I want to stress that I think Claudia Leeb’s book is excellent, innovative, and critically important for work on political subjectivity. Furthermore (as she also suggests in her review of The Misinterpellated Subject), I think that we share many similar ideas; we have much more in common, I would say, than not. I think we are fighting the same fights, generally speaking, and opposing the same understandings of subjecthood. Clearly, however, there are also some areas of disagreement and, since disagreement is always more interesting and probably more fruitful to think about, I will focus on our contentions in this brief response.

As I see it, the basic disagreements between Leeb and myself are twofold. First, in terms of her claim that a fluid or discontinuous subject is incapable of agency or causing change, it is certainly the case, as she asserts, that a subject who is genuinely weakened probably would not be able to do much of anything, much less resist patriarchy, capitalism, and normativity. But I think that sometimes a subject’s appearance as fluid may only reflect a projection from the perspective of liberal subjectivity that any nonconforming subjecthood must be weak and without agency. Also, I think that even if the subject is fluid and uncertain, it can still be an agent, just not the kind of agent that liberal subjecthood demands. Leeb’s own insight into the subject-in-outline suggests as much. I could see a liberal saying that a subject-in-outline is not a subject and will collapse from its own porosity, whereas I see a variety of such alternative forms of agency as all being viable and posing a genuine threat to normativity.

The second disagreement comes in terms of whether recognition can ever offer any form of resistance from within its dictates. I clearly agree that it is a system that is rigged, but my book is an examination of how even a rigged system can backfire against its rigger. It is not so much that anarchic subjects can choose their way out of the identity that they have been recognized as having, so much as they can inhabit that identity in ways that disrupts its normative aspects (even while continuing to pass as normative, nonthreatening beings).

In general, I would say that I am more tolerant of partial measures than Leeb is. I see many instances where even a seemingly defeated subject has ways to resist. I think Leeb is correct to point out the way that fluid subjects can support rather than undermine capitalism. What interests me is that sometimes they can do both at once. My book is about how to spot and enhance the subversive side of liberal subjects, how to not let the fact that they are compromised and weak be the end of the story. I think this is important because, like Leeb, I seek out subjects that are capable of resisting and even undoing liberal (and now neoliberal) capitalism. In my view, if you write off the compromised, you are writing off just about everyone. I do not think that the subject-in-outline is necessarily opposed to such compromises (you can imagine the dashes to be that part that is compromised and the empty gaps that part which is not). So I see this argument between us as being a matter of degree and not of kind.

Finally, I do not agree that I dismiss the effect of cruel laughter, mockery, and imposed self-hatred, which are the hallmarks of liberalism’s treatment of so many of its subjects. Nor do I downplay the murder of black women like Sandra Bland behind the scenes. These are all the way that liberalism sustains itself. My focus is on those moments when this treatment does not result in more liberalism. I acknowledge that in Althusser’s proverbial nine times out of 10 (in real life far more rarely, I am afraid) the mocked subject slinks away, full of despair, and the murdered black woman is forgotten and no one says her name. But once in a while the misinterpellated subject chooses to remain and fight, and the murdered black woman is remembered and named. My book is about how that is even possible. I share Leeb’s belief that such moments are not only possible but can be multiplied and enhanced so that those other times of loss and self-loathing become the exception and not the rule.