For my final post I'd like to identify what I meant in my last post by excess. I had a couple comments inquiring if I could be a little more in depth and I think it is worthwhile because it is a great summation of what I take from the course.
To make it simple, let's look at excess, which is just the term I have chose to use for this idea, in terms of what we have come to know throughout this course as "perversion," especially in the Foucaultian, repressive sense. In the notion of perversion we have to take into account that which is the negation of perversion, hence "normal." In a heteronormative society (i.e. ours), anything deviating from strict, reproductive heterosexual monogamy legally qualified as marriage is not the expected behavior (norm) and thus is "perverse."
Excess is the theoretical distance from this normative behavior, and the assimilation of excess comes to have a normalizing effect on recognition. Norms are literally expanded to absorb the accepted excess. This usually results in a sliding scale, as the extremity of any excess is not usually fully acknowledged. A great example of this is the social and cultural revolution that was sparked in 1970-80s London through the punk scene created by the band The Sex Pistols. The band's frayed, unwholesome, noisy and unrefined aesthetic was a challenge to classical etiquette and established a growth in an extremely conservative society that established a renewed form of acceptance.
Now combine this excess with the ideas of the theorists we have read, espeically Butler's poststructural intersubjectivity. The difference in excess reveals the ability to assimilate it. For instance, in that couples (heterosexual) are meant to reproduce in order to supply the labor force, a heterosexual marriage that does not yield children (by choice) would be perverse. This is a very small stretch from the normative behavior and thus was not very difficult to gain normal status. Now look at the example i gave in the last post of the Kiss-in protests. This is a public display of (tame) sexual intimacy between two members of the same sex. The level of excess, or distance from the norm, is much greater here, hence the problems in assimilation.
As one final point, and the penultimate notion, is the teleology (or end goal) behind any display of excess. If it were the goal of kiss-in protests to make other people uncomfortable as some sort of humorous display, it would have little legitimacy and little chance of becoming normalized. However, as the goal behind it is to force a sort of desensitization towards the hegemony (read heteronormativity) it becomes a plea for recognition that has been forced to excess. The goal being (presumably) that if people are forced to encounter the private lives of people who identify as queer then an acceptance can be established. Perhaps that acceptance will never mean specific individuals feeling comfortable with the action of two men kissing, but somewhere in the gradient of the normalizing shift toward the excess a legal barrier can be reached that allows for equality.
In this sense, there is a moral prerogative behind normalizing excesses that embody the recognition of non-destructive ways of life. Obviously, there is never going to be a normalizing shift towards people who feel that they just need to kill people for fun now and then. However, it does hold that with growth of tolerance over time and allowance for acceptance, normalizing shifts can be accomplished (e.g. same sex marriage) to allow for what Butler calls a livable life.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Butler and Fantasy; Video Clip for Monday
I found the readings from chapter one of Undoing Gender especially interesting in an abstract sense in her discussions of fantasy. To Butler, fantasy seems almost necessary to reality in that it is a mechanism (a discursive mechanism, if you will) that establishes boundaries through one of my favorite motifs in literature: excess.
The concept of excess in fantasy versus reality becomes important as far as the evolution of acceptance. The more extreme of an excess the more extreme the normalizing shift will be, granted that some form of acceptance, whether socially, legally, culturally etc., can be garnered. This makes the kiss-in protest movement especially prescient because it is an excess in terms of public displays of gay relationships. The important thing in establishing the fantasy that excess reveals as a possibility for reality or truth is the teleology. The end goal of any form of excess should be considered and I think this consideration relates to the assimilation of excess against normality.
Another example of this is in the video clip that we have for Monday. The clip is from the HBO show Hung and involves contrasting the reactions of people at a high school reunion with those of the main character and that of the character in contention. The problem centers around the 'excessive' demonstration made by a transgender character (played also by a transgender actress) in an attempt to either deceive or assimilate into a former public community. The questions that I would propose to think about before watching this next week would be: would this count as an example of excess? If so, what is the goal of this excess? And then just any opinions that one might have towards the intentions, action and consequences of this scene.
The concept of excess in fantasy versus reality becomes important as far as the evolution of acceptance. The more extreme of an excess the more extreme the normalizing shift will be, granted that some form of acceptance, whether socially, legally, culturally etc., can be garnered. This makes the kiss-in protest movement especially prescient because it is an excess in terms of public displays of gay relationships. The important thing in establishing the fantasy that excess reveals as a possibility for reality or truth is the teleology. The end goal of any form of excess should be considered and I think this consideration relates to the assimilation of excess against normality.
Another example of this is in the video clip that we have for Monday. The clip is from the HBO show Hung and involves contrasting the reactions of people at a high school reunion with those of the main character and that of the character in contention. The problem centers around the 'excessive' demonstration made by a transgender character (played also by a transgender actress) in an attempt to either deceive or assimilate into a former public community. The questions that I would propose to think about before watching this next week would be: would this count as an example of excess? If so, what is the goal of this excess? And then just any opinions that one might have towards the intentions, action and consequences of this scene.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Recognition and Language: Gender isn't Dead
Judith Butler's Undoing Gender goes a long way towards finally making some step towards building a form of praxis in the relation between genders that different texts engaging queer theory we've read thus far have fallen short of. Butler's Gender Trouble begins an attempt to unpack the notions of gender and in what way gender is created, however, this text doesn't do much to engage physically or practically how these representations of desire occur. In readings for another class, I came across another reading that helps to recognize this even further. Reading Butler's notions of desire constituting gender, and gender constituting categories, and categories ensconcing norms along with Axel Honneth's identity-recognition theory establishes a firm ground on which a platform of social reform in the name of queer theory can actually be enacted.
Butler states that to exist outside of the norm of discourse is to have an unlivable life. She talks about discourse's capability to reduce humanity in a person in a couple different ways. First, we get the notion that certain terms can withhold recognition for someone by terming them something that is normatively viewed as less than human. An example of this to me would be to say that, normatively, men should be attracted to women. Therefore, to use a term for a man who isn't attracted to women ("gay") is to reduce their recognition as a person. Conversely, recognition can be deprived through a negation in terms of identity. In the same example, one might say that the man attracted to other men isn't "straight," and is therefore not normative, which makes him (as Butler puts it) sub-human. This puts these terms within the realm of an established category, rather than allowing them to constitute one. This discourse presumes a superstructure of category that fallaciously embraces the norms of a single category as being category-transcendent.
To Butler, undoing recognition makes life unlivable. As she describes it, people often strive towards a certain gender, a certain category, because of a desire towards what that entails. It is an act of self-acceptance, an claim towards the right to acceptance by others within that category and also a claim towards recognition as belonging to said category or gender by people outside of it. The problem then, is a problem of categories. There is simply no discourse available currently (in that there are people being forced to compromise and live unlivable lives marked by shame and pathology) that allows for recognition of appropriate categories. This is essential, because it is Butler's claim towards gender, in my approximation, that normative discourse shouldn't be privileged as a transcendent property. It is only within an accepted category, an accepted gender, that norms should be appropriate. To enforce norms and the discourse of terming those norms on a different category implies a claim towards superiority that is both pernicious and ideological.
With this established, it becomes important for me to see how this recognition is built in the first place. Now that it isn't being withheld, where the hell does it come from? This can be answered chiefly by the identity-recognition theory of a German critical social theorist named Axel Honneth. Honneth's theory developed from part of the tradition of philosophy, which he learned from his mentor Habermas, known as the liguistic turn. Abbreviated extremely, this progression goes like this: Ancient Greek philosophy of "the good," Medieval philosophy and the religious view of God's will, then Descartes's subjective turn (Cogito ergo sum) which puts man not god as the primary source of metaphysics. The linguistic turn is the embrace of language and social practices as rationality and the source of ontology. This theory is sort of the end of metaphysics. Honneth takes the idea that language as a social practice is the most important view of society and adds to it. I look at it this way, and this is how it connects to Butler: language is created by a society, one is (in modernity) born in to that language. Expression through this language to another subject allows for acceptance of another subject, and reciprocally reveals the self as subject, too.
Foucault, Derrida and most post-structuralists here say that this means language constricts the subject, thus taking away agency (autonomy) in the same way that Freud might have said that subjects lose autonomy when they are being driven to action by unconscious libidinal forces. In reading Honneth's theory and now Butler's, I finally have proof for what I'd thought for a long time, which is that Derrida and Foucault's idea that there is no agency any more is (and pardon my strong expression) fucking ridiculous. Here's why: for Butler, stating that one has a desire towards claiming a gender (a category) is a means of expressing a self-direction and a self-awareness (autonomy). In addition this is supported by Honneth's corollary to the linguistic determination of identity. People need other people to recognize them as subjects to be a subject. This is done through communication. However, languages (besides Latin for example) are NOT dead, and are constantly evolving, implying a means of expression and communication that is available only through relations with other subjects, which allows language to differentiate and expand to be able to express experiences. This leaves us not with the Cartesian subjectivism, but with a necessary intersubjectivism. Agency is created and expressed only in conjunction with and mediated through social relations. The living language allows for living thought which can discursively expand to encompass new meanings. Specifically new meanings of categories and normativity. That post just got a lot longer than I intended, my bad.
Butler states that to exist outside of the norm of discourse is to have an unlivable life. She talks about discourse's capability to reduce humanity in a person in a couple different ways. First, we get the notion that certain terms can withhold recognition for someone by terming them something that is normatively viewed as less than human. An example of this to me would be to say that, normatively, men should be attracted to women. Therefore, to use a term for a man who isn't attracted to women ("gay") is to reduce their recognition as a person. Conversely, recognition can be deprived through a negation in terms of identity. In the same example, one might say that the man attracted to other men isn't "straight," and is therefore not normative, which makes him (as Butler puts it) sub-human. This puts these terms within the realm of an established category, rather than allowing them to constitute one. This discourse presumes a superstructure of category that fallaciously embraces the norms of a single category as being category-transcendent.
To Butler, undoing recognition makes life unlivable. As she describes it, people often strive towards a certain gender, a certain category, because of a desire towards what that entails. It is an act of self-acceptance, an claim towards the right to acceptance by others within that category and also a claim towards recognition as belonging to said category or gender by people outside of it. The problem then, is a problem of categories. There is simply no discourse available currently (in that there are people being forced to compromise and live unlivable lives marked by shame and pathology) that allows for recognition of appropriate categories. This is essential, because it is Butler's claim towards gender, in my approximation, that normative discourse shouldn't be privileged as a transcendent property. It is only within an accepted category, an accepted gender, that norms should be appropriate. To enforce norms and the discourse of terming those norms on a different category implies a claim towards superiority that is both pernicious and ideological.
With this established, it becomes important for me to see how this recognition is built in the first place. Now that it isn't being withheld, where the hell does it come from? This can be answered chiefly by the identity-recognition theory of a German critical social theorist named Axel Honneth. Honneth's theory developed from part of the tradition of philosophy, which he learned from his mentor Habermas, known as the liguistic turn. Abbreviated extremely, this progression goes like this: Ancient Greek philosophy of "the good," Medieval philosophy and the religious view of God's will, then Descartes's subjective turn (Cogito ergo sum) which puts man not god as the primary source of metaphysics. The linguistic turn is the embrace of language and social practices as rationality and the source of ontology. This theory is sort of the end of metaphysics. Honneth takes the idea that language as a social practice is the most important view of society and adds to it. I look at it this way, and this is how it connects to Butler: language is created by a society, one is (in modernity) born in to that language. Expression through this language to another subject allows for acceptance of another subject, and reciprocally reveals the self as subject, too.
Foucault, Derrida and most post-structuralists here say that this means language constricts the subject, thus taking away agency (autonomy) in the same way that Freud might have said that subjects lose autonomy when they are being driven to action by unconscious libidinal forces. In reading Honneth's theory and now Butler's, I finally have proof for what I'd thought for a long time, which is that Derrida and Foucault's idea that there is no agency any more is (and pardon my strong expression) fucking ridiculous. Here's why: for Butler, stating that one has a desire towards claiming a gender (a category) is a means of expressing a self-direction and a self-awareness (autonomy). In addition this is supported by Honneth's corollary to the linguistic determination of identity. People need other people to recognize them as subjects to be a subject. This is done through communication. However, languages (besides Latin for example) are NOT dead, and are constantly evolving, implying a means of expression and communication that is available only through relations with other subjects, which allows language to differentiate and expand to be able to express experiences. This leaves us not with the Cartesian subjectivism, but with a necessary intersubjectivism. Agency is created and expressed only in conjunction with and mediated through social relations. The living language allows for living thought which can discursively expand to encompass new meanings. Specifically new meanings of categories and normativity. That post just got a lot longer than I intended, my bad.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
"Queering" the Children's Book (What a Bizarre Title)
Like mentioned, I had a hard time with this assignment for a few reasons. The first being that it is hard to make slight modifications that radically alter gender symbols, because they are just so thick and common. Second, because I had a direct need to keep the story making sense, if not always with the picture at least in the framework, as well as my idea that I still wanted it to read as a children's book. Third, because I wanted to support a child-like view of queerness that didn't in some way trivialize some aspect, or worse broach from lewd to stereotypical or pernicious.
First, the masculine vs. feminine encoding is almost inexorable in children's books. In that, and I think this can be pretty easily agreed with, children's books tend to encompass quite a lot more didacticism than more mature literature, there are many forced and normalized renditions of behavior and representation. Example, it would have been almost impossible to go through without utterly changing the entire picture on every page to remove distinctly "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics, especially from Mama and Papa Bear (recall, I had a Bearenstein bears book, titled Papa's Day Surprise). Papa is first shown, in his overalls, flannel shirt and boots with an axe, hacking down a tree. His shirt is even unbuttoned slightly down the front as if to indicate some display of chest hair. Which I have to believe is a joke, because it is a fur-covered BEAR. Mama on the other hand wears a polka dotted dress, matching bonnet, and is shown only in the garden and in the kitchen initially. The children are adorned in pink and blue respectively. This creates difficulties.
My second problem stems directly from the first. I could have changed every single picture so Mama had pants and the son wore a dress, but I wanted to take a more subtle attempt at subverting the fragility of these stereotypes. They proved iron-clad for quite a while. In an attempt to use all the material the book gave me, I finally chose to take the Papa's Day surprise in a much more literal way. Even in doing so, there were plenty of pages where I still couldn't alter anything worth doing. I chose, instead of making Mama bears dress into pants, to let "Mama" keep wearing a dress. But make "Mama" a man. Making Mama and Papa a homosexual couple with adopted children seemed a break though, but it still presented difficulties.
It was regardless, even in leaving most text the way it was as a representation of the ease of seeing a homosexual couple in the same situations as a heterosexual one, I had to hold back my incredibly dark sense of humor at times. Then there was the way I should have the kids react. I tried to take the opposite reaction in them than that of Samuel Delaney's daughter did, in his account. Through the lens of children as less jaded and culturally encrypted I wanted to reinforce the similarities that should be able to be seen in the situation, regardless of gender roles and sexuality of the parents.
Therefore, in regards to Delaney, I essentially tried to set up a view of acceptance in gender roles that is as closely related to the current discourse originally available in the book as possible. In showing the similarities in situation, discussion, dialogue, attitude and acceptance, I tried to establish a discursive expansion and the simplicity with which it can be enacted.
First, the masculine vs. feminine encoding is almost inexorable in children's books. In that, and I think this can be pretty easily agreed with, children's books tend to encompass quite a lot more didacticism than more mature literature, there are many forced and normalized renditions of behavior and representation. Example, it would have been almost impossible to go through without utterly changing the entire picture on every page to remove distinctly "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics, especially from Mama and Papa Bear (recall, I had a Bearenstein bears book, titled Papa's Day Surprise). Papa is first shown, in his overalls, flannel shirt and boots with an axe, hacking down a tree. His shirt is even unbuttoned slightly down the front as if to indicate some display of chest hair. Which I have to believe is a joke, because it is a fur-covered BEAR. Mama on the other hand wears a polka dotted dress, matching bonnet, and is shown only in the garden and in the kitchen initially. The children are adorned in pink and blue respectively. This creates difficulties.
My second problem stems directly from the first. I could have changed every single picture so Mama had pants and the son wore a dress, but I wanted to take a more subtle attempt at subverting the fragility of these stereotypes. They proved iron-clad for quite a while. In an attempt to use all the material the book gave me, I finally chose to take the Papa's Day surprise in a much more literal way. Even in doing so, there were plenty of pages where I still couldn't alter anything worth doing. I chose, instead of making Mama bears dress into pants, to let "Mama" keep wearing a dress. But make "Mama" a man. Making Mama and Papa a homosexual couple with adopted children seemed a break though, but it still presented difficulties.
It was regardless, even in leaving most text the way it was as a representation of the ease of seeing a homosexual couple in the same situations as a heterosexual one, I had to hold back my incredibly dark sense of humor at times. Then there was the way I should have the kids react. I tried to take the opposite reaction in them than that of Samuel Delaney's daughter did, in his account. Through the lens of children as less jaded and culturally encrypted I wanted to reinforce the similarities that should be able to be seen in the situation, regardless of gender roles and sexuality of the parents.
Therefore, in regards to Delaney, I essentially tried to set up a view of acceptance in gender roles that is as closely related to the current discourse originally available in the book as possible. In showing the similarities in situation, discussion, dialogue, attitude and acceptance, I tried to establish a discursive expansion and the simplicity with which it can be enacted.
Dirty Pretty Things and the start of The Left Hand of Darkness
In examining these two texts together, one issue stands out in comparative relevancy: embodiment. It is central to both texts, and informs nearly all of the decisions and attitudes of the characters. With Dirty Pretty Things's take on the sale of the body, and more importantly to me, some sort of distancing of body and "self" we see an estranging of embodiment, which can also be seen in the alien race of "Gethenians" The Left Hand of Darkness, with their fluid metamorphoses in sexuality.
Dirty Pretty Things is a British film, concerned primarily with the (very British) notion of post-colonialism. That is to say, how the former colonizer and empire treats "subjects" of the former empire in their relation as members of "new" (most independent former British colonies are hardly recent phenomena, however, it is clearly still a very pertinent issue in that culture) or foreign societies. First off I noted the abasement that Okwe elucidates to the illicit organ donor at the climax of the film. He describes the invisible status afforded immigrants (of any status) to London and how persecution is the immediate response to breaching that invisibility compromise. He relates the horrible conditions they live in and the terrible work that they endure. This invisibility bodily manifests throughout the film by showing lack of privacy and the habitation of tiny, cramped spaces. The most interesting thing I found was the contradiction that desperation put on the body. In that I am still considering that the mind and body are not split (Cartesian Dualism deal again; none of that please), the idea that one would sacrifice body for identity is intriguing and tragic. The sale of a kidney for a fake passport hardly seems an easy sacrifice or something that should be necessary to attain a livable life.
On the other hand is the social mentality created by an entirely different concept of embodiment. The beginning of The Left Hand of Darkness has me wondering at the connection between the anti-progressive, laconic pace of the people of Karhide. In that they have no sexual notions or desires except for a few days at a time out of a 26-day cycle, the Gethenians have a radically different structured society. I have to think, how would advertising (to us in our world/society) be different if sexual desire was not a prevalent mental condition?
Thinking about the combination of the two just leads me to believe even more strongly in the notion of intersubjectivity and the embodiment of perception. The Gethenian model seems to me to show us the way in which social constructions influence the body, but at the same time (discursively!) the body is the means on which society is crafted. (E.g. doorknobs are made to be grasped by fingers. It would be just as easy to have originally had the lever hand, which requires no dexterity.) Add to this the way in which body and the change of the body physically can change social view of someone from the film, and I like to think we have a good model of how bodies shape society, society reflects bodies and then how acceptance of those bodies by society renders the body a social object, to be accepted only by other members of that society. Like Hegel said (hate to bring up Hegel again, but hell, he's right), there is no subject without another subject. Except, you know, in German.
Dirty Pretty Things is a British film, concerned primarily with the (very British) notion of post-colonialism. That is to say, how the former colonizer and empire treats "subjects" of the former empire in their relation as members of "new" (most independent former British colonies are hardly recent phenomena, however, it is clearly still a very pertinent issue in that culture) or foreign societies. First off I noted the abasement that Okwe elucidates to the illicit organ donor at the climax of the film. He describes the invisible status afforded immigrants (of any status) to London and how persecution is the immediate response to breaching that invisibility compromise. He relates the horrible conditions they live in and the terrible work that they endure. This invisibility bodily manifests throughout the film by showing lack of privacy and the habitation of tiny, cramped spaces. The most interesting thing I found was the contradiction that desperation put on the body. In that I am still considering that the mind and body are not split (Cartesian Dualism deal again; none of that please), the idea that one would sacrifice body for identity is intriguing and tragic. The sale of a kidney for a fake passport hardly seems an easy sacrifice or something that should be necessary to attain a livable life.
On the other hand is the social mentality created by an entirely different concept of embodiment. The beginning of The Left Hand of Darkness has me wondering at the connection between the anti-progressive, laconic pace of the people of Karhide. In that they have no sexual notions or desires except for a few days at a time out of a 26-day cycle, the Gethenians have a radically different structured society. I have to think, how would advertising (to us in our world/society) be different if sexual desire was not a prevalent mental condition?
Thinking about the combination of the two just leads me to believe even more strongly in the notion of intersubjectivity and the embodiment of perception. The Gethenian model seems to me to show us the way in which social constructions influence the body, but at the same time (discursively!) the body is the means on which society is crafted. (E.g. doorknobs are made to be grasped by fingers. It would be just as easy to have originally had the lever hand, which requires no dexterity.) Add to this the way in which body and the change of the body physically can change social view of someone from the film, and I like to think we have a good model of how bodies shape society, society reflects bodies and then how acceptance of those bodies by society renders the body a social object, to be accepted only by other members of that society. Like Hegel said (hate to bring up Hegel again, but hell, he's right), there is no subject without another subject. Except, you know, in German.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Grosz's Discursive Literature + Notes on My Halloween Experience
In the first chapter of Space, Time, and Perversion, Elizabeth Grosz speculates on the meaning that is implied in terming something feminist literature and how exactly it comes to be described as such. Grosz has a series of reasons by which other theorist feminism is identified with literature, but essentially makes the claim that these strictures are often reductive or irrelevant.
Grosz begins by listing some of the means by which a text was judged to be feminist. These are the sexes of the author and the reader, the content of the text an the style in which the text is presented. To Grosz, these perimeters belie and illusory correlation between what she refers to as "women's texts," "feminine texts" and "feminist texts" (Grosz, 11). Grosz problem is that her use of these terms is "purposely being vague," whereas other theorists had previously not made such distinctions (ibid). Logically, there are blatant problems with this. For one, under the assumption that a feminist text MUST relate in someway to a critique of patriarchal hegemony or promote female equality, then it is easy for a text written by a women to engage these issues at all. Even if a female author doesn't promote patriarchy in her work, it can't be automatically designated as anti-patriarchal. In the same mode of thinking, a man my create a text from a female point of view or character which does not promote a critique of male hegemony.
Grosz explains that to assume that the experience of subjugation to a patriarchal society is the only privileged perspective that any female can have is reductive and furthermore fallacious. This creates the illusion of a connection under the term "woman" that Judith Butler elucidates upon. This idea is also limiting to texts, which Grosz denies stating that "every text exceeds its author" (Grosz, 19).
Grosz, through her analysis of Derrida's concept of the signature, then believes in a dialectical relation between, originally, the author and the text, and then between the reader and the text. This signature concept basically seems to imply that in the generation of authenticity that a signature provides, there is created a distinction between others. Thus, in the way I see it, the text is the mediation in a dialectic between the author and reader, whereby both can be the subject. That is to say, the author has a discourse with his authorial "I" as in the narrator or point of view. The reader engages the "I" and therefore creates a semiotic barrier of intentionality (both conscious and unconscious in my opinion) and meaning that encapsulates the text on both "sides."
On a different note, I had a personal experience recently that I thought fit very well with our themes of perversion and gender roles/identities but is also (I think) pretty hilarious. This past Saturday, I went out for Halloween dressed (there's a much longer story behind this choice) as the pop singer Ke$ha (Yes, she does put a dollar sign in her name. Don't ask me why).
This is Kesha:
Grosz begins by listing some of the means by which a text was judged to be feminist. These are the sexes of the author and the reader, the content of the text an the style in which the text is presented. To Grosz, these perimeters belie and illusory correlation between what she refers to as "women's texts," "feminine texts" and "feminist texts" (Grosz, 11). Grosz problem is that her use of these terms is "purposely being vague," whereas other theorists had previously not made such distinctions (ibid). Logically, there are blatant problems with this. For one, under the assumption that a feminist text MUST relate in someway to a critique of patriarchal hegemony or promote female equality, then it is easy for a text written by a women to engage these issues at all. Even if a female author doesn't promote patriarchy in her work, it can't be automatically designated as anti-patriarchal. In the same mode of thinking, a man my create a text from a female point of view or character which does not promote a critique of male hegemony.
Grosz explains that to assume that the experience of subjugation to a patriarchal society is the only privileged perspective that any female can have is reductive and furthermore fallacious. This creates the illusion of a connection under the term "woman" that Judith Butler elucidates upon. This idea is also limiting to texts, which Grosz denies stating that "every text exceeds its author" (Grosz, 19).
Grosz, through her analysis of Derrida's concept of the signature, then believes in a dialectical relation between, originally, the author and the text, and then between the reader and the text. This signature concept basically seems to imply that in the generation of authenticity that a signature provides, there is created a distinction between others. Thus, in the way I see it, the text is the mediation in a dialectic between the author and reader, whereby both can be the subject. That is to say, the author has a discourse with his authorial "I" as in the narrator or point of view. The reader engages the "I" and therefore creates a semiotic barrier of intentionality (both conscious and unconscious in my opinion) and meaning that encapsulates the text on both "sides."
On a different note, I had a personal experience recently that I thought fit very well with our themes of perversion and gender roles/identities but is also (I think) pretty hilarious. This past Saturday, I went out for Halloween dressed (there's a much longer story behind this choice) as the pop singer Ke$ha (Yes, she does put a dollar sign in her name. Don't ask me why).
This is Kesha:
So this was what my costume attempted. The funny part is that I did this basically to make fun of my roommates, all of whom are straight males like me. However, where I think these things are funny, they were all extremely uncomfortable. When each one of them showed up at the party I attempted (successfully every time) to make them think I was actually a girl. They weren't pleased. Again, I thought this was the funniest thing that had happened in months.
To highlight why I am bringing this up, I think it enforces a lot of the issues we've discussed as far as class themes. There is a deep fear (yes, fear) in most males of a man wearing women's clothes. I think the massively adverse reactions they all had (exclamation, expletives, more expletives, etc.) illustrated the strength of the cultural taboos against perversion.
I even had some gender issues going through my head afterward as well. I'm sure most of you noticed Monday that I had nail polish on. It was shocking to me as well, when I woke up Sunday morning. In my mind, every hand gesture, every way I held a cup or did anything looked (for lack of a better term) "girly." The only thought I had was, well I need to get this stuff off. I then decided that that was not me talking, but the fear someone would think that it was weird. Which I took as a challenge. So I kept it on for a few days. After deciding Sunday morning that I needed to do a lot of masculine things to account for cross dressing the previous night, I realized I didn't care at all. So I left the nail polish on, cleaned my house and cooked dinner for all my roommates. I didn't stop laughing all day at how arbitrary and artificial it all was. I can only hope that Butler or Foucault would be proud of my decisions. Or at least amused. That is, if Foucault even knows how to laugh.
Works Cited
Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion. 1995. Routledge. New York, NY.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Mendes and Cvetkovich: The Trauma of the Suburbs
While American Beauty already shared many of the themes and theories that our course has centered around, however, with the addition of Cvetkovich's theories of trauma, the comparison become even more succinct.
As a means of running down a list of themes involved in the movie, it would be helpful to identify specifically some of these principles. American Beauty is an excellent example of embodiment (in terms of body image, self identity and mental instability), sexuality (misconceptions, homophobia and repression) and Freudian melancholia.
To start with, the embodiment, or rather issues of body and subjectivity come across fairly blatantly. Lester's desire to better himself physically is at first driven solely by an exterior source. He overhears Angela talking to Jane about his physique and immediately Lester goes and begins to lift weights. In this way, he comes to embrace his change in disposition in regards to himself. He loses the lethargy that he had felt before. This culminates at the end of the film in which he decides not to sleep with Angela, feeling that it would be a violation, but realized that he is happy with himself afterwards and the changes he has made in his life. The issues of embodiment and perversion therein come up in the mental issues of two characters: Ricky and his mother. Ricky describes having only come to his self assurance after being caught smoking marijuana and the subsequent military school enrollment and expulsion that left him in a mental institution. The root cause of this, Ricky's overbearing Marine father Frank, is also presumably the cause behind the unexplained problems Ricky's mother has. The two then become to sides of what this mental pressure can do. Ricky's mother is clearly beyond helping, but Ricky is still able to escape the mental crippling.
Sexuality plays an enormous role in this film. It is sexuality that drives Lester to reinvigorate himself. The basis behind Lester's reinvention in body is that of a drive to alleviate his own sexual repression. This is of course directly tied to the character of Angela. She believes that sexual discourses are thus the only means of achieving her own success. However, the most potent views of sexuality come in the forms of repressed homosexuality in Col. Frank Fitz. Frank constantly states his displeasure in seeing or hearing about homosexuals (like the gay couple down the street). He also goads Ricky into stating his own similar disapproval, although the excess of the statement can be taken as an implication that Ricky doesn't in fact believe in his own anti-gay statements. Frank's fear of homosexuality is derived mainly from himself and the thought that he might have "passed it on" to his son. Frank becomes violent with Ricky, expelling him from his house, upon mistakenly believing that Ricky was gay. This can be seen as a form of melancholia in that Frank is now internalizing not only his shame at his own homosexuality but also that of Ricky's. Frank's attempts to come to terms with this lead only to more mistaken identity (in an ridiculousness on Shakespearean levels) as he assumes Lester is gay. Frank's act of self-preservation is thus seen as a direct consequence of his homophobia and is thus a condemnation.
Lester alone accounts for much of the ideas of melancholia in the film, because of the internalization that he is in fact a hopeless loser at the start of the movie. Other examples of the ways in which melancholia is overcome are Jane's internalized self image problems stemming from comparisons with Angela. To the opposite effect, Carolyn's materialism does not end and in fact her melancholia can be said to deepen. She begins with an internalized view that she cannot succeed in her real estate business be she herself cannot project her success well enough, leading to her materialism. However, she doesn't solve this problem in a lasting or healthy way. Instead, she begins to feel that Lester has victimized her in some way, to the point that she had even contemplated killing him.
The final scene of the film, ending in Lester's murder, is a circumspection of what Cvetkovich would call the trauma inherent in the plot. Traumatic experiences occur frequently, from Lester quitting his job and the backlash at home, to the beatings Ricky endures at the hands of his father, the non-diegetic trauma Ricky describes in his institutionalization. And in a way, as is director Sam Mendes's repetitive theme, all of this can be traced back to what (Cvetkovich and Mendes might jointly term) the trauma of the suburbs. Inherent to this is the outsider view that informs so many of the choices and decisions that the characters make. Lester represents the escape from this system, however, his murder can then be seen as the penalty for leaving the system. Yet, the possibility of escape for Ricky and Jane can be seen as hope for escape from this trauma.
As a means of running down a list of themes involved in the movie, it would be helpful to identify specifically some of these principles. American Beauty is an excellent example of embodiment (in terms of body image, self identity and mental instability), sexuality (misconceptions, homophobia and repression) and Freudian melancholia.
To start with, the embodiment, or rather issues of body and subjectivity come across fairly blatantly. Lester's desire to better himself physically is at first driven solely by an exterior source. He overhears Angela talking to Jane about his physique and immediately Lester goes and begins to lift weights. In this way, he comes to embrace his change in disposition in regards to himself. He loses the lethargy that he had felt before. This culminates at the end of the film in which he decides not to sleep with Angela, feeling that it would be a violation, but realized that he is happy with himself afterwards and the changes he has made in his life. The issues of embodiment and perversion therein come up in the mental issues of two characters: Ricky and his mother. Ricky describes having only come to his self assurance after being caught smoking marijuana and the subsequent military school enrollment and expulsion that left him in a mental institution. The root cause of this, Ricky's overbearing Marine father Frank, is also presumably the cause behind the unexplained problems Ricky's mother has. The two then become to sides of what this mental pressure can do. Ricky's mother is clearly beyond helping, but Ricky is still able to escape the mental crippling.
Sexuality plays an enormous role in this film. It is sexuality that drives Lester to reinvigorate himself. The basis behind Lester's reinvention in body is that of a drive to alleviate his own sexual repression. This is of course directly tied to the character of Angela. She believes that sexual discourses are thus the only means of achieving her own success. However, the most potent views of sexuality come in the forms of repressed homosexuality in Col. Frank Fitz. Frank constantly states his displeasure in seeing or hearing about homosexuals (like the gay couple down the street). He also goads Ricky into stating his own similar disapproval, although the excess of the statement can be taken as an implication that Ricky doesn't in fact believe in his own anti-gay statements. Frank's fear of homosexuality is derived mainly from himself and the thought that he might have "passed it on" to his son. Frank becomes violent with Ricky, expelling him from his house, upon mistakenly believing that Ricky was gay. This can be seen as a form of melancholia in that Frank is now internalizing not only his shame at his own homosexuality but also that of Ricky's. Frank's attempts to come to terms with this lead only to more mistaken identity (in an ridiculousness on Shakespearean levels) as he assumes Lester is gay. Frank's act of self-preservation is thus seen as a direct consequence of his homophobia and is thus a condemnation.
Lester alone accounts for much of the ideas of melancholia in the film, because of the internalization that he is in fact a hopeless loser at the start of the movie. Other examples of the ways in which melancholia is overcome are Jane's internalized self image problems stemming from comparisons with Angela. To the opposite effect, Carolyn's materialism does not end and in fact her melancholia can be said to deepen. She begins with an internalized view that she cannot succeed in her real estate business be she herself cannot project her success well enough, leading to her materialism. However, she doesn't solve this problem in a lasting or healthy way. Instead, she begins to feel that Lester has victimized her in some way, to the point that she had even contemplated killing him.
The final scene of the film, ending in Lester's murder, is a circumspection of what Cvetkovich would call the trauma inherent in the plot. Traumatic experiences occur frequently, from Lester quitting his job and the backlash at home, to the beatings Ricky endures at the hands of his father, the non-diegetic trauma Ricky describes in his institutionalization. And in a way, as is director Sam Mendes's repetitive theme, all of this can be traced back to what (Cvetkovich and Mendes might jointly term) the trauma of the suburbs. Inherent to this is the outsider view that informs so many of the choices and decisions that the characters make. Lester represents the escape from this system, however, his murder can then be seen as the penalty for leaving the system. Yet, the possibility of escape for Ricky and Jane can be seen as hope for escape from this trauma.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Meditations on Bersani's last paragraph. And some other stuff.
To begin with, I'd like to just go into a little bit more on some of my thoughts on that last paragraph we analyzed from the Bersani essay. I'd like to do this mostly to sort out what exactly it is I think of the concept (and also what the hell it means). I've heard before that writing is thinking, and I prefer to do both at the same time, so I am not really sure how this ends.
Bersani has a few key concepts, so let's get those out:
1. The inviolability of selfhood
2. Selfhood allows for violence as self preservation
3. Sex is dysfunctional in that it is a violent action that leaves the at least one party disenfranchised.
4. Sex as a union is a myth
5. The violence of sex is against the self (solipsistic-jouissance)
So that's established, individually none of these is controversial. Connecting the dots gets weird. As mentioned, the self and the belief by "a self" in the greater concept of "selfhood" (vis-Ã -vis selfishness) is how violence against another self is justified ethically. Someone else violates my selfhood, I kill them. Done. Now, to counteract that, the myth of sex arises. The myth is that this self v. self violence is put to an end by the pastoral view of sex in relation with matrimony and union and procreation and what have you. Bersani says this is a lie.
Basically Bersani is proposing then (in my interpretation) that because of the myth, people go into sex (and let's take another example than his of homosexual males, because if this is a principle it should apply all over, with a heterosexual pairing) with the maxim of unity. That is, they intend to form a union, and under this pretense the self destruction lies. Broadly consider the "insertee," Bersani's article would have that the submission and passivity of this participant is a disenfranchisement of power. Thus, the insertee submits in order to allow for the union, but in reality only allows the violence against the self, categorically destroying the self (the jouissance is then the act, compiled with the mental violence of technical self abasement).
For the "inserter," the violence comes in the literal concept of insertion as well the deprivation of power upon said action. The inserter has the maxim, or intention, of union, but with only a dictum of submission to show for the violence exhibited, the maxim is contradicted. Therefore, the self in contradicting itself commints self-violence, thus destruction (the jouissance is again the action on one hand and the psychic violence of self contradiction).
Simply adding a hyphen clarifies Bersani's "solipsistic jouissance." Solipsism alone would not support this self shattering, in fact it is the opposite. But solipsistic-jouissance is then the intense feeling of the destruction of the self, the solipsistic self to be precise. Thus, the self is destroyed as a concept, there is no indication that Bersani is proposing sex destroys one's identity and would then have to be reconstituted afterward.
Also, as an unrelated note, and maybe this will help with posting replies because it is a question (that is kind of out there), it seems that there is something very strong being said underneath Lars and the Real Girl to some extent, to a large extent in Misfortune and also in Foucault and more so in Butler regarding masculinity and femininity. So Butler calls gender repeated actions. Meaning that "normal" is just the average, and is baseless as far as gestalt views of total behavior. Rose seems the perfect example of this with her behaviors as a father and as a "feminine man" (scare quotes used to show impending clincher). What all these seem to be saying, is that these categories are an illusion to a very specific point. For lack of a better (and more satisfying) term, masculinity and femininity are complete and utter bullshit.
Bersani has a few key concepts, so let's get those out:
1. The inviolability of selfhood
2. Selfhood allows for violence as self preservation
3. Sex is dysfunctional in that it is a violent action that leaves the at least one party disenfranchised.
4. Sex as a union is a myth
5. The violence of sex is against the self (solipsistic-jouissance)
So that's established, individually none of these is controversial. Connecting the dots gets weird. As mentioned, the self and the belief by "a self" in the greater concept of "selfhood" (vis-Ã -vis selfishness) is how violence against another self is justified ethically. Someone else violates my selfhood, I kill them. Done. Now, to counteract that, the myth of sex arises. The myth is that this self v. self violence is put to an end by the pastoral view of sex in relation with matrimony and union and procreation and what have you. Bersani says this is a lie.
Basically Bersani is proposing then (in my interpretation) that because of the myth, people go into sex (and let's take another example than his of homosexual males, because if this is a principle it should apply all over, with a heterosexual pairing) with the maxim of unity. That is, they intend to form a union, and under this pretense the self destruction lies. Broadly consider the "insertee," Bersani's article would have that the submission and passivity of this participant is a disenfranchisement of power. Thus, the insertee submits in order to allow for the union, but in reality only allows the violence against the self, categorically destroying the self (the jouissance is then the act, compiled with the mental violence of technical self abasement).
For the "inserter," the violence comes in the literal concept of insertion as well the deprivation of power upon said action. The inserter has the maxim, or intention, of union, but with only a dictum of submission to show for the violence exhibited, the maxim is contradicted. Therefore, the self in contradicting itself commints self-violence, thus destruction (the jouissance is again the action on one hand and the psychic violence of self contradiction).
Simply adding a hyphen clarifies Bersani's "solipsistic jouissance." Solipsism alone would not support this self shattering, in fact it is the opposite. But solipsistic-jouissance is then the intense feeling of the destruction of the self, the solipsistic self to be precise. Thus, the self is destroyed as a concept, there is no indication that Bersani is proposing sex destroys one's identity and would then have to be reconstituted afterward.
Also, as an unrelated note, and maybe this will help with posting replies because it is a question (that is kind of out there), it seems that there is something very strong being said underneath Lars and the Real Girl to some extent, to a large extent in Misfortune and also in Foucault and more so in Butler regarding masculinity and femininity. So Butler calls gender repeated actions. Meaning that "normal" is just the average, and is baseless as far as gestalt views of total behavior. Rose seems the perfect example of this with her behaviors as a father and as a "feminine man" (scare quotes used to show impending clincher). What all these seem to be saying, is that these categories are an illusion to a very specific point. For lack of a better (and more satisfying) term, masculinity and femininity are complete and utter bullshit.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Lars and the Fake Girl & Misfortune and the Not-Girl
In looking at the film Lars and the Real Girl alongside the novel Misfortune, it is impossible not to notice some similarities. There is the issue of restriction of body for one, for example, in the film, Lars (Ryan Gosling) feels physical pain at the touch of others. Rose from the novel constantly mutilates herself, chewing her fingers, because of the years of bodily abuse she has received. Another example is the need for isolation in both Lars and Rose, and to go along with this isolation, both have a srong familial love that brings them out of their isolation.
While these themes and motifs, as well as many more, are present and important to each story, I believe that there is one central theme that is similar to both, though enacted in a different way. In each story, the plot revolves around the issue of an artificial or constructed femininity. In both, this is simultaneously a simple a complex relation. However, I think the outcomes are very similar.
In Lars and the Real Girl, a lonely man with deep feelings of guilt and desire for isolation (largely over his mother dying during childbirth and a depressive father) is driven towards developing the delusion that an "anatomical love doll" that he has purchased over the internet is in fact a living person, whom he met on the internet and is now in a relationship with. This causes alarm in Lars' family as they seek psychological help for him. Eventually, the town comes to embrace Lars' delusion. Because of all the attention that Lars and "Bianca" get it becomes necessary for Lars to invent an entire back story for Bianca. This story is often vastly similar to Lars' own experience, signalling his trouble to deal with his experiences in isolation and the need to form another identity with which to empathize. Lars begins to use this artificial ideal female version of himself as a proxy for deflecting his problems around. This artificial feminine shield becomes Lars' disguise as he learns to conquer his own personal issues.
Rose's situation, while seemingly different, is quite similar. While Lars manifested this artificial identity by imbuing it onto an external object, Rose was raised with a dual identity, causing her(/him) to have two conflicting identities, both of which feel at odds to her. While Rose, categorically a male, is raised female, her masculinity is thrust upon her at the advent of her physical development and deviation from the female body.
While Rose has strong feelings of alienation towards her masculinity, especially her anatomy and the uncomfortable feelings she encounters while wearing men's clothes. We see that Rose, despite often partitioning it and ignoring it, has accepted, if not her masculinity as an embrace of identity, that she is masculine. Therefore, a good deal of the plot is devoted to Rose's acceptance of the artificially created femininity that was imposed on her from birth. As physical ideals of this, Rose takes Sarah and ,to an even greater degree, Prudence. Prudence's stolen red dress thus becomes a symbol of Rose's femininity. Always in tow and hidden.
However, at the resolution of both stories there is simultaneously a loss of these feminine ideals, as well as a profound acceptance of the wholeness of identity through a connection with the feminine sides of both Rose and Lars.
Rose's revelation comes when she is given the option to be a man who wears dresses first, and second at the sort of "fall from grace" that Prudence has had in Rose's mind. Stating that childbearing (a possible extension of femininity) has reduced Prudence to plainness and stripped her of her appeal to Rose. Rose loses her ideal of femininity at the confrontation with Prudence. However, she is able to retain a piece of it in her identity, evidenced by her request to be referred to as "she" while simultaneously fathering two children. That and the dress, of course.
Lars' acceptance of the feminine in his identity is perhaps even more dramatic. Lars, in his waning need for the external construct of Bianca, slowly allows the delusion to simply die. Lars literally kills his constructed delusion. However, when he should seem at his lowest for losing his shelter and proxy, Lars is finally able to connect with an actual person, namely Margo, the "real girl" who had been constantly after his affections. In the acceptance of another person into his life Lars actualized his stunted identity, accepting himself at the same time as Margo.
While these themes and motifs, as well as many more, are present and important to each story, I believe that there is one central theme that is similar to both, though enacted in a different way. In each story, the plot revolves around the issue of an artificial or constructed femininity. In both, this is simultaneously a simple a complex relation. However, I think the outcomes are very similar.
In Lars and the Real Girl, a lonely man with deep feelings of guilt and desire for isolation (largely over his mother dying during childbirth and a depressive father) is driven towards developing the delusion that an "anatomical love doll" that he has purchased over the internet is in fact a living person, whom he met on the internet and is now in a relationship with. This causes alarm in Lars' family as they seek psychological help for him. Eventually, the town comes to embrace Lars' delusion. Because of all the attention that Lars and "Bianca" get it becomes necessary for Lars to invent an entire back story for Bianca. This story is often vastly similar to Lars' own experience, signalling his trouble to deal with his experiences in isolation and the need to form another identity with which to empathize. Lars begins to use this artificial ideal female version of himself as a proxy for deflecting his problems around. This artificial feminine shield becomes Lars' disguise as he learns to conquer his own personal issues.
Rose's situation, while seemingly different, is quite similar. While Lars manifested this artificial identity by imbuing it onto an external object, Rose was raised with a dual identity, causing her(/him) to have two conflicting identities, both of which feel at odds to her. While Rose, categorically a male, is raised female, her masculinity is thrust upon her at the advent of her physical development and deviation from the female body.
While Rose has strong feelings of alienation towards her masculinity, especially her anatomy and the uncomfortable feelings she encounters while wearing men's clothes. We see that Rose, despite often partitioning it and ignoring it, has accepted, if not her masculinity as an embrace of identity, that she is masculine. Therefore, a good deal of the plot is devoted to Rose's acceptance of the artificially created femininity that was imposed on her from birth. As physical ideals of this, Rose takes Sarah and ,to an even greater degree, Prudence. Prudence's stolen red dress thus becomes a symbol of Rose's femininity. Always in tow and hidden.
However, at the resolution of both stories there is simultaneously a loss of these feminine ideals, as well as a profound acceptance of the wholeness of identity through a connection with the feminine sides of both Rose and Lars.
Rose's revelation comes when she is given the option to be a man who wears dresses first, and second at the sort of "fall from grace" that Prudence has had in Rose's mind. Stating that childbearing (a possible extension of femininity) has reduced Prudence to plainness and stripped her of her appeal to Rose. Rose loses her ideal of femininity at the confrontation with Prudence. However, she is able to retain a piece of it in her identity, evidenced by her request to be referred to as "she" while simultaneously fathering two children. That and the dress, of course.
Lars' acceptance of the feminine in his identity is perhaps even more dramatic. Lars, in his waning need for the external construct of Bianca, slowly allows the delusion to simply die. Lars literally kills his constructed delusion. However, when he should seem at his lowest for losing his shelter and proxy, Lars is finally able to connect with an actual person, namely Margo, the "real girl" who had been constantly after his affections. In the acceptance of another person into his life Lars actualized his stunted identity, accepting himself at the same time as Margo.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Meta Gothic and Gender Confusion
I think in order to suss out this novel, Misfortune, it is important for me to just simply state all of the various facets of the largely ambiguous and troubling scenes and themes. To start with, like I stated in class, there are seemingly a lot of similarities to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The first of which that I found is the elaborate experiment regarding the capacities of human life that Anonyma engages in with baby Rose. Now, this is obviously not reanimation or anything as extreme or scientifically improbable (improbable should really have scare quotes around it), however, Anonyma does in fact take on an experiment whereby she is taking certain boundaries that persist to human life and seeing at what points she can bend, shape and basically erase them. And, just like Victor Frankenstein, Anonyma is present for the duration of the process. She knows all along that Rose is a boy in girl's clothing. It should be as little a surprise that Rose would eventually discover "her" anatomy than it was to Victor that he was building a human form out of various large cadavers. How can Victor think these dead rotting tissues wouldn't be horrifying when they stood up and looked at him? Similarly, how did Anonyma think that, without informing Rose of the availability of the proposed gender choice that she had tried to afford her, Rose would grow to be anything but confused and self-destructive? To be fair, Anonyma's experiment was cut short by external machinations.
I also found odd, as I'm sure the author intended, the three sort of sex scenes discussed in class: first with creepy old Uncle Edwig (who reminds of the child molester uncle from Tommy), then the encounter with Sarah, and finally Esmond's (deserving) torment. To start, the scene with Uncle Edwig is nothing short of horrifying. There are multiple factors and cues that Stace gives us to interpret. One, there is a sensational quality to the disgust. The old man has spilled food strewn over him, he smells awful, and he has a dubious manner of speaking. Other things include the obviousness that he is an alcoholic in withdrawals and that he makes extremely unwanted advances at all manner of women in his own family. Finally, we have the omniscient view point's sense that Rose really has no idea of the disturbing quality of the situation she is in. There is (or was for me) a palpable sense in the reader of wanting Hood to simply stroll out and end the debauchery. Which of course doesn't happen. To Rose, it becomes an exploration of anatomy that becomes something of a comfort, in that "she" seems to think there is nothing wrong with "her" body. This juxtaposition is simultaneously brilliant and demented. Finally, Rose gets the stigma of Edwig's death, in association with what she believes is the "tuning" that she feels from Edwig.
This stigma carries over to the sensation that Sarah has during the encounter between her and Rose. This scene is especially ambiguous because it casts into light so many different ways of observing the relationship. It seems apparent that Rose looks up to Sarah. Sarah is an exceptional model for what a girl should be (Prudence is as well, physically, but is lacking in character). Rose wants to be like Sarah. In discovering the disparities in their anatomies, Rose becomes sorry for Sarah at what she perceives as a loss. If the male uncle Edwig had this appendage, and the "female" Rose does as well, then everyone should right? After some fears, Rose finally pieces together the only logical solution: that "she" is a not a she.
Where this matters for the sake of the theme of gender identity/roles and how these play into sexuality lies in the analysis of the intentions in this scene. We know that Sarah and Rose have kissed multiple times, with varying degrees of romantic (or maybe proto-romantic) weight. So. The many, many possibilities in this situation play out like this. Sarah is embracing this as much as Rose is enacting it. Intentionality towards continuation from both. But. Sarah is literally a girl, who thinks that Rose is also a girl. Rose is not a girl. This can mean many things, not all of which could have changed due to whether Rose had been raised the way she was or not. Is Sarah accepting the pleasurable feeling from the simple attention of the friend she is extremely close with, or does she have an implicit attraction to other females in general. Does she have an attraction to Rose only because of her androgynous qualities? Also, does Rose, raised as a girl, still hold all alleged biological propensities towards heterosexuality despite not really even knowing what that means for "her." It is almost impossible to say whether this experiment had an effect on the situation. There are a lot of questions here, but I think to strengthen the theme, it is important to isolate perhaps a stronger teleology. Reading more of the story might clear this up (what a novel concept). Yet at the same time, in the spirit of deconstruction, perhaps it would make the utterly confusing quality of Rose's position even stronger if there was a disharmony between this scene and any further evidence we get from Rose and Sarah as they develop.
Finally, I have to mention the scene with Esmond just because I thought it was, for lack of a better term, super badass. I laughed openly throughout it. The powerlessness that Esmond encounters is such great vengeance for the slew of awful attitudes and behaviors that most of the Loveall's extended family exhibit. Also, there is one more thing that I thought was great about this scene. Anonyma had intended to create a being that was, at least as close as possible to, equally feminine and masculine. And it is in this embracing of a male body and a feminine mind that Rose is completely in control of her full faculties of embodiment, wit and personality.
I also found odd, as I'm sure the author intended, the three sort of sex scenes discussed in class: first with creepy old Uncle Edwig (who reminds of the child molester uncle from Tommy), then the encounter with Sarah, and finally Esmond's (deserving) torment. To start, the scene with Uncle Edwig is nothing short of horrifying. There are multiple factors and cues that Stace gives us to interpret. One, there is a sensational quality to the disgust. The old man has spilled food strewn over him, he smells awful, and he has a dubious manner of speaking. Other things include the obviousness that he is an alcoholic in withdrawals and that he makes extremely unwanted advances at all manner of women in his own family. Finally, we have the omniscient view point's sense that Rose really has no idea of the disturbing quality of the situation she is in. There is (or was for me) a palpable sense in the reader of wanting Hood to simply stroll out and end the debauchery. Which of course doesn't happen. To Rose, it becomes an exploration of anatomy that becomes something of a comfort, in that "she" seems to think there is nothing wrong with "her" body. This juxtaposition is simultaneously brilliant and demented. Finally, Rose gets the stigma of Edwig's death, in association with what she believes is the "tuning" that she feels from Edwig.
This stigma carries over to the sensation that Sarah has during the encounter between her and Rose. This scene is especially ambiguous because it casts into light so many different ways of observing the relationship. It seems apparent that Rose looks up to Sarah. Sarah is an exceptional model for what a girl should be (Prudence is as well, physically, but is lacking in character). Rose wants to be like Sarah. In discovering the disparities in their anatomies, Rose becomes sorry for Sarah at what she perceives as a loss. If the male uncle Edwig had this appendage, and the "female" Rose does as well, then everyone should right? After some fears, Rose finally pieces together the only logical solution: that "she" is a not a she.
Where this matters for the sake of the theme of gender identity/roles and how these play into sexuality lies in the analysis of the intentions in this scene. We know that Sarah and Rose have kissed multiple times, with varying degrees of romantic (or maybe proto-romantic) weight. So. The many, many possibilities in this situation play out like this. Sarah is embracing this as much as Rose is enacting it. Intentionality towards continuation from both. But. Sarah is literally a girl, who thinks that Rose is also a girl. Rose is not a girl. This can mean many things, not all of which could have changed due to whether Rose had been raised the way she was or not. Is Sarah accepting the pleasurable feeling from the simple attention of the friend she is extremely close with, or does she have an implicit attraction to other females in general. Does she have an attraction to Rose only because of her androgynous qualities? Also, does Rose, raised as a girl, still hold all alleged biological propensities towards heterosexuality despite not really even knowing what that means for "her." It is almost impossible to say whether this experiment had an effect on the situation. There are a lot of questions here, but I think to strengthen the theme, it is important to isolate perhaps a stronger teleology. Reading more of the story might clear this up (what a novel concept). Yet at the same time, in the spirit of deconstruction, perhaps it would make the utterly confusing quality of Rose's position even stronger if there was a disharmony between this scene and any further evidence we get from Rose and Sarah as they develop.
Finally, I have to mention the scene with Esmond just because I thought it was, for lack of a better term, super badass. I laughed openly throughout it. The powerlessness that Esmond encounters is such great vengeance for the slew of awful attitudes and behaviors that most of the Loveall's extended family exhibit. Also, there is one more thing that I thought was great about this scene. Anonyma had intended to create a being that was, at least as close as possible to, equally feminine and masculine. And it is in this embracing of a male body and a feminine mind that Rose is completely in control of her full faculties of embodiment, wit and personality.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Vampiric Identities
In this weeks readings, we are introduced to a range of ideas and theories that I found to be very interrelated. The readings for the Case essay were especially intriguing. The way in which she uses the mythos of the vampire for an analogy to the lesbian experience. There were three main ways in which this metaphor functions. The first, which she opens the essay with, is that of referring to the hurling of the term queer as an insult. She equates this to a physical wound that is the mark of interaction with a vampire. Thereby, both the vampire and the "queer" are created by a wound. Most interesting to me, was that she also made the connection that this wound, on both sides of the analogy, was the locus of the desire associated with it. This seems to be the most insightful idea in this portion of the comparison.
The next association came in the practice of the discontinuation of life as well as the contamination of blood. To skim, typical vampire mythology has them dying and returning in a post-life state with specific ramifications, notably here the need to consume living blood. The basis of Case's argument was in what she described as the unnatural quality that sterile homosexual sex had long been demonized with. Because of this inability for the act to procreate, homosexual sex is devoid of the right to life, whereby heterosexual sex has the right to life in the creation of it. The main problems that I had with these arguments came from the fact that homosexual sex is an un-live practice. It does still involve living people. However, I suppose the distinction can be made that it does not directly pass life on. And then again, this can be countered by stating that this is an antiquated view and that there are methods of procreation available for most circumstances. There is also the distinct notion that a vast array of problems can limit the birth capacity of heterosexual couples as well.
The problem of the contamination of the blood by "queers" is a wholly social construct that has basis more in propaganda and xenophobia than fact, especially in case of the AIDS epidemic and how it was blamed at the start on the gay population.
The final comparison was more in tune directly with the lesbian experience. This view was equated to the invisibility of the vampire as well as a lesbian's alleged need to appear normal. While the vampire hides in darkness, it is the lesbian's invisibility that is even more pernicious, inherent in the concept of passing. I found this the most disturbing as it entails the negation of the self. Yet, it is in this that perhaps the best vampire reference can be found. The vampire is the death of one's previous self and the negation of it through something new and destructive.
The next association came in the practice of the discontinuation of life as well as the contamination of blood. To skim, typical vampire mythology has them dying and returning in a post-life state with specific ramifications, notably here the need to consume living blood. The basis of Case's argument was in what she described as the unnatural quality that sterile homosexual sex had long been demonized with. Because of this inability for the act to procreate, homosexual sex is devoid of the right to life, whereby heterosexual sex has the right to life in the creation of it. The main problems that I had with these arguments came from the fact that homosexual sex is an un-live practice. It does still involve living people. However, I suppose the distinction can be made that it does not directly pass life on. And then again, this can be countered by stating that this is an antiquated view and that there are methods of procreation available for most circumstances. There is also the distinct notion that a vast array of problems can limit the birth capacity of heterosexual couples as well.
The problem of the contamination of the blood by "queers" is a wholly social construct that has basis more in propaganda and xenophobia than fact, especially in case of the AIDS epidemic and how it was blamed at the start on the gay population.
The final comparison was more in tune directly with the lesbian experience. This view was equated to the invisibility of the vampire as well as a lesbian's alleged need to appear normal. While the vampire hides in darkness, it is the lesbian's invisibility that is even more pernicious, inherent in the concept of passing. I found this the most disturbing as it entails the negation of the self. Yet, it is in this that perhaps the best vampire reference can be found. The vampire is the death of one's previous self and the negation of it through something new and destructive.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Extinction of Queer
In reading Foucault's final notions of the body in his terms of the cogency of the power held in controlling death, we can see his (possibly extreme) views on the role of construction of sexuality and the notion of how that might be negatively charged. What this really leads us to is the concept form the Sedgewick readings on queer theory. Foucault's views of allowing the body to be constituted of itself presuppose some of the ideas in Sedgewick. In demanding that the only source of sexuality should be the body (literally) and pleasure, Foucault resists the socio-historical context of sexualities established by an ideological hegemonic apparatus.
If we relate this to Sedgewick then (and I think it's a pretty direct relation), then we can use her views of adopting the term queer. She spends a lot of time on this, with just cause. I really enjoyed the back-up that is described through the deconstructionist view of diction-based or linguistically charged idiosyncrasies and often contingencies within a text as a means of embracing a sense of dissonance. She makes it quite clear in her elaborations upon the precipitous trend in suicides amongst gay teens and adolescents that there is a feeling of going against the grain that comes in conjunction with an identification as homosexual. This same tension in going against the grain seems to be the very source of identification that Sedgewick seems to find in queer theory's application of the deconstructionist method of isolating those minor details and intricacies of excess in terms of the over all plot arc and theme of a text.
Compiled with the reader response revival inherent in the first person application of the means by which queer theory explores the meanings available within a text, this embrace of tension at a very personal level can be read as an embracing of the recently repossessed monicker of "queer." However, inasmuch as queer is now an umbrella term for the gay/lesbian/transgender movement, then semantically it doesn't mean simply homosexual. It would follow then, that queer has made a semantic return to something akin to odd. Although, it is likely more accurate to define it as apart from a proposed norm as opposed to simply odd or strange, both of which can be devoid of relations to a norm.
This would mean, then, that any who feel as though they have some factor of their embodiment or personality which deviates even slightly from the norm could conceivably be self-labeled as queer. TO the militant gay movement, this might be a sullying of a chosen term. This would be an oversight, though, in my opinion. The point of oppositional philosophies is to eliminate that opposition. Therefore, for queer theory to "succeed" (in the utopian sense) there would need to be a recognition by each and every individual that regardless of what society they inhabit they are quite literally an individual and as such cannot possibly adhere to every single norm in existence. In this way, any one can feel queer, because, in fact, everyone is queer. And if everyone is queer, then no one is. Oppostion negated. Unity reached. This is of course utopian; apart from the militant gay sector there would be opposition to this concept from both the conservative core who would cling to majority status and then the inevitable ignorance that surrounds the issue. So, possibly farfetched, but then again most ideals are. I do like to think sardonically that the meta narrative might have a teleology, however asymptotal.
If we relate this to Sedgewick then (and I think it's a pretty direct relation), then we can use her views of adopting the term queer. She spends a lot of time on this, with just cause. I really enjoyed the back-up that is described through the deconstructionist view of diction-based or linguistically charged idiosyncrasies and often contingencies within a text as a means of embracing a sense of dissonance. She makes it quite clear in her elaborations upon the precipitous trend in suicides amongst gay teens and adolescents that there is a feeling of going against the grain that comes in conjunction with an identification as homosexual. This same tension in going against the grain seems to be the very source of identification that Sedgewick seems to find in queer theory's application of the deconstructionist method of isolating those minor details and intricacies of excess in terms of the over all plot arc and theme of a text.
Compiled with the reader response revival inherent in the first person application of the means by which queer theory explores the meanings available within a text, this embrace of tension at a very personal level can be read as an embracing of the recently repossessed monicker of "queer." However, inasmuch as queer is now an umbrella term for the gay/lesbian/transgender movement, then semantically it doesn't mean simply homosexual. It would follow then, that queer has made a semantic return to something akin to odd. Although, it is likely more accurate to define it as apart from a proposed norm as opposed to simply odd or strange, both of which can be devoid of relations to a norm.
This would mean, then, that any who feel as though they have some factor of their embodiment or personality which deviates even slightly from the norm could conceivably be self-labeled as queer. TO the militant gay movement, this might be a sullying of a chosen term. This would be an oversight, though, in my opinion. The point of oppositional philosophies is to eliminate that opposition. Therefore, for queer theory to "succeed" (in the utopian sense) there would need to be a recognition by each and every individual that regardless of what society they inhabit they are quite literally an individual and as such cannot possibly adhere to every single norm in existence. In this way, any one can feel queer, because, in fact, everyone is queer. And if everyone is queer, then no one is. Oppostion negated. Unity reached. This is of course utopian; apart from the militant gay sector there would be opposition to this concept from both the conservative core who would cling to majority status and then the inevitable ignorance that surrounds the issue. So, possibly farfetched, but then again most ideals are. I do like to think sardonically that the meta narrative might have a teleology, however asymptotal.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Foucault and the Evil Baby Machine. Week 2
Like I stated in class Wednesday, the parts of this week's reading I was most taken with were Foucault's takes on the causes of why Victorian Puritanism came to be. Moreover, I was piqued at the the lasting effects that Foucault insists derived from this and the means by which modernity claimed to have solved these issues while (for Foucault) not really fixing anything. Foucault, as it would appear through his text, doesn't really seem to think that anything at all is being repressed, but rather that sexuality is basically being sterilized and pigeonholed into teleological digressions.
First, there is the part where Foucault makes the implicit claim towards this reification of sexuality. Foucault says that "there emerged the analysis of the modes of sexual conduct" (26). OK, so basically he is up in arms about this. There "emerged"? That diction alone seems to show that a criticism of sexual conduct did not exist prior to this period. He continues to say that this analysis sought directly to locate the "boundary line of the biological and the economic domains" (ibid). Reading more through this section, it seems apparent to me that Foucault is really not happy about this. It seems to him that sexuality, as part of the body and the body's interaction with others, should not be something that can be empirically rendered.
As we know from the Butler reading, Foucault views the body as the source of everything for people, not a disembodied mind, or soul. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, says that the "soul is the prison of the body." To the post-structuralist Foucault, I would take this to mean that Foucault believes the only prohibition to the choices that we make are those that represent the historicity and situation we inhabit. Foucault, in my opinion is then equating the concept of an exterior presence influencing the self (read body, here), the soul, with the social, historical and situational factors that render so much of the existence that the self endures.
Then I would say that this matters to our readings in the connection that, in a society (a situation) where everything one does is a relational choice, that restricting the literal body in terms of sexuality, or even labeling and sterilizing it, is a means of the "soul" constricting the "body." In a bizarre way.
As a final note, Hegel said in one of his biggest (and I mean important and also just way too long) books The Philosophy of Right, there is no such thing as a subject that doesn't have something else, object or another subject, in relation to it. Subjectivity, the self-in-itself (to get all annoying and Heideggerian), only exists as a relation that allows it to be subjective.
First, there is the part where Foucault makes the implicit claim towards this reification of sexuality. Foucault says that "there emerged the analysis of the modes of sexual conduct" (26). OK, so basically he is up in arms about this. There "emerged"? That diction alone seems to show that a criticism of sexual conduct did not exist prior to this period. He continues to say that this analysis sought directly to locate the "boundary line of the biological and the economic domains" (ibid). Reading more through this section, it seems apparent to me that Foucault is really not happy about this. It seems to him that sexuality, as part of the body and the body's interaction with others, should not be something that can be empirically rendered.
As we know from the Butler reading, Foucault views the body as the source of everything for people, not a disembodied mind, or soul. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, says that the "soul is the prison of the body." To the post-structuralist Foucault, I would take this to mean that Foucault believes the only prohibition to the choices that we make are those that represent the historicity and situation we inhabit. Foucault, in my opinion is then equating the concept of an exterior presence influencing the self (read body, here), the soul, with the social, historical and situational factors that render so much of the existence that the self endures.
Then I would say that this matters to our readings in the connection that, in a society (a situation) where everything one does is a relational choice, that restricting the literal body in terms of sexuality, or even labeling and sterilizing it, is a means of the "soul" constricting the "body." In a bizarre way.
As a final note, Hegel said in one of his biggest (and I mean important and also just way too long) books The Philosophy of Right, there is no such thing as a subject that doesn't have something else, object or another subject, in relation to it. Subjectivity, the self-in-itself (to get all annoying and Heideggerian), only exists as a relation that allows it to be subjective.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Cartesian Dualism: Wait people still care about that? Week 1
My initial reaction to Butler's Gender Trouble was that of most dense philosophical tracts. I lay the book open on my desk, pinched the bridge of my nose and then shrugged my shoulders. However, upon a methodical reading it isn't hard to parse out exactly what she means in a analytical, and often merely semantic, way. In the very first sentence she relates the skepticism that she has for the grounding of feminist theory, without denying the veracity of feminism in and of itself. She uses the word "assumed" to indicate that the aforementioned "identity" that consists of the category of "woman" is an illusion (Butler 2). Butler seems to imply that there is a feminist theory-- and therefore femininity-- however, the basis (woman) is altogether a synthetic construct. It isn't often a thing that is called to attention, but every theory, especially mathematical, must have a basis. This is basically what the Theory of Relativity did to physics, it established a base principle. And to some miniscule degree even the cosmological constant required some assumption.
This basis is then the challenge that Butler goes into with the first few sections. I found the musing towards the necessity that Butler sees in some forms of feminism to establish a "universal patriarchy" as a way of legitimizing their own goals funny (Butler 5). She clearly has some disdain for this lack of regard for cultural relativism when she claims these feminists are blaming societies of "non-Western barbarism" (5). As if to say, how dare they not feel oppressed, the savages! After settling her idea that this 'workers (women?) of the world unite' is frivolous, Butler begins to coalesce the concepts of gender and society or politics as inseparable. She states that "gender intersects with race, class, ethnic and sexual" influences as well (4). This is to say gender roles, and thus the role of woman, are inherently connected and manufactured by the means of society. And as she noted before, that can mean many different things. What it means for her, in a Western, "masculine hegemony," is that there is in fact a suppression of genders NOT masculine, of which she insists there are multiple (46).
What I take this to mean, and what the statement closing chapter one blatantly insists, is that gender is created by the mechanisms of society and thus can be changed by the very same means. The gender roles of 1950s businessman and his obedient housewife were oppressive then and intolerable now. In beginning to identify this role of the combination of sex, biology and gender in individuals, Butler and the other reading by Grosz bring out the concept of the difference between the mind and the body. The concept that the mind and body are separate is not new.
This is where I started to see some tie ins with my philosophy background. Descartes basically came up with the idea that the mind is the source of all subjectivity and reason and exists within a 'spirit realm' while the body lives in the 'empirical world' as a mass of dumb matter. Kant comes along and uses this in his morality. He uses the physical body and the concept of emotions, impulses, urges and other 'unwholesome' things to stand in opposition to the idea that one must, in every moral decision, act in a way that one would want to be expressed as natural law from then on out. Basically, don't lie or else you allow the world to be full of liars. The phenomenologists came along, followed by the French Existentialists and made a different distinction. They relied in part on the concept of humanism and a little on this speech Nietzsche made where he basically said that nothing in some ridiculous spirit world could have any causal effect on a physical body. For some, this debunked the mind-body dualism. It was taken further by a dude named Merleau-Ponty (a friend of Simone de Beauvoir's) who said that is is in fact the situation (i.e. history, presence, existence, personality, choices) of a person that lies their 'soul'. He insists that the body and the mind are one in that we perceive things with both our reflective mind and active body all at once. Basically.
So what this means for gender, is that, crudely, take the example of a transvestite like Izzard. His body has male physiology. He is attracted to women (male lesbian), yet he enjoys wearing high heels and make-up. His mind is not some separate entity that wishes to wear make up while his male body is biologically programmed for heterosexuality it is one consistent entity with fallacious contradictions construed upon it.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith Butler. Gender Trouble, Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity.
Routledge Classics, 2006. Print
This basis is then the challenge that Butler goes into with the first few sections. I found the musing towards the necessity that Butler sees in some forms of feminism to establish a "universal patriarchy" as a way of legitimizing their own goals funny (Butler 5). She clearly has some disdain for this lack of regard for cultural relativism when she claims these feminists are blaming societies of "non-Western barbarism" (5). As if to say, how dare they not feel oppressed, the savages! After settling her idea that this 'workers (women?) of the world unite' is frivolous, Butler begins to coalesce the concepts of gender and society or politics as inseparable. She states that "gender intersects with race, class, ethnic and sexual" influences as well (4). This is to say gender roles, and thus the role of woman, are inherently connected and manufactured by the means of society. And as she noted before, that can mean many different things. What it means for her, in a Western, "masculine hegemony," is that there is in fact a suppression of genders NOT masculine, of which she insists there are multiple (46).
What I take this to mean, and what the statement closing chapter one blatantly insists, is that gender is created by the mechanisms of society and thus can be changed by the very same means. The gender roles of 1950s businessman and his obedient housewife were oppressive then and intolerable now. In beginning to identify this role of the combination of sex, biology and gender in individuals, Butler and the other reading by Grosz bring out the concept of the difference between the mind and the body. The concept that the mind and body are separate is not new.
This is where I started to see some tie ins with my philosophy background. Descartes basically came up with the idea that the mind is the source of all subjectivity and reason and exists within a 'spirit realm' while the body lives in the 'empirical world' as a mass of dumb matter. Kant comes along and uses this in his morality. He uses the physical body and the concept of emotions, impulses, urges and other 'unwholesome' things to stand in opposition to the idea that one must, in every moral decision, act in a way that one would want to be expressed as natural law from then on out. Basically, don't lie or else you allow the world to be full of liars. The phenomenologists came along, followed by the French Existentialists and made a different distinction. They relied in part on the concept of humanism and a little on this speech Nietzsche made where he basically said that nothing in some ridiculous spirit world could have any causal effect on a physical body. For some, this debunked the mind-body dualism. It was taken further by a dude named Merleau-Ponty (a friend of Simone de Beauvoir's) who said that is is in fact the situation (i.e. history, presence, existence, personality, choices) of a person that lies their 'soul'. He insists that the body and the mind are one in that we perceive things with both our reflective mind and active body all at once. Basically.
So what this means for gender, is that, crudely, take the example of a transvestite like Izzard. His body has male physiology. He is attracted to women (male lesbian), yet he enjoys wearing high heels and make-up. His mind is not some separate entity that wishes to wear make up while his male body is biologically programmed for heterosexuality it is one consistent entity with fallacious contradictions construed upon it.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith Butler. Gender Trouble, Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity.
Routledge Classics, 2006. Print
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