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Salih Butler Performativity Chapter - 3 PDF
Salih Butler Performativity Chapter - 3 PDF
3
On Judith Butler and Performativity
SARA SALIH
SOURCE: This chapter was originally part of chapters 2 and 3 in Judith Butler. Copyright © 2002 Sara
Salih. Reprinted by permission.
55
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husband by turning up at a party in an identi- emphasis). Once again we return to the notion
cal dress to that worn by his dead wife on a that there is no doer behind the deed, no voli-
similar occasion. In preparation for the party, tional agent that knowingly “does” its gender,
the narrator, assisted by the malign Mrs. since the gendered body is inseparable from the
Danvers, believes that she is choosing her cos- acts that constitute it. All the same, in the
tume and thereby creating herself, whereas it account of parody and drag that follows this
turns out that Mrs. Danvers is in fact recreat- description it does at times sound as though
ing the narrator as Rebecca. If Mrs. Danvers is there is an actor or a “doer” behind the deed,
taken to exemplify authority or power here, and Butler later admits that in Gender Trouble
Rebecca may provide an example of the way she “waffled” between describing gender in
in which identities, far from being chosen by terms of linguistic performativity and charac-
an individual agent, precede and constitute terizing it as straightforward theatre. Her
those “agents” or subjects (just as Rebecca lit- theories are clarified in Bodies That Matter
erally precedes the narrator). where Butler emphasizes the Derridean and
Austinian underpinnings of performativity that
are as yet only implicit in Gender Trouble.
SURFACE/DEPTH
Butler’s argument that there is no identity out-
PARODY AND DRAG
side language leads her to reject the commonly
accepted distinction between surface and “If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication
depth, the Cartesian dualism between body and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and
and soul. In the third chapter of Gender inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it
Trouble she draws from Foucault’s book seems that genders can be neither true nor
Discipline and Punish, in which he challenges false, but are only produced as the truth effects
“the doctrine of internalization,” the theory of a discourse of primary and stable identity,”
that subjects are formed by internalizing disci- Butler writes in the third chapter of Gender
plinary structures. Foucault replaces this with Trouble (GT: 136). In that case, it must be
“the model of inscription”: as Butler describes possible to “act” that gender in ways which
it, this is the idea that “[the] law is not literally will draw attention to the constructedness of
internalized, but incorporated, with the conse- heterosexual identities that may have a vested
quence that bodies are produced which signify interest in presenting themselves as “essential”
that law on and through the body” (GT: and “natural,” so that it would be true to say
134–5). Because there is no “interior” to gen- that all gender is a form of parody, but that
der “the law” cannot be internalized, but is some gender performances are more parodic
written on the body in what Butler calls “the than others. Indeed, by highlighting the dis-
corporeal stylization of gender, the fantasied junction between the body of the performer
[sic] and fantastic figuration of the body” (GT: and the gender that is being performed, paro-
135). Butler repeatedly refutes the idea of a dic performances such as drag effectively
pre-linguistic inner core or essence by claiming reveal the imitative nature of all gender identi-
that gender acts are not performed by the ties. “In imitating gender, drag implicitly
subject, but they performatively constitute a reveals the imitative structure of gender
subject that is the effect of discourse rather itself—as well as its contingency,” Butler
than the cause of it: “that the gendered body is claims; “part of the pleasure, the giddiness of
performative suggests that it has no ontological the performance is in the recognition of a rad-
status apart from the various acts which con- ical contingency in the relation between sex
stitute its reality,” she writes (GT: 136; my and gender” (GT: 137–8; her emphasis).
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Gender is a “corporeal style,” an act (or a subversive parody and the sort of “ordinary”
sequence of acts), a “strategy” which has cul- parody that Butler claims everyone is unwit-
tural survival as its end, since those who do tingly engaged in anyway? All gender is paro-
not “do” their gender correctly are punished dic, but Butler warns that “[p]arody by itself is
by society (GT: 139–40); it is a repetition, a not subversive,” and she poses the important
copy of a copy and, crucially, the gender par- question as to which performances effect the
ody Butler describes does not presuppose the various destabilizations of gender and sex she
existence of an original, since it is the very describes, and where those performances take
notion of an original that is being parodied place (GT: 139). There are some forms of drag
(GT: 138). Gender performatives that do not that are definitely not subversive, but serve
try to conceal their genealogy, indeed, that go only to reinforce existing heterosexual power
out of their way to accentuate it, displace het- structures—in Bodies, Butler cites Dustin
erocentric assumptions by revealing that het- Hoffman’s performance in Tootsie as an
erosexual identities are as constructed and example of what she calls “high het entertain-
“unoriginal” as the imitations of them. ment,” and we might also add the more recent
Gender does not happen once and for all film Mrs. Doubtfire in which Robin Williams
when we are born, but is a sequence of gives a cross-dressed performance as a nanny.
repeated acts that harden into the appearance Neither of these drag performances are subver-
of something that’s been there all along. If sive, since they serve to reinforce existing distinc-
gender is “a regulated process of repetition” tions between “male” and “female,” “masculine”
taking place in language, then it will be possi- and “feminine,” “gay” and “straight.”
ble to repeat one’s gender differently, as drag The question as to what constitutes “subver-
artists do (and you might also recall my sive,” as opposed to ordinary everyday gender
wardrobe analogy—the ripped clothes and the parody, is left open in the conclusion to Gender
sequins representing my attempts to “do” my Trouble, “From Parody to Politics,” where
gender in subversive and unexpected ways). As Butler asserts that it is possible to disrupt
I argued previously, you cannot go out and what are taken to be the foundations of gender,
acquire a whole new gender wardrobe for anticipating what such parodic repetitions will
yourself, since, as Butler puts it, “[t]here is achieve, without suggesting exactly how this
only a taking up of the tools where they lie, can take place. Butler’s claim on the penulti-
where the very ‘taking up’ is enabled by the mate page of Gender Trouble that “[t]he task is
tool lying there” (GT: 145). So you have to not whether to repeat, but how to repeat, or,
make do with the “tools,” or in my example, indeed to repeat and, through a radical prolifer-
the “clothes” that you already have, radically ation of gender, to displace the very gender
modifying them in ways which will reveal the norms that enable the repetition itself” (GT:
“unnatural” nature of gender. 148) presents a similar problem: she has already
There are two problems with this formula- asserted that to describe identity as an effect is
tion: one is that the manner of taking up the not to imply that identity is “fatally deter-
tool will be determined as well as enabled by mined” or “fully artificial and arbitrary,” and
the tool itself—in other words, subversion and yet at times it sounds as though the subject she
agency are conditioned, if not determined, by describes is in fact trapped within a discourse it
discourses that cannot be evaded. This leads to has no power to evade or to alter. In which
the second problem, which is that, if subver- case, “how to repeat” will already be deter-
sion itself is conditioned and constrained by mined in advance, and what looks like agency is
discourse, then how can we tell that it is sub- merely yet another effect of the law disguised as
version at all? What is the difference between something different.
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All the same, this is certainly not a view THE TROUBLE WITH
Butler expresses, and she seems optimistic GENDER TROUBLE
about the possibilities of denaturalizing, pro-
The fact that Butler’s description of gender
liferating and unfixing identities in order to
identity has raised so many questions is a tes-
reveal the constructed nature of heterosexual-
tament to its force, and at least some of
ity. A proliferation of identities will reveal the
Gender Trouble’s importance lies in the
ontological possibilities that are currently
debates it has generated amongst philoso-
restricted by foundationalist models of identity
phers, feminists, sociologists and theorists of
(i.e. those theories which assume that identity
gender, sex and identity, who continue to
is simply there and fixed and final). This is not,
worry over the meaning of “performativity,”
then, “the death of the subject,” or if it is, it is
whether it enables or forecloses agency, and
the theoretical death of an old, fixed subject,
whether Butler does indeed sound the death
and the birth of a new, constructed one char-
knell of the subject. In a written exchange with
acterized by subversive possibility and agency.
Butler, which took place in 1991 and was
“Construction is not opposed to agency; it is
published in 1995 as Feminist Contentions:
the necessary scene of agency,” Butler affirms
A Philosophical Exchange, the political
(GT: 147; see also CF: 15), and this leads her
philosopher Seyla Benhabib asserts that femi-
to refute another assumption popular among
nist appropriations of Nietzsche, which
critics who are hostile to so-called “postmod-
Benhabib dubs “the ‘death of the subject’ the-
ern” formulations of identity: “[t]he decon-
sis,” can only lead to self-incoherence. If there
struction of identity is not the deconstruction
is no gender identity behind the expressions of
of politics; rather, it establishes as political
gender, asks Benhabib, then how can women
the very terms through which identity is artic-
change the “expressions” (by which she
ulated” (GT: 148). Identity is intrinsically
apparently means “acts”) by which they are
political, while construction and deconstruc-
constituted? “If we are no more than the sum
tion (note that they are not antithetical) are
total of the gendered expressions we perform,
the necessary—in fact the only—scenes of
is there ever any chance to stop the perfor-
agency. Subversion must take place from
mance for a while, to pull the curtain down,
within existing discourse, since that is all
and let it rise only if one can have a say in the
there is.
production of the play itself?” (Benhabib et al.
However, a number of important questions
1995: 21). Butler claims that the Self is a mas-
remain. We have already encountered a poten-
querading performer, writes Benhabib, and
tial difficulty in the attempt to differentiate
between subversive and ordinary parody, and we are now asked to believe that there is no
we still have not answered the question as to self behind the mask. Given how fragile and
what or who exactly is “doing” the parodying. tenuous women’s sense of selfhood is in
Indeed, if there is no pre-discursive subject, is many cases, how much of a hit and miss
affair their struggles for autonomy are, this
it possible to talk in terms of parody and
reduction of female agency to “a doing
agency at all, since both might seem to pre- without the doer” at best appears to me to
suppose an “I”, a doer behind the deed? How be making a virtue out of necessity.
helpful is the notion of parodic gender any- (Benhabib et al. 1995: 22)
way? Does it really reveal the lack of an origi-
nal that is being imitated, or does it merely The claim that the subject is necessary, if
draw attention to the factitiousness of the drag only as a fiction, has been made by other
artist? Some of these questions and criticisms theorists, who are also likely to collapse “per-
are dealt with in the next section. formativity” into “performance.” Indeed, this
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reiteration and, to return to the subject of and agency. In Bodies she returns to drag
this section, re-citation. This is what Derrida as an example of what she calls “queer trou-
calls “the essential iterability of [a] sign” which ble,” and she finds other occasions for
cannot be contained or enclosed by any con- “Nietzschean hopefulness” in the iterability
text, convention or authorial intention (1972: and citationality of the sign. We will return to
93). Rather, Derrida asserts that signs can be these ways of “making trouble” in the next
transplanted into unforeseen contexts and section but one.
cited in unexpected ways, an appropriation
and relocation that he calls citational grafting:
THE MATTER OF RACE
all signs may be placed between quotation
marks (“sex,” “race”), cited, grafted, and reit- Can race, like sex, sexuality and gender be
erated in ways that do not conform to their cited and re-cited in ways that reveal the vul-
speaker’s or writer’s original intentions and nerability of the terms of the law to appropri-
this means that, as Derrida puts it, the possi- ation and subversion? Is race an interpellated
bility of failure is intrinsic and necessary to the performance, and is a racial identity some-
sign, indeed it is constitutive of the sign (1972: thing that is “assumed” rather than some-
97, 101–3). thing one simply “is”? Would it be possible
These ideas will be familiar from Gender once again to alter the terms of de Beauvoir’s
Trouble where, as I noted, Derrida is an implicit statement and affirm that “one is not born
rather than a stated presence, and where fail- but rather one becomes black/white”? Or could
ure, citation and re-citation are crucial to the word “race” be substituted for “sex” in
Butler’s discussions of subversive gender per- Butler’s description of Bodies That Matter as
formatives. In Bodies, Butler sees potential for “a poststructuralist rewriting of discursive per-
subversion in Derrida’s characterizations of formativity as it operates in the materialization
the citational sign, and she now charts a move of sex”? (BTM: 12).
in her own theory from performativity to cita- Discussions of race were largely absent
tionality, since rethinking performativity from Gender Trouble, and in Bodies Butler is
through citationality is deemed useful for rad- careful to make the “addition” of considera-
ical democratic theory (BTM: 191; see also tions of racial identity to her analyses of iden-
14). Specifically, Butler asserts that Derrida’s tity formation (BTM: 18). Accepting that
citationality will be useful as a queer strategy normative heterosexuality is not the only reg-
of converting the abjection and exclusion of ulatory regime operating in the production of
non-sanctioned sexed and gendered identities the body, Butler asks what other “regimes of
into political agency. regulatory production contour the materiality
In the final chapter of Bodies, Butler sug- of bodies” (BTM: 17), and she asserts that
gests that what she has called “the contentious “[t]he symbolic—that register of regulatory
practices of ‘queerness’” exemplify the politi- ideality—is also and always a racial industry,
cal enactment of performativity as citationality indeed, [it is] the reiterated practice of racializ-
(BTM: 21). Butler is referring to subversive ing interpellations” (BTM: 18; original
practices whereby gender performatives are emphasis). Butler rejects models of power that
“cited,” grafted onto other contexts, thereby see racial differences as subordinate to sexual
revealing the citationality and the intrinsic— difference, and she argues that both racial and
but necessary and useful—failure of all gender heterosexual imperatives are at work in repro-
performatives. Butler gave examples of these ductive and sexing practices.
practices in Gender Trouble, where she focused Interpellations do not just “call us” into
on parody and drag as strategies of subversion sex, sexuality and gender, but they are also
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“racializing” imperatives that institute racial theorized in exactly the same way as the
difference as a condition of subjecthood. Sexual sexualized, sexed or gendered body, although
and racial differences are not autonomous or this is not to dispute Butler’s assertion that all
discrete axes of power (BTM: 116–17) and these vectors of power operate simultaneously
Butler repeatedly emphasizes that sex and gen- and through one another.
der are in no way prior to race. “What appear It may be significant that Butler’s most
within such an enumerative framework as sep- extended discussion of race centers on a
arable categories are, rather, the conditions of novella by Nella Larsen, Passing, in which one
articulation for each other,” she states; “How of the protagonists attempts to “pass” for
is race lived in the modality of sexuality? white. Here the body is not visibly black, and
How is gender lived in the modality of race? Clare (the woman who is “passing” for white)
How do colonial and neo-colonial nation- is only “outed” (Butler’s term, BTM: 170) when
states rehearse gender relations in the consoli- her white husband encounters her among a
dation of state power?” (BTM: 117). group of black people. Butler uses Passing to
These are the questions Butler sets herself, confirm her point that race and sexuality are
but in spite of this the “matter” of race is not imbricated and implicated, since she discerns
convincingly integrated into her discussions an overlapping of the “mute homosexuality”
(which is why I am dealing with the question between the two women protagonists and
in a separate, penultimate section here). Clare’s “muted” blackness, which, like
Although she analyzes how sex, sexuality and homosexual desire, attempts to conceal itself
gender are interpellated, assumed and perfor- (BTM: 175). Moreover, just as heterosexuality
matively constituted, there are no parallel dis- requires homosexuality in order to constitute
cussions of performative race or how exactly its coherence, so “whiteness” requires “black-
race is interpellated by what Butler calls ness” to offset itself and confirm its racial
“racializing norms.” Moreover, some critics boundaries. Heterosexuality and whiteness are
might feel that it is important to preserve the simultaneously destabilized in Passing, as
distinction between the “raced” body and queering—i.e. the desire between the two
the gendered/sexed/sexualized one. Remember women—upsets and exposes both racial and
the “It’s a lesbian!” joke: there the humor is sexual passing (BTM: 177). (For a discussion
derived from the fact that sexuality is not visi- of race and melancholia, see Butler’s interview
ble at birth, whereas by contrast race very “On Speech, Race and Melancholia,” 1999).
often (although certainly not always) is. The Butler’s analysis of Larsen’s novella similarly
African-American theorist Henry Louis Gates “queers” psychoanalytic theory by exposing
Jr. effectively crystallizes this issue when he its assumption of the primacy of sexuality
makes the following statement in his essay and whiteness. In fact, Butler sees Passing
“The Master’s Pieces”: as a challenge to psychoanalytic theory, “a
theorization of desire, displacement, and
It’s important to remember that “race” is jealous rage that has significant implications
only a sociopolitical category, nothing for rewriting psychoanalytic theory in ways
more. At the same time—in terms of its
that explicitly come to terms with race”
practical performative force—that doesn’t
help me when I’m trying to get a taxi on the (BTM: 182).
corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue. (“Please The other analysis of race in Bodies occurs
sir, it’s only a metaphor.”) (1992: 37–8) in Butler’s discussion of Jennie Livington’s Paris
Is Burning (BTM: 121–40), a film about drag
Gates’ wry observation shows that the visi- balls in Harlem that are attended by/
bly “raced” body (black or white) cannot be performed by African-American or Latino/Latina
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“men.” Again, Butler sees the film as exemplify- Antigone’s Claim), while Passing similarly
ing her assertion that sexual difference does not reveals how hegemonic racial and sexual
precede race or class in the constitution of the norms may be destabilized by subjects who do
subject, so that the symbolic is also a racializing not fit neatly in the categories of white hetero-
set of norms and the subject is produced by sexuality. Such norms are far from monolithic
racially informed conceptions of “sex” (BTM: or stable, but, as we saw in a previous section,
130). Butler’s analyses of Paris Is Burning and they may be reiterated and cited in ways that
Passing lead her to conclude that the theoretical undermine heterosexual hegemony. (For an
priority of homosexuality and gender must give alternative reading of Paris Is Burning, see bell
way to a more complex mapping of power that hooks’ essay, “Is Paris Burning?” [1996].)
places both terms in their specific racial and However, if all linguistic signs are cita-
political contexts (BTM: 240). tional, citationality in and of itself is not a sub-
Butler herself has been scrupulous in not versive practice, and it follows that some signs
suggesting that any one term takes priority will continue to work in the service of oppres-
over another, even though the organization of sive heterosexuality norms (and this is some-
Bodies might suggest otherwise—if not the thing we already know from Butler’s
priority of sex over race, at least the separabil- description of femininity as “a forcible citation
ity of the terms. Since race is largely dealt with of the norm” [BTM: 232; my emphasis]).
in discrete chapters (and, for that matter, these Clearly, there are “good” (subversive) citations
chapters are “literary” rather than “theoreti- and “bad” (forced) citations, and the task will
cal” in their focus), as I noted before, “the be to distinguish between them—which is not
matter,” so to speak, remains somewhat at a always easy as we shall see. Another problem
distance from Butler’s other theoretical discus- is that discourse and the law operate by con-
sions. We may be left with questions concern- cealing their citationality and genealogy, pre-
ing the relationship between race and the senting themselves as timeless and singular,
lesbian phallus, or how Butler’s description of while performativity similarly “conceals or
“girling” might be applied to race, since nei- dissimulates the conventions of which it is a
ther the lesbian phallus nor interpellation/ repetition” (BTM: 12). Again, it will be neces-
performativity are specifically discussed in sary to distinguish between those performa-
the context of race. All the same, to talk in tives which consolidate the heterosexual norm
terms of “racializing norms” is indeed to sug- and those that work to reveal its contingency,
gest that race, like gender, sex and sexuality, is instability and citationality.
constructed rather than natural, assumed in In a previous example, I described an unor-
response to the interpellative “call” of dis- dained brain surgeon who conducts a mar-
course and the law, even though Butler is riage ceremony that, in Austinian terms, will
somewhat unspecific as to how exactly this have no performative (or indeed legal) force
“call to race” takes place. because it falls outside recognized and sanc-
tioned conventions. Butler, on the other hand,
might assert that the utterance of “I pro-
QUEER TROUBLE
nounce you, etc.” by someone who is not
In spite of the tragic outcome of both texts, authorized to do so is a subversive political
Butler highlights the moments of promising strategy, since it is a recitation of an unstable
instability in Paris Is Burning and Passing. In heterosexual norm that is always vulnerable to
Butler’s analysis, Paris Is Burning represents appropriation. There are alternative, equally
the resignification of normative heterosexual subversive ways of citing heterosexual signs
kinship (an issue to which Butler will return in that are all vulnerable to appropriation: the
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lesbian phallus is one such “recitation,” and for a heterosexual economy that must
Butler gives other examples, some of which are constantly police its own boundaries against
theatrical. As in Gender Trouble, parody and the invasion of queerness” (BTM: 126).
drag are modes of queer performance that As before, it is difficult to disentangle sub-
subversively “allegorize” (to use Butler’s term) versive citations and performatives from the
heterosexual melancholy, thereby revealing power structures they oppose, since subver-
the allegorical nature of all sexual identities. sion is necessarily and inevitably implicated in
Although Butler is careful to distinguish per- discourse and the law. However, this consti-
formance from performativity in Bodies, she tutes the promise as well as the problematic of
also asserts that theatre provides crucial performativity, and Butler argues that making
opportunities for queer politics. “[A]n impor- use of existing “resources” for subversive ends
tant set of histories might be told in which the will require vigilance and hard work. “How
increasing politicization of theatricality for will we know the difference between the power
queers is at stake,” she writes. “Such a history we promote and the power we oppose?”, she
might include traditions of cross-dressing, drag writes. The problem, of course, is that one
balls, street walking, butch-femme spectacles . . . can’t know this in advance, so that subversive
kiss-ins by Queer Nation; drag performance recitation will always involve a certain amount
benefits for AIDS” (BTM: 233). of risk. It is a risk that Butler well understands,
What Butler calls “the increasing theatrical- as she once again submits her work to the
ization of political rage in response to the scrutiny of readers who are likely to interpret
killing inattention of public policy-makers on and deploy her ideas in unforeseen ways. The
the issue of AIDS” is epitomized by the appro- effects of one’s words are incalculable, since
priation of the term “queer,” an interpellative performatives and their significations do not
performative that has been converted from an begin or end (BTM: 241). Perhaps it will be
insult into a linguistic sign of affirmation and appropriate to end with a “citation” of Butler’s
resistance (BTM: 233). And yet, although she concluding acknowledgment of the vulner-
continues to find subversive potential in the ability of her own terms to appropriation and
contingency and resignifiability of the sign, redeployment:
Butler is also aware that citation is not neces-
sarily subversive and she points out that cer- it is one of the ambivalent implications of
tain “denaturalizations” of the heterosexual the decentering of the subject to have one’s
writing be the site of a necessary and
norm actually enforce heterosexual hegemony
inevitable expropriation. But this yielding of
(BTM: 231). Such parodies may certainly be ownership over what one writes has an
“domesticated” so that they lose their subver- important set of political corollaries, for the
sive potential and function merely as what taking up, reforming, deforming of one’s
Butler calls “high het entertainment,” and words does open up a difficult future terrain
Butler cites Julie Andrews in Victor, Victoria, of community, one in which the hope of
ever fully recognizing oneself in the terms by
Dustin Hoffmann in Tootsie or Jack Lemmon which one signifies is sure to be disap-
in Some Like It Hot as examples of drag per- pointed. This not owning of one’s words is
formances that have been produced by the het- there from the start, however, since speak-
erosexual entertainment industry for itself ing is always in some ways the speaking of a
(further examples might include Julian Clarry stranger through and as oneself, the melan-
cholic reiteration of a language that one
and Eddie Izzard) (BTM: 126). Such perfor-
never chose, that one does not find as an
mances only confirm the boundaries between instrument to be used, but that one is, as it
“straight” and “not straight” identities, pro- were, used by, expropriated in, as the unsta-
viding what Butler calls “a ritualistic release ble and continuing condition of the “one”
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and the “we”, the ambivalent condition of ——— (2000) Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between
the power that binds. (BTM: 241–2) Life and Death, New York: Columbia
University Press.
This statement could be interpreted as a de Beauvoir, Simone [1949] The Second Sex (La
Deuxième Sex), trans. H. M. Parshley,
gesture of humility or a disclaimer of responsi- London: Everyman, 1993.
bility on Butler’s part, and there may be con- de Lauretis, Teresa (1987) Technologies of Gender:
texts in which it is problematic to claim that Essays on Film, Theory and Fiction,
one does not use language but is, rather, used Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
by it. (“I didn’t write those words! They wrote Derrida, Jacques [1972] “Signature Event Context”
(“Signature Evénement Contexte”), in Peggy
me.”) Butler returns to the issues of speech
Kamuf (ed.) A Derrida Reader: Between the
acts, linguistic responsibility and the “reach Blinds, New York: Columbia University Press,
of . . . signifiability” (BTM: 241) when she 1999, pp. 80–111.
analyzes hate speech, “obscenity” and censor- Foucault, Michel [1975] Discipline and Punish: The
ship in her next book, Excitable Speech. Birth of the Prison (Surveiller et Punir:
Naissance de la Prison), trans. Alan Sheridan,
London: Penguin, 1977.
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Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and American Tradition,” in H. L. Gates (ed.)
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Discussion Questions
1. What, according to Salih’s discussion of Judith Butler’s work, is gender? What does
it mean to say that gender is performative? How is performativity different than
performance?
2. What are some of the questions that have been raised about Butler’s conception of
gender performativity?
3. Do you think that performativity is a useful way of thinking about other social iden-
tities, such as race, ethnicity, and class? Why or why not?
4. How well does Weeks’ notion of sexual identities as necessary fictions complement
Butler’s concept of sex and gender as performative?
5. After reading this chapter, what do you believe is possible in regard to subverting
hegemonic norms of gender, sex, and sexual identity?