ENG4013 - Sexual Difference & Queer

Dr. M spent a lot of time talking about Lacan's extensions of Freud's ideas on desire last week. A couple of general notes. While Freud says that the original desire is the mother's breast (though note that shouldn't be seen as precisely literal, just for the things that implies – warmth, comfort, food, etc. – so single fathers or bottle-feeding mothers, don't feel you can't meet that) Lacan says there is no original desire. Desire is part of what we are and is never satisfied. When desire is satisfied, we have no reason to live. On the whole, I thought Lacan was a bit out on a limb, sawing on the wrong side, but, hey, this way of thinking apparently makes some people feel better. As the title of a Steve Taylor song says, "Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better." (The song is full of such irony.)

This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference

• Explain what essentialism and essentialization of gender signify
• Explain the two step process of deconstruction described for "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Daniel Deronda.
• Explain Judith Butler's critique of "identity politics."

Queer

• Explain what Butler means when she says gender identity is performative.

As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).

Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.

B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")

Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.

If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.

Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."

Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.