Date of Award
2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Johanna Oksala
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the concept of gendered subjectivation by tracing a theoretical lineage between Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler. At stake between these philosophers is the problem of resistance to the norms, taboos, and legal/punitive practices that constitute subjects. The project asks: how can feminist philosophy construct an account of gendered subjection that takes seriously the constitutive force of social norms and regulations while simultaneously providing a robust theory of resistance? To answer this question, my project makes a twofold contribution to social political philosophy and feminist philosophy. First, I unpack the conceptual and theoretical dialogue linking Althusser, Foucault, and Butler. Secondly, I advance contemporary debates in feminist philosophy on ideology critique and subject constitution. The first chapter argues that Althusser foregrounded a promising new way to theorize subjectivation for feminist philosophy. While Althusser has been framed as an enemy of the subject, he in fact opened a radically new way to conceive of subjects as produced by ideology, which bears overlooked potential for feminist philosophy. However, I problematize Althusser’s opposition between ideology and scientific Marxism, and his view of repressive state apparatus and ideological state apparatus distinction. The chapter concludes by highlighting the points that require rethinking in Althusser’s conception of the state/ideology/subject relationship from a feminist perspective. The second chapter proposes that Foucault’s Punitive Society lectures are a response to Althusser’s rethinking of ideology. The argument uncovers an implicit dialogue between the two philosophers pertaining to the intertwinement of capitalism, law, and morality. Foucault shared with Althusser a common theoretical interest in analyzing power’s constitution of subjects. Nonetheless, his philosophical method took the traditionally Marxist analysis of capitalism in a radically new direction. Instead of assuming a prior imbalance between a moralizing ruling class and a proletariat subject to punitive control, Foucault interrogated how the uneven operation of power came to be. His genealogy of the moralization of the law radically foregrounded the importance of resistance by highlighting the contradictory, contingent character of the legal/moral system created in modernity. The third chapter makes a twofold contribution to scholarship on Judith Butler. The argument shows that Butler builds an analysis of gendered subject constitution based on concepts inherited from Althusser’s and Foucault’s works, while also addressing their inadequacies by importing theoretical tools from psychoanalytic theory. The chapter nevertheless identifies key problems with Butler’s turn to psychoanalysis, pertaining to their analysis of racialized and gendered subjection in their commentary of Nella Larsen’s novella Passing. Butler’s development of a hybrid Foucauldian/psychoanalytic theory ultimately overemphasizes the unviability of marginalized subject positions, thus falling back into a negative model of power. Finally, the fourth chapter returns to Althusser and proposes an alternative route for the theorization of gendered subjection and resistance. Based on an experimental feminist reading of Althusser’s ill-known writing on materialist theatre, the chapter argues that Althusser considered materialist theatre to create a new aesthetic experience that combined techniques of ‘distancing’ spectators with their simultaneous enlistment into the play. This innovation made possible a new kind of ideology critique where spectators are confronted not with the ideological falseness of theatrical representations, but with their very entanglement within ideology. Applying this claim to gender, the chapter ends by carving out a path for a reading of Althusser that can consider resistance to gendered subjection as an “aesthetics of existence” in a Foucauldian vein.
Recommended Citation
Pons, Daphne, "Subjectivation, Gender, Resistance: Tracing the Theoretical Lineage between Althusser, Foucault, and Butler" (2026). Dissertations. 4325.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/4325
