The Embodied Vulnerability of Language : Toward a Post-sovereign Account of Responsibility in Ludwig Wittgenstein and Judith Butler (by Way of Stanley Cavell)

In this paper, I will consider an encounter between a Cavellian reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and in particular his account of inner life as embodied expression, and Judith Butler’s notion of embodied vulnerability. In doing so, I aim to show that these two perspectives place at the center of language as a shared and embodied practice a fundamental vulnerability, which emerges both as a constitutive condition of embodied life and as a crucial dimension for developing a responsive ethical attitude toward ourselves, others and shared forms of life, thereby reformulating the notion of responsibility from a post-sovereign perspective. Furthermore, I wish to show that these two perspectives complement each other. Thanks to Butler’s account of the embodied vulnerability of language, it is possible to take into account the social and hegemonic dimension of norms conceived of as embodied practices that both enable and constrain our life. Thanks to Wittgenstein, by way of Cavell, it is possible to show the irreplaceability of our personal embodied expressions and our responsibility for them.