Giving an Account: When, Where, for Whom, and Why?

In this essay, Judith Butler considers a series of critical engagements with their work, examining not only what it means to give an account of oneself but to whom and about what. Several of the authors in the collection Unaccountably Queer draw attention to how the generalized philosophical problem, can I give an account of myself ?, changes once we ask what prompts the question, to whom the answer is addressed, and in what time and space the “account” becomes an instrument or illumination of power. If any such account assumes a language saturated with social norms, then how is it possible to avoid becoming trapped in categories, or effaced by them, if they function to discredit the speaking I? Considering the racial politics of account giving, transphobic and diasporic narratives, complaints, colonial trajectories, and humanitarian whiteness, the question takes on new dimensions by virtue of its specific conditions of enunciation. Along the way, giving an account of oneself is distinguished from memoir and autobiography, and the existential stakes of theoretical reflection are defended.