Imitation and Gender Insubordination

Imitation and Gender
Insubordination
Judith Butler
Hillary Chiou
Kai Clark
Lindsey Maxon

Judith Butler
• Born February 24, 1956
• American post-structuralist philosopher,
who has contributed to the fields of
feminism, queer theory, political philosophy,
and ethics
• She is the Maxine Elliot professor in the
Rhetoric and Comparative Literature
departments at the University of California,
Berkeley
• Received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale
University in 1984, for a dissertation
subsequently published as Subjects of
Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-
Century France
• In the late-1980s held several teaching/
research appointments, and was involved in
“post-structuralist” efforts within Western
feminist theory to question the
“presuppositional terms” of feminism
• Research ranges from literary theory,
modern philosophical fiction, feminist and
sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century
European literature and philosophy, Kafka
and loss, mourning and war

Butler’s Works
• Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (1990)
• Bodies That Matter: On the
Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993)
• Excitable Speech: A Politics of the
Performative (1997)
• Undoing Gender (2004)
• Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)

What’s a sexuality
•“phantasy structure”
•act
Here
•orifice
•gender
Here
•anatomy
Here

What’s a sexuality
Not what you ARE,
but what you claim
to NOT be.
=
There’s no set definition for any
sexuality. It can only be defined
by the sexualities it isn’t.

Why define sexuality
Political purposes
Can’t ask for
equal rights
if nobody
knows what
you’re talking
about
!!!

Why define sexuality
Political purposes
This is an outrage!
Gay men shouldn’t
exist! Everyone
should be straight!

Why define sexuality
Political purposes
But what about
the lesbians
Don’t be silly,
lesbians don’t
exist.

Why define sexuality
Political purposes
If one category is prohibited, you
can fight the prohibition; if another
category doesn’t even “exist,” how
do you establish it as valid
Hey baby,
you single

Why define sexuality
So that it isn’t defined in
comparison to heterosexuality
It’s easy in a
homophobic
mindset to define
homosexuality as
a derivative of
heterosexuality
#1
(or, as nonexistent)
#3
#2

Where does gender
come from
Generally seen as
based on a default
Females = feminine
Males = masculine

Where does gender
come from
Therefore, drag is seen
as a an imitation of
the opposite gender

But the idea of
“gender” itself is
completely made up
Where does gender
come from
Female ≠ feminine
Male ≠ masculine

Where does gender
come from
“Drag” reveals
that gender is
not set in stone,
it’s acted.
!!!
Gender performativity
This is the key word you should be taking notes on, guys.

What about sexuality
Heterosexuality is seen as the
origin. Other sexualities are
derivative from this origin.

What about sexuality
But the idea of heterosexuality depends
on the idea of homosexuality.

What about sexuality
But, because homosexuality is viewed as a “copy”
of heterosexuality, it cannot be the original.
Heterosexuality is the copy of the copy.

What about sexuality
It’s an endless cycle

What about sexuality
Like gender, heterosexuality is
based on an (imaginary) ideal

What about sexuality
Because it cannot live up to
its own ideal, it repeatedly
performs its sexuality as the
only way to sustain it

If it stops performing it, it
stops existing, because
sexuality is defined by
what it DOES instead of
what it IS.
What about sexuality

Paris Is Burning
“Realness”: because gender is performed, drag
makes a biological male into a “real” female.

• Gender is the effect of reiterated acting
• Produces the effect of a static or normal gender while
obscuring the contradiction and instability of any single
person’s gender act
• This effect produces what we can consider to be “true
gender,” a narrative that is sustained by “the tacit
collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain
discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured
by the credibility of those productions—and the
punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them.”
• The performative acts which Butler is discussing she
names to be performative and within the larger social,
unseen world, they exist within performativity.

• The socially constructed aspect of gender performativity is
perhaps most obvious in drag performance, which offers a
rudimentary understanding of gender binaries in its
emphasis on gender performance
• Butler understands drag cannot be regarded as an example
of subjective or singular identity, where “there is a ‘one’
who is prior to gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of
gender decides with deliberation which gender it will be
today”
• Subsequently, drag should not be considered the honest
expression of its performer’s intent
• Rather, Butler suggests that what is performed “can only be
understood through reference to what is barred from the
signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility.”

“Original” sexuality
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=zKAW96N-Vms