Rodrigo Paramo

HUSL 6317
Subversive Bodily Acts (1990)
Judith Butler
Contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain
sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of
feminismtrouble is inevitable and the task what best way to be in it What happens to the
subject and to the stability of gender categories when the epistemic regime of presumptive
heterosexuality is unmasked as that which produces and reifies these ostensible categories of
ontology.
Judith Butlers Subversive Bodily Acts outlines the relationship between bodies and the
societies that construct them for Butler, contemporary theory that seeks to ground itself in
the ideas of true sex, discrete gender, and specific sexuality have largely missed the point.
They assume a static understanding of identity markers that ignores the contingent and
constructed nature of identity.
Building on Foucaults claim that the body is a plane of inscription, she highlights
bodies as being continuously re-defined by social norms. Society (history) construct values
and meanings through a process of inscription that begins with the body. The only constant
is this process of inscription and the body that pre-figures it. From here, Butler cites Mary
Douglas diagnosis that the body and its limits are never merely physical though they are
eventually articulated as such, they begin as limits of larger social orders. This process of
construction allows for certain practices and bodies to be painted as threats to the social
order the homosexual, AIDS, non-normative sexualities. This is especially true for
homosexuality and the liminal status it is given both un-civilized and un-natural. Butler
then reads Kristeva and Young to formulate her conception of the Other created by the
repudiation of something that is originally central to the body (in the instance of the body,
excretory passages). This construction of the body as inner/outer is what provides stability to
a necessarily contingent subject.

The question is not how did that identity become internalized? as if internalization
were a process or a mechanism that might be descriptively reconstructed. Rather, the
question is: From what strategic position in public discourse and for what reasons has
the trope of interiority and the disjunctive binary of inner/outer taken hold? In what
language is inner space figured?

How (why) are these norms produced? Butler argues that this strive for coherence
works to conceal the deviant iterations that exist along sexual contexts. Instances where
gender/sex/sexuality dont line up work to rupture understandings of the body; not only do
these bodies disrupt conventional understandings, they also reveal previous ideals as both
normatively constructed and, more importantly, fictional. Building on Foucaults
understanding of the body, Butler argues that the self is constructed outside of the body
subjectivity (or the soul) is never pre-existent in the way it has historically been explained.
Rather, the subject is defined by the actions that the body takes; acts, gestures, and desire
produce the effect of an internal core or substance. Butlers understanding of ethics, the
subject and politics are contingent on reading the world through a performative lens that
prioritizes the political regulations and disciplinary practices which produce selves and
subjects.
Thus, gender is only ever the effect of performance, not a true or false state of being.
This truth is what allows Butler to make the articles central claim: that drag fully subverts
the inner/outer dichotomy and mocks the notion of true gender. In imitating gender, drag
implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself as well as its contingency.
Engaging in this parodic performance reveals the possibility for continuous re-signification
when original markers are inserted into new contexts, the very notion of originality is
thrown into serious question. If bodies are boundaries, we must understand gender as a
corporeal style (an act), which is both intentional and performative. This is not an
individual project, but rather a survival strategy that is utilized to navigate through
contemporary culture. Thus, Butler concludes that gender is an identity created by
individuals engaging in a stylized repetition of acts. This means that gender is no longer
solely a model through which we can understand identity as an act that occurs in a
particular temporality. In other words, a gendered self is always only a surface
presentation, one that comes into being after a series of performed and repeated acts.
Genders can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor
derived. As credible bearerers of those attributes however, genders can also be
rendered thoroughly and radically incredible.

Further Reading:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.