Judith Butler

Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative

Gill Jagger

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134601332
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Feminism & Feminist Theory

Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet it is also notoriously difficult to access.

This key book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida). The volume covers such topics as:

• gender as performance and performativity
• sociological notions of performance
• the materiality of the body and the role of biology
• power, identity and social regulation
• subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice.

A comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, this book also covers melancholia and gender identity, hate speech, pornography and 'race', social change and transformation, and Butler's shifting relation to psychoanalysis.

Clearly laid out to cover key themes for a student audience, this text will be an essential read for undergraduates in the fields of gender, psychoanalysis and sociology.

1 Gender as performance and performative

Butler’s account of gender as a kind of performance that is performative in Gender Trouble has proved highly influential in its critique of identity categories as a matter of social and political construction, rather than the expression of some kind of essential nature. However, it has also proved highly controversial as this critique extends beyond the category of gender to sex, sexuality and the body. Indeed, the stated aim of Gender Trouble is to establish a critical genealogy of the construction of the categories of sex, gender, sexuality, desire and the body as identity categories and reveal them, and the binary framework that structures them, to be products of ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality and ‘phallogocentrism’. Butler wants to show that identity categories are ‘fictional’ products of these ‘regimes of power/ knowledge’ or ‘power/discourse’ (Butler 1990a: xi) rather than natural effects of the body. They are fictional in the sense that they do not pre-exist the regimes of power/knowledge but are performative products of them. They are performative in the sense that the categories themselves produce the identity they are deemed to be simply representing. Hence:

A genealogical critique refuses to search for the origins of gender, the inner truth of female desire, a genuine or authentic sexual identity that repression has kept from view; rather genealogy investigates the political stakes in designating as an origin and cause those identity categories that are in fact the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple and diffuse points of origin.

(Butler 1990a: x–xi)

Thus Butler wants to show that these apparently foundational categories are actually cultural products that ‘create the effect of the natural, the original, the inevitable’ (p. viii). However, denaturalizing these categories is only one aspect of this genealogical critique. Another important aim is to destabilize the epistemological and ontological regimes that produce them as natural (p. xi). Hence, she goes on: ‘The task of this inquiry is to centre on and decentre such defining institutions: phallogocentrism and compulsory heterosexuality’ (p. xi). Significantly then, she is not just concerned with the denaturalization of identity categories but also with the possibilities for resistance and change within all this. She wants to reveal that heterosexuality, and the binary system of sexual difference on which it is based, is compulsory yet at the same time show that it is permanently unstable, and to argue that it is this instability that opens up the space for change.

Much of the controversy that arose from this critique of identity categories, however, stems from the same source: the model of subjectivity on which it is based and the implications of this for agency and critique, and resistance and change. This is because Butler’s account of the performativity of gender is based on a poststructuralist understanding of the subject, rooted in a critique of the ‘metaphysics of substance’ in a Nietzschean sense, and the ‘metaphysics of presence’ in a Derridean sense. In this understanding, the substantive ‘I’ of the humanist subject becomes an illusion, a product of the grammatical structure of language rather than a unified, coherent being which linguistic categories simply represent. In Butler’s application of this critique of the humanist subject to the problematic of identity in a feminist, and what was to become known as a ‘queer’, sense, identity categories become performative effects of language and signification, rather than properties of individuals, or the linguistic expression of ‘nature’, based on the materiality of the body. The political project thus becomes a matter of the subversion of identity rather than capitulation to those constructed categories by building theories and political programmes around them. Agency and critique, and resistance and change, become a matter of the subversion of identity. The subversion of identity becomes a matter of opening up the space for alternative significations and the displacement of the discursive regimes of compulsory heterosexuality and phallogocentrism. All this clearly has enormous implications for feminist and queer practice, not least because it involves a critique of the kind of identity politics on which much feminist and queer activism is based. It also appears to challenge the rationale for any specifically feminist theory based on the experiences or bodies of women, and any specifically queer theory based on the materiality of gay, lesbian or trans bodies.

Another related source of controversy stems from the notion of performance involved in Butler’s account of performativity. There are two particular aspects to this. One is that it was often taken to involve the idea that gender is a performance in a theatrical sense and so could be changed at will. This was a view that tended to be embraced positively by some queer theorists but rejected in the main by feminists. The other stemmed from the assumption by some that as a socially constructed performance, gender becomes a mere arbitrary artifice. However, neither of these was a view to which Butler herself subscribed. Indeed, she actively argues against such interpretations as the discussion that follows will show. Nevertheless, as they were fairly common interpretations, they warrant some consideration when examining the early account of performativity that can be gleaned from Gender Trouble.

There was also some controversy around the critique of heterosexuality as a ‘regulatory fiction’ which seemed to suggest a politics of parody, for which drag was the model, and to equate instability with subversion. Although suggesting that instability provides the opportunity for resistance and change (for resignification) is not the same as saying that instability is itself subversive, nevertheless, this is something that Butler is often taken to be claiming and her account of subversion in Gender Trouble has attracted much criticism.

Despite all these controversies however, and others yet to be mentioned, Butler’s critique of identity categories in Gender Trouble contains a number of elements that have not changed as she has developed her account of performativity in subsequent works. The theory of performativity involved becomes much more explicitly based on speech act theory (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 5) and psychoanalysis plays a greater role in explaining the intractability of identity categories (as discussed in Chapter 3). Nevertheless, the basic premise on which the critique of identity categories in Gender Trouble is based remains the same: there is nothing given about gender nor is there any pre-cultural or pre-discursive sex that provides the basis for its cultural construction. Identity is rather an effect of signifying practices rooted in regimes of power/knowledge characterized as compulsory heterosexuality and phallogocentrism. As such, it is a matter of social and political regulation rather than any sort of innate property of individuals, or source of agency in a traditional, liberal humanist sense. The political possibilities and agency stem from the inherent repeatability of these signifying practices and the possibility of resignification. Although the precise ways in which this works are given much more attention in her later work (Butler 1993a, 1997a, 1997b), the political aspirations continue to hinge on the possibilities of signification and resignification.

The main elements of Butler’s account of performativity as expressed in Gender Trouble will thus be explained and the controversies they generate will be examined in this chapter. It will focus in particular on the following key themes: the distinction between gender as performance in a theatrical sense and gender as performance in a performative sense; the critique of heterosexuality as a matter of performance, imitation and drag; the issue of subversion and the role of parody as a political strategy; the constituted subject and the possibility of agency; and the critique of binary oppositions. The issue of the materiality of the body which has also generated much controversy is examined in detail in later chapters (in Chapter 2 in relation to feminism and in Chapter 5 in relation to queer theory and trans critiques), so it is only mentioned briefly here. Particular emphasis will be given, however, to the concept of resistance and change which, as I have argued, is a key issue for Butler throughout her work. It is also an aspect that attracts much criticism from critics and adherents alike.

Performance and performativity

In Gender Trouble, Butler argues that gender is a kind of enforced cultural performance, compelled by compulsory heterosexuality, and that, as such, it is performative. Rather than expressing some inner core or pre-given identity, the performance of gender produces the illusion of such a core or essence. This then becomes a cultural effect, a product of particular signifying practices, as we shall see. She also argues that there is a temporal aspect to this performance as it involves the ‘ritualized repetition of conventions’, which are also ‘shaped and compelled by compulsory heterosexuality’. She refers to these repetitions as ‘sustained social performances’ which create the reality of gender, but which, significantly, are not separable from agents, or actors, preceding the performances, as in a theatrical model. Indeed, this inseparability is crucial to Butler’s account of performativity.

Nevertheless, one of the main causes of controversy in the reception of Gender Trouble arose from the tendency to associate the notion of performance presented there with theatrical models of subjectivity, which imply that there is an actor who chooses which script to follow and then does the acting – and in this sense is separable from the act. This, then, would seem to imply voluntarism and the idea that there is some sort of everyday optionality about sex, gender and even the body.¹ Moreover, Butler’s account of the performativity of gender does involve a notion of performance and does often invoke a sense of theatricality, which contributes to this confusion. The association of performance with drag and then drag with subversion in Gender Trouble also contributes to the voluntarist interpretation. Nevertheless, as she insists in Bodies that Matter (and a number of other places, e.g. Butler 1988, 1991), the model that she is employing is not a theatrical model. It is rather a speech act model based on a poststructuralist understanding of subjectivity. This is a distinction that Butler makes from her very earliest work and one that she continues to emphasize as she develops her notion of performativity in later works (Butler 1993a, 1997a, 1997b). It is an important distinction to grasp in getting to grips with Butler’s work in general, and her political strategies and understanding of social change in particular.

‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’

Even before the publication of Gender Trouble, Butler was emphasizing the difference between performativity and the notion of performance in symbolic interactionism, and in phenomenological and ethnomethodological accounts of the enactment of gender, which have been influential in the sociology of gender. In ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ (Butler, 1988), she distinguishes between the notion of performance and acts in a performative account of gender and the notions of acts, performances and roles in both the phenomenological approach of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau Ponty, and the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman. A significant difference, she argues, lies in the constituting role of the ‘doer’, or pre-existing self behind these acts. Whereas these earlier accounts seem to imply a ‘true self’, a ‘doer’ who is doing the acting, in Butler’s notion of performance the ‘doer’ is produced in and by the act, in a Nietzschean sense, and importantly does not stand outside of, or before it, in a position of reflection. Although she doesn’t mention it in this paper, this distinction follows Nietzsche’s rejection of the humanist separation of the subject and action. This separation allows the subject to be (mis)taken for the cause of action rather than a product of it.²

Therefore, rather than focusing on the ways that ‘social agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign’ (Butler 1988: 519, original emphasis) in the phenomenological tradition, Butler focuses on the ‘more radical use of the doctrine of constitution that takes the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts’ (ibid., original emphasis). Furthermore, she argues:

In opposition to theatrical or phenomenological models which take the gendered self to be prior to its acts, I will understand constituting acts not only as constituting the identity of the actor but as constituting that identity as a compelling illusion, an object of belief.

(p. 520, original emphasis)

It is in this sense that gender is ‘intentional, non-referential and contingent’ as she later claims (Butler 1993a) – even as it is also a constituting aspect of identity and, as such, not a simple matter of volition.

Butler draws on the phenomenological tradition, as work in this area attempts to provide a theory of embodied subjectivity and human action which does not take the body itself as the source of meaning and identity. It rather focuses on the significatory practices which endow particular bodies with social and symbolic meaning and which structure the everyday actions of embodied subjects. The focus of this approach is thus on ‘constituting acts’ in the doing of subjectivity rather than on predetermined structures of any sort, or metaphysical questions about the nature of human being that produce the idea of ontologies of gender as substantive features of human being. Indeed, Butler argues that this approach ‘moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of a constituted social temporality’ (Butler 1988: 520, original emphasis).

However, her application of this approach to the performativity of gender involves an extension of the concept of constituting acts beyond the constitution of identity to the constitution of identity as ‘a compelling illusion, an object of belief’ (p. 520, original emphasis), as in the above quote. She wants to get at the ways in which neither sex nor gender is a natural or material fact whose essence can be determined through an examination of physiology or biology and to show that the substantive model of identity is an illusion which is a product of the performance itself. Hence, she draws on ‘theatrical, anthropological and philosophical discourses, but mainly phenomenology … to show that what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo’ (p. 520). Furthermore: ‘In its very character as performative resides the possibility of contesting its reified status’ (p. 520).

Butler’s attempt to theorize gender as a performance which is performative is therefore far removed from an understanding of gender as a role undertaken by a pre-existing self. It represents a marked departure from, for example, Goffman’s account of the performance of roles in the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, ‘which posits a self which assumes and exchanges various “roles” within complex social expectations of the “game” of modern life’ (p. 528). Butler rejects the very idea of such a self and the view that gender acts are expressive of a core identity, of something prior to the acts themselves that is the cultural, ‘spiritual or psychological correlate of a biological sex’ (p. 528).³

Therefore, as one sociological commentary suggests, despite certain ‘echoes’, Butler’s work is ‘somewhat more sophisticated and considerably more complex’ than those earlier accounts which draw on the phenomenological tradition (Hood-Williams and Harrison 1998: 84). For one thing, the ‘universalistic human subjectivities’ which underpin these accounts is displaced in Butler’s approach. Hood-Williams and Harrison argue that, unlike Butler, Goffman explicitly bases ‘his discussion of gender identity – which is regarded as nothing more than a schedule for its own portrayal – in a general human capacity: the capacity to depict and to read depictions’ (p. 83). They also identify similar problems with attempts to draw parallels between Butler’s account of gender as performative and the study of gender and transgender in the ethnomethodological tradition that has been very influential in sociology. Garfinkel (1990), for example, described the everyday practicalities of gender interactions in which a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual, whose name was Agnes, learnt to act like, and so ‘become’, a woman. He wanted to describe Agnes’s styles of speech and the way she communicated as a woman in order to understand the ways in which gendered norms regulate verbal and non-verbal interactions. However, his account also rested on a humanist conception of the self (or ‘member’ to use Garfinkel’s own terminology) at the core of identity. Moreover, neither of these approaches was based on a theory of language. Although Goffman gave the example of advertisements as a form of significatory practice to demonstrate that gender is a social performance, rather than an ontological feature of persons (albeit rooted in the human capacity to ‘provide and read depictions’), and in this sense at least his account is in keeping with Butler’s denaturalization of identity categories. Nevertheless, in Butler’s work,

[g]ender is held to be a significatory practice in which acts are to be understood through linguistic concepts and in which gender subjectivities and identifications are produced and acquire the hardness of gender ontologies in the process of their own reiterated citationality.

(Hood-Williams and Harrison 1998: 84)

These theoretical concerns thus mark a significant difference between Butler’s work and the more empirical enquiries of these earlier accounts, as Hood-Williams and Harrison suggest.

Indeed, Butler is not concerned with describing the everyday practicalities of gender interactions in the way that ethnomethodological accounts such as Garfinkel’s might, or as in Goffman’s symbolic interactionism. On the contrary, her account is criticized precisely because it does not pay attention to these aspects of ‘doing’ gender (see, for example, Namaste 1996). Moreover, Butler’s concern with the constitution of gendered subjectivity involves revealing the ways in which heterosexuality, as a compulsory and unstable regime of power/knowledge, structures the gendered norms that regulate the kind of verbal and nonverbal interactions that Garfinkel and Goffman merely describe.

Hence, the critique of heterosexuality marks a further difference from these earlier sociological enquiries and from the phenomenological tradition more generally, even as it demonstrates the sociological relevance of Butler’s work.

This critique also marks a significant difference between Butler’s account of gender performativity and the social constructionist models of s...