well needed examination of whether there is personal meaning still to be found in our posthumanist, poststructuralist world, After you've stripped away any promised totality or wholeness from the Subject, how is that Subject supposed to continue in the world in full consciousness of where she stands in relation to the hegemonic systems said to control her every move and thought Ruti does a beautiful job of demonstrating the possible freedoms to be found within the cracks of the System.
If I fault her at all, it's in the slight repetitiveness of her writing and her defensiveness in continually fending off perceived attacks against her thoughts especially in the first half of the book.
As I believe this is her first main work and assumed some derivation of her thesis I think it can be understood as part of her process of breaking free from the ironic hegemony of poststructuralism.
When I was a graduate student in Anthropology my thinking was caught in a war between a cognitive theorist and a poststructuralist, both of whom I respected immensely, both of whom couldn't vouch for the beliefs of the other, and
both unable to see that they could both be right in a nuanced combination of ideas.
Forever we are caught in the web of our always calcifying ideals, defining ourselves by always pushing further away from the center of what is probably true, Essential reading for scholars and students in critical theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies,
How does the self care for itself in the posthumanist era What psychic processes might allow the postmodern subject to find meaning and value in its life Is it possible to delineate a theory of psychic potentiality that is compatible with poststructuralist models of fluid, decentered, and polyvalent subjectivity
Reinventing the Soul offers a new perspective on what it means to be a human being and to strive in the world despite the wounding effects of the socialization process.
Drawing on the rich legacies of French poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Ruti builds an affirmative alternative to the postFoucaultian tendency to envision subjectivity as a function of hegemonic systems of power.
She proposes that the subject's encounter with the world also necessarily activates the psyche's innovative potential, By focusing on matters of creative agency, imaginative empowerment, inner metamorphosis, and selfactualization, Ruti outlines some of the mechanisms by which the psyche manages not only to survive its lack, alienation, or suffering, but also to transform its abjection into an existentially livable reality.
Central to Ruti's argument is the idea that human beings relate to the world in active rather than merely passive waysas dynamic creators of meaning rather than as powerless dupes of disciplinary power.
Ruti provides a soulful and constructive take on posthumanist theories that brilliantly reconciles the notion of a constructed, narrative/metaphorical self made up of externally obtained fictions, with the possibility of agency and autonomy.
She argues that it is precisely because the self is constructed with metaphors that one is able to reconstruct it, by taking in newer, more enabling metaphors that prevent old, fossilized, and oppressive metaphors from running the show alone.
This is what makes it possible to resist oppression and create a viable life for oneself, as opposed to the picture that many posthumanist thinkers have painted of humans as inevitably doomed to hegemonic suppression by dehumanizing dominant narratives.
In her words, subjectivity, although constituted with pieces obtained externally, does not always equal subjection,
Ruti also provides a much needed distinction between harmful and loving forms of sociality, arguing that even though individualistic notions of the self that disdain the "masses" and communities are problematic, communities and relationships are not always conducive to one's wellbeing either, and health does not depend on our being alone or being with others, but on our ability to experience both our solitary, contemplative moments and our time with others as deeply satisfying.
Every book that Ruti writes, is a pleasure to read, She spoke of how she reads Nietzsche to find consolation, and it's probably the Nietzschean undertone of all her work that is the reason why I read Ruti for consolation.
Whenever I am in the midst of melancholia, and in the process of metaphorizing that lack which becomes me, I have been turning to Ruti, because this is the essence of her work.
How do we inhabit the lack of our being, so that we can embrace the singularity of our being, which our lack is foundational for,
The way she writes too is quite comforting in a sense, It feels like a loving teacher, and it's probably why in every single one of my reviews of her work, I refer to having a crush on her, It's hard not to, because the character she presents as the author of the book, is one who is embodying love, The work which is personal, is also universal in a sense,
I absolutely love her work, I also have been learning to love my lack, AMOR FATI. A great deal of this book is fantastic, inspiring, and thought provoking, Every time I read the word 'potential,' I get shudders thinking about her thoughts therein,
I think Ruti's chapter on despair and melancholy and their necessary ties to creativity is a bit narrow in scope, But, for the mission she set out on and for room she gave herself to work, I think this book is quite good, Ruti offers a posthumanist humanism, of sorts, By wading through Lacan, Foucault, Butler, Nietzsche and many others, Ruti I think successfully navigates the postmodern decentering of the subject by reestablishing meaningmaking in life through what she dangerously calls a 'soul'.
I liked it. I liked the clarity of her prose, I liked how she expressed her goals and fears in writing this book, And I liked how her humanism and ethical insight emerged from a postmodern worldview,
"What this suggests is that those of us working with posthumanist paradigms of subjectivity cannot assume that existential questionsquestions about the best way to live, for instancecarry any less weight now than they did prior to.
The fact that the self is socioculturally constituted, that it is alienated rather than selfidentical, does not mean that it does not long to live its life meaningfully, No matter how sophisticated our critical insights into the ideological seductions, exclusions, and manipulations through which we come to inhabit particular subject positions, no matter how refined our understanding of the systems of signification and power that rob us of selfdetermination, and no matter how elaborate our efforts at cultural demystification, it is virtually impossible to exorcise, on the level of concrete lived experience, the appeal of a life well lived.
Who among us does not strive to live life to the fullest Who does not hunger for psychic and affective profundity Who can resist the allure of a unique calling, the promise of passion, beauty, and creative insight" p.
. Mari Ruti is Distinguished Professor of critical theory and of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, She is an interdisciplinary scholar within the theoretical humanities working at the intersection of contemporary theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, trauma theory, posthumanist ethics, and gender and sexuality studies.
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