“Splendid Failures”: Inclination, Slow Regicide, and Performative Critique

Abstract

This paper focuses on Honig’s critical reworking of the concept of inclination and her concept of “slow regicide”. With “slow regicide” Honig describes a performative critique of the violence of the patriarchal order. However, what Honig underestimates, I argue, is that this intervention must itself be non-violent if it is not to reinstate patriarchal violence.

My suggestion is that paying closer attention to the performativity of inclination shows how “slow regicide” enables a non-violent refusal in which the normativity of patriarchy is frustrated and fails.