judith butler
Judith Butler and Performativity for Beginners (mostly in her own words)
Film 165A
1. A central concept of the theory is that your gender is constructed through your own repetitive performance of gender. This is related to the idea that discourse creates subject positions for your self to occupy—linguistic structures construct the self. The structure or discourse of gender for Butler, however, is bodily and nonverbal. Butler’s theory does not accept stable and coherent gender identity. Gender is “a stylized repetition of acts . . . which are internally discontinuous . . .[so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Gender Trouble). To say that gender is performative is to argue that gender is “real only to the extent that it is performed” (Gender Trouble).
2. There is no self preceding or outside a gendered self. Butler writes, “ . . . if gender is constructed, it is not necessarily constructed by an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ who stands before that construction in any spatial or temporal sense of ‘before.’ Indeed, it is unclear that there can be an ‘I’ or a “we” who had not been submitted, subjected to gender, where gendering is, among other things, the differentiating relations by which speaking subjects come into being . . . the ‘I’ neither precedes nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within the matrix of gender relations themselves” (Bodies that Matter).
3. Performativity of gender is a stylized repetition of acts, an imitation or miming of the dominant conventions of gender. Butler argues that “the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that’s been going on before one arrived on the scene” (Gender Trouble). “Gender is an impersonation . . . becoming gendered involves impersonating an ideal that nobody actually inhabits”
Film 165A
1. A central concept of the theory is that your gender is constructed through your own repetitive performance of gender. This is related to the idea that discourse creates subject positions for your self to occupy—linguistic structures construct the self. The structure or discourse of gender for Butler, however, is bodily and nonverbal. Butler’s theory does not accept stable and coherent gender identity. Gender is “a stylized repetition of acts . . . which are internally discontinuous . . .[so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Gender Trouble). To say that gender is performative is to argue that gender is “real only to the extent that it is performed” (Gender Trouble).
2. There is no self preceding or outside a gendered self. Butler writes, “ . . . if gender is constructed, it is not necessarily constructed by an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ who stands before that construction in any spatial or temporal sense of ‘before.’ Indeed, it is unclear that there can be an ‘I’ or a “we” who had not been submitted, subjected to gender, where gendering is, among other things, the differentiating relations by which speaking subjects come into being . . . the ‘I’ neither precedes nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within the matrix of gender relations themselves” (Bodies that Matter).
3. Performativity of gender is a stylized repetition of acts, an imitation or miming of the dominant conventions of gender. Butler argues that “the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that’s been going on before one arrived on the scene” (Gender Trouble). “Gender is an impersonation . . . becoming gendered involves impersonating an ideal that nobody actually inhabits”