Judith Butler

1
Judith Butler

• Feminist Philosopher and Theorist

2
Life and Times

• Judith butler attended Bennington College and
  then Yale University where she received her B.A
  and Ph.D in philosophy. She taught at Wesleyan
  and Johns Hopkins universities before becoming
  Chancellor Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative
  Literature at the University of California at
  Berkley

3
Situating Herself

• Although hailed as a foundational contributor to
  Queer Theory, Butler identifies herself as a
  Feminist Theorist, taking commitments to Feminism
  as her primary concern. Interview in Radical
  Philosophy

4
Her Work

• Gender Trouble (1990)
• Feminists Theorize the Political (1992)
• Bodies that Matter (1993)
• Feminist Contentions (1995) co
• Excitable Speech (1997)
• The Psychic Life of Power (1997)
• Whats Left of Theory? (1999)

5
Gender Trouble

• Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

6
Trouble with Feminism

• Traditionally, Feminism assert that women were a
  group with common characteristics and interests.
• Feminist reject the idea that biology is destiny

• This performs an unwitting regulation and
  reification of gender relations reinforcing a
  binary gender view, men/women.
• Feminism closed options of identity
• Feminism works from an account of patriarchal
  culture which assumes masculine and feminine
  genders will be built by culture on male and
  female bodies.

7
Gender Ontology

• Traditionally the established gender ontology is
  one in which the duality of sex (male/female)
  forms the basis of gender identity
  (masculine/feminine)
• In this binary women is seen as the other half.
  
• Gender defined as the extent to which one is not
  the other gender (30).
• Sex is seen as constructing gender, i.e gender
  mirrors sex.
• Sex and gender thus establish a causal
  relationship.

8
Pre-determined Fate

• Butler attempts to detach gender and sex through
  critiques of feminism, structuralism,
  post-structuralism and psychoanalysis.
• Through these critiques she argues that sex and
  gender are both pre-determined and open to
  construction depending upon the terms of the
  debate.
• Her hope is the deconstruction of the patriarchal
  hegemonic discourse on sexuality.

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The deconstruction of the male/female binary

• Butler calls to smash the links between sex and
  gender where sex is seen to cause gender.
• Gender can then become flexible, free floating
  and not caused by any other stable factor.
• We can then understand those historical and
  anthropological positions that understand gender
  as a relation among socially constituted subjects
  in specifiable contexts
• Gender then becomes a fluid variable which shifts
  for different contexts and situations rather then
  a fixed attribute.

10
Slippery Gaps Derrida

• La difference- 1) the relationship between a word
  (the signifier) and what it signifies (the
  signified) is always an arbitrary one 2) a single
  word, or signifier, can connote any number of
  different signifieds.
• Meaning is endlessly deferred as we seek to
  differentiate among an array of interpretative
  choices and to negotiate the gap between an ever
  increasing number of signifiers and signifieds.

11
The Floating Signifier

• If we acknowledge la difference, then we are left
  with gender as a floating signifier.
• Therefore the meaning of gender is deferred,
  leaving gender a multiplicity of meaning.
• Butler then argues that through the
  deconstruction of the gender binaries, gender
  exists on a continuum of identity.
• Gender then becomes what is constructed at a
  specific place and time, i.e contextualized
  historically and historically.

12
Gender as Performance

• Gender is always a doing, though not a doing by
  subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed

13
The Hegemonic Apparatus

• There is no gender identity behind the
  expressions of gender identity is
  perfromatively constituted by the very
  expressions that are said to be its result
• Gender is a performance its what you do at
  particular times, rather then a universal of who
  you are.
• Certain cultural apparatuses have hegemonic
  control, have naturalized this culture.
• There is no sex, only gender and gender is a
  performance.

14
Performing for the Camera

• I would like to look at how gender is performed
  through some advertisements of men and women. In
  naming this performance we may be able to
  identify the hegemonic discourse that
  construction our notion of gender placed
  historically and culturally.

15
Constructing Male Gender

• Calvin Klein

16
More Klein

• While there is a dearth of ads with women, there
  are few with men and they are difficult to find.

17
The Dapper Gentleman

• This is a liquor ad found on a website that
  analyzed advertisements.

18
Performing the Feminine

• There was little search for women in advertising.

19
The Caged Bird

• Dressed to kill and all locked away. This is an
  ad for designer clothes, but we barely see the
  dress.

20
Barfly

• This ad for Camel is a reoccurring one that
  mostly ran in mens magazines.

21
Angels of the House

• The angel theme is a common one in Victorias
  Secret advertising.

22
Performance Anxiety

• Subverting gender identity

23
Subversive Action

• Butler argues that we all put on a gender
  performance, so now the question becomes what
  form will the performance take?
• Subversion can occur through a mobilizing,
  subversive confusion and proliferation of
  genders, thereby identity
• By choosing a difference we work to change gender
  norms and deconstruct the binary understanding of
  masculinity and femininity.

24
How do we do that?

• Butler opens up two cites for the intervention,
  exposure and displacement of binary
  masculine/feminine reifications (42).
• First using heterosexual constructs in
  non-heterosexual frames. For example continued,
  repeated performance of queer identities may
  eventually become normalized and seen as
  culturally intelligible.
• Second, is the potential of ender parody
  exemplified through cross-dressing, drag and
  butch/femme identities.

25
Madonna A Virtual Embodiment?

• Some critics have argued that Madonna could serve
  as an embodiment of Butlers multiplicity of
  identity.

26
Playing with Gender

• Madonna plays with identity, reinventing herself
  constantly.

27
Subversion in Rock

• She parodies traditional female stereotypes and
  adapts identities that contradict female
  heterosexuality.

28
Moving Through the Spectrum

• Madonna moves through a spectrum of gender
  identity, from Hollywood Starlet to transgendered
  cross-dressing female.

29
Transgendering Trouble

• Drag Queens and Butch Femmes

30
Queering Identities The Drag Queen

• Butler argues that the performance of drag
  emphasizes the discontinuity between anatomy and
  gender.
• Exposes the illusion of gender identity as a
  fixed inner substance (187).

31
Confusing Gender

• Drag is subversive because it confuses gender.

32
Choosing your Identity

• Sexuality continues on a spectrum of choice.

33
Drag Kings

• While there is a plethora of constructions of
  feminine genders in advertisements, men rule in
  crossdressing.

34
Constructing the male

• Butler and others have found the problems with
  using cross-dressing and transgendering as the
  epitome of subversive acts.
• The construction of gender in cross-dressing
  often works within the same hegemonic forces.

35
Using the Masters Tools

• Cross-dressing uses the Masters tools, switching
  the binary is not as subversive as we might like
  to think.
• Here gender might be confused, but still relies
  on binaries of masculine/feminine.

36
Trouble your gender!!!

• The End