The cultural assumptions of the norm of human sexuality and gender are explored by Judith Butler. Butler traces the question of gender via the writings of 20th century social theorists.
i. "Women" as the subject of feminism
Butler begins with Foucault's political/social systems of power that regulate with limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and what is considered for the good of all. The system, with regulatory hegemony, forms, defines, and reproduces its subjects. Butler claims that feminism therefore suffers presumed universality (p. 6) where the subject of "women" should nowhere be presumed (p. 8).
ii. The compulsory order of sex/gender/desire
The binary gender system predisposes women as a reaction or mirror of men: sex resulting in gender definition and thus desire for the opposite sex. The question of how sex and gender were constructed discursively begs the question of should gender then be reformulated sans constructionism and prediscursive (p. 10).
iii. Gender: the circular ruins of contemporary debate
Butler quotes de Beauvoir: "one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one" (p. 11, from The Second Sex, Vintage: NY, 1973, p. 301). Therefore, Butler asks, since gender is constructed by the agent, can gender be determined by choice. This would be in contrast to the hegemonious phallogocentric language of masculine dominance - man as It - and woman as Other (p. 13).
iv. Theorizing the binary, the unitary, and beyond
Butler compares Luce Irigaray's masculine philosophy underlying language to de Beauvoir's theories and adds that "feminist critique ought to explore the totalizing claims of a masculinist signifying economy, but also remain self-critical with respect to the totalizing gestures of feminism," (p. 18).
v. Identity, sex, and the metaphysics of substance
The cultural matrix defining gender requires that gender follow from sex and sex follow from desire (of the opposite sex), (p. 24). Monique Wittig writes that there is actually no binary - only general, which is masculine and then other, which is feminist and therefore sex. The answer is a universal subject, which is unfortunately prohibited in language as language requires gender, (p. 27). The linguistic constraints result in gender-specific attributes "produced and compelled in the regulatory practices of gender coherence," (p. 34).
vi. Language, power, and the strategies of displacement
Language defines, subordinates and excludes women. Butler introduces Jacques Lacan's analysis of gender biases and imposed roles, (p. 38), and goes on to critique the forces that police the compulsory frames and social appearance of gender (p. 45).
2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix
Butler, along with cultural/anthropologist theorists, speculates on pre-law notions of gender, while assessing the law's historical self-justification of patriarchy and the subjugation of women, (p. 48).
i. Structuralism's critical exchange
Structuralist discourse [including Confucianism, Mao, institutionalized religion] structures human relations; the woman is a gift of exchange, as explained by Claude Levi-Strauss, who applied Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics to anthropology, (p. 53).
ii. Lacan, Rivier, and the strategies of masquerade
Butler returns to Lacan's theory of language structured by paternal law and its mechanisms of differentiation, (p. 59). Men embody the agressor, however, via masquerade a woman can assume the role of the agressor (p. 63). Joan Riviere takes this a step further with feminism as a masquerade, blurring the boundaries of heterosexual and homosexual (p. 68). Lacan attributes the divide of masculine and feminine, or the binary - the divide -, to the law (p. 74). The law is at once prohibitive and generative, guaranteeing a slave morality under the Symbolic or religion.
iii. Freud and the melancholia of gender
The conflict of two heterosexual desires within a single psyche produce a melancholy or suffering, theorizes Freud (p. 82). The ego ideal regulates gender identification cognizant of taboo, prohibition, and the norm. (p. 86). The repressive law dictates cultural discourse distinguishing the speakable from the unspeakable, the legitimate from the illegitimate (p. 89).
iv. Gender complexity and the limits of identification
Lacan, Riviere, and Freud all theorized differently regarding the formation of the gender in the self. Beyond them, Butler declares that "incorporation" or assimilation of a gender identity (p. 93) to go beyond the law and incorporate a variety of attributes.
v. Reformulating prohibition as power
In The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex Gayle Rubin writes of the historical cultural social mechanisms by which gender is produced, forcing women into subjugation in the human race, oppression, (p. 100).
3. Subversive Bodily Acts
i. The body politics of Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva suggests multiple sexual identities as opposed to a unified feminist code. However, she interprets the lesbian experience as psychotic (p. 118). She views the law as paternal and the culture into which a child is born. The semiotic experience, however, included the maternal or poetic. The child is engaged in the discourse of the two and thus formulates their own identity (p. 119). Culture, kinship, and family necessitate defining the world for the child even as they engage in a maternal discourse that is more open and free-thinking (p. 115).
ii. Foucault, Herculine and the politics of sexual discontinuity
Foucault writes of a hermaphrodite/intersexed person conflicted in their sexuality. Butler explores the conflicts of the inner and the outer person, as well as societal influences. Her conclusion is that the law produces only those who are subject yet conflicted.
iii. Monique Wittig: bodily disintegration and fictive sex
Wittig understands "sex" to be discursively produced by a system oppressive to women, gays, and lesbians (p. 154). Language powerfully creates what is socially real (p. 157). Women must assume agency and overthrow the system, formidably in the system of language (p. 158).
iv. Bodily inscriptions, performative subversions
Gender formation and transformation are found in the abiding gendered self, not true or false - not original or derived - but rather evoked through agency choice and determination, rendered through expression and performance. However, this is not in relation to law or a masculine general (p. 192).
Conclusion: From Parody to Politics
Language is not an "exterior medium or instrument into which I pour a self and from which I gleam a reflection of that self," (p. 196). By describing possibilities for gender that exist albeit unintelligibly, cultural configurations of gender are able to proliferate within discourse that assures their intelligibility and legitimacy. This serves to confine the binarism of sex and expose its unnaturalness (p. 203).
No comments:
Post a Comment