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Katerina Kolozova, Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, 208 pp., $50 (hardback), ISBN 978-023-116-610-2.
Katerina Kolozova's Cut of the Real focuses on the relationality between the categories "Real" and "gender," and treats them in light of what could be called the orthodoxy of either feminist poststructuralism or feminist poststructuralist philosophy. (In this review I will use the first term and abbreviate it to FP). Broadly summarized, her central argument is that these fields have the tendency to divorce gender and the Real, and instead associate it with "fiction." In approaching feminist poststructuralism's dominant vision that gender is a fiction and a social construct, Kolozova deals by extension with its notion of (and sometimes obsession with) embodiment. Cut of the Real is not, however, an attack against FP that tries to substitute it with a renaturalization of gender from a realist/speculative perspective. The close readings of both Judith Butler and Rosi Braidotti reveal an expertise in and respect for their work and followers. Because it is neither a vitriolic attack on nor a romantic exegesis of FP, and because it is an original contribution to both FP and non-philosophy, this book will be of sustained interest for scholars in FP, poststructuralism, and non-philosophy, but also new materialism and new (speculative) realism.
On the one hand, if the Real is constituent of an ontology of subjectivity and its manifestation and givenness in the world, then on the other hand, how would the pol- itics of a realist ontology of subjectivity defy the metaphysics of presence in the history of philosophy? First, Kolozova aims to reveal the intrinsic limitations of FP posed by its own neglect of all and any positive rendition of an Outside. Second, when exposed as a dogmatic system of philosophical thought, FP becomes the model of continental impasses with subjectivity and embodiment; it produces its own impossibility of the Outside. These two problems are to a great extent successfully addressed in the book with feminist bravery and surgical precision. It will not be an overstatement to claim that, because Kolozova successfully exposes FP as a dogmatic kind of philosophy, aided by François Laruelle's now well-known critique of "philosophical decisionism" and "the principle of sufficient philosophy"1 (29),...