First off, I would like to say I really enjoyed everyone's show and tell and I liked the idea for the project in general. As you all know for my show and tell I brought in the movie Chasing Amy and I strongly reccoment you watch it if you have not already as it is an excellent film. Honestly, this was the first film that really got me thinking about sexuality in a productive way. what I mean by that, is that it was the first film that actually made me question sexuality, how it defines, what categories of identification mean and how they oftewn fall short of actually identifying the person. Alyssa Jones is a very interesting character with an undefined sexuality. Most people would probably define her as bisexual though I do not think that is acurate. When she is first introduced she claims to be a lesbian. Then she dates a man. Does that make her bisexual or does that make her a lesbian who is having sex with a man? Then it is later revealed that this isn't thew first time she has had sex with a man. In highschool she apparently had sex with two men at once earning her the nickname "fingercuffs." Her sexuality is undefinable throughout the whole movie and the beauty of it is that she doesn't try and define or limit herself she just is who she is, a girl with no map to follow. This film is also full of fruitfull conversations about sexuality that really challenges they way I used to generally think about sexuality. I also find it extremely interesting that a relatively main stream movie tackles these ideas and concepts in a very Butler way- just opening up more questions. For my final remarks, I'd just like to say watch the film and I really enjoyed having class with all of you!
Thanks,
Michelle
Monday, December 12, 2011
Going Back to "Sex in Public" For my project
So, as luck would have it one of the weeks early on in the semester that I didn't to a post for was the week we read "Sex in Public" which is the essay I used to help create my own theory. To refresh everyone's mind as to what it is about their main focus with this essay is to tease out how sex is mediated by publics. By far there most intruiging and pervocative idea is that "Heteronormativity is more than ideology or prejudice, or a phobia against gays and lesbians; it is produced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life" (Berlant and Warner 554). In essence everything social inis filtered through heteronormativity. This idea is huge to me as I think of all it's implications. Practically everything we do, see, feel, hear has been mediated through heteronormativity. For my project I worked on the way I thought heteronormativity effected film and images in general. My theory was that it privleges filmic space and he most privleged position was being in the position of the spectator (aka directly facing the camera obviously looking at something- generally in a head shot). For my project I tried to switch up how people generally took pictures by having women do men's poses and men do women's poses. For me the most interesting thing by far was how much heteronormativity really did affect life. All of my models felt some discomfort nd found it very difficult to pose as the other sex, especially the men. One guy commented on how wierd it felt to be so close to another man in the picture, he said, "it's really weird that I can feel his warmth." I guess I always knew that thew world is based heavily on heteronormative ways but I find it interesting to see how far the world really is controlled by the male heterosexual culture.
Butler- Wraping it up
One thing I have stuggled with in Butler is not only her complex sentence structure (:p) but also her idea on unintelligability. In our last readings for the class Butler talked a lot about the travesty of a person beign unintelligable. To me, as I read it, unintelligable means they are not able to be recognized for what they are. According to dictionary.com it means "not able to be understood; incomprehensible " so I seem to be on the right track. My question, I guess is why are these people unintelligable? Is it because we do not have an adequate discourse with which to describe them? Is it because they do not fit into defined indentifcatory categories?Is it because the world is seen through a heteronormative lens and they just don't fit the bill? Is it because the majority of people are unable to identify with their situation? Or is it something else? Or all of the above? My ending conclusion from Butler is that these questions are not meant to be answered but explored and pushed and used to generate more questions. Answers just seem to provide more categories and more limits to our understanding while questions open up new avenues of thought and I feel thatthis is her main point. By constantly questioning what it means to be intelligable or what it means to have a livable life it causes us to explore or world and the lives of others for an answer and this increasesour understanding and just allows us to explore further. I am glad this is the final note we end on because to be honest, I feel like I have more questions now then I did at the begining of the course and I guess according to Butler that is a good thing.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Undoing Gender- The intro
Near the very begining of her introduction Butler states that "the essays are about the experience of becoming undone in both good and bad ways. Sometimes a normative conception of gender can undo one's personhood, undermining the capacity to perserve livable life. Other times, the experience of a normative restriction becoming undone can undo a prior conception of who one is only to inaugurate a relatively newer one that has greater livability as its aim" (1). A phrase she uses a lot in this passage is "undone" and I am curious to figure out what exactly she means by it.
My gut is telling be that by undone she means unintelligable, but she uses this specific word later and I feel if she meant for them to be the same thing she would not have used two different phrases. Perhaps, an easier question would be what does "done" mean. " If my doing is dependent on what is done to me or, rather, the ways in which I am done by norms , then the possibility of my persistence as an "I" depends on me being able to do something with what is done to me."( 3). Here done seems to be used in a couple of different ways. In the first part where she says "If my doing is dependent on what is done to me" she seems to be saying "to be done" by norms is to have norms define you, to have them make you intelligable and to restrict you to being a certain discursive identity. As such, she seems to be saying that the ability for some to gain autonomy is dependent on their ability to the identity society has given them.
It is interesting that he chose the word done in particular instead of, for example, defined, identified, made intelligable, ect. Done, to me seems to imply that something is finished, it is at its end it is complete. Perhaps Butler is using these connotations on purpose because she believes that once society has defined you in a particular way that is it, you are done. But if these are the implications she was trying get people to draw, how could anyone ever become "undone?" Butler says towards the end of the introduction that, " Or does it turn out that "I" who ought to be bearing its gender is undone by being a gender, that gender is always coming from a source that is elsewhere and directed toward something that is beyond me, constituted in a sociality I do not fully author"(16). I feel like to be done is to have an autonomy that is derived from you way are made intelligable. Being "undone" then seems to mean, unintelligable, and unable to be discussed in discourse. Then, by that thought, one can be undone by being defined as a specific gender and having that be lacking in personal intelligiableness. Butler seems to be focused on one's ability to be intelligable and how that is tied to personal and cultural autonomy. Being undone seems to be becoming unintelligale then.
I would appreciate others' thoughts on this because this is still a bit unclear to me.
My gut is telling be that by undone she means unintelligable, but she uses this specific word later and I feel if she meant for them to be the same thing she would not have used two different phrases. Perhaps, an easier question would be what does "done" mean. " If my doing is dependent on what is done to me or, rather, the ways in which I am done by norms , then the possibility of my persistence as an "I" depends on me being able to do something with what is done to me."( 3). Here done seems to be used in a couple of different ways. In the first part where she says "If my doing is dependent on what is done to me" she seems to be saying "to be done" by norms is to have norms define you, to have them make you intelligable and to restrict you to being a certain discursive identity. As such, she seems to be saying that the ability for some to gain autonomy is dependent on their ability to the identity society has given them.
It is interesting that he chose the word done in particular instead of, for example, defined, identified, made intelligable, ect. Done, to me seems to imply that something is finished, it is at its end it is complete. Perhaps Butler is using these connotations on purpose because she believes that once society has defined you in a particular way that is it, you are done. But if these are the implications she was trying get people to draw, how could anyone ever become "undone?" Butler says towards the end of the introduction that, " Or does it turn out that "I" who ought to be bearing its gender is undone by being a gender, that gender is always coming from a source that is elsewhere and directed toward something that is beyond me, constituted in a sociality I do not fully author"(16). I feel like to be done is to have an autonomy that is derived from you way are made intelligable. Being "undone" then seems to mean, unintelligable, and unable to be discussed in discourse. Then, by that thought, one can be undone by being defined as a specific gender and having that be lacking in personal intelligiableness. Butler seems to be focused on one's ability to be intelligable and how that is tied to personal and cultural autonomy. Being undone seems to be becoming unintelligale then.
I would appreciate others' thoughts on this because this is still a bit unclear to me.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Possible Paper Topic- Could use Advice/ Ideas on where to go
One idea that we have been discussing a lot of in class recently is the idea of space- whether it be queer space or a space for queers that has been taken away, and this has peaked my interest. As I was driving down the street I was looking at people walking and I noticed that women, in general seemed to have less personal space than men. For example, if I saw a group of women walking down the street they were close together, sometime linking arms with those around them where as men would be more spaced out and rarely ever touched them. This got me to thinking about how space operates in general and how it is distributed amongst people. For example, most children have one room in the house which is theirs and sometimes they must share this with another sibling where as the parents lay claim to the whole house. Rich people tend to have larger houses and more land than those without the same wealth. Presidents and other heads of state have a lot more space under their domain than others with out the same political power. I can go on and on, but what I noticed was that how much space a person has is somewhat symbolic of how much power they have. Space provides an area of which someone can have domain over and it is directly tied to power. I want to look at this in terms of spaces that belong to Queer people. Do people who are queer have less space in general than those who are heterosexual. What sort of message is being presented when a bath is built or when it is taken down? How does that exhibit power dynamics? What does queer space afford people and does it operate the same as non queer space in power dynamics? This is what I am mulling over for my final project. I also want to heavily look into how space is presented in films as symbolic representations of power. If you have any ideas for where might be neat to go or any interesting points on this topic please let me know!
Thanks!
Thanks!
Lesbian Fetishism- My Reading Selection form Space, Time and Perversion
For my reading selection in the book Space Time and Perversion by Elizabeth Grosz, I chose to read chapter 9, the one on Lesbian Fetishism. According to Freud, fetishism is a possible way of coping with the threat of castration. What happens is that the young boy sees his naked mother and sees that she does not have a penis. This presents a threat to the boy because he believes his mother to be castrated and he worries he too will come to that same fate. In order to deal with this threat some boys fetishize something on the mother (her hair, her feet, her hands, ect). In essence they believe this part of her to be her phallus, thus eleviating the threat of castration which she symbolizes. A fetish is the belief of two contradictory ideas at the same time. The boy believes his mother to be castrated thus he makes something else on her a phallus so that she is not, thus the mother is both castrated and has a phallus-two contradictory ideas- a fetish. Fetishism starts with a disavowal of the truth, and acts as a means of compensating for it. It is also important to note that the phallus is not the same thing as a penis. The little boy does not believe his mother's hair or feet or ect. is a penis, he believes that they are a phallus. A phallus, in short, an object of power and authority and in men it is tied to the penis.
The fetish relies solely on the threat of castration. Without the threat of castration there is no need to fetishize. So for women, who have already been "castrated," there is no point to fetishize. However, Grosz has come up with a few ways she believes a sort of fetishism is possible in women. "There are three distinctive paths which may result from a girl's disavowal of her own castration: heterosexual (secondary narcissism), hysteria, and the masculinity complex" (150). Since the girl is already castrated she has a disavowal of her own castration rather than her mothers. One of the ways she can deal with this is through the heterosexual or secondary narcissistic way. In this case, " she phallicizes her whole body. If a man believes that he has a phallus (the object of desire), than the woman believes she is the phallus" (150).In the second way, the woman phallicizes a part of her body in what Grosz says is called hysteria. In this way the woman has a phallus just like a man. These two ways are still not the same as the way the fetish operates for a man. For men the fetishized object is not something that is a part of his own body, it is outside his body, generally something connected to the mother. In the third path of the masculinity complex, woman take a route much more similar to that of men.
The girl 'suffering' from such a complex refuses to accept her secondary and subordinated state; she aspires to be treated like and act the same as men... [she] retains the clitoris as her leading sexual organ and the position of activity it implies. She may also retain the mother as the model for which she will base her later object attachments...' Thus the girl may refuse to accept the fact of being castrated, may harden herself in the conviction that she does posses a penis and may subsequently be be compelled to behave as though she were a man(152).
This is the closet a woman can get to having fetishistic tendencies in the same way a man does. Though the masculinity complex does not imply lesbianism, it seems as though it is a common occurrence. Grosz seems to be exploring this topic to exploit holes in psychoanalysis to show how it doesn't quite work for anyone who is outside of the norm of the heterosexual nuclear family. My question is, however, what is to be gained from this when Freud is already discredited in a lot of things for his sexist overtones? Why does it seem like she wants to prove women can be fetishists too?
The fetish relies solely on the threat of castration. Without the threat of castration there is no need to fetishize. So for women, who have already been "castrated," there is no point to fetishize. However, Grosz has come up with a few ways she believes a sort of fetishism is possible in women. "There are three distinctive paths which may result from a girl's disavowal of her own castration: heterosexual (secondary narcissism), hysteria, and the masculinity complex" (150). Since the girl is already castrated she has a disavowal of her own castration rather than her mothers. One of the ways she can deal with this is through the heterosexual or secondary narcissistic way. In this case, " she phallicizes her whole body. If a man believes that he has a phallus (the object of desire), than the woman believes she is the phallus" (150).In the second way, the woman phallicizes a part of her body in what Grosz says is called hysteria. In this way the woman has a phallus just like a man. These two ways are still not the same as the way the fetish operates for a man. For men the fetishized object is not something that is a part of his own body, it is outside his body, generally something connected to the mother. In the third path of the masculinity complex, woman take a route much more similar to that of men.
The girl 'suffering' from such a complex refuses to accept her secondary and subordinated state; she aspires to be treated like and act the same as men... [she] retains the clitoris as her leading sexual organ and the position of activity it implies. She may also retain the mother as the model for which she will base her later object attachments...' Thus the girl may refuse to accept the fact of being castrated, may harden herself in the conviction that she does posses a penis and may subsequently be be compelled to behave as though she were a man(152).
This is the closet a woman can get to having fetishistic tendencies in the same way a man does. Though the masculinity complex does not imply lesbianism, it seems as though it is a common occurrence. Grosz seems to be exploring this topic to exploit holes in psychoanalysis to show how it doesn't quite work for anyone who is outside of the norm of the heterosexual nuclear family. My question is, however, what is to be gained from this when Freud is already discredited in a lot of things for his sexist overtones? Why does it seem like she wants to prove women can be fetishists too?
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Queer Places
So for this week's blog I am going to talk about my experience in looking for "queer places" on campus. Of course while I was trying to think of places that I thought were queer I went back and tried to look at what it meant to be a queer place to begin with. According to Judith Halberstam "'Queer Space' refers to the place-making practices within postmodernism in which queer people engage and it also describes the new understandings of space enabled by the production of queer counterpublics" (6). Therefore a place is defined as queer or is made queer through queer peoples engagement with it. Around campus this should translate into footpaths and quirky places like graffiti on sidewalks. This could also extend to several unisex bathrooms around campus where couples go to have sex when roommates are in as well as hang outs where people always go to smoke weed or engage in other illicit activities. If we consider "queer" to be how Sedgewick defines it as a catch-all phrase for anything abnormal it would be easy to argue most of campus is a queer place because "queer" people engage in things all over campus.
One thing I did think of while contemplating this assignment is the idea of a personal queer place. As I will define it a "personal queer place" is a place that you find queer while others may not because there you personally engage in queer activities or it is a place in which something queer happened to you personally. For me, for example, I would include in my "personal queer places" some of the trees on campus. I love climbing trees and I often climb them when I like to think or clear my head. I am almost always in a weird place mentally and I climb my trees to help me work it out. For others these trees would just be trees but for me they are sanctuaries. Perhaps to add to my definition of a "personal queer space" I will add on this additional part of the definition: a "personal queer place" can also be a place you use in a queer manner (e.g. like climbing trees to clear one's mind). I would also include in my list of personal queer places my sophomore year dorm. I had a few personal issues my sophomore year and I spent a lot of time in my room. I begin to tie those feelings to that room and to this day I like to avoid it. For me that is a queer place but to other that would just be a dorm room.
As an extension of personal queer places I would also like to consider places in people are mentally queer. For example could someone be in a queer state of mind? Can that be considered a "queer place?" Also, what about diaries or journals? Are they not a personally queer spot where the owner feels free to write without a filter and record their thoughts throughout the day? Is that not an odd space that can be constituted as queer? When I kept a journal it was full of a smattering thing from poems to essays to accounts of the day to rants about my current state of life. In journals people often write for their own eyes only and that is a queer use of language since we generally use language to commute with other people.
I believe if we look hard enough queer places can be found everywhere. My guess is that people have unique queer spaces that are specific to them personally. Also, I would love to here comments on whether journals can be considered a queer place (especially if the express queer ideas or desires).
One thing I did think of while contemplating this assignment is the idea of a personal queer place. As I will define it a "personal queer place" is a place that you find queer while others may not because there you personally engage in queer activities or it is a place in which something queer happened to you personally. For me, for example, I would include in my "personal queer places" some of the trees on campus. I love climbing trees and I often climb them when I like to think or clear my head. I am almost always in a weird place mentally and I climb my trees to help me work it out. For others these trees would just be trees but for me they are sanctuaries. Perhaps to add to my definition of a "personal queer space" I will add on this additional part of the definition: a "personal queer place" can also be a place you use in a queer manner (e.g. like climbing trees to clear one's mind). I would also include in my list of personal queer places my sophomore year dorm. I had a few personal issues my sophomore year and I spent a lot of time in my room. I begin to tie those feelings to that room and to this day I like to avoid it. For me that is a queer place but to other that would just be a dorm room.
As an extension of personal queer places I would also like to consider places in people are mentally queer. For example could someone be in a queer state of mind? Can that be considered a "queer place?" Also, what about diaries or journals? Are they not a personally queer spot where the owner feels free to write without a filter and record their thoughts throughout the day? Is that not an odd space that can be constituted as queer? When I kept a journal it was full of a smattering thing from poems to essays to accounts of the day to rants about my current state of life. In journals people often write for their own eyes only and that is a queer use of language since we generally use language to commute with other people.
I believe if we look hard enough queer places can be found everywhere. My guess is that people have unique queer spaces that are specific to them personally. Also, I would love to here comments on whether journals can be considered a queer place (especially if the express queer ideas or desires).
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A Few Queer Things About American Beauty
I was thinking about American Beauty and how it pertained to our class discussions and readings and I couldn't come up with just one topic I wanted to talk about so here are several:
Queer Voice:
Several movies have narrators, however most of these narrators are not dead when the movie begins. Using a main character as the narrator causes issues of embodiment. Not only does this voice belong to the body you see on screen, but it transcends the body and becomes a disembodied voice that generally acts as a semi god like figure (seeing and knowing more than his embodied character on screen. It is especially queer when this voice not only transcends it's body but also transcends a mortal existence, coming to us from the grave. This transcendence makes it queer.
Queer Time:
American Beauty also makes us of queer time, both in the way Halberstam means it and also in another way. In the way Halberstam refers to queer time, Lester regression to his younger self is sort of a prolonged adolescence. Lester's return to his teenage ways also seems a bit melancholic, like he never really let go of the past and instead kept it inside of him until he couldn't suppress it any longer and he starts to act out because of it. Lester seems very nostalgic in his regression, buying his dream car from when he was younger and returning to his past job of burger flipping. It was like he could never really accept the lost love object of his youthful self and he became melancholic because of it. The other way time is queer in this film is that time is not linear. First of all, their is a voice from the future narrating the entire story. Also, more of what I want to get into, there are Lester's fantasies. Lester's fantasies seem to freeze time yet time still progresses both during the fantasy and in the real world while he is fantasizing. The music slows down and changes, all other people are removed from the space, his fantasies act like a pocket in time, a loop adjacent to the main time line. Time seems to pass during his fantasies but how much or how fast time goes by is uncertain. In this way I would like to say American Beauty deals with Queer time.
Queer Desires:
American Beauty is full of queer desires. Angela and Lester have a somewhat incestuous and pedaphilic desire for each other. Col. Fits is suppressing his homosexual desires. There is the openly gay couple. Carolyn's obsessive desire to be normal is queer as well. Ricky also has a queer desire to be a voyeur. All of these desires are not normal in some way and the film focus' on them.
I will add more later as I think of more.
Queer Voice:
Several movies have narrators, however most of these narrators are not dead when the movie begins. Using a main character as the narrator causes issues of embodiment. Not only does this voice belong to the body you see on screen, but it transcends the body and becomes a disembodied voice that generally acts as a semi god like figure (seeing and knowing more than his embodied character on screen. It is especially queer when this voice not only transcends it's body but also transcends a mortal existence, coming to us from the grave. This transcendence makes it queer.
Queer Time:
American Beauty also makes us of queer time, both in the way Halberstam means it and also in another way. In the way Halberstam refers to queer time, Lester regression to his younger self is sort of a prolonged adolescence. Lester's return to his teenage ways also seems a bit melancholic, like he never really let go of the past and instead kept it inside of him until he couldn't suppress it any longer and he starts to act out because of it. Lester seems very nostalgic in his regression, buying his dream car from when he was younger and returning to his past job of burger flipping. It was like he could never really accept the lost love object of his youthful self and he became melancholic because of it. The other way time is queer in this film is that time is not linear. First of all, their is a voice from the future narrating the entire story. Also, more of what I want to get into, there are Lester's fantasies. Lester's fantasies seem to freeze time yet time still progresses both during the fantasy and in the real world while he is fantasizing. The music slows down and changes, all other people are removed from the space, his fantasies act like a pocket in time, a loop adjacent to the main time line. Time seems to pass during his fantasies but how much or how fast time goes by is uncertain. In this way I would like to say American Beauty deals with Queer time.
Queer Desires:
American Beauty is full of queer desires. Angela and Lester have a somewhat incestuous and pedaphilic desire for each other. Col. Fits is suppressing his homosexual desires. There is the openly gay couple. Carolyn's obsessive desire to be normal is queer as well. Ricky also has a queer desire to be a voyeur. All of these desires are not normal in some way and the film focus' on them.
I will add more later as I think of more.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Check this out!
Hello,
So last night, for the heck of it, I decided to wiki "Lesbian" to see what the people of the world made of the term. While reading the extensive article (which had lots of interesting tid bits) I came across something that reminded me of Misfortune. Read about Queen Christina of Sweden here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden. Apparently she was the inverse of Rose, a woman raised as a man. I think she may be an interesting person to research/discuss in class.
Just a thought,
Michelle
So last night, for the heck of it, I decided to wiki "Lesbian" to see what the people of the world made of the term. While reading the extensive article (which had lots of interesting tid bits) I came across something that reminded me of Misfortune. Read about Queen Christina of Sweden here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden. Apparently she was the inverse of Rose, a woman raised as a man. I think she may be an interesting person to research/discuss in class.
Just a thought,
Michelle
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Stumbling through Butler and Her Ideas of Gender Identification through Freud's Melancholia
I waited to write this post in the hopes of some deus ex machina event where the lights of heaven would shine down upon me and bring me an epiphany as to what Butler was saying. Alas it did not happen, so here is my best guess as to what she is saying about melancholia and how it relates to gender identity.
First I will start off with what I gathered from Freud as this is where Butler draws from. As we defined it in class and as he defines it in his essay "Mourning and Melancholia" melancholia is a state one enter when they have lost an object of love and they have internalized this loss in their ego (Freud 244-45). Melancholia differs from Mourning in this internalizing factor. People who experience melancholia feel as though this loss is a loss in their ego, instead of a loss in the world. Butler ties melancholia to gender identification by claiming that one loss that we all internalize is our desire for incest. In Butler's own words, "this process of internalizing lost loves becomes pertinent to gender formation when we realize that the incest taboo, among other functions, initiates a loss of a love-object for the ego and that this ego recuperates from this loss through the internalization of the tabooed object of desire"(79).
Now, for me this belief that we all inherently have incestuous desires seems a bit unrealistic and so does Butler's idea that we handle this denial of desire in a melancholic way and internalize, but for the sake of trying to understand her argument I am going to ignore my issues with these assumptions. The question then remains: How does the process of internalizing the lost love object of incest lead to gender identification?According to Freud and Butler it is in part due to the fact that when we internalizethis loss we are identifying with it as well and this is crcial in the formation of our character and also or gender identity (Butler 79). So the young child identifies with these forbidden incestuous feelings and this plays into the formation of their gender identity, but how? To me this does not seem like a logical leap. Here is how Butler explains it:
In the case of the prohibited heterosexual union [the desire for insect], it is the object which is denied
[the opposite sex parent], but not the modality of desire, so that the desire is deflected from the
object [the opposite sexed parent] onto other objects of the opposite sex [aka attraction to the
opposite sex]. But in the case of a prohibited homosexual union, it is clear that both the desire and
the object require renunciation and so become the subject to the internalizing strategies of melancholia.
'Hence the young boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him.'(79-80).
In other words it is when the child feels an attraction to the parent of the same sex as he that he feels the taboo of not only the incest but of the homosexuality and there for he internalizes this desire which allows the young boy to foster and identification with his father. This does not happen when the attraction is to the parent of the opposite sex because it is only the incest that is taboo and there for it is given up and is not internalized. This is, at least, how I have come to understand what Butler is saying. She goes on to say Freud's idea of the boy's fear of castration by the father is really more of a fear of feminization because of his homosexual love of the father in heterosexual society (80).
While this makes sense several questions then arrise. Why does the boy not also internalize his of his mother and begin an identifation process with her as well? Could a child perhaps not internalize any of this and handle it in a fashion more similar to mourning? What if the child never experiences a homosexual to its same sex parent? Would it then never be able to form a proper gender identity? As with most pyschoanalysis I feel like it provides an interesting explanation but it depends upon a variety of very bizzare things to be true and considered as fact (such as all children experience incestuous desires). Anyhow, this is how I understand Butler's general arugument for how melancholia relates to gender identification. If that deus ex machina event actually happens and the rest of her article makes perfect sense I will add more. Until then, happy reading!
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Rutledge Classics, 1990. Print.
First I will start off with what I gathered from Freud as this is where Butler draws from. As we defined it in class and as he defines it in his essay "Mourning and Melancholia" melancholia is a state one enter when they have lost an object of love and they have internalized this loss in their ego (Freud 244-45). Melancholia differs from Mourning in this internalizing factor. People who experience melancholia feel as though this loss is a loss in their ego, instead of a loss in the world. Butler ties melancholia to gender identification by claiming that one loss that we all internalize is our desire for incest. In Butler's own words, "this process of internalizing lost loves becomes pertinent to gender formation when we realize that the incest taboo, among other functions, initiates a loss of a love-object for the ego and that this ego recuperates from this loss through the internalization of the tabooed object of desire"(79).
Now, for me this belief that we all inherently have incestuous desires seems a bit unrealistic and so does Butler's idea that we handle this denial of desire in a melancholic way and internalize, but for the sake of trying to understand her argument I am going to ignore my issues with these assumptions. The question then remains: How does the process of internalizing the lost love object of incest lead to gender identification?According to Freud and Butler it is in part due to the fact that when we internalizethis loss we are identifying with it as well and this is crcial in the formation of our character and also or gender identity (Butler 79). So the young child identifies with these forbidden incestuous feelings and this plays into the formation of their gender identity, but how? To me this does not seem like a logical leap. Here is how Butler explains it:
In the case of the prohibited heterosexual union [the desire for insect], it is the object which is denied
[the opposite sex parent], but not the modality of desire, so that the desire is deflected from the
object [the opposite sexed parent] onto other objects of the opposite sex [aka attraction to the
opposite sex]. But in the case of a prohibited homosexual union, it is clear that both the desire and
the object require renunciation and so become the subject to the internalizing strategies of melancholia.
'Hence the young boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him.'(79-80).
In other words it is when the child feels an attraction to the parent of the same sex as he that he feels the taboo of not only the incest but of the homosexuality and there for he internalizes this desire which allows the young boy to foster and identification with his father. This does not happen when the attraction is to the parent of the opposite sex because it is only the incest that is taboo and there for it is given up and is not internalized. This is, at least, how I have come to understand what Butler is saying. She goes on to say Freud's idea of the boy's fear of castration by the father is really more of a fear of feminization because of his homosexual love of the father in heterosexual society (80).
While this makes sense several questions then arrise. Why does the boy not also internalize his of his mother and begin an identifation process with her as well? Could a child perhaps not internalize any of this and handle it in a fashion more similar to mourning? What if the child never experiences a homosexual to its same sex parent? Would it then never be able to form a proper gender identity? As with most pyschoanalysis I feel like it provides an interesting explanation but it depends upon a variety of very bizzare things to be true and considered as fact (such as all children experience incestuous desires). Anyhow, this is how I understand Butler's general arugument for how melancholia relates to gender identification. If that deus ex machina event actually happens and the rest of her article makes perfect sense I will add more. Until then, happy reading!
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Rutledge Classics, 1990. Print.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Hello, Dolly! Dolls- Bodies without Minds
After reading Misfortune and watching Lars and the Real Girl, I got to wondering: What is with all of these dolls? Dolls play a major role in both texts. In Misfortune the doll house is central to the children's playtime and Geoffrey always finds great comfort in it as he is reminded of Dolores. In Lars and the Real Girl the main character, Lars, falls in love with a life size sex doll. Are the dolls in these two texts merely toys with fond memories attached to them or are they something more?
One important thing I noticed was how life was bestowed upon the dolls in both texts. Dolls are bodies with no mind. They are lifeless objects that often resemble living beings, yet there is something interesting about dolls in particular as opposed to statues which also resemble humans; people play with dolls. People use dolls to act out stories, to talk to, to have as a companion, to dress up, to be friends with-there is a personal interaction that people have with dolls that they do not with other objects that resemble humans. In a way we instill a "mind" onto the the object, giving it a personality, a name, a life.
There is something else unique to dolls, dolls are often played with by multiple people at a time. This is significant because it is not just one person putting a personality onto an inanimate object, it is a group of people recognizing a personality that is attached to an inanimate object. In the book Misfortune Geoffrey and Dolores build a doll and bestow upon her the characteristics of their ideal governess. Together they maintained this belief and in a way created a person to be their governess. In Lars and the Real Girl, Lars gives a personality to the sex doll he buys and names her Bianca. At first it is just him that treats her like a real person, but over time everyone in the town believes in her and treats her like a real person (she even receives a funeral service when she dies!). The communal belief in and bestowing of a personality onto a doll is interesting and important, especially when considering ideas such as acceptance, reality/mind/body disconnect, and the creation of a person.
I find it very important that both Misfortune and Lars and the Real Girl deal with dolls because they also deal with the issues listed above. In terms of acceptance both Lars, Rose and Geoffrey look for acceptance from others, perhaps this is why they are all so fascinated by dolls (dolls can reject no one and are generally accepted by all). Also all of these characters also seem to have some disconnect between mind and body or at the very least mind and reality. Lars suffers from a delusion, Rose has a gender identity crisis, and Geoffrey is convinced he can still speak to his dead sister when he visits the doll house. Both Rose and Lars are coming of age in their respective texts (Geoffrey is too, though not the same degree as the others). The story focuses on they're becoming an adults and the creation of their new identites. These characters are deeply tied to dolls throughout this text, so much so that perhaps the authors are commenting on how they are similar to dolls, or on a grander scheme of things, how people in general are similar to dolls. As it is claimed in the book Misfortune , "A baby's inner self is neither male nor female... Boys and girls were therefore made and not born" (98). Perhaps people are no more than ideas bestowed upon a body that are upheld by society, much like dolls.
One important thing I noticed was how life was bestowed upon the dolls in both texts. Dolls are bodies with no mind. They are lifeless objects that often resemble living beings, yet there is something interesting about dolls in particular as opposed to statues which also resemble humans; people play with dolls. People use dolls to act out stories, to talk to, to have as a companion, to dress up, to be friends with-there is a personal interaction that people have with dolls that they do not with other objects that resemble humans. In a way we instill a "mind" onto the the object, giving it a personality, a name, a life.
There is something else unique to dolls, dolls are often played with by multiple people at a time. This is significant because it is not just one person putting a personality onto an inanimate object, it is a group of people recognizing a personality that is attached to an inanimate object. In the book Misfortune Geoffrey and Dolores build a doll and bestow upon her the characteristics of their ideal governess. Together they maintained this belief and in a way created a person to be their governess. In Lars and the Real Girl, Lars gives a personality to the sex doll he buys and names her Bianca. At first it is just him that treats her like a real person, but over time everyone in the town believes in her and treats her like a real person (she even receives a funeral service when she dies!). The communal belief in and bestowing of a personality onto a doll is interesting and important, especially when considering ideas such as acceptance, reality/mind/body disconnect, and the creation of a person.
I find it very important that both Misfortune and Lars and the Real Girl deal with dolls because they also deal with the issues listed above. In terms of acceptance both Lars, Rose and Geoffrey look for acceptance from others, perhaps this is why they are all so fascinated by dolls (dolls can reject no one and are generally accepted by all). Also all of these characters also seem to have some disconnect between mind and body or at the very least mind and reality. Lars suffers from a delusion, Rose has a gender identity crisis, and Geoffrey is convinced he can still speak to his dead sister when he visits the doll house. Both Rose and Lars are coming of age in their respective texts (Geoffrey is too, though not the same degree as the others). The story focuses on they're becoming an adults and the creation of their new identites. These characters are deeply tied to dolls throughout this text, so much so that perhaps the authors are commenting on how they are similar to dolls, or on a grander scheme of things, how people in general are similar to dolls. As it is claimed in the book Misfortune , "A baby's inner self is neither male nor female... Boys and girls were therefore made and not born" (98). Perhaps people are no more than ideas bestowed upon a body that are upheld by society, much like dolls.
Monday, October 10, 2011
So am I queer? Or am I different? Or are those the same thing? -Reflections on Sedgwick
Hello all! I am sorry for my lack of blogging lately, but I fully intend to catch up by the end of this week. So going all the way back to Sedgwick and the excerpts we read from her book Tendencies....
Overall, I thought Sedgwick made a lot of good points and brought up some interesting ideas about the use of the first person in queer theory, but I want to draw your attention to the way she defines "queer." She defines "queer" several times throughout this excerpt and the first time she defines it as such:
Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive-recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word "queer" itself means across- it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwert...across genders, across sexualities, across genres, across perversions. (xii)
"Queer," as Sedgwick defines it here, is a motion across boundaries it is that which does not lie in one particular category. (Perhaps this is the reason people feel uneasy with things that are "queer"-because they are not easily defined and mess with societal boundaries). However, by having "queer" mean across boundaries or, in other words, something that is not strictly within the a social norm, doesn't the term "queer" become a catch-all phrase, simply meaning "not of the norm?" Indeed this all inclusive definitions of "queer" seems to be what Sedgwick is pointing to. Later in the essay, Sedgwick creates a list of ways to define one's sexuality to exemplify how many factors go into determining one's sexuality (7). This shows how there are several opportunities for one to define their sexuality across boundaries, thereby occupying a position that is not purely heterosexual. As Sedgwick claims herself:
With or without that heterosexist assumption , though, what's striking is the number and difference of the dimensions that "sexual identity" is supposed to organize into a seamless univocal whole. And if it doesn't? That's one of the things that "queer" can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of any one's gender, of any one's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically. (8)
Now, to me this just seems to be saying that "queer" pretty much encompasses anything that is not strictly defined within the boundaries of the norm. But what advantage does she gain from this? Almost no one is strictly within the norm of sexual identity. Sedgwick points out this fact later on in the paragraph when she goes on and on with examples of people that would not be considered "normal"(8). But if almost everyone is "queer" where is the force behind this word? Does it still allow specific groups of queer people (for example, homosexuals) to use its agency?
In the forward she discusses the political movements that have gone on for queers and in particular a rally she participated in. By making "queer" a catch-all term she allows several groups of people to identify with that word and join the cause; however, there is also a downside to this. Allowing the term "queer" to be employed by any one of atypical sexuality diversifies and muddles the meaning of the word making it simply t a word to be used to push for a general acceptance of abnormal sexuality rather than allowing it to be employed by a specific group, such as homosexuals, to fight for issues that are effecting them in particular. By not defining the term a little more precisely Sedgwick steals a specific groups identity (specifically the homosexuals) and lumps all atypical sexualities, with various different agendas, into one group-the group "queer."
Another issue with defining "queer" so broadly is that you can then create several divisions among the group. It is not one universal sexuality with one universal agenda; Sedgwick has created a very diverse group. Does a straight female who really loves being the sadistic one in S&M role playing really have the same political agenda as a homosexual male? Would this not lead to a factioning of the category "queer" and thereby weaken the only power that was gained from having it be a catch all phrase? Would it not eventually create a "queer" within the "queer?" While I understand she was trying to make a point that society too narrowly defines what is considered a "normal" sexual identity, what she ends up doing is encompassing almost everyone under a slightly restricted heading of "queer." In an idealistic world maybe the group "queer" could accomplish all the goals of all the groups of people it encompasses, but realistically this is a group of diverse individuals with different (and possibly opposing) political agendas and the group "queer" would be used to define them all which weakens the term's agency. For example, "American" is a term used to define a large group of people with diverse political views and agendas. Now this term can be applied to gain some sort of agency when it is used in context with other countries, but it cannot be used within America for its agency. Say you have someone who is pro-choice and someone else that is pro-life. They can not both rally under the name "Americans" for both those causes, it wouldn't make sense. Since "queer" as Sedgwick defines encompasses such a large group of diverse individuals they have the potential of running into that problem. The title people gather under needs to clearly define their political agenda in order for it to have its maximum agency as a title, and to steal the word "queer" from the homosexuals as a rallying point by making it a catch-all phrase could be highly detrimental to their political agenda.
ASIDE: If you want to watch some funny and well done videos about gay rights check out http://fckh8.com/BornThisWay/ !
Overall, I thought Sedgwick made a lot of good points and brought up some interesting ideas about the use of the first person in queer theory, but I want to draw your attention to the way she defines "queer." She defines "queer" several times throughout this excerpt and the first time she defines it as such:
Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive-recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word "queer" itself means across- it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwert...across genders, across sexualities, across genres, across perversions. (xii)
"Queer," as Sedgwick defines it here, is a motion across boundaries it is that which does not lie in one particular category. (Perhaps this is the reason people feel uneasy with things that are "queer"-because they are not easily defined and mess with societal boundaries). However, by having "queer" mean across boundaries or, in other words, something that is not strictly within the a social norm, doesn't the term "queer" become a catch-all phrase, simply meaning "not of the norm?" Indeed this all inclusive definitions of "queer" seems to be what Sedgwick is pointing to. Later in the essay, Sedgwick creates a list of ways to define one's sexuality to exemplify how many factors go into determining one's sexuality (7). This shows how there are several opportunities for one to define their sexuality across boundaries, thereby occupying a position that is not purely heterosexual. As Sedgwick claims herself:
With or without that heterosexist assumption , though, what's striking is the number and difference of the dimensions that "sexual identity" is supposed to organize into a seamless univocal whole. And if it doesn't? That's one of the things that "queer" can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of any one's gender, of any one's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically. (8)
Now, to me this just seems to be saying that "queer" pretty much encompasses anything that is not strictly defined within the boundaries of the norm. But what advantage does she gain from this? Almost no one is strictly within the norm of sexual identity. Sedgwick points out this fact later on in the paragraph when she goes on and on with examples of people that would not be considered "normal"(8). But if almost everyone is "queer" where is the force behind this word? Does it still allow specific groups of queer people (for example, homosexuals) to use its agency?
In the forward she discusses the political movements that have gone on for queers and in particular a rally she participated in. By making "queer" a catch-all term she allows several groups of people to identify with that word and join the cause; however, there is also a downside to this. Allowing the term "queer" to be employed by any one of atypical sexuality diversifies and muddles the meaning of the word making it simply t a word to be used to push for a general acceptance of abnormal sexuality rather than allowing it to be employed by a specific group, such as homosexuals, to fight for issues that are effecting them in particular. By not defining the term a little more precisely Sedgwick steals a specific groups identity (specifically the homosexuals) and lumps all atypical sexualities, with various different agendas, into one group-the group "queer."
Another issue with defining "queer" so broadly is that you can then create several divisions among the group. It is not one universal sexuality with one universal agenda; Sedgwick has created a very diverse group. Does a straight female who really loves being the sadistic one in S&M role playing really have the same political agenda as a homosexual male? Would this not lead to a factioning of the category "queer" and thereby weaken the only power that was gained from having it be a catch all phrase? Would it not eventually create a "queer" within the "queer?" While I understand she was trying to make a point that society too narrowly defines what is considered a "normal" sexual identity, what she ends up doing is encompassing almost everyone under a slightly restricted heading of "queer." In an idealistic world maybe the group "queer" could accomplish all the goals of all the groups of people it encompasses, but realistically this is a group of diverse individuals with different (and possibly opposing) political agendas and the group "queer" would be used to define them all which weakens the term's agency. For example, "American" is a term used to define a large group of people with diverse political views and agendas. Now this term can be applied to gain some sort of agency when it is used in context with other countries, but it cannot be used within America for its agency. Say you have someone who is pro-choice and someone else that is pro-life. They can not both rally under the name "Americans" for both those causes, it wouldn't make sense. Since "queer" as Sedgwick defines encompasses such a large group of diverse individuals they have the potential of running into that problem. The title people gather under needs to clearly define their political agenda in order for it to have its maximum agency as a title, and to steal the word "queer" from the homosexuals as a rallying point by making it a catch-all phrase could be highly detrimental to their political agenda.
ASIDE: If you want to watch some funny and well done videos about gay rights check out http://fckh8.com/BornThisWay/ !
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
These words that bind- Looking back at our first reading assignments from Foucault
There are two very broad similarities that I have noticed about both Foucault and Butler. 1) They both focus on the way language and some particular words are restricting, inexhaustive and limiting. 2) They both seem to focus on their particular sex without much discussion, if any, of the other. In particular I would like to focus on how Foucault's whole discussion on the discourse of sex could have been made stronger and potentially a bit complicated if he focused on more than just male sexuality.
In my opinion, Foucault's main point in part 2 of his book The History of Sexuality, is that in order to control/manage sexual pleasure and desire, people have created discourses with which to discuss it. Over time these discourses become more varied and particularized. However, these discourses should not be viewed as a freeing and or liberating of sexuality. Instead, these discourses have repressed sexual pleasure even more and have re appropriated the ways in which one gains sexual pleasure from before, being focused on the sexual act, to now were pleasure is derived from discussing sex. By forcing people to discuss sex and to discuss it using a very controlled language and manner the pleasure of the sexual act has been repressed. Sex was taken away from the discourses of silence and was given a new formal verbal discourse:
It was a new regime of discourses. Not any less was said about it; on the contrary. But things were said in
a different way; it was different people who said them, from different points of view, and in order to obtain
different results. Silence itself- things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is
required between different speakers- is less the absolute limit of discourse.... There is no binary division
between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not
saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak them are distributed, which type of
discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many
silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (27).
Here, to me, Foucault seems to feel that silence is a more liberating less restrictive way to discuss sex as opposed to the formalized language that develops. My question, though, is how do women fit into this? Historically speaking, the Victorian era and the latter ages were more restrictive on women then they were on men in terms of sexuality. While men were given a new verbal discourse in which to talk about sex, female sexuality was virtually ignored until Freud decided to discuss it in the early 1900s, but even then, that was a male discussing female sexuality in a highly scientific manner.
By completely leaving out the gender differences in the way sex is discussed Foucault lost out on several great examples for how discourse is limiting and missed a few other ways the sexual pleasure was taken away from the sexual act.Women, in general, are not supposed to discuss sex, or at least never to the same degree men are able to, and are often expected to practice sexual modesty or be sexually naive. Not only are women not supposed to discuss sex in detail if at all, often times their knowledge of it was restricted as well. In this way women delt with sex in the way Foucault may describe as a silent discourse, but was this really more freeing or placing more pleasure in the sexual act. I argue that they dealt in the silent discourses, not only because their speech and knowledge of sex was limited, but that they were often viewed as the objects of sex, not the subjects, viewed as the ones giving pleasure rather than receiving it. I believe this somewhat complicates Foucault's claims, or at the very least woman's sexuality is an important avenue he ignored when discussing his thoughts on the history of sexuality and in particular how it is repressed.
In my opinion, Foucault's main point in part 2 of his book The History of Sexuality, is that in order to control/manage sexual pleasure and desire, people have created discourses with which to discuss it. Over time these discourses become more varied and particularized. However, these discourses should not be viewed as a freeing and or liberating of sexuality. Instead, these discourses have repressed sexual pleasure even more and have re appropriated the ways in which one gains sexual pleasure from before, being focused on the sexual act, to now were pleasure is derived from discussing sex. By forcing people to discuss sex and to discuss it using a very controlled language and manner the pleasure of the sexual act has been repressed. Sex was taken away from the discourses of silence and was given a new formal verbal discourse:
It was a new regime of discourses. Not any less was said about it; on the contrary. But things were said in
a different way; it was different people who said them, from different points of view, and in order to obtain
different results. Silence itself- things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is
required between different speakers- is less the absolute limit of discourse.... There is no binary division
between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not
saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak them are distributed, which type of
discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many
silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (27).
Here, to me, Foucault seems to feel that silence is a more liberating less restrictive way to discuss sex as opposed to the formalized language that develops. My question, though, is how do women fit into this? Historically speaking, the Victorian era and the latter ages were more restrictive on women then they were on men in terms of sexuality. While men were given a new verbal discourse in which to talk about sex, female sexuality was virtually ignored until Freud decided to discuss it in the early 1900s, but even then, that was a male discussing female sexuality in a highly scientific manner.
By completely leaving out the gender differences in the way sex is discussed Foucault lost out on several great examples for how discourse is limiting and missed a few other ways the sexual pleasure was taken away from the sexual act.Women, in general, are not supposed to discuss sex, or at least never to the same degree men are able to, and are often expected to practice sexual modesty or be sexually naive. Not only are women not supposed to discuss sex in detail if at all, often times their knowledge of it was restricted as well. In this way women delt with sex in the way Foucault may describe as a silent discourse, but was this really more freeing or placing more pleasure in the sexual act. I argue that they dealt in the silent discourses, not only because their speech and knowledge of sex was limited, but that they were often viewed as the objects of sex, not the subjects, viewed as the ones giving pleasure rather than receiving it. I believe this somewhat complicates Foucault's claims, or at the very least woman's sexuality is an important avenue he ignored when discussing his thoughts on the history of sexuality and in particular how it is repressed.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Ok Butler, if there is no such thing as "women" then is there no such thing as "men?"
After reading the first 22 pages of Judith Butler's book, Gender Trouble, I came away with one thought, "so... I guess there is no such thing as women." In these first few pages she seems to me to be arguing that "women" is a category created as a foundation for itself (yeah, wrap your head around that). Which implies that women is actually an empty term that exists only because someone (or some group or something) constructed it and because after it was created people bought into it and perpetuated it. Feminists is one group Butler critiques for perpetuating the idea of "women. " As she writes "For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued"(2). As I understand it, for Butler the word "women" is not satisfactory as an identity. I would then like to ask, "what constitutes a satisfactory identity?"
If "women" does not cut it as a satisfactory identity for women, then what does? A different word? A picture? A symbol? A movement? Also, if "women" is not an identity, then is "men" not an identity? If "men" is and identity then what makes it more satisfactory than "women?" I believe I agree with her general point that "women" is hardly an exhaustive word for that category of people, and has probably even been a limiting factor and a detriment to the feminist movement, but I believe there is a flaw in her logic. People need some way to communicate and the main way we do that is through language. All words constitute themselves and only hold the meaning that culture gives to them. While this may not be a perfect way to communicate, the only way to change it would be to completely change the way we communicated, and I would argue that no way of communication will ever be completely satisfactory. Language is a devilish paradox, giving us a way to express our ideas yet at the same time never fully expressing them. Perhaps this is Butler's point, that language is unsatisfactory and to change the way "women" identify themselves we must first change the language.
However, this does not seem a very practical route and is probably not exactly what Butler intended. As she claims:
This text continues, then, as an effort to think through the possibility of subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble, not through strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity. (46)
From this, I gleaned that her point is not to completely usurp the system but to exploit the holes in the current system to expose its faults and bring about a deeper understanding. If we start to consider why someone might identify with "women" and what that implies, and realize how much that term lacks as an identifying tool we can start to re appropriate meaning to the word "women" and reclaim it. By exposing the flaws in the current system of identification, or as she puts it, by "subversive confusion" perhaps we can redefine our identities.
If "women" does not cut it as a satisfactory identity for women, then what does? A different word? A picture? A symbol? A movement? Also, if "women" is not an identity, then is "men" not an identity? If "men" is and identity then what makes it more satisfactory than "women?" I believe I agree with her general point that "women" is hardly an exhaustive word for that category of people, and has probably even been a limiting factor and a detriment to the feminist movement, but I believe there is a flaw in her logic. People need some way to communicate and the main way we do that is through language. All words constitute themselves and only hold the meaning that culture gives to them. While this may not be a perfect way to communicate, the only way to change it would be to completely change the way we communicated, and I would argue that no way of communication will ever be completely satisfactory. Language is a devilish paradox, giving us a way to express our ideas yet at the same time never fully expressing them. Perhaps this is Butler's point, that language is unsatisfactory and to change the way "women" identify themselves we must first change the language.
However, this does not seem a very practical route and is probably not exactly what Butler intended. As she claims:
This text continues, then, as an effort to think through the possibility of subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble, not through strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity. (46)
From this, I gleaned that her point is not to completely usurp the system but to exploit the holes in the current system to expose its faults and bring about a deeper understanding. If we start to consider why someone might identify with "women" and what that implies, and realize how much that term lacks as an identifying tool we can start to re appropriate meaning to the word "women" and reclaim it. By exposing the flaws in the current system of identification, or as she puts it, by "subversive confusion" perhaps we can redefine our identities.
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