Finally got around to reading this, a 2000 review of Judith Butler's work by Martha Nussbaum (whom I am quickly becoming very enamored with).
I started reading Gender Trouble months ago, and after I got a ways in, I began to wonder what was actually happening. What was I meant to be getting out of this book? I could piece together some general concepts -- performativity, for instance, but I felt lost and greatly out of my league.
You see, when I can't understand the details of a work like this, I tend to assume that it's my own understandings that are deficient, not the author's explication. I haven't read much Foucault, for instance, nor many other French thinkers. Perhaps, I often find myself thinking, if I were more familiar with these philosophical traditions, then I might be capable of understanding someone like Butler a little bit better.
As it is, when I get into work like Butler's I sometimes start wondering to whom it is relevant. This probably sounds haughty or short-sighted, but it's a feeling that I have trouble shaking. I certainly don't share the views of those who see all theory or philosophy as irrelevant or useless. On the contrary, I think that theorizing is something that everyone does and that matters a great deal. I love doing and reading social theory. I just feel the desire to connect it, in some way, to someone's actual experiences. So when I feel that some text doesn't do that, I get discouraged and start to wonder just what the point is.
I suppose the Nussbaum piece sort of cheered me up a bit, then. It's nice to be reminded every once in a while that one can do sophisticated social theory that is nonetheless engaged with and made for actual people. Sometimes, that's all too easy for me to forget.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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I don't know if this helps, but you could try a middle ground. As an English person, I use theory like Butler's to analyze texts around me--literature, mostly, but movies, television, news articles and broadcasts, music, etc. are all textual. For me, it's immediately useful in that arena, because we are constantly surrounded and shaped by texts, and using theories like Foucault and Butler to ground our understandings of those texts can give new insight into our culture. Perhaps it could help to read Butler, then, and think of America's Next Top Model or Rue Paul's Drag Race. Or a book you've read, or a film, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do think Butler is relatable to every person's life, and I do think that was her point. Gender is a performance for each of us, but that doesn't make it not compulsory or any less real in our experiences. Her work helps us understand *how gender works* in our every day lives, and how gender-bending works to either reinforce or subvert the production of binary gender. Do you think performativity doesn't apply to your life? What about her feels so abstract?
Hi Courtney,
ReplyDeleteI suppose I don't really understand the concept of performativity, so I don't know how it applies to my everyday life. I understand the concept of "doing gender" through one's mannerisms, style of dress, and so forth, but I don't know if this is what Butler means. Performativity for her doesn't seem to refer to a kind of stage or theatrical performance that other kinds of theory -- like symbolic interactionism -- does.
Is "doing gender" what Butler is talking about, or am I missing something? I suppose I should read more of her work to figure this out, and I plan on doing so in the near future.
I think I am probably more on board with the style of analysis you describe than I've made it seem here. Still, problems arise for me when theory becomes inaccessible to anyone outside of a small group. And again, I really should state that I am usually the last person to cry irrelevance when discussing theory, and I'm still really hesitant to do so. I do think that Nussbaum brings up some excellent points, though, about the connections between theory and social change, and what the logical conclusions of Butler's work are.
It sort of is. The simplest way I can put it is that performativity describes how gender is done: your mannerisms and dress and speech (literally almost every aspect of your behavior) are a result of compulsory gender performance. Done over and over again, it becomes your identity. So gender is not just something you do, and thus can throw off when you feel like it, but a part of who you are. That's why "theatrical" is not necessarily the best way of putting it; you "perform" gender even when the doors are closed. So it's arbitrary, in that its not natural, but that doesn't mean you can't just go through your day not performing gender; your entire identity is wrapped up in it.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Nussbaum, but I would also suggest reading Butler's newest introduction to *Gender Trouble.* She talks about its intersections with her activism and what actual results she intended to come out of it.
this might be relevant: http://botchedilliteration.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/bad-writing/
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