It Begins and Ends With Butler

I’m heavily invested in beginnings and endings, so the time has come for the post to sum it all up. Just in case the first sentence was not obvious enough, this post will be self-indulgent.   In my first post of the semester, I ruminated over how Butler’s argumentation that the category of “woman” is highly problematic could be reconciled with the gains feminist political movements made for individuals who identified as women through the use of identity politics. I came to the conclusion that the concept of fragmented coalitions she presented as a means to acknowledge the success of the past while moving the feminist movement into the future was highly problematic, and was uncertain any political movement could be at all successful outside the mentality of collectivity which identity politics fosters.  I was similarly uncertain the category of women could truly be fundamentally altered. Everything she asserted seemed impossible.  After reading Undoing Gender and many other wonderful texts throughout the course of the semester, I think I can finally appreciate the merits of Butler’s arguments and, to some extent, understand her ideas and the limitations of my own former assumptions.

Despite the issues I had with Gender Trouble, the viability of fragmented coalitions and the ability of concepts which seem resolute to be fundamentally altered in politically powerful ways are two ideas I rely on within my theory. Probably in large part due to the Cvetokovich reading, I now recognize it is possible to form political coalitions amongst people with nothing in common aside from a goal or belief, even if that goal or belief reflects different value systems, an inconsistency which I had trouble grappling with as I initially worked through Butler.  This determination has enabled me to draw parallels between heterosexual individuals who hold divorce parties and folks who speak at congressional hearings in attempts to secure the rights of queer individuals to marry the people they love.  My conviction that the fundamental alteration of discourse, institutions, and reality is possible which I have developed from reading Butler and becoming invested in her idea of the changing human has allowed me to base my project on the idea that seeking marriage rights as an act of redefining the institution, could be a productive course of action for the queer community, something Butler doesn’t even think is possible.  I think that justifies the claim I’ve come full circle. I suppose the most important thing I have taken from this class is a broader view of what is possible and new ways of evaluating possibility. Whether this has made me a better thinker, a new version of naïve, or just a more hopeful person in general, I haven’t quite decided.  I’m excited to continue reading and learning with the insights the class has afforded me. 

My Theory

This is as far as I have developed the theory I presented in class yesterday. Any comments or suggestions as I keep working would be much appreciated. 

Throughout Undoing Gender, Judith Butler asserts that in order to make the world more hospitable for queer folks and other marginalized bodies, the fundamental meaning of human must expand and reality must be reconstituted to enable and to reflect this change.   She positions cultural translation, a process which compels “each language to change in order to apprehend the other,” as the key mechanism to the creation of a world in which more queer individuals are able to enjoy livable lives.  Though the specific political and economic operations which will contribute to this international dialogue and result from this interchange remain relatively unexplored by Butler, she does explicitly condemn recent efforts to promote lesbian and gay marriage as counter to the reconstitution of norms she envisions.

Butler’s aversion to the drive for gay marriage rights, an uneasiness shared by many scholars working in the realm of queer theory, is rooted in an anxiety that “the enduring social ties that constitute viable kinship in communities of sexual minorities are threatened with becoming unrecognizable and unviable as long as the marriage bond is the exclusive way in which both sexuality and kinship are organized,”(4).  Considering the institution’s status as a fundamental structural unit of heteronormative society privileging intimacy which is heterosexual, focused in effective child rearing, monogamous, and lifelong, this concern is valid. Furthermore, the discourse generated by many marriage rights campaigns rightfully warrants the interpretation of the movement as an attempt at an imperfect assimilation into this parochial power structure, justifying apprehension about the issue. Still, it seems defeatist and erroneous to consider the rigid norms of marriage stable and able to incorporate queer intimacy without significant reconstitution.  If the queer community was granted marriage rights, the boundary between the inside and outside of this power structure would become much more fluid, allowing forms of intimacy aside from those proscribed by former regulations to redefine the institution. The productive possibility of efforts by the queer community to gain access to marriage rights in order to destabilize the marriage norm and, as a result, the heteronormative society which uses this institution as a building block, should not be underestimated.  The incredible power an alteration of the boundaries and significance of marriage promises is made apparent in Butler’s reflection on the potential of reclaiming and redefining problematic terms, a discussion in which she observes struggles against exclusion “often end up reapproprating those very terms of modernity, appropriating them precisely to initiate an entrance into modernity as well as the transformation of modernity’s parameters”(179).   It seems logical to assume that the reclamation and redefinition of an institution which supports and proliferates reality rooted in heteronormativity could be an equally powerful exercise allowing queer individuals to work with the norms which they cannot will away in a manner conducive to their eventual complete reconstitution, a feat which could lead to the restructuring reality in a manner that makes more forms of intimacy and notions of kinship recognizable, and, as a result, more lives livable.

Accordingly, it seems warranted to assert the queer community could oppose the homophobia generated by the marriage rights campaign without embracing the marriage norm by seeking access to  the institution as a means of reconstituting the  norm. The restructuring of reality this course of action has the potential to is paramount, as the inability of marriage to incorporate and legitimize the most fleeting forms of intimacy dictates that any effort to make all forms of intimacy legible must ultimately seek to detach political and economic rights from any form of intimacy, sexuality, or sexual act.  Thus, in seeking to redefine marriage and the notions of the human with which it is intimately bound to make more lives livable, queer folks would ultimately be striving to eventually displace marriage from its current position of economic, political, and social importance in society.  As “paradox is the condition of possibility,” this course of action, though difficult to relate to through the lens of logic rooted in binaries, holds promise(Butler 3).  The very act of seeking marriage rights begins this process of reconstitution, as the compulsion of marriage to encompass relationships existing outside of heterosexuality powerfully asserts the reality of queerness and its right to recognizability, challenging the notions of heteronormativity embedded within the institution and the conceptions of space, time, and kinship vital to the structuring of society and reality which makes queerness an impossibility.  Moreover, if queer individuals, or furthermore all individuals who desire in ways that do not conform to the societal valuation of relationships based in longevity, monogamy, and other characteristics conducive to the effective rearing of children, forced marriage to encompass their own variable intimacies and kinship structures, and thus recognize these relationships as legitimate through the endowment of political and economic rights, the traditional meaning of marriage and its role in upholding notions of reality would be further compromised.

The pursuit of marriage rights and subsequent overhaul of the institution as catalyst for a larger reconstitution of norms has merits aside from its theoretical possibility. The viability of marriage as the premiere heterosexual societal structure through which to seek a reconstitution of reality in its totality is reinforced by the precariousness of the institution.  The divorce rate within the United States hovers around 50%, and nearly 75% of divorced individuals remarry, suggesting visions of marriage as a sacred bond of lasting love in the best interest of all people are, at best, dated, and perhaps even  fantastical. These figures also suggest many heterosexual individuals who already have access to the institution may lack an investment in traditional notions of marriage or even be willing to support efforts to detach economic and political advantages from monogamous and lasting forms of intimacy.  Moreover, as traditional notions of marriage have aided the historical, and, in some cases, continual relegation of women to limited societal roles widely considered inferior to those of men, many women may also support a fundamental redefinition of marriage as an opportunity to change society and reality in a manner conducive to equality. Thus, the possibility for the formation of fragmented coalitions to reconstitute social norms arises.   Furthermore, as marriage does, in its current form, offer both recognition and economic and political benefits currently denied to those whose intimacy exists outside its rigid parameters, queer access to this institution promises an immediate extension of literal livability to some queer lives which philosophical approaches seeking to eventually incite political, social, and economic change may not offer.  Though this benefit can be interpreted as a compromise of theoretical purity on some level, its status as a legitimate benefit is, nonetheless, unquestionable. As the reconstitution of reality which will ensue from this more immediate extension of livability to some queer lives creates the prospect of a world in which intimacy and sexuality does not determine one’s reality or humanity, this compromise must be properly envisioned as the proliferation of possibility, a resource “crucial as bread” and absolutely vital to the international conversation Butler envisions.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. "Undoing Gender." Routledge New York and London. 2004.

Print.

"Divorce Rate." divorce.com. n.p. n.d. Web. 22 November 2011. 

Questions I Still Have for Judith Butler

     I found Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender infinitely easier to understand and relate to than her earlier work Gender Trouble. However, there is a still a bit of vagueness, and, in my opinion, contradiction which leads me to pose a few questions about the practical reality of what she is proposing, or, perhaps more fittingly, what she is proposing at all.

What are the everyday issues people face who are not considered real or human?

     This experience is obviously infinitely varied and dependent on culture, but what violence does the queer community suffer aside from actual physical violence, which Butler posits reinforces the discourse excluding such individuals from humanity, creating a vicious circularity. Such communities’ denial of rights and the economic exploitation that results from this lack of recognition leads to an insidious trauma which, though certainly a form of violence, is not as thoroughly explored.

Is it wrong for people to compromise the purity of ideals in order to seek power (economic and otherwise) in a thoroughly heterosexual world?

      Butler admonishes gay marriage being made the main focus of queer human rights efforts of our time, stating that to install it as a “model for sexual legitimacy is precisely to constrain the sociality of the body in acceptable ways”(26).  She asserts privileging marriage asserts those that partake in relationships outside the parameters of longevity and monogamy do not have “real” desire and connections, proposing a drastic rethinking of our kinship structures. In my opinion, her dismissal of the focus on gay marriage is problematic for many reasons. First of all, I’m unconvinced it is fair to assert in this day and age that marriage represents monogamy or longevity-at least in Western culture- , as the divorce rate hovers around 50% and 75% of those who get divorces remarry at least one time(Divorce Rate , www.divorce.com). Moreover, even if marriage symbolically stands for such values, marriage represents an area of access to economic equality queer folks have henceforth been denied. Is pursuing gay marriage not a potential practice of seeking autonomy in an imperfect world one did not choose? It also seems possible that gaining access to marriage would allow queer populations to influence the definition of the institution, and possibly change its meaning or displace its importance.  Since, in our age, marriage and the privileges which accompany it are simply one branch of heterosexual power systems which define space, time, and how these entities are interpreted and organized by the general public, gaining access to, and thus some level of influence over, this system could potentially provide a foothold into displacing or destabalizing some of the broader heterosexual systems of power. Though queer desire, in all its variations, is not fully recognized or legitimized through the drive for marriage rights, this process seems to provide an opportunity to attain eventual recognition. If ideals should not be compromised on some level, or for some period of time, in working toward a better future, how exactly does the realty of the everyday lives of people become more livable? Will changes in our economic systems and societal order result from a grand and pure change in who is considered human without any theoretical compromise? Can such a transition occur without changes on the level of the everyday preceding it?

Does maintaining theoretical purity, in a way, lead to the sacrifice of bodies?

       The gay marriage example, which is one of the few concrete examples of political realities Butler explores, poses the question how undercutting the importance of seeking a place within or access to heterosexual systems of power leads to the sacrifice of bodies on some level. If queer populations cannot remake the society they did not choose, then seeking power within this imperfect society seems to be a vital exercise, one that should accompany and augment efforts to make norms more inclusive for all. In speaking about the politics of intersex birth, and more specifically the proposition that children should not be assigned genders in efforts to restore natural sexual difference, Butler states that queer theory would not “oppose all gender assignment,” as it is a “perfectly reasonable assumption” that children “do not need to take on the burden of being heroes for a movement without first assenting to the role”(Butler 8).  Should the queer community, which, in large part, seems to support the agenda of seeking marriage rights, a goal whose tangibility has been affirmed in recent legislative progress, sacrifice this focus in order to pursue a brand of politics which endorses a more dramatic restructuring of heterosexual power systems? What would this brand of politics look like, and is it possible an exclusive focus on such agendas would lead to the sacrifice of current dehumanized population’s quality of life, or potential quality of life, which could be gained by securing access to rights within a heterosexual power system.  It seems unfair to posit the deaths of queer folks because they do not have access to their partner’s health insurance benefits in light of marriage laws are any less tragic than other forms of violence, and are in need of redress less than other forms of violence.

Can the expansion of the umbrella of human occur without increasing economic equality and a diffusion of power?

                In creating a parallel between the human experience of grief, a process she describes as “agreeing to undergo a transformation the full result of which you cannot know in advance,” and the fundamental alteration of the notion of who is human, Butler asserts that we cannot know what the results of this process will entail in advance.  Nevertheless, in deeming the effort to reconstitute the human as “the demand to establish more inclusive conditions for viable life,” Butler suggests this effort will inevitably result in more people being considered human and thus being able to accrue the advantages that accompany such stature.  It seems this is, indeed, something of which we can be certain. Considering economic systems, and more generally power systems, are built on the exploitation of the nonhuman other, such inclusiveness will inevitably lead to an increasing dispersion of power and resources. Under this framework, can the accrual of economic privileges and power be construed as conducive to the expansion of who is considered human?

The conclusion I suppose I am trying to make is that agency of some kind can be garnered from changing the realities of the everyday without the fundamental (and global) alteration of norms and classifications. A lack of power and influence within inhospitable societal systems, a symptom of a rigid and inclusive conception of humanity, is one effect of intolerance which makes life unlivable. Nevertheless, though such conditions can be viewed as a derivative of the more totalizing discursive injustice which manifests through power systems, localized efforts to make life more livable which are not necessarily a theoretically pure representation of ideals championing the complete destabilization of prevailing norms should not and cannot be dismissed as secondary. Gaining footholds in heterosexual systems of power may be a very valuable resource for, or step towards, attempting to change and destabilize norms, and the results of these efforts promise immediacy that the process of global exchange to reformulate norms, which Butler positions as a key to the expansion of livable lives, may not hold.   Though I believe full equality for groups deemed inhuman or less than human will require an overturn of power systems and the norms which drive these structures, I do not think all progress must retain this exclusive focus.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. "Undoing Gender." Routledge New York and London. 2004.
Print.

"Divorce Rate." divorce.com. n.p. n.d. Web. 22 November 2011. 

The Discourse(s) of Gethen

As I read the first chapter of Samuel Delaney’s Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary, I was able to more fully grasp the nature of my struggle to understand Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and the world of Gethen which it depicts.  After reflecting on Bohannon’s misguided effort to prove Shakespeare’s Hamlet has universal appeal by telling the tale to a group of West Africans, Delaney concludes it is a grave error to assume “that a single recognizable event, a single recognizable object, or a given rhetorical feature will have the same meaning no matter what discourse it is found in”(31).  My tendency to evaluate Le Guin’s invented world on the basis of my own assumptions and systems of meaning, which are rooted in the varied discourses to which I have been exposed, has led me to struggle with a series of contradictions while working through The Left Hand of Darkness. However, the folk tales sprinkled throughout the novel, much like the stories the Africans tell Bohannon which allow her to more fully understand their cultural difference, present some insight into the discourse of Gethen, and how rhetoric is shaping this discourse throughout the novel’s course.

“The Place Inside the Blizzard,” identified within the text as a hearth tale, reveals what meanings are written onto bodies through the discourse of Karhide. Though the lack of sexual differentiation within the people of Karhide prevents the society’s systems of signification from closely resembling the patriarchal discourse readers are familiar with and undoubtedly influenced by, the valuation of human life paramount to the culture of Karhide is certainly familiar. This sanctity of life is evidenced by the taboos against incest and suicide which are highlighted within the tale. Though the taboo against incest may initially prompt readers to forge a connection between this societal value and the incest taboo which serves as a powerful force within patriarchal culture, the fact that incestuous sexual relations are permitted until a child is born suggests that the outlawing of incest within Karhide is not motivated by the conception that such actions are morally reprehensible and universally unnatural, but rather by a concern for the health of the nation (or more specifically a healthy gene pool). The fact that incest is subjugated only for its ability to compromise the survival of Karhidians is further evidenced by the footnote which reveals that the brother’s choice to vow kemmering only became an issue when it was interpreted as leading to his brother’s suicide. The regard for life instilled within Karhide’s society is perhaps best evidenced by the powerful suicide taboo revealed within the observation “murder is a lighter shadow on a house than suicide”(Le Guin 22).  Since murder can be construed as an act to save one’s life in order to defeat an enemy or protect the lives of self and others, while suicide is an active choice to extinguish life which cannot be easily allied to an effort to sustain life in some other capacity, and thus a clear and direct act of devaluing life, this hierarchy supports the valuation of life.  One can infer this valuation of life is at least partially a result of the difficulty of living in a land as barren and frigid as Gethen, a speculation Ai makes repeatedly throughout the text.

The valuation of life made evident through these taboos is interwoven into a cultural conception that people do not own their bodies.  The notion that bodies are communal property is also evidenced by the existence of a powerful suicide taboo, as this societal value suggests one does not have the right to extinguish the vigor of their body by taking their own life.  Furthermore, as Getheren is held responsible for the suicide of his brother and lover, a strange dynamic in which individuals are somehow responsible for the bodies they come into contact with emerges.  After being exiled, Getheren has all bodily comforts denied and his bodily presence within he community is largely ignored, suggesting his brother’s decision to compromise his own body compromised Getheren’s body as well. Nevertheless, he retains a name, and his sentiment “There is no place by the fire for me, nor food on he able for me, nor a bed made for me to lie in. Yet I still have my name, Getheren is my name” suggests this name allows him to retain a sense of identity and power (Le Guin 22).   Though he compromises his name, and thus  his individuality, through his departure into the winter landscape, he is unable to violate the principle code of his society by compromising his own body.  As he crawls through the snow, he resists the temptation to lie in the snow and die, his expressed desire, suggesting that the valuation of life championed by his society still has a hold on him. The glorification of life within the story is furthered as he encounters his dead lover, finding there is “no life in his belly” and he cannot say his name, a moment which asserts there is no individual identity or bodily fertility in death.  Getheren’s ultimate choice to retain his bodily integrity reinforces both the sanctity of life and the notion of the body as communal property, while his sacrifice of his name in order to attain physical integrity privileges communal bodies as more important than personal identities.  Nevertheless, as Getheren relinquishes his individuality to his community and maintains his body, the collective object, this inversion proves highly problematic for the community, which promptly falls into a state of illness and infertility.   However, as his identity and body are ultimately reunited, the merging of these entities causes both Geheren’s own death and the prospering of his former community, signifying the death of the individual and ultimately once again asserting the community’s control of bodies.  The notions of communal bodies and communal responsibility for bodies which pervade “The Place Inside the Blizzard” suggest these values are embedded within the discourse of Karhide.   As Estraven is exiled, and, on some level, is punished for his associate Ai’s “perverse” bodily difference, this discursive quality reemerges.  

Nevertheless, the chapters which follow this story give the distinct impression that the discourse of Karhide is changing.  Though human life has clearly been regarded as sacred throughout history, the government’s aggressive support of the violence emerging in the Sinoth Valley suggests this value is under attack by the powers that be.   Furthermore, Estraven’s suggestion that King Argaven is attempting to run Karhide “efficiently” in a manner similar to the neighboring nation of Orgoreyn, a condition which Ai suspects will give the Gethian nations “an excellent chance of achieving the condition of war,” suggests events on the horizon may irrevocably alter the discourse of Gethen(Le Guin 49).  Karhide, and furthermore all of Gethen, clearly face the potential of massive alterations in their discourse as the story of the envoy Ai unfolds. Negotiating between the old and the new manners of making meaning is a challenge I fully expect to grapple with as I make my way through the rest of the text.

Tracy

Works Cited

Delaney, Samuel R. Queer Though and the Politics of the Paraliterary.  

      Wesleyan University Press. Hanover and London. 1999. Print.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 2000. Print.

Grappling with Essentialism

Within her reflection on the problem of essentialism within Space, Time, and Perversion, Elizabeth Grosz paints a portrait of the two principle modalities of feminism and the fundamental tensions which differentiate these theoretical approaches to efforts to redefine women.  Grosz asserts all feminists must negotiate “between seeking acceptance in male terms and retaining a commitment to women’s struggles”(46). In doing so, the concept of essentialism, which Grosz defines as the assumption that women have a “given” and “universal” essence- describing biologism, naturalism, and universalism as distinct variations or specifications or this concept- becomes paramount.  Grosz asserts all of these frameworks have rationalized “the prevailing sexual division of social roles by assuming these roles are the only, or the best, possibilities, given the confines of the nature, essence, or biology of the two sexes”(49). 

Egalitarian feminists, or first wave feminists, attempted to completely abandon essentialism, a natural political move as this concept was the academic justification for their oppression throughout history.  Nevertheless, in seeking escape from oppression, these feminists struggled for “a greater share of the patriarchal pie and equal access to social, economic, sexual, and intellectual opportunities” by asserting that women could accomplish the same feats as men if they were not confined to restrictive social roles, effectively alleging the sameness of all humanity (51).  Though this movement championed the concept that men could be feminine and women could be masculine, making an important contribution to the development of recognition of the fluidity of gender roles, Grosz outlines the multiple problematic aspects of this approach.  She asserts this movement:

1.       assumed masculine values and achievements as the norm;

2.       focused on the commonality of humanity to an extent which led to the abandonment of conceptions of femininity;

3.       enacted equal opportunity laws which were often used by males in manners which hurt women;

4.       ignored specificities, including the history, of society’s male and female dynamic ;

5.       lost power through its reduction to an attack on patriarchy which was not gender specific;

6.       addressed only the public domain by addressing equality, a concept which cannot be policed on a personal  level;

7.       and did not rewrite the social meanings of women’s actions, preventing the change of women’s place within social and symbolic order.

Recognition of the significant political drawbacks of the complete rejection of essentialism likely contributed to a new conception of feminism focused on difference which emerged in the 1980s. However, the embracement of the age old conception of women as fundamentally different from men was based on a notion of difference vastly different than the binaries of autonomy and lack utilized historically. The women of these movements considered their difference as pure difference, or difference which is not derived “from a pre-given norm” or based on systematic privileging of any identity.  In describing the progress this new concept allowed, Grosz points to the fact the feminism based in difference:

1.       allowed a major transformation of the social and symbolic order by refusing to privilege a single identity ;

2.       allowed differentiation of women from other oppressed groups;

3.       made the fight against patriarchy specific to women;

4.       and put pressure on “structures of representation, meaning, and knowledge to transform in order to avoid patriarchal alliances(54).

The merits Grosz associates with feminism of difference, most particularly in her reflections on its ability to make the feminist movement explicitly feminine in nature, once again reveals a recognition of the worth of identity politics.  Though some theorists assert that to define women as a group different than men is to essentialize them, and thus tragically revert to the type of classification which led to the need for the feminist movement, Grosz allies repudiating essentialism with a politically impractical effort to retain theoretical purity.  In recognizing the political worth of acknowledging and celebrating the difference of femininity, Grosz sets herself apart as a theorist who recognizes that reshaping discourse is a political action, and thus cannot be meaningfully separated from politics into a realm of respectable academics.  Nevertheless, in acknowledging the legitimacy of the concern of producing work that is respected by our masculine notions of credibility, she illustrates the tensions which lead to an infinite variety in what constitutes a feminist text, a distinction which she explores in the first chapter of Space Time and Perversion.  As one reads Grosz’ text, which is ordered according to masculine logic- even utilizing numbers to highlight important points and their complexity, the variety of textual constructions which can be considered feminist and the differing motivations of writing feminist texts are clearly put on display.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion. Routledge New York and London. 1995. Print.

"Space, Time, and Perversion": An Exercise of Moderation

          Upon picking up Elizabeth Grosz’s Space, Time, and Perversion, I immediately noticed the blurbs on the back cover, the first of which is an endorsement of the work by Judith Butler.  Seeing as I read the book with Butler on the brain, I was not at all surprised Butler’s discussion of women as a collective group within Gender Trouble made its way into our class discussion of Grosz’s work.  Within the first chapter of Space, Time, and Perversion, Grosz sets out to both reveal “the more conventional positions regarding the categorization and assessment of feminist (and patriarchal) texts are problematic in feminist terms” and propose “new conceptions of textual production and reception that may help to explain the ways in which political judgments about the textual and sexual positioning of theories and texts may be possible”(11).  All of the issues with the common theoretical frameworks used to designate texts as feminist Grosz expresses can be related to a general suspicion of identity politics which pervades Butler’s works.  However, her effort to generate new and improved theory in the designation of texts as feminist reveals an acceptance, if a somewhat grudging acceptance, of the importance of identity politics, a sentiment which Butler similarly concedes through her call for fragmented coalitions or groups which “acknowledge it contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact”(20)

                Grosz positions the sex of the author, the content of the text, the sex of the reader, and the style of the text as the four highly problematic characteristics of writing individuals often examine in determining whether or not a work is feminist in nature.  Examining the sex of the author leads one into the web of intentional fallacy and suggests there is a certain manner in which women write which allows individuals to immediately recognize the gender of the author on the basis of the text’s content or style.  Grosz dismisses the legitimacy of both the sex of the author and the content of the work as an indicator of the text’s feminist nature with the simple assertion that “women’s experiences are as varied as men” and not wholly dictated by patriarchal oppression, the universality of which Butler critiques through her claim “the urgency of feminism to establish a universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminism’s own claims to be representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorical or fictive universality of the structure of dominance”(5).  The consideration of the sex of the reader as an indicator of a text’s status as feminist, patriarchal, or some compromise of these appellations also relies on this problematic notion of the universal experience of patriarchal oppression, as such framework ignores the affective fallacy, and in doing so, creates an “ideal reader” which comes to signify the collective mindset of women. The final category, the style of the text, which is justified as an indicator of a text’s feminist nature through the assertion that women writers always craft their work in manners which somehow undermine the logical constructions of texts as dictated by our masculine signifying economy, is undermined through its paradoxical imagination of patriarchal repression as both an experience universal for women and exclusive to women.  Grosz uses the example of avante garde art, which is a field dominated by male artists, as evidence that one does not necessarily have to be a woman to experience the repressive nature of patriarchy and desire to express these trials within art. 

                Though dismissing these common frameworks is fairly easy to reconcile within the spirit of suspicion of the merit of identity politics, suggesting that a text can be inherently feminist requires acknowledgement of the utility of labels. Grosz’s reluctance to enter this realm is clearly revealed by her tentative assertion the construction of parameters as to what constitutes a text only “may” be possible, expression of “a Foucauldian anxiety about what power is invested in providing definitive categories” and acknowledgment of the potential “that there isn’t really a clear-cut distinction between feminist and mainstream texts and that, moreover, one and the same text can, in some contexts, be regarded as feminist and in other contexts as non- or anti- feminist (18). Nevertheless, she presents framework for deeming a text feminist, a label which has had great historical worth in allowing individuals to improve their qualities of life and abilities to be heard, which are flexible and resist assumptions of the gender collectivity such terms as the feminine imagination imply. In doing so, she asserts that in order to be considered feminist, a text must challenge phallocentrism in some way, “problematize the standard masculine ways in which the author occupies the position of enunciation,” and not only challenge patriarchy, but “help, in whatever way, to facilitate the production of new and perhaps unknown, unthought of discursive spaces”(Grosz 23).  None of these requirements are gender specific, opening up the possibility of the consideration of a diverse body of texts as feminist in nature and the collection of the infinitely varied writers and readers of these works into feminist coalitions of individuals with an array of biological traits and life experiences, a possibility which Butler champions in her revisionary assessment of identity politics. Moreover, the requirement that texts must generate new ideas and open up revolutionary possibilities within the world of representation in order to be considered feminist works retains the consideration of feminism as a highly productive movement and manner of changing the world which spans eras, effectively doing the spirit of the movement which has inspired the legacy of texts under consideration justice.  In examining the role of identity politics in the modern era, Grosz, in my opinion, manages to successfully negotiate a compromise between the modern sentiments of the problematic nature of labels and the great benefit labels have reaped throughout history, creating a valuable link between feminism and queer thinking without completely abandoning the conception of woman.

- Tracy

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge Classics. 2006. Print.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion. Routledge New York and London. 1995. Print.

Corrective Rape and The Bodily Stakes of Discourse

The average South African woman is more likely to be raped than to complete secondary school.  Human rights organizations estimate that over 40% of South Africa’s female population is raped at some point in their life (Middleton, 1). Moreover, in Capetown, the nation’s largest city, these organizations estimate 10 corrective rapes, or rapes aimed to cure victims of their homosexuality, occur each week(Middleton, 1). In describing the rationale motivating these crimes, Jody Kollopen, the former head of the South African Human Rights Commission, states, “"The rationale would be that a woman who chooses to be lesbian has surely not had a relationship with a man, and therefore, if she has a relationship with a man, even if it's a violent, forced one, that will surely convince her that the lifestyle she chose is inappropriate’”(Gim, Schapp 1).  Though South Africa is not the only setting to heinous hate crimes of this nature, it is certainly the most visible battleground, as condemnations of corrective rape’s prevalence in this region and widespread cultural acceptance of these crimes have emanated from an array of news outlets; everyone from Newsweek to ESPN has covered this traumatic aspect of the nation’s culture. (If you would like to do some reading on the issue you might try http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-27/world/world_wus-sa-rapes_1_lesbians-sexual-orientation-cape-town?_s=PM:WORLD ,http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/story?id=5177704 , or http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057744,00.html).

This tragic state of affairs is paradoxical to say the least, as South Africa’s laws regarding gay rights are some of the most progressive in the world.  In 1994, South Africa legalized homosexuality and prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation within their post-apartheid constitution, acts of tolerance several nations throughout the world have not yet undertook. Furthermore, in 2006, the nation legalized gay marriage.  This disconnect between the nation’s progressive laws and the barbarism lesbians of South Africa face reveals that tolerant words must be backed up by tolerant thoughts to truly craft an environment in which queer individuals are respected and do not face insidious trauma as a subjected group. The danger of ingrained homophobic thought manifested within this situation reveals the incredible importance of queer theory’s effort to alter the discourse of sexuality.

The discourse surrounding these tragic occurrences inevitably reflects ideas explored within texts of queer theory.  In reflecting on her trip to the police station to report her experience of corrective rape, a South African woman named Fana relates, "They say, 'She deserve everything. How can she pretend to be a guy. Why, she's a girl. There's no such thing as gay. A woman is a woman, and a man is a man.'(Gim, Schapp 1).  The dangerous nature of the conception of the categories of man and woman as rigid and unambiguous, and, moreover, rooted in sexual behavior, revealed by this violence raises the stakes of Butler’s argument that the juridical systems of power which operate to establish identities we often assume precede discourse “produce what it claims to merely represent” in a troubling manner (Butler 3). If our ultimately baseless systems of signification allow people to justify bodily violation of other human beings, it seems legitimate to assert these categories are in serious need of re-evaluation.  Butler’s argument becomes a bit more tangible and increasingly urgent upon examination of the tragedy of the rhetoric she critiques and its relation to bodies. The importance placed on distinct aggressive and passive sexual roles many texts we have studied explore similarly becomes more ominous within this situation.

The plight of South African women also both poses questions to Cvetkovich’s exploration of trauma and provides evidence of the many layers of the traumatic she investigates. Though Cvetkovich chooses to focus on insidious trauma, or trauma which is tangential to the clearly horrific events the conception trauma is often rooted within by discourse seeking to pathologize and individualize the experience, the plight of South African lesbians blends the boundaries between these distinctions.  Though all queer women of the nation are affected by insidious trauma as members of a subjected group which faces not only the widespread rejection of their sexual identities but the threat of violent erasure of their sexuality, many have also directly experienced rape, a personal and clearly definable experience of trauma. Can their experience of homophobic attitudes and violence be reconciled into either of these experiences of trauma? The point at which trauma becomes a matter of everydayness or the result of an incident seems difficult, if not impossible, to sort out, and it seems viable to claim that all trauma is rooted in direct experience at some level.  The complex nature of this trauma becomes more apparent within one columnist’s sentiment “In other words, the men who are perpetrating this violence believe that by raping a woman they can turn her into a “real African woman,” as the fact that the trauma of the rejection of sexual identity leads to broader experience of complete cultural exclusion, provides a concrete example of the intricate relations and transferences of traumatic Cvetkovich seeks to legitimize (Price 1).    

The prevalence of corrective rape is horrifying, and it is understandable to hope atrocities of this nature could not occur closer to home, or are an “African problem.”  It is certainly more comforting to use this tragedy as evidence that our nation is making a drive toward equality and tolerance, and is certainly further along in such a process than South Africa. The inherent flaw of any assumption of a natural drive toward more progressive thinking is undercut by the dynamics which led to the proliferation of corrective rape and its relative acceptability within cultural consciousness, as  “New York-based Human Rights Watch recently conducted interviews in six of South Africa's nine provinces and concluded ‘social attitudes towards homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people in South Africa have possibly hardened over the last two decades ( Mabuse, 1).  A drive toward the tolerance of queerness requires a clear and active alteration in thought, thus queer theory’s act of generating a new form of discourse is incredibly important. In wallowing through theory it is easy to forget the real bodies which these ideas are attempting to redefine and, in many cases, save.  The South African women whose sexuality has been deemed something in need of “correction” or has been actively “corrected” are obvious embodiment of the importance of this type of study.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge Classics. 2006. Print.

Gim, Beein and Schapp, Jeremy. "Female athletes often targets for rape" ESPN E:60. 11 May 2010. 29 October 2011.   http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/news/story?id=5177704

Price, Carolyn E. "Corrective rape a growing trend in South Africa" Digital Journal. 29 October 2011. 29 October 2011. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/313566#ixzz1cCTKBBu5

Mabuse, Nkepile. "Horror of South Africa's 'corrective rape'" CNN. 27 October 2011. 29 October 2011.http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-27/world/world_wus-sa-rapes_1_lesbians-sexual-orientation-cape-town/2?_s=PM:WORLD

Middleton, Lee. "'Corrective Rape' Fighting a South African Scourge" Time. March 2011. 29 October 2011. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057744,00.html

Cvetkovich and Clare: The Nuances of Trauma

                Within “An Archive of Feelings” Ann Cvetkovich investigates trauma and our society’s perceptions of trauma, arguing for the rethinking of what constitutes the categorization “traumatic.”  She draws on influences from the realms of Marxism, queer theory, Feminism, and race issues to assert that insidious trauma, or trauma which “resists the melodramatic structure of an easily identifiable origin of trauma,” is just as legitimate as the common notion of trauma as originating from a clearly identifiable and catastrophic personal experience (33).   Under the framework she constructs, having experienced the Holocaust is traumatic, but having ancestors who lived through this atrocity is traumatic as well. By locating trauma as a thoroughly personal reaction to a horrible experience, and thus as a condition which should be treated with personalized therapeutic or medical attention, Cevetkovich claims our society produces “a hall of mirrors in which social problems are reduced to diseases in need of forever refined diagnosis,” positioning the recognition of the legitimacy of insidious trauma as paramount to revealing “the need to change social structures more broadly rather than just fix individual people”(33).

                The disability rights movement, as described by Eli Clare within her article “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness,” operates in accordance to Cvetkovich’s perspective that the medicalization and personalization of traumatic experience has led social problems to remain unaddressed. Clare asserts the “dominant paradigms of disability,” which she labels “the medical, charity, supercrip, and moral models” all “turn disability into problems face by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong”(359-69).  These simplistic ways of viewing disability, and more specifically the trauma of disability, are all based on fairly one dimensional emotional responses, or what Cvetkovich would deem “easy emotions.”  In contrast to these efforts  to locate the pain of disability entirely within the brokenness of the body, the disability rights movement positions the insidious trauma of living as a disabled individual in America as a derivative of the “material and social conditions of albeism,” or a result of societal discrimination (360).  However, though Clare’s description of day to day life as a queer individual with a disability can rightfully be labeled traumatic, revealing an investment in Cvetkovich’s conception of insidious trauma, she harshly critiques the disability rights movement’s attempt to externalize the experience of this trauma, arguing that the experience of oppression cannot be divorced from personalized bodily experience.

                Though Cvetkovich and Clare can be viewed as embodying opposing stances on the basis of these external and internal focuses, their respective arguments are not completely adversarial. Cvetkovich expresses a reverence for those who refuse to accept the inscriptions society has written onto their bodies and the conception of themselves as broken by their trauma, calling for exploration of the infinitely varied affective experience of those who live with insidious trauma.   The chronicle of Clare’s process of coming to terms with the physical realities of her disability presented within “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness” provides a perfect example of both an individual’s refusal to be defined by societal definitions and a representation of an infinitely complicated affective response to traumatic circumstances which transcends “easy emotion”.  Though Cvetkovich positions societal change, or the reevaluation and transformation of familiar attitudes concerning trauma’s definition and the scope of its effects, as a key step to reducing the pain of those affected by insidious trauma, while Clare asserts the lives of such individuals can most expediently be improved through the alteration of how they themselves put their own experience into context, these processes are certainly intertwined, and both scholars recognize this fact.  By acknowledging the importance of those who have been affected by insidious trauma reclaiming shame, a thoroughly personal action, Cvetkovich reveals that her argumentation for societal change is motivated by a belief that widespread recognition of insidious trauma will make processes of personal healing easier.  Thus her argument does not undercut the importance of the personal experience of trauma, but reflects a determination that personal experience is connected to history and the collective experience of groups.  Similarly, Clare concedes that personal transformation is reliant on “all the allies, lovers, community, and friends we can gather, all the rabble-rousing and legislation, all the vibrant culture and articulate theory we can bring into being” or the very external factors which Cvetkovich champions (364).  Though their concentrations vary, it is unfair to accuse Cvetkovich of abandoning the body and unwarranted to assert Clare does not recognize context. Together the argumentation of both scholars forms a coherent vision of the complexities of trauma, its infinitely personal nature and simultaneous connection to social and cultural history spanning centuries. 

Works Cited

Clare, Eli. "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness." Public      Culture, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 359-365. Print.

Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public      Cultures. Duke University Press. 2003. 

Lars Revisited

Last week I posted a critique of Lars and the Real Girl which was quite negative and did not reflect my instincts about the movie. Luckily our class discussion allowed me to rethink my arguments and (I hope) improve them. Here is a pretty massive revision of my former scathing interpretation.

Lars and the Real Girl, a 2007 film which takes up the topics of alternative desire and societal reaction to such intimacy raises important questions about tolerance of sexual difference and the establishment of sexual identity.  Lars, the film’s protagonist, who is clearly alienated from the heterosexual matrix as the film begins, jumps headlong into the realm of marginalized queerness as he orders an “anatomically correct” sex doll and proceeds to christen her Bianca, introducing her to his community as his perfectly normal, and thoroughly alive, girlfriend.  Nevertheless, with the prodding of the local mental health professional Doctor Dagner, the community accepts his notion Bianca is alive.  Though this exercise of tolerance presents an indictment to societal systems which harshly prevent any legitimization of transgressions of normal sexual conduct and desires, the film ultimately fails to explore the possibility of a world in which heteronormativity is not idealized as the norm Doctor Dagner’s treatment of Lars opens for exploration. Though this squandered opportunity prevents the film from presenting enterprising argumentation for the normalization alternative sexualities and desires, queerness colors the film from start to finish, presenting the progressive, though less ambitious, assertion that queer desire and identification has the right to exist despite its deviation from norms and cannot be eradicated despite its marginalization.

Though he does not have a same sex partner or practice a condemned sex act as the film begins, Lars can be rightfully designated as queer due to the expansive nature of the classification, which Sedgwick claims identifies anyone whose personality traits, procreative choice, enjoyment of power in sexual relations, and other aspects of sexual identity do not perfectly correlate with their biological sex or resist organization into a “seamless and univocal whole”(Sedgwick 8). Lars’ inability to socialize, asexuality, and avoidance of physical contact prevent the characterization of him as a heterosexual and effeminize him by suggesting he is passive by nature.  This inconsistent sexual identity reveals the life Lars leads within his garage apartment situated on the margins of the heterosexual family home of Karin and Gus is securely outside the realm of heteronormativity long before he purchases a sex doll and proceeds to date her. 

Lars’ queerness is put into sharper relief by his friend’s and family’s concerns for his lack of sexuality and sociability as the film begins, which reveal a clear privileging of heteronormativity within the community. The moment in which Mrs. Gruners assaults Lars with questions concerning his sexuality as they exit church effectively illustrates this privileging, as her initial query as to why he does not have a girlfriend reveals that heterosexual desire is the assumed sexuality, and thus the norm. Though she later asks if he is gay in a friendly manner, claiming she knows all about “the gays,” her simplification of queerness implicit within this reductive categorization shows she and other members of the community probably do not possess a nuanced respect of and understanding for alternative forms of desire and non-heteronormative identifications.  Furthermore, her act of giving Lars a flower, an item traditionally associated with man’s pursuit of women, to pass along to someone special suggests it would certainly be preferable if that special someone was a woman and attempts to push Lars into the masculine gender role of the aggressor of romance. Lars’ rejection of this role is clearly evidenced by his immediate disposal of the flower when Margo, a potential heterosexual love interest, speaks to him.  Gus and Karin’s absolute joy when they initially believe the formerly reclusive Lars is hosting a live female visitor further evidences the community’s investment in heteronormativity, while their horror upon realizing his new girlfriend is a sex doll, and subsequent conclusion he is demented, reveals that though his relative asexuality was concerning, the act of loving a doll is much more abhorrent. 

Despite this initial horror at Lars’ new queerness, which incites a heightened level of concern, likely due to its status as an “offense against the regularity of a natural function,” Gus, Karin, and Lars’ larger community are able to play along with Lars’ delusion().  The community’s acceptance of Lars’ delusion is conceived by Doctor Dagmar, a medical professional with an enlightened approach to the treatment of abnormal behavior.  Rather than diagnosing Lars with a mental illness, Dagmar classifies his alternative desire for Bianca and faulty perceptions of her nature as a delusion, externalizing his queerness rather than classifying this intimacy as the defining factor of Lars’ identity or a force “at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written all over his face and body it was a secret that always gave itself away”( 43).  Accordingly, Dagmar asserts the best course of action is to allow Lars the opportunity to work out his delusion on his own terms rather than attempting to undertake Gus’ injunction to “fix him” by placing him in a institution or intervening medically, actions which by nature present such alternative desires as both the determinant factor of identity and undesirable.  Dagmar’s medical advice, which asserts the right for queerness to exist and be respected within the community, is rooted in her conclusion Lars’ feelings for Bianca are indeed “real” and are not a hazard to himself or others. The legitimization of queerness implicit within her refusal to marginalize Lars’ delusion directly attacks the privileging of heteronormativity within the community.

As Dagmar attempts to stifle the impulse of Gus, Karin, and the larger community to aggressively eradicate Lars’ queerness, her progressive plan creates a potential for the overturn of traditional power dynamics. Within The History of Sexuality, Foucault explores the power systems which have led to the simultaneous visibility and condemnation of queerness within modern culture, pinpointing the identification of individuals by their respective sexualities as vital to the creation of definitive roles of the sexual transgressor and enforcer of norms, divisions which lead to the marginalization of sexualities deemed abnormal.  As Doctor Dagmar attempts to avert the definition of Lars exclusively by his queerness and condemnation of his sexual identity, she acts to prevent characterization of him as a sexual transgressor subject  to the community’s enforcement of norms and  hopelessly entangled within  the “perpetual spirals of power and pleasure” which form as “the pleasure that comes of exercising a power that questions, monitors, watches, spies, searches out, palpates, brings to light; and on the other hand, the pleasure that kindles at having to evade this power, flee from it, fool it, or travesty it” ( Foucault 45).    As the breakdown of this power dynamic detaches the acts of condemning sexual practices and evading these judgments from pleasure, true embracement of Dr. Dagmar’s directions leads to the expiration of the need for a normalized sexuality on which to base this power dynamic. Consequently, in the wake of Dr. Dagmar’s plan, Lars’ community appears ripe for a complete destabilization of sexual hierarchy or the establishment of a space that reflects “not just a safe zone for queer sex but the changed possibilities of identity, intelligibility, publics, culture, and sex that appear when the heterosexual couple is no longer the reference or privileged example of sexual culture”(548).  Nevertheless, the film fails to displace heteronormativity as a normative force, and thus capitalize on this opportunity to fully explore the queer possibility its premise presents.

Though the community partially legitimizes Lars’ queerness by accepting his delusion, momentarily abdicating the role of enforcer of sexual norms, it never wholly embraces the sentiment Lars’ sexual identity is normal and equal to heteronormative identifications.  First and foremost, the community’s act of treating Bianca as a live girl arises somewhat grudgingly from the only available medical recommendation to dispel delusion rather than an embracement of the principle queerness does not deserve to be an object of derision implicit within Doctor Dagmar’s counsel, and, therefore, is principally an act to eventually expel Lars’ queerness rather than embrace his atypical desire.  This bastardization of Doctor Dagmar’s intent becomes apparent as Gus and Karin present their conundrum to their friends and coworkers, cracking jokes and reveling in the shock of the relationship.  In these moments, there does not seem to be any challenge to the community to accept Lars’ desire as normal or real, but simply humor him in order to most effectively work through the unfortunate situation.  Moreover, as Lars’ desire for Bianca escalates, the community reclaims the role of the enforcer of norms by finding Bianca employment, taking her to recreational activities, and even electing her to the school board, actions which humanize the doll, and thus passively attempt to push Lars into the world of human heterosexual relationships they privilege. Though the community undeniably forms an attachment to Bianca, an embodiment of the queerness they are attempting to eradicate, there is a level of mockery within these relationships preventing true and progressive identification with the queerness she represents, as her placement on the school board shows that her integration into the community is integrally tied to the comedy and novelty of the situation.  Though Dagmar’s intent laid out in her instructions to Karin and Gus is a progressive step toward the destabilization of the community’s heteronormativity sensibilities, the community does not seems to possess the desire or humanity to evaluate their prejudices and assumptions  exposed as the film begins.

The opportunity the film has to portray a world in which “the heterosexual couple is no longer the reference or privileged example of sexual culture” is further undermined by the film’s allocation of a heteronormative perspective to viewers. Just as the community assumes Lars identifies as heteronormative before the emergence of Bianca, the film assumes its audience cannot identify with queerness, as viewers scarcely inhabit the perspective of Lars, and are only afforded this level of identification in the moments in which he is exhibiting heterosexual or masculine behaviors.  As the film begins, the audience first views Lars through a window and the cover of his baby blanket, an image which creates multiple layers of separation between him and the viewer.  Soon after, viewers inhabit the gaze of Karen, a woman whose marriage and pregnancy make her a fitting representation of normalized and fertile heterosexuality, and Lars’ social queerness during their exchange likely reassures audiences that Karen’s  gaze is the viewpoint with which they can identify.  The audience is not prompted to identify with Lars until viewers nearly inhabit his gaze, watching the action from a viewpoint just beyond Lars shoulders, as he views Margo from the vending machine room, pulling up a chair in order to so, in a moment which reveals his growing intrigue with this human girl and the world of heterosexuality her undying affection offers.  Soon after, viewers look upon Margo from Lars’ unadulterated perspective as she interacts with her current boyfriend.  This moment once again reveals a growing affection for Margo, and, furthermore, a momentary embodiment of a more typically masculine gender role, as Lars firmly shakes her boyfriend’s hand in a manner that can be viewed as an assertive disclosure of masculinity.  Though Bianca is Lars’ love interest for the majority of the film, viewers only see her from Lars’ perspective late in the work’s progression as he questions Gus about the transition into manhood, a moment in which Bianca’s escalating sickness and Lars’ simultaneous increased intrigue with Margo reveal he is slowly embracing the heterosexual desire privileged by the community and the assumed heterosexual audience.  This progression is further signified by the fact that we only see Bianca from Lars’ perspective as he looks upon her through a window, a layer of separation which signifies he is quickly becoming alienated from the  abnormal sexuality the doll  embodies in a manner similar to the separation of the audience from Lars generated at the film’s beginning.  Thus, the manipulation of gaze within the film does not challenge viewers to identify with Lars’ queerness, an act vital to any earnest attempt to displace heteronormativity as the norm within the film, but rather encourages heteronormative identification by directing the audience to identify with the apparent progression to heteronormativity Lars is undergoing with the community’s aid.

Despite the impending transformation suggested by the film, Lars’ queerness perseveres. Though Lars’ act of killing Bianca, and thus actively dispelling his own queer delusion, in order to pursue Margo, the human love interest championed by his community from the film’s beginning, undoubtedly displays an embracement of heterosexuality and momentary embodiment of a masculine gender role, he never forms a coherent sexual identity, the hallmark of heteronormativity, due to his failure to completely embrace masculinity.  On the day of Bianca’s funeral, he pays tribute to her by wearing her sweater, and this instance, which is not Lars’ first display of a fondness of drag within the film, asserts he still has effeminate tendencies.  This effeminate characterization is solidified during his final exchange with Margo, as his lack of sexual assertiveness, a trait he also consistently displays over the film’s course through a lack of significant physical intimacy with Bianca, is signaled by his choice to invite her on a walk rather go in for a kiss, an action which traditionally serves as the final scene signifying the beginning of a relationship in films truly championing heteronormativity. Furthermore, the absence of this defining kiss, coupled with the fact this final exchange between Lars and Margo occurs in a graveyard, a thoroughly infertile atmosphere, suggests the pair’s relationship, though heterosexual in nature, may never escalate into a fertile bond of the likes of Gus and Karin’s relationship, a connection which embodies the heteronormative principles privileged by the community.

Lars and the Real Girl fails to fully capitalize on the possibilities Doctor Dagmar’s suggestions present, which generate the potential to disrupt sexual power dynamics and displace heteronormativity as a privileged and assumed identify. Nevertheless, Lars’ queerness, which is never normalized by the community, does survive an atmosphere which is hostile to its difference, powerfully asserting its “realness” or legitimacy.   In this regard, the film itself takes on a queer structure, as there is no progression toward a preferable, or even merely definitive, end result within the work key to the Hollywood formula of romances.  Though the film constructs a seemingly positive progression toward heteronormativity through Lars’ actions and both the community’s and audiences’ relation to these actions, Lars’ progression explodes within the graveyard scene as his continued evasion of heteronormativity is displayed.  He is queer when the film begins and remains queer when the film ends.  Moreover, this queerness is not normalized as the film begins and remains non-normative as the graveyard scene draws to a close.  This sense of stagnancy makes the film queer, questioning the legitimacy of the possibility of the normative transformation it constructs and the productivity of the heteronormative norms it resists fully displacing.

Lars and The Real Girl: An Emphasis on Real and Heteronormativity

Lars and the Real Girl, a 2007 film which takes up the topics of alternative desire and societal reaction to such intimacy raises important questions about tolerance of sexual differance and the establishment of sexual identity.  Lars, the film’s protagonist who is clearly isolated from the heterosexual matrix as the film begins, jumps headlong into both the realms of marginalized sexuality and mental illness as he orders an “anatomically correct” sex doll and proceeds to christen her Bianca, introducing her to his community as his perfectly normal, and thoroughly alive, girlfriend.  With the prodding of the local mental health professional Doctor Dagner and Lars’ family, the community accepts his notion Bianca is alive.  Though the largely tolerant reaction of Lars’ family, doctor, co-workers, and widespread community to Bianca presents an indictment to intolerant societal systems which harshly prevent any legitimization of transgressions of normal sexual conduct and desires, the correlation of alternative sexuality and delusion generated within the film undercuts the strength of the argumentation made for the normalization of sexual desire. In accepting Lars’ sexuality, the community is ultimately not acknowledging his acts are acceptable, but attempting to reintegrate him to a state of normalcy, which is repeatedly associated with normative heterosexual desire.   Furthermore, neither the community nor audience are asked to identify with his intimacy with Bianca or accept the physical realities alternative sexualities similar to Lars often entail, but rather are encouraged to celebrate his ultimate transition into the heteronormative world signified by his increasing attraction to Margo, a “real girl,” and the ultimate death of his delusion.  In light of the film’s lack of demand for true identification with Lars’ intimacy with Bianca, the work fails to promote treatment of sexual identity which normalizes alternative desire and makes community more accessible for those with queer tendencies.  In contrast, the general progression of the film reinforces the privileging of normalized heterosexual desire and suggests that such desire is natural.

Lars’ community clearly favors normalized heterosexual desire, and reveals such desire is considered superior to alternative forms of desire from the film’s beginning. The moment after a church service in which Mrs. Gruners assaults Lars with questions concerning his sexuality, which evolve from her query why he does not have a girlfriend, effectively illustrates community norms.  Though she asks if he is gay in a friendly manner, claiming she knows all about “the gays,” her simplification of alternative desire implicit with this reductive categorization shows she and other members of the community probably do not possess a nuisanced respect of and understanding for alternative sexuality.  Furthermore, her act of giving Lars a flower, an item traditionally associated with romance between men and women, to pass along to someone special suggests it would certainly be preferable if that special someone was a woman.  The status of normative heterosexuality as the form of intimacy privileged within the community is further reinforced by the suggestive observation that Lar’s coworker Margo, a heterosexual female,  is cute made by a the secretary of Lars’ workplace and Gus and Karin’s absolute joy when they initially believe Lars is hosting a live female visitor.  The horror Karin and Gus express upon realizing Lars’ new girlfriend is a sex doll as they panic in the kitchen and conclude he has gone crazy reveals that though his relative asexuality was concerning, the act of loving a sex doll, and thus dramatically departing from the heterosexual matrix, is much more abhorrent.

Despite this initial horror, Gus, Karin, and the community are able to curb their perceptions of normality enough to play along with Lars’ delusion Bianca is a live girl. This tolerant reaction is conceived by Doctor Dagmar, a community medical professional with an enlightened approach to the treatment of abnormal behaviors.  Rather than diagnosing Lars with a mental illness, Dagmar classifies his alternative desire for Bianca and faulty perceptions of her nature as a delusion, externalizing his abnormal behavior rather than classifying this intimacy as the defining factor of Lars’ identity. By externalizing Lars’ sexuality, Dagmar resists what Foucault positions as the typical modern discursive representation of those with queer desires as individuals whose sexuality is an omnipresence in all aspects of their identity or a force “at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written all over his face and body it was a secret that always gave itself away”( 43).  Accordingly, Dagmar asserts the best course of action is to allow Lars the opportunity to work out his delusion on his own terms and for those who surround him to refrain from contesting his perceptions rather than placing him in a institution or intervening medically, actions which by nature present such alternative desires as problematic and the determinant factor of identity.

Though the partial legitimization of Lars’ desires resulting from the majority of the community’s choice to join Dr. Dagmar, Karin, and Gus in treating Bianca as the living individual Lars envisions her to be is certainly an act of tolerance, the scope of this act as a true act of tolerating alternative sexuality is limited. First and foremost, treating Bianca as a live girl is a doctor’s recommendation to dispel delusions, and, therefore, is principally an act to eventually expel Lars’ alternative sexuality than embrace his atypical desire.  As Gus and Karin present their conundrum to their friends and coworkers, cracking jokes and reveling in the shock of the relationship, there does not seem to be any challenge to the community to accept Lars’ desire as normal, but simply humor him in order to most effectively work through the unfortunate situation.  Moreover, as Lars’ desire for Bianca escalates, the community makes a concerted effort to humanize her by finding her employment, taking her to recreational activities, and even electing her to the school board, actions which push the pair’s relationship as close to normalized heterosexual desire as it can possibly become, suggesting a generalized goal of eventually incorporating Lars into this world.  This aversion to acceptance is not completely based on the delusional quality of his intimacy with Bianca, as his coworkers reactions to the sex doll assert such desire would be considered abnormal even if Lars was aware of Bianca’s lifelessness.  In introducing the brand of dolls to Lars, Eric whispers they are anatomically correct, revealing that sexual desire for and acts with inanimate objects  are not something that can spoken about at a normal volume, or a marginalized sexuality which evokes a sense of shame or embarrassment.  Similarly, the woman of the heterosexual couple who discusses the nature of the doll at Lars’ work party expresses clear revulsion to her male counterpart’s assertion Lars has sexual relations with the doll, asserting once again that physical intimacy with the doll without delusion would still be considered unhealthy or obscene by several segments of society.

The film’s aversion to portraying Lars and Bianca’s relationship in these physical terms further undercuts any attempt to position the story as one promoting sexual tolerance.  Lars’ initial request to have Bianca hosted within the main house rather than his garage due to the fact that they are unmarried reveals a lack of intention to consummate their relationship.  However, the clearly conscious effort of the film to dispel viewer’s perception, or fear, that the status of their relationship has changed reveals an unwillingness to explore the physicality of alternative sexuality.  As Lars chooses to take over Gus’ duty of putting Bianca to bed, leaving the pair alone in the privacy of the pink room as the rest of the house goes to sleep, the next scene shows Lars in his own garage bedroom, dispelling any suggestion their relationship has become physical. Similarly, though Lars expresses the desire to spend the night in the pink room as Bianca approaches her death, once again potentially giving viewers the impression the pair’s relationship may be consummated, the following scene in which Gus opens the bedroom door to check on them reveals them innocently lying hand in hand.  Viewers are never truly asked to come to terms with or accept the act of physical intimacy with an inanimate object, as the only physical intimacy between Gus and Bianca is a goodbye kiss. In this respect, viewers are not asked to come to terms with the bodily actions associated with alternative sexuality which are often viewed as grotesque and serve as a principle factor of difference leading to a lack of tolerance of alternative sexuality.

Aside from not being asked to contemplate the physicality of Lars’ alternative sexuality, one can easily argue viewers are not asked to identify with Lars’ desire for Bianca at all.  Such an assertion can be evidenced simply by the moments, or perhaps more appropriately lack of moments, in which viewers embody Lars’ gaze.  As the film begins, viewers first see Lars through a window with his face is partially covered by his baby blanket, an image which creates multiple layers of separation between him and the viewer.  Soon after, viewers inhabit the gaze of Karen, a woman whose marriage and pregnancy make her a fitting representation of normalized heterosexuality, and Lars’ reluctance to interact with her as he once again shields himself behind a window compounds this separation, as his social strangeness likely reassures audiences that Karen’s gaze is truly the viewpoint with which they can identify.  The audience does not come close to seeing the film’s progression of events from the perspective of Lars until viewers nearly inhabit his gaze, watching the action from a point just beyond Lars shoulders, as he views Margo from the vending machine room, pulling up a chair in order to so, in a moment which reveals his growing intrigue with this real girl and the world of heterosexuality her undying affection offers.  Soon after, viewers look upon Margo from Lars’ unadulterated perspective as she interacts with her current boyfriend.  This moment once again reveals a growing affection for Margo, and a progression towards a more typically masculine gender role, as Lars shakes Erik’s hand firmly upon Margo’s introduction in manner that can be viewed as a challenge to Erik’s masculinity and expression of jealousy.  In contrast, viewers only see Bianca from Lars’ perspective later in the film’s progression as he questions Gus about the transition into manhood, a moment in which Bianca’s escalating sickness and Lars’ simultaneous increased intrigue with Margo reveal he is already well on his way to a transition toward normalized heterosexual desire.  This transition and the accompanying waning intimacy is further signified by the fact that we only see Bianca through Lars’ gaze through the separation of a window while she does yard work with Karen outside. This layer of separation between Lars and Bianca signifies he, like the heterosexual audience the movie seems to assume, is quickly becoming alienated from the sex doll in a manner similar to the separation of the audience from Lars generated at the film’s beginning.  Thus, the manner in which the film is shot only asks audiences to identify with Lars’ perspective when he is transitioning to a heteronormative perspective, which seems to be the assumed viewpoint of the audience which remains unquestioned throughout the film’s course.

Though the lack of legitimate challenges the film makes for both viewers and community members to identify or accept alternative sexuality compromises its status as a work promoting tolerance, the eventual return to heteronormativity the acceptance of Lars’ delusion by the community leads to sends the extremely troubling message that normalized heterosexual desire is the natural derivative of tolerance.  In Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, he explores the discursive systems which have led to the visibility of heterosexuality within modern culture, pinpointing the medicalization of sexual difference and resulting identification of individuals by their respective sexualities as a key component which maintains the marginalization of sexual difference.  As Doctor Dagmar, Lars’s family, and his community resist defining of Lars solely by his alternative sexuality or completely condemning this sexuality, and thus prevent definitive differentiation between normalized desire and Lars’ love for a sex doll he believes is alive, this level of tolerance prevents the strict identification of the sexual transgressor and the enforcer of the norm Foucault’s model requires.  Consequently, this lack of differentiation prevents the formation of “perpetual spirals of power and pleasure” which he asserts form as “The pleasure that comes of exercising a power that questions, monitors, watches, spies, searches out, palpates, brings to light; and on the other hand, the pleasure that kindles at having to evade this power, flee from it, fool it, or travesty it” endlessly play off one another(45).  However the release of Lars, a representative of alternative sexuality, from the confinement of the category of transgressor does not allow his difference to peacefully coexist amongst other sexual practices, but leads him to embrace heterosexuality. Under this framework, the film on some level supports the ideology that if you ignore and tolerate queerness, it will eventually go away, portraying prolonged or permanent alternative sexuality as heavily reliant on the lures of transgression. Such a portrayal is certainly not progressive, and suggests that if human beings resisted the pleasures of punishing each other and evading punishments, queerness would naturally die in a manner similar to Bianca.

Lars and the Real Girl is a cute movie that elicits laughs and considerations of the possibility of a world tolerant of sexual difference.  However, by forging an alliance between mental instability and queerness and then reverting to a happy Hollywood ending in which the guy takes his chance with the human girl who has thoroughly proven her devotion, the film squanders its opportunity to capitalize on its disruptions of the power dynamics of sexual difference and explore what Berlant and Warner deem “not just a safe zone for queer sex but the changed possibilities of identity, intelligibility, publics, culture and sex that appear when the heterosexual couple is not longer the reference or the privileged example of sexual culture”(548).   The squandering of this opportunity, coupled with the extremely regressive view of queer desire as based in the pleasure of transgression, and thus divorced from physical pleasure, the films progression can be interpreted as supporting, prevents the film from presenting a message of any substance useful to the fight against heteronormativity.

Works Cited

Berlant, Lauren and Warner, Michael. "Sex in Public."  Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 2 Intimacy. p547-566. 1998. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 An Introduction. Vintage Books, New York. 1998. Print.

Lars and the Real Girl. Dir. Craig Gillespie. Prod. Sidney Kimmel, John Cameron, and Sarah Aubrey. By Nancy Oliver. Perf. Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, and Paul Schneider. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2007.