I read her now is the fundamentality of the concept of recognition; recognition as the drive of desire; and recognition, most basically, as the condition under which one is able to live a viable life as she would have it (though I am somewhat disappointed that she now also starts talking about all this Deleuzian stuff: life, the human, becoming and what have you not). I find it interesting, I presume, because I feel that much of my (current) life and desire (more forward-pressing than at other times) circles around precisely this, the desire for recognition. Though I've been wondering and asking myself if this recognition of the Other (in both senses) isn't only about the question of becoming or being real, but also of becoming or being lovable. It seems to me that I have somewhat lost the sense of what it means to be lovable, and thus of what it means to be real. Can one, really, separate the two? Is an unloved existence (which is not, I believe, the same as an unwanted existence) really conceivable, or, indeed, viable?
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