Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Bulter: Chap 3, part III and IV, and Conclusion

Where to begin...

III.
In this section Butler lays out Wittig’s arguments and then proceeds to destroy them en masse. Still, Butler walks away having gained some insight with Wittig’s arguments. Butler analyzes Wittig in light of Beauvoir’s assertion that sex is “factic” and that gender is gained later on. Wittiq believes that sex, like gender is also acquired (153). Wittig sees sex as something that is politically thrust upon women, and that women become “ontologically suffused with sex” (154). With sex, because we start to see it as intrinsically “there” rather than perpetuated by a social system, it’s hard to notice how sex is created rather than just experienced.

“’Sex’ the category, compels ‘sex,’ the social configuration of bodies, through what Wittig calls a coerced contract. Hence, the category of ‘sex’ is one that enslaves” (157). This forced contract, as represented by heterosexism (?) fails to provide those outside the system with a “voice.” To speak is to take part in the discourse in which you don’t fit (158-9). A predicament to say the least. Butler starts to depart from Wittig at this point. Wittig starts to argue, in Butler’s eyes, for the lesbianizing (163) of the world. Butler’s issue with this is that such a process to achieve a universal point of view would assert a compulsory effect similar to the coercive heterosexual contract that Wittiq criticizes. Wittig feels that only a radical departure from the heterosexual will be able to rid us of the heterosexual regime (164). Butler disagrees... “Further, Wittig’s radical disjunction between straight and gay replicates the kind of disjunctive binarism that she herself characterizes as the divisive philosophical gesture of the straight mind” (165). Not only can homosexual relationships represent some of the inherent problems with the “heterosexual contract,” but also, Butler feels the force of the heterosexual regime is “not the only way it operates” (166). This approach relies to heavily on the “very terms that lesbianism purports to transcend” (169) and that Wittig’s lesbianism discourages a solidarity with heterosexual women (173).

IV.
In this section, Butler explains the effects of inscribing gender (or maybe sex, too) on the body—something I can’t claim to fully understand after reading. As such, my description here will be short. Butler states that, at least for Foucault, “cultural values emerge as a result of inscription on the body” (177). Butler connects this to Douglas’ discussion of taboos. From my perspective, this section can be described by an excerpt on page 186 when Butler brings the discussed arguments back to the sphere of gender:

“If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity.”

The notion of gender being “neither true nor false” helps introduce Butler’s next topic: drag. We see on the following page (187) how drag, or the act of performing gender outside of one’s anatomical sex is representative of three dimensions: gender performance, gender identity, and anatomical sex. The three sets of dissonance (187) shows how “in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as it’s contingency” (187). If performance, then gender cannot be based on a preexisting attribute or act (192), indeed Butler concludes, “gender can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived” (193).

Conclusion:
We’re brought all the way back to how Butler opened her book. Which, I must say, is probably the best way to conclude. The feminist’s claim of solidarity among all women is a “phantasmatic construction” (194); so too is the “real” and the “sexually factic” (199). I’m likely to agree with Butler here. She sees how feminists have limited themselves with the identities that they tried to use to “open up” discourse (200-1). “The internal paradox of foundationalism is that it presumes, fixes, and constrains the very ‘subjects’ that it hopes to represent and liberate” (203).



So where do we go from here? What is the next step for feminists? Or on an even smaller scale, how do we approach the subject as a class dedicated to discussing gender? By knowing our limitations, which Butler has spelled out many times, we should be able to start to fix them—Or do we replace them entirely?

1 comment:

Laurax Olson said...

Matt,

I liked your last few statements and I agree with you completely. Where do we go from here? I feel as if we have more boundaries and limitations to work around because of Butler.

What has Butler written since Gender Trouble? Has she had any epiphanies lately?

I really wish I coulda tracked her down when I was in Berkeley...