2010/05/21 by Ernesto Javier Martínez · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies #Discourse Analysis in Language Studies #Rhetoric and Communication Studies
paper · doi:10.1086/651037
openalex publication_date 2010/05/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
This essay is an engagement with the theory of language and narrative that Toni Morrison promotes in her powerful and, up until now, little‐discussed Nobel Lecture in Literature. Importantly, however, this essay is also an engagement with the brief and peculiar misuse of Morrison’s work in Judith Butler’s study Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. In Butler’s study, Morrison’s lecture is selectively cited in order to support claims about the indeterminacy of language that are curiously at odds with Morrison’s own understanding of language and social reference. I raise questions about Butler’s use of Morrison not only to point to discrepancies but also to pose broader observations about the perfunctory and instrumental presence of writers of color as evidence in feminist theoretical projects employing extreme constructivist (antirealist) presuppositions.