Butler - Gender Trouble

 Judith Butler

1.     Gender Trouble

a.     From the Preface.

                                               i.     Masculinity is dependent on the female mysteriousness, or Hegel’s “Other.”

1.     This link demonstrates that men are not autonomous from women.

2.     Observation of power reveals it is more than exchange or a relation between men and women.

3.     Observation reveals that power is formed through the binary thinking about gender.

                                             ii.     Butler questions thought on gender.

1.     What do the terms “men” and “women” mean?

2.     What restrictions are in play?

3.     Is it an uncomfortable question as the terms conform to heterosexual notions and understandings about gender and desire?

4.     What happens to thought on these issues when taken out of the domination of heterosexual ideology?

5.     Do these notions apply to other binary pairs associated with other categories of identity?

                                            iii.     Answers can be investigated through Foucault and Nietzsche’s “Genealogy.”        

1.     The investigation will not look for origin or truths on sexuality.

2.     The investigation will look into what is at political stake that effect sexuality.

3.     The investigation will focus and challenge “phallogocentrism” and “compulsory heterosexuality.”

                                            iv.     Chapter 3. Subversive Bodily Acts.

1.     Categories of true sex, discrete gender, and specific sexuality have constituted the stable point of reference for feminist theory and politics.

a.     These notions of identity have served as foundations for theory that drives and forms politics.

b.     Does the fixed notion of gender, and compulsory behavior, determine the shape of politics, or does politics create political forces that determine notions of gender?

2.     Conventional thought directly associates the human body with gender.

a.     Foucault said that genealogy is to “to expose a body totally imprinted by history.”

b.     History is the creation of values and meanings by a signifying practice that requires the subjection of the body.

c.     Foucault and Nietzsche thought cultural values emerge as the result of their effect on the body that is sublimated into a domain of values.

d.     An analogy: As history writes to the body, the body is destroyed and left with values.  As the pen writes to paper, the pen is destroyed and leaves its story.

e.     As the body disappears, culture remains.

3.     Mary Douglas suggests that the contours of the body are marked in a way that seeks to establish cultural codes which creates a nature/culture binary.

a.     The limits of the body are socially hegemonic.

b.     When someone crosses those limits, they are perceived as a danger.

c.     AIDS is used as an example.  Not only was it considered a threat or a “gay” disease, the hysterical reporting of it was carried through mainstream media.

d.     A direct association was formed with “the body” as the disease was transmitted through bodily fluids.

4.     Douglas suggests that all social systems are vulnerable at the margins because the dangers exist on the margins.

5.     Discussion on the binary pair “inner” and “outer.”  Both physically and psychologically.   

a.     The binary pair is used together to stabilize and consolidate the subject.

b.     The question that remains is how does a particular identity become internalized?

b.     From Interiority to Gender Performatives

                                               i.     Foucault writes that “laws” are not literally internalized. 

                                             ii.     “Laws” are incorporated into the self with consequences.

                                            iii.     The “laws” are fully manifest, but are not visible (latent).

c.     Inner space is signified as a vital and sacred enclosure.

d.     The “soul” becomes a surface signification that reflects the inner psyche on the outside, while perpetually renouncing itself.

e.     There is a link between the inner workings of the psyche, pertaining to gender, and how it is displayed on the outside.  The beginnings that differentiate gender from the outward appearance of the body.

                                               i.     Words, acts, gestures and desires produce the internal workings on the surface of the body through interactions.

                                             ii.     They are expressions of the internal psyche expressed on the outer body.

                                            iii.     They are performative and h old no other reality other than their acts.

                                            iv.     A complete inner account of gender is not present, nor is gender tied to the body.

                                             v.     Genders are neither true nor false, but are produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity.

f.      Cross-dressing, drag and butch give insights into gender.

                                               i.     Drag is associated with anatomy against the performed gender.

                                             ii.     However, there is actually anatomy, gender identity, and gender performance.

                                            iii.     The performance illustrates dissonance between the three.

                                            iv.     In essence, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself.

                                             v.     Imitation that mocks the notion of the original tends to more a sincere representation than a parody.

g.     The body is not a being, but a boundary that is politically regulated.

                                               i.     Gender is a performance with punitive consequences.

                                             ii.     People are punished for not doing gender right.

                                            iii.     There is no “gender” that gender aspires to be, there is no essence.

                                            iv.     It is the various acts of gender that create the idea of gender.

                                             v.     Gender is a construct that conceals itself.

h.     If gender is act, then it the production of multiple performances.

                                               i.     Gender is not static.  It is prone to shifts and changes.

                                             ii.     If gender is created through sustained social performances, then notions of true male and female gender are also social performances.

i.      Genders can neither be:

                                               i.     True or false.

                                             ii.     Real or apparent.

                                            iii.     Original or derived.

  

            Works Cited

Butler, Judith.  Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1261-1265. Print.