ABSTRACT
One of my students suggested that the title of this chapter was too confrontational. It suggested to her a vision of a courtroom drama. She imagined me cross-examining Professor Judith Butler-an icon of poststructuralist thought in the United Stateswith that spooky loud gong sound from the long-playing television show Law and Order going off every few seconds. I assured her that the title was partially intended to evoke a sense of oxymoron. One couldn’t really put poststructuralism on trial because there would “always already” be another discursive “move” that would prevent any fact, strategy, or theory from being established. My imaginary cross-examination of a radical poststructuralist-which I believe Professor Butler is not-would be accompanied by a calliope rather than by that Law and Order sound. After all, the calliope bears a postmodern double meaning. The instrument is the sound track of the circus, signifying a sort of disorder that is both annoying and liberating. Calliope was also one of the nine Muses of ancient Greece, believed to inspire epic poetry.
