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.