{"id":1921,"date":"2009-02-10T22:08:09","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T03:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=1921"},"modified":"2009-02-10T23:14:27","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T04:14:27","slug":"lloyd-subversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/02\/10\/lloyd-subversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyd subversion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ultimately, Wittig, Foucault, Lacan and Zizek are all accused of the same [Kristeva’s] error. By conceiving subversion as outside of culture, whether in teh imaginary (Lacan), the real (Zizek), pre-discursive libidinality (Wittig) or pre-discursive heterogeneous bodily pleasures (Foucault), all mask rather than illuminate the cultural operations of power, for, as Butler theorizes it, one of the ays in which discourse works is to construct an element as outside of \u2014 or prior to \u2014 culture. This element is then presented as natural or incontrovertible, when in actuality it is neither. It is an effect of discourse presented as if it were not. This raises an obvious question. If subversion cannot be located outside of culture, since the idea of the outside is the artificial construct of discourse within a specific ensemble of power relations, then were does it take place?\u00a0 The answer is equally obvious. Effective subversion must be immanent to culture. It must be a form of cultural subversion<\/strong><\/em> (Lloyd, 2007: 53).<\/p>\n

Agency, as Butler presents it … is intimately connect with signification. Signification, according to her, refers to the process that establishes the terms of intelligibility or meaning. Signification is thus a practice. Moreover, it is a practice based on repetition. It is precisely the repetition of acts, gestures and discourses that produces the effect of an identity at the moment of action. Agency, for Butler, might be thought of, then, as an effect of signification and resignification. The possibility of producing ‘alternative domains of cultural intelligibility’, in particular non-heteronormative domains, rests on this necessity to repeat and on the potential to repeat differently<\/strong>.\u00a0 Indeed, for Butler, ‘it is only within<\/strong><\/em> the practices of repetitive signifying that a subversion of identity becomes possible’.\u00a0 It is the only way to challenge the ‘rigid codes of hierarchical binarisms’ that sustain heteronormativity (GT: 185). What, therefore, might count as a subversive repetition capable of contesting the naturalization of heterosexuality?\u00a0 The short answer is those ‘parodic styles’ (GT: 176), as Butler terms them, that are patently imitative; that denaturalize what they are performing by displaying explicitly the ways in which the natural is produced.\u00a0 These are repetitions, in other words, that openly reveal their status as performative constructions (Lloyd, 2007: 54).<\/p>\n

Subversion is made possible by the necessity to repeat that is essential to gender performativity.\u00a0 Such a repetition is more likely to be subversive, according to Butler, when it exposes what is taken to be natural or authentic to a particular sex as simply an effect of the reproduction of particular norms, acts and gestures; in other words, when it compels us to question what is real.\u00a0 At such a time, the norms that define gender are not simply resisted; they are also (potentially) reworked.\u00a0 It is thus feminism’s critical undertaking, according to Butler, to identify strategies of subversive repetition’ (GT:188).\u00a0 They have … to identify ‘local strategies for engaging the “unnatural”‘ in order to denaturalize the heteronormative gender order (GT: 190).\u00a0 A subversive gender politics, for Butler, on my reading, thus consists in three inter-related phenomena:<\/p>\n

1. agency understood as (re-)signification<\/p>\n

2. denaturalization<\/p>\n

3. the critical labour required to identify when and where gender norms might be challenged.<\/p>\n

AIM: to create the space within which non-normative genders, sexes and sexualities might thrive (Lloyd, 2007: 56-7)<\/p>\n

[Butler] develops Foucault’s insight that power relations not only limit but also enable possibilities of (political) action (GT:158). It is this argument that allows her to contend that, although there is no feature of the subject that is pre-discursive, agency still exists. The gendered subject, that is, may be constituted but it is not determined.<\/p>\n

To be determined is to lack agency. It is to be programmed to behave in a a particular way without the space to improvise or to change that behaviour. Constitution, for Butler, is different. This is because performativity has a temporal dimension; it depends on the repetition of those acts constitutive of the subject.<\/strong> It is, in other words, an on-going and never-ending process grounded in ‘the compulsion to repeat’ (GT: 185). Constitution<\/strong> is distinguished from determination, therefore, by the need perpetually to reproduce the gestures and styles of the flesh that generate gender as an effect<\/strong>. Crucially, it is in this compulsion to repeat these gestures and styles that agency resides. Agency is not, therefore, a property of the subject (an innate quality it has); it is rather, an element of signification and repetition. What remains unclear at this point in Butler’s argument, however, is what it is about repetition per se <\/em>that allows for variations in gender performance and thence social change. <\/strong>How, in other words, is it possible to navigate between norms and acts so as to subvert or transform heteronormativity: Since the account of performativity developed in Gender Trouble<\/em> is clearly insufficient to answer these questions, Butler needs to amend it in some way.\u00a0 This is why, I suggest, she borrows the idea of iterability from Derrida (61).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ultimately, Wittig, Foucault, Lacan and Zizek are all accused of the same [Kristeva’s] error. By conceiving subversion as outside of culture, whether in teh imaginary (Lacan), the real (Zizek), pre-discursive libidinality (Wittig) or pre-discursive heterogeneous bodily pleasures (Foucault), all mask rather than illuminate the cultural operations of power, for, as Butler theorizes it, one of … Continue reading “Lloyd subversion”<\/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":[83,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency","category-butler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921","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=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1925,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions\/1925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}