Judith Butler - Gender Trouble

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Media and Cultural Theory 2010

 

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler tackles the work of preceding second-wave feminism and argues that there is no ontological self that is feminine. The problem with this for Butler is that it limits the kind of experiences that can be articulated as part of feminist discourse. The challenge for feminism in Butler’s logic, therefore, is reconciling the historic exclusion of women from the hegemonic discourse, without limiting the inclusiveness of feminism. To put things more simply, feminism needs to recognise that the catch-all use of the term women conceals experiential differences linked to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class:

 

Clearly, the category of women is internally fragmented by class, colour, age, and ethnic lines, to name but a few, in this sense honouring the diversity of the category and insisting upon its definitional nonclosure appears to be a necessary safeguard against substituting a reification of women’s experience for the diversity that exists. (Butler, 1990, 327).

 

Like Cixous she views the term woman as a masculine construct that labels the feminine as other: different. However, instead of focusing on the primacy of writing, she proposes that the self is constructed through a series of performances: stylised acts that may rely upon restricted frameworks to make semantic meaning but are arbitrary nonetheless.

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In her emphasis upon disciplinary techniques and regulative discourse, Butler is of course invoking the work of Foucault on the function of bodily discipline in the organisation of human behaviour. Bentham’s model of the Panopticon discussed in chapter 1 is exemplary of this. In Butler’s logic, however, these regulative discourses help maintain the illusion of gender stability. Drawing upon the work of Julia Kristeva she suggests that in the pre-Oedipal ‘semiotic’ stage of development ‘unconscious fantasies exceed the legitimating bounds of paternally organised culture’ (Butler, 333). However, where she differs from Kristeva is in her disavowal of self that exists at all and in this sense, Butler is rejecting psychoanalytical frameworks that categorise second-wave feminism.

 

Of course, one argument that can be leveled at Butler is that she does not account for the material biological differences between the sexes. While she acknowledges that this exists, for her this is immaterial to the construction of gender, which she views as entirely cultural. In this sense, Butler views ‘sex’ as an alibi, which naturalises the attribution of gender at birth. Overall Butler’s view of gender is transforming because it aligns feminism with a more postmodern cultural paradigm. Indeed, in her reading of the parodic nature of gender, her thoughts echo those of Baudrillard and Jameson on the simulacrum: 'The notion of gender parody defended here does not assume that there is an original which such parodic identities imitate. Indeed, the parody is of the very notion of an original (Butler, 338)'.

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In this sense, Gender Trouble is definitive in understanding contemporary ideas about gender because at  its core is a rejection of the distinction of the real and the simulated. Unlike preceding definitions of feminism, Butler’s work is significant also because it speaks for the subject position of men as well women; while patriarchal oppression may be a culturally constructed regulative discourse, Butler’s work acknowledges that it does not universally benefit the lives of all men.

 

One area in which Butler’s work has been particularly influential is that of Popular Music Studies. In the wake of Gender Trouble, a number of feminists have explored the way in which popular music performance embodies Butler’s ideas. In particular the work of the American singer Madonna has come in for some close scrutiny. Alice Kaplan, Cathy Schwichtenberg, and Beverley Skeggs, for example, all wrote pieces in 1993 that debate the extent to which Madonna can be seen to exemplify Butler’s arguments. Indeed, David Gauntlett uses the term ‘Madonna Studies’ to categorise analysis of the singer (www.  theory.org). Influenced by Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1976) as well as Butler, such readings have the tendency to see musical performance as representative of radical gender politics. For example, in ‘Guilty Pleasures Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna’ (1996) Pamela Robertson asks the question ‘Is Madonna a glamorized fuckdoll or the queen of parodic critique?’ (Robertson, 1996, 188).

 

The problem with ‘Madonna Studies’ from the perspective of Musicology is that very little analysis is focused on the musical text but rather on performances and promotional video. In addition to this, in its application of Butler’s work, ‘Madonna Studies’ has the tendency to conflate self-conscious and highly stylised musical performances with the more routinised performance of self. That said, within Popular Music Studies, there is some very forward thinking analysis of masculinity. In Sheila Whitely’s Sexing the Groove (1997), for example, both Gareth Palmer and Stan Hawkins offer salient accounts of the way in which both Bruce Springsteen and the Pet Shop Boys manipulate their own gendered subject position. And in this sense, it is possible to see the way in which ideas about the self and the gendered subject are framed and shaped by media stars.