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| Bodies That Matter (Critically Queer) |
| 理論家 Theorists / Judith Butler 茱蒂絲•巴特勒 |
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Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer." Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993. 223-42.
In "Critically Queer," the last chapter of Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler examines how the term "queer" changes from "signaling degradation . . . to signify[ing] a new and affirmative set of meanings" (223) and what the change implicates for the future of queer politics. Originally, "queer" was used to categorize people who were seen as having abnormal sexual inclinations in the continuous process of societal normalization of individuals in order to gain control and power over them as subjects. Gradually, however, those people who are labeled queers "reappropriate" this term for their own use in order to "reaffirm" their own sense of identity and purpose.
I. Perfomative Power
II. Queer Trouble
III. Gender Performativity and Drag
IV. Queer Politics
V. Melancholia and the Limits of Performance
VI. Gendered and Sexual Performativity
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| Perfomative Power |
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Butler first begins discussing Eve Sedgwick's idea on the process of "queering" that "persists as a defining moment of perfomativity" (224) in which the practice of naming and categorizing—through the "speech acts"—enforces a certain "binding power" over actions. For example, when the priest says, "I pronounce you man and wife," the power and ideology of "heterosexualization" is reestablished and reinforced each time. In other words, "Performative acts are forms of authoritative speech" and it is through discourse that power is re-established and re-stabilized continuously (225). Furthermore, power does not come from a "speaking subject," such as the priest, but instead, the "binding power" comes from citing previous conventions, such as the traditional marriage vows that exists before any of the people taking part in the ceremony. For Butler, the discourse comes before the speaking "I," which then enables the subject to speak out while at the same time being limited by the language system in what can be said. Therefore, when a person says "I," s/he is in fact referring to and citing the established speaking "I" of the language system in which a speaking subject cannot exist before or outside of.
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Queer Trouble
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Butler continues on to deal with the issue of identity through discourse. She explains that the naming of an individual as a "queer" is connected to "accusation, pathologization, [and] insult" (226) of a dominant "homophobic" society towards the people who do not conform to the sexual norm. Furthermore, the dominant power "accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices" (Butler's italics 227). Therefore, the performative acts illustrate that there is no origin or a subject that precedes the acts and that a historical past resides in each citation.
Butler then expands her discussion to the question of whether the re-appropriation of certain acts or terms, such as the word "queer" in relations to politics and identities, would also end up excluding or marginalizing other individuals. Moreover, the term "queer" changes as different groups of people re-appropriate it for different purposes; therefore, the term and its meaning is never stable "but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes" (228). It is this instability, while restricting in the act of naming and categorizing, that allows for new possibilities and changes to emerge through the reclamation of the term.
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Gender Performativity and Drag
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Looking back at the idea of performativity, Butler further explains what the term pertains to and mentions how other critics use the term since its first appearance in her book, Gender Trouble. Many critics use performativity to explain how gender roles are like clothes that individuals can put on and take off in different situations. However, to Butler, "gendering" is a "compulsory practice" of repetition. At the same time, this process is always undermined by the inability of a person to "inhabit the ideal s/he is compelled to approximate" (231). In other words, Butler does not see the performance of gender identities as something that people can choose at will. No one performs their gender roles perfectly to portray the ideal "man" or "woman".
Butler then links performativity to drag and discusses how some critics see drag as always being a subversive force against the dominant heterosexual matrix that governs gender roles. Drag can undermine the idea of compulsory heterosexuality in society because the drag performance exposes the "naturalized status of heterosexuality" (231), but this revelation does not naturally lead to subversion. In fact, the dominant power can use this exposure to "reidealize" or reinforce gender ideals as something to covet or to achieve.
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Queer Politics
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Due to the instability of gender identities, the once "abjecting" (Julia Kriesteva's term) power of gender norms can then become a "site of resistance" for the marginalized groups to reappropriate, such as the term "queer", and give new values and signification to the term that creates and allows new identities. Butler believes that subjects are formed through the interpellating (Louis Althusser's term) act of "gendering," which first occurs when the doctor announces the biological sex of a baby. This is when the baby becomes interpellated into discourse, and once a baby is interpellated, then s/he is "compelled to 'cite' the norm [of femininity or masculinity] in order to qualify and remain a viable subject" (232). In other words, there is no subject—no 'one,' before gendering, and it is only through the citation, or performativity, that a subject is produced and recognized by society.
For queer politics, Butler focuses on the effect of "queering". The people who are queered have to cite this term along with its historical background first in order to change its abjecting power into a positive force. However, Butler sees this kind of citation as being "theatrical" in that it "mimes and renders hyperbolic the discursive convention" (Butler's italics 232), while at the same time subverts the norm. Thus, the performativity reveals a 'homophobic' society and its unstable abjecting power. Queer activists use this kind of 'theatrical performance' to erase the restricting binarism of public vs. private sphere in order to bring issues, such as AIDS, out into public awareness instead of being hidden or ignored in politics. In other words, the activists work to change the process of queering from a strategy used by society to shame and privatize any sexual activities that do not conform to the norm to something public and positive.
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Melancholia and the Limits of Performance
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What drag reveals is the inconsistency of gender between the "'inside' truth of femininity, considered as psychic disposition or ego-core, and the 'outside' truth considered as appearance or presentation" (234). For Butler, there is a distinction between performance as an act and performativity as a citational process of the norm because the former suggests a choice whereas the latter suggests a lack of will and a forcible power. Butler further discusses this hidden governing force over gender norms through psychoanalysis. She sees that there is a distinction between "how gender appears and what gender signifies" (234), and thus looks at gender melancholia ("melancholia" is a term first used by Sigmund Freud) to explain the differences.
For Butler, "drag allegorizes some set of melancholic incorporative fantasies that stabilize gender" (Butler's italic 235). Drag performers are usually heterosexuals; thus their performance exposes and reinforces the two opposite categorizes of what a normal individual should love (heterosexual objects) and what should be reviled (homosexual objects). In other words, drag "allegorizes heterosexual melancholy" (Butler's italics 235) in which the same sex can never be seen as an object of love. Taking it one step further, heterosexual melancholy in the performing of gender roles, such as masculinity and femininity, is when "The straight man becomes (mimes, cites, appropriates, assumes the status of) the man he 'never' loved and 'never' grieved; the straight woman becomes the woman she 'never' loved and 'never' grieved" (Butler's italics 236).
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Gendered and Sexual Performativity
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Drag performers perform "the sign of gender" (237) in which a body is read with. Butler sees these performances as being 'hyperbolic,' or exaggerated, in their efforts to become the idealized versions of 'man' and 'woman,' which can never be accomplished. Therefore, the whole process is continuously being reinforced in order to try to maintain a semblance of being stable and of being natural. Drag is not an oppositional force towards heterosexuality, but it works to expose the unnatural workings of the sexual institutions.
Butler further emphasizes that the relationship between gender and sexuality is neither a causal one nor a determining one even though sexual practices may be experienced differently within different genders, not just the two gender categories of masculinity and femininity as distinguished in the heterosexual matrix (238). In other words, there are also sexual/gender differences within homosexuality too, and thus the main focus should be placed on the relationship between identification and desire (239).
Ultimately, Butler's focus is not simply on the subversive methods that can be used for political aims. Instead, she suggests that once the hidden mechanisms behind the politics of gender and sexuality are exposed, new methods and identities can be established.
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