Embodied practices make linguistic resignification alone unable to destabilize norms

Evidence

In Butler’s conception, insofar as the force of the body is knowable through the system of signifi challenges to the system come from interventions in the signifi features of that system. For example, Butler analyzes the reappropriation of the term “queer,” which was historically used as a form of hate speech against lesbians and gays, but which has now come to serve as a positive term of self.. identifi For But.. ler the appropriation of the term “queer” works by redirecting the force of the reiterative structure of homophobic norms and tethering the term to a differ.. ent context of valences, meanings, and histories. What is notable for the pur.. pose of my argument here is that it is a change in the referential structure of the sign that destabilizes the normative meaning and force of the term “queer.” In the case of the mosque movement, as I have argued above, a change in the referential structure of the system of signs cannot produce the same effect of destabilization. Any attempt to destabilize the normative struc.. ture must also take into account the specifi of embodied practices and virtues, and the kind of work they perform on the self, recognizing that any transformation of their meaning requires an engagement with the technical and embodied armature through which these practices are attached to the self. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1130

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Butler’s performativity theory — the reader’s contrast with Butler on resignification echoes the politics-of-piety vs. secular-feminist-agency tension. — connects to: Physical expressiveness precedes language as the negative that generates it; Interpretative skill cannot be digitized because it is embodied know-how — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 478; Shared recitation’s meaning does not survive passage into mature citizenship — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 361 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies what performative resignification means in Butler’s framework versus what it cannot accomplish under embodied-practice regimes.