{"id":6566,"date":"2011-02-12T17:04:28","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T22:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6566"},"modified":"2011-02-12T17:16:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T22:16:32","slug":"nice-take-on-butlers-gender-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/02\/12\/nice-take-on-butlers-gender-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"nice take on Butler’s gender trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is from Belsey’s Culture and the Real<\/em>, but it sounds like what I wrote:<\/p>\n

In 1990 Judith Butler\u2019s book Gender Trouble electrified cultural critics all over the world. Butler\u2019s brilliant insight was that speech-act theory could be harnessed for feminism and queer studies to demonstrate the performativity of sexual identity. She countered essentialism and identity politics with sexuality as theatre, a display of \u2018corporeal style\u2019 (1999: 177), in which parody and the masquerade demonstrated the constructed character of gender as impersonation. Sexual disposition was not an origin but an effect of repeated social performances, none more \u2018natural\u2019 than any other. And just as gender is constituted by repeated acts, the idea of \u2018an essential sex\u2019 is culturally produced to mask gender\u2019s contingent character (180).<\/p>\n

The conventional feminist distinction between biological sex and cultural gender was regressive, Butler argued, leading to a naturalization of gender characteristics rooted in the body. For her, by contrast, sex and gender were one and the same<\/strong> (10\u2013 11); what passed for nature was in practice a product of culture; nature was incorporated into culture<\/strong>. Butler\u2019s anti-foundational feminism, and her opposition to heterosexual hegemony, which I wholeheartedly share, are secured by overriding the anxiety about the limits of culture that I have suggested is evident in culture itself.\u00a0 Belsey, Catherine. Culture and the Real : Theorizing Cultural Criticism<\/em>. 2005, 11<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42 But then Belsey goes on to critique Butler’s book Gender Trouble<\/em><\/p>\n

Gender Trouble stressed the regulatory character of culture: heterosexuality was a discursive regime, and the possibilities for resistance were limited. But subversion could be read, in Butler\u2019s account, as a matter of choice, as if, because it was purely cultural, sexual identity could be improvised from moment to moment, \u2018enacted\u2019 at will:\u00a0 “The culturally constructed body will then be liberated, neither to its \u2018natural\u2019 past, nor to its original pleasures, but to an open future of cultural possibilities.” <\/strong>(Butler 1999: 119)\u00a0\u00a0 At such moments Gender Trouble sounds remarkably close to the American dream<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In practice, norms are not so easily subverted, however, and this reading had to be corrected, along with the impression that physiology was reducible to mere discourse.<\/strong> Three years later, in Bodies that Matter<\/em>, Butler insists on performativity rather than performance; the emphasis on theatricality is much reduced in the analysis (though it returns in the style of the writing); and the politics is less utopian, an issue of rearticulation and resignification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is from Belsey’s Culture and the Real, but it sounds like what I wrote: In 1990 Judith Butler\u2019s book Gender Trouble electrified cultural critics all over the world. Butler\u2019s brilliant insight was that speech-act theory could be harnessed for feminism and queer studies to demonstrate the performativity of sexual identity. She countered essentialism and … Continue reading “nice take on Butler’s gender trouble”<\/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],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-6566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-gender","tag-gendertrouble"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566","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=6566"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6571,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566\/revisions\/6571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}