Common Air
Crawley posits the performance of breathing as a critique of normative thought. Taking from Foucault the notion of critique (as resistance) and from Butler the notion of performance (as constitution), Crawley shapes his aesthetics of possibility that acts out breathing in an aesthetic, performative way to irrupt the distinctions of the normative world.
To follow Crawley’s argument, we must see how ‘power’ in the discursive practice links to subjectivity. Power manifests itself in relations that subject an agent to lines of normative behavior. This is one meaning of subjectivity. Such imposition of normativity includes and excludes along lines of categorial distinctions e.g. man/woman, human/non-human, thereby giving certain subjects (and not others) intelligibility and legitimacy. This is the second meaning of subjectivity.
It is crucial, however, to see that Crawley tries to operate on the undefined margins prior to discursive practice, that is, prior to the world-view of Foucault/Butler. If they defined resistance as contemporaneous to power, Crawley, by way of common air, draws a space for breathing as a ‘resistance that is prior to power’ (48 and 81). Foucault/Butler, as far as I understand, do not focus on that which is prior to power. For Foucault, there is no such thing. For Butler, such a thing would be un-intelligible. On the other hand, for Crawley un-intelligibility is not a sign of lack, but rather the sign of that horizon which is irreducibly open and unbounded. The ‘shared in and as common’ of air (45) is the basis of aphilosophical-atheological resistance, which is necessarily prior to any distinctions that would marginalize, normalize, do violence. From air, we proceed to breath, and to flesh - the matter sustained not by distinctions but by common practice and performance. Has Crawley provided enough resources to support this commonality over and above categorical distinction, discursive practice, and power? Can we link his notion of undefined openness to Glissant’s and Spivak’s ideals?
