Reading Cornelia Rau : at the limits of intelligibility

This article is a consideration of the case of Cornelia Rau in relation to recent accounts of intelligibility and recognition in the work of Judith Butler (2004a, 2004b). Our analysis of texts from the initial moments[2] of the Rau scandal draws on poststructuralist theory to consider the discursive constitution of subjects within those texts, tracing the fractures in thought that are evident within them. Influenced, like Butler, by the work of Michel Foucault on power and its operations on material bodies, and drawing as well on Michel de Certeau's notion of law as it is inscribed on the body, we analyse the discourses deployed in two Ministerial Media Releases that served to position Rau as unintelligible as a citizen, and thus, as undeserving of the fundamental rights of citizenry in a liberal democracy.[3]