Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. Routledge, 2002. p 56.<\/p>\n
MELANCHOLY HETEROSEXUALITY<\/p>\n
The case study of the \u2018little girl\u2019 could be summarized as follows:<\/p>\n
\u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 desire for her mother\u00a0\u2192 incest taboo \u2192 \u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 melancholia\u2192identification with mother through incorporation \u2192 \u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 disavowed homosexual desire \u2192 femininity\u2192melancholic heterosexuality<\/p>\n
MELANCHOLY GENDER<\/p>\n
The loss of a love object results in melancholy and an identification with that object. According to Butler, the taboo against homosexuality precedes the taboo against incest, which means that homosexual desire is prohibited from the outset. Whereas it is possible to grieve the consequences of the incest taboo in a heterosexual culture, the taboo against homosexuality cannot be grieved and so the response to the taboo against homosexuality is melancholia rather than mourning (GT: 69). The melancholic identification with same-sexed parent is incorporated, i.e. preserved on the surface of the body, so that, far from being \u2018natural\u2019 or a given, like gender, sex is a process, something one assumes through identification and incorporation. The melancholy heterosexual subject will \u2018bear\u2019 her or his forbidden same-sex desire on the surface of the body, so that physical \u2018ultra-femininity\u2019 and \u2018ultra-masculinity\u2019 denote the subject\u2019s relinquished desire for an object of the same sex. This means that you \u2018are\u2019 what you have desired, and that the desires you have been prevented from expressing are symptomatized on the body and in your behaviour. All sexuality and gender identities are melancholic, but Butler points out that, since there is not the same sanction against acknowledging heterosexual desire in a heterosexual culture, homosexual and heterosexual melancholia are not identical (Salih, Sara. 2002. p 58).<\/p>\n
Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. Routledge, 2002. p 56.<\/p>\n
INCORPORATION<\/p>\n
By referring to \u2018the stylization of the body\u2019 and \u2018the production and \u201cdisposition\u201d of sexual desire\u2019 in the section I have just quoted, Butler introduces the idea that sex, as much as gender, is a result of the taboo against homosexuality. So far she has argued that the taboo against homosexuality triggers the melancholic response described by Freud in \u2018Mourning and Melancholia\u2019, in other words, an identification with the parent of the same sex. Butler talks of this identification in terms of \u2018internalization\u2019, implying that, as in Freud\u2019s descriptions, the lost object is introjected and set up in the ego as an identification . Now, departing from Freud, who does not talk about incorporation in \u2018Mourning and Melancholia\u2019 or The Ego and the Id, Butler asks where melancholic identification takes place, and she concludes that identifications are incorporated, i.e. preserved on the surface of the body (GT: 67).<\/p>\n
Here Butler follows Abraham and Torok, who argue that, whereas mourning leads to the introjection of the lost object, melancholia results in its incorporation. \u2018When we consider gender identity as a melancholic structure, it makes sense to choose \u201cincorporation\u201d as the manner by which that identification is accomplished\u2019, Butler writes; \u2018[G]ender identity would be established through a refusal of loss that encrypts itself in the body . . . incorporation literalizes the loss on or in the body and so appears as the facticity of the body, the means by which the body comes to bear \u201csex\u201d as its literal truth\u2019 (GT: 68). It is not just the ego that is the receptacle for object-cathexes that have had to be abandoned, but the body itself is a sort of \u2018tomb\u2019 (note the word \u2018encrypts\u2019) in which, however, these lost desires are far from \u2018buried\u2019 since they are preserved on the surface of the body and thus constitute one\u2019s sex and gender identities. Butler formulates the ontological equation in the following way: \u2018If the heterosexual denial of homosexuality results in melancholia and if melancholia operates through incorporation, then the disavowed homosexual love is preserved through the cultivation of an oppositionally defined gender identity\u2019 (GT: 69). Or, more bluntly put, you are what you have desired (and are no longer permitted to desire). All stable gender identities are \u2018melancholic\u2019, founded on a prohibited primary desire that is written on the body and, as Butler asserts, rigid gender boundaries conceal the loss of an original, unacknowledged and unresolved love (GT: 63). It is not just straight people who suffer from melancholy gender (if \u2018suffer\u2019 is the right verb: Butler calls melancholy heterosexuality a \u2018syndrome\u2019, which does seem to hint that there is something pathological about it (GT: 71)). Butler accepts that \u2018a homosexual for whom heterosexual desire is unthinkable\u2019 will maintain his or her heterosexual desire through the melancholic incorporation of that desire, but she points out that, since there is not the same cultural sanction against acknowledging heterosexuality, heterosexual and homosexual melancholia are not really equivalent (GT: 70). Like gender, the body conceals its genealogy and presents itself as a \u2018natural fact\u2019 or a given, whereas, by arguing that relinquished desire is \u2018encrypted\u2019 on the body, Butler asserts that the body is the effect of desire rather than its cause. The body is an imagined structure which is the consequence or the product of desire: \u2018the phantasmatic nature of desire reveals the body not as its ground or cause, but as its occasion and its object\u2019, she writes; \u2018The strategy of desire is in part the transfiguration of the desiring body itself\u2019 (GT: 71). The idea that desire \u2018transfigures\u2019 the body is complex, but for the purposes of this discussion it is enough to note that Butler is not positing a body that is stable, fixed and \u2018merely matter\u2019, but one that is constructed and contoured by discourse and the law. Butler returns to the question of the body in the third chapter of Gender Trouble, \u2018Subversive Bodily Acts\u2019, where she considers both sex and gender as \u2018enactments\u2019 that operate performatively to establish the appearance of bodily fixity. If both gender and sex are \u2018enactments\u2019 rather than givens, then it will be possible to enact them in unexpected, potentially subversive ways. Before she goes on to discuss performativity and parody, Butler considers the subversive potential of the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. Routledge, 2002. p 56. MELANCHOLY HETEROSEXUALITY The case study of the \u2018little girl\u2019 could be summarized as follows: \u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 desire for her mother\u00a0\u2192 incest taboo \u2192 \u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 melancholia\u2192identification with mother through incorporation \u2192 \u2018little girl\u2019s\u2019 disavowed homosexual desire \u2192 femininity\u2192melancholic heterosexuality MELANCHOLY GENDER The loss of a love object … Continue reading “melancholy heterosexuality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,86,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-gender","category-melancholia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2926,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/2926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}