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.
I also think her choice of the term "undone" is very interesting. I'm particularly curious about your sentiment "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." I think your missing a word there, and I'm interested to know exactly what you were thinking. It seems like you could logically enter "adopt" or "become intelligible under" based on some of your other observations, but I would be tempted to say "interact with." I interpreted her presentation of autonomy as rooted in the ability to interact with norms in a way that allows one to be recognized, but I'm not sure Butler forecloses the possibility of achieving recognition outside of the identity originally given by society.
ReplyDeleteI also think it's useful to think about being "undone" through grief, which she introduces in the second section. I think her lines "Let's face it. Were undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something" are very powerful(19) In this section, "being undone" seems to represent one's experience of connection to others, an undeniable reality which is the source of both joy and pain. This usage made me speculate being undone is not only being made unintelligible, but being made something other than a cohesive entity of your own definition.
I also had some trouble with this term. Using Butler's own terminology from the chapter helped, though. The concepts in this chapter are interlinked. For example, being undone relates to grief, as Tracy explained, but it also relates to intelligibility because it is through the process of making someone intelligible that they become undone. Using an example from queerness-I may be a man who identifies as a woman, but others may articulate me as transgender due to my anatomy no matter how much I insist that I am a woman. When I read this section, I got an image of the term "undone" as a force pushing definition, but I'm sure it is more nuanced than this.
ReplyDeleteMichelle -
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I'm definitely with Tracy and Ziev in terms, and I agree that Butler's terms can carry some pretty heavy, multi-dimensional significance. The idea that your existence or form of being is unintelligible suggests that you're invalidated, made less human or maybe not human at all, as she suggests in this first section. It sounds so appalling to me that anyone could ever be invalidated in such a way, but I do think its the sad reality for a lot of people who consider themselves queer.
And thinking about undone from a grief standpoint takes me back to Freud's difference between mourning and melancholia. Both involve a profound loss, which, in experience this loss, we lose a piece of ourselves that we will never reclaim, and I think that, even if we "fully heal," that small bit of us is still undone.
- Terese
Thanks for the comments. I am truly sorry I do not read through my posts always before I put them up. In answer to youre question Tracy I believe I meant use the word "adopt."
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