Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Judith Butler’

I’m?devolving into a babbling?idiot. I blame the mad dash?for the semester’s end.?In true cyborg style I warn you:
RAM IS CRITICALLY LOW.
NO MORE INPUT PLEASE.

PREFACE:
In June of 1977, my grandmother watched the launch of NASA’s Viking 1 Mars mission on TV. Before the craft sent photos back to Earth, scientists believed that?the little red planet possessed a life sustaining atmosphere. At 6 1/2 years old, my only focus was deadlocked on Dumbo and a fat blue crayon.

“Did you hear that, Kim? They’re talking about space shuttles. Someday you?could live on Mars.”

My?concentration, and life as I knew it, was shattered. Me??Trade the beautiful Earth and its pulpy coloring books for a technological shelter and an iPod? I dropped?my crayon.?Tears breached the borders of my lashes. The?flood gates?broke open.

Gram’s?hand rested on my shoulder. “Oh no. Did I scare you?”

I think now, “You bet yer ass you did, and so does Donna Haraway.”

DONNA HARAWAY, A MANIFESTO FOR CYBORGS:
Cyborgs have the ability to delve into the borderlands, or as Gloria Anzaldua would say, the last mestiza. They challenge the boundaries between?human and animal; organism and machine; physical and non-physical. My favorite quote from Haraway falls under the first category:

Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes?between life and social sciences. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creation should be fought as a form of child abuse. (2271)

Rock on, girlfriend. Eat vegetarian. Down with religion. Equality can never come from a patriarchal Christian hierarchy.

Because cyborgs?have no origin story, no dominating patriarchal?tradition or otherwise, there?exists possibility for freedom?from these Western dualisms:

Self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man. (2296)

This is brilliant and beautifully Utopian. I love it. I love Haraway… until I remember where?she says:

Microelectronics mediates the translations of labor into robotics and word processing; sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies; and mind into artificial intelligence and decision procedures.?(2285)

Communication systems and technologies are the tools?necessary to recraft our selves, to disassemble and reassemble, to recode who we are. Okay. But… (This is where I cry like a 6 year old.) I don’t want to live like this. Is?this even living? Are we really already there?

Warning, Will Robinson! Tangent ahead: Sure, modern medicine provides artificial limbs that respond to mental stimuli. This ability?is truly amazing and beneficial to people who have lost body parts. But what happens when the Bionic Woman becomes a reality? (Answer: Countless?Lindsay Wagner?reproductions sell billions of?Sleep Number Beds.) What?becomes of?talent, ability?and stamina for physical training in arenas like the Olympics? We chastise those who take performance drugs for being dishonest. Sneaking in a pair of knees with?mnemonic assist can’t be good.

All Systems Online: To get back on track, I found great value in the text and got all sorts of serious while?commenting on Joei’s Blog. Pardon me while I plagiarize myself (with a few tweaks):

My take on page 2269, where Haraway says, ?Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices?? is that people are no longer being seen as the sum of all their parts. The medical realm has created artificial limbs, and thus human/machine hybrids. Do we consider these hybrid people/cyborgs any less human, whether male or female? No.

This leads directly into the next quote?[Joei] pulled from the text.

Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in ?essential? unity. There is nothing about being ?female? that naturally binds women. (2275)

In agreement with Joei, I say this. Gender in our society is based on biology, yet Judith Butler says that maleness or femaleness is not a ?natural? assumption based on?body parts. If some men are born with ovaries and breasts, women with male genitalia, or?some women undergo hysterectomies, all of these provide a gray area within the dichotomy of ?men??and ?women.? To invert this system of categorical breakdown, the same holds true for women as a collective. Being female, possessing the required parts, does not create unity among the group. As Haraway points out, society, history, difference in race, class, and gender are divisive.

The?end game is that cyborgs hold the key to possibility in that they breach the boundaries of dualism. The list on page 2296 [and above] shows all the ways that cyborgs circumvent the categories. This circumvention can lead to freedom because the categories of identity break down.

Shutting Down: As a web geek, I love technology.?Still, I beg, can’t?the plight of humanity be?improved?while remaining?human? Or?are cyborgs Haraway’s way of?”letting the dead monster fall?”?(Think Watchmen.) Here’s my trouble. I hold close to a Native-American-style reverence?of the Earth, its creatures and their spirits. I hate cell phones . People that wear them “hands free” on their heads look stupid.?Borders employees?are freaks. They agree to assimilation, wearing ear devices to connect with the Mother Ship’s corporate command center. Cyborgs. Sellouts. Corporate America gets?fat because communication travels faster than bodies. Sit back, sip 12 Cokes, and take it all in.

Post Script: Maybe I’m?a victim of?Horkeimer and Adorno’s theory. Brainwashing IS present in film. Do I have the utmost respect for the wonderfully villainous?Borg?on Star Trek? Yes.?Could I ever?see them as heroes, breaking through the barriers of Western duality? Not so much. They want to cruelly assimilate Captain Piccard’s individuality and that, my friends, is a crime against humanity. Similarly, AI (Speilberg’s Artificial Intelligence)?boasts the dangers of loving?the clone of?a “real boy,”?one developed through genetic and technological advancement, while cyborgs?riot against?humanity for hurting their wittle feelings. In the end it all goes to hell. I’m a sucker for this message of pending doom. I believe.

These?are merely a few thoughts that presented easily for me.

Foucault and Cho sittin’ in a tree…
There are SO MANY different types of sexual discourse within Cho’s performance of I’m the One that I Want: gay, straight, drunk, slutty, medical – and people pay to hear all about it. We are not a prudish population overall. (In fact, after posting?about foot lickers and 7 feet of sex, my?blog traffic?went through the roof.)

The most pertinent point where Cho and Foucault align is the moment when?Cho’s small desire in the grand scheme of her identity briefly defines?her identity as a whole. Cho tells her mother that she?has a?sexual encounter?with a woman while working on a lesbain cruise line. This is not typical behavior for Cho and she asks herself if she’s gay or straight. She decides she’s just slutty but her mother needs to classify Cho and calls her machine asking:

Are you gay? Are you gay? Are you gay? If you don’t pick up the phone, you’re gay. Okay, you’re gay.” Her mother then continues with “Why can’t you talk to Mommy? Mommy is so cool… Mommy know all about the gay!”

Suddenly, Cho is seen differently through her mother’s eyes in light of a singular experience. Cho’s mother is interesting in that she is deeply effected by racism when she arrives in the States in the 60′s. Knowing that classification is hurtful and dangerous, she reproduces the same behavior with her daughter. I’m seeing both Althusser and Foucault here. Ideologies are in place to perpetuate the system.

Butler and?Cho sitting in a tree…
So, Cho’s?performance includes?the roles of both men and women. How do we, as an audience, know which role she is playing? Gender roles are important here. Cho seems to prove Butler’s point that gender is imposed, learned and performed. In playing the role of a man, Cho displays mannerisms belonging to that gender. When she depicts her gay male friends, she displays?more forced feminine gestures as performed by these men. Certainly, these performances play on stereotypes, but Butler would say that stereotypes are as false as the gender we assume. Butler would also use the example above to say that there is no true identity/soul. There are just chaotic desires within us that are reigned in by social expectations. These expectations are?placed upon us?and we, in turn, place them upon ourselves.

BODY AND SOUL
Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990),?explores the process by which society inscribes identity on the body. Before this happens, a body has a sex or silhouette?but no specific gender. External sources, not internal,?determine gender identity by way of “surface politics” (2496) and?”the law of heterosexual coherance” (2498). Whatever doesn’t fit the mold?is cast out, scorned, punished?for being?dirty, polluted and polluting to society.

PERFORMANCE PARODY
Performers have been raising the gender question for as long as there have been performances. The most popular and contemporary gender parody is the Pat skit on Saturday Night Live. Androgenous to the core, Pat is never forthcoming with clues as to which gender he/she belongs. Because Pat can’t be identified as male or female, the people that Pat interracts with?are?generally polite in their confusion.?Does this really raise awareness and acceptance of alternate identities?

GENDER AS PASTICHE
Parody playfully mocks an original but since gender is not an original identity, parody is imitating?an imitation.?This becomes pastiche, which Jameson says has lost its humor. Butler disagrees:

The loss of the sense of “the normal” … can be it’s own occasion for laughter, especially when “the normal,”?”the original” is revealed to be a copy … In this sense, laughter emerges in the realization that all along the original was?derived. (2499)???

So, this is why we have cult classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show?and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

THE REMEDY?
I have to wonder, are audiences getting it? Are they laughing with the transvestites or at them? And how do drag?performances build support for tolerance when those who are performing are preaching to the already converted?

Don’t many heterosexuals feel they deserve the right to?act as?Gender Border Patrol? If those who define their heterosexuality by way of opposition to alternative identities are dangerous to the mental and physical health of others, how do we break the restrictive social mold?

Laugh, take two queens and call me in the morning…

I find the idea of drag interesting as a remedy for intolerance, having never contemplated how:

We are actually in the presence of three contingent dimensions of significant corporeality: anatomical sex, gender identity and gender performance. If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender and performance.

Having friends in several shows, I knew?their performance?was an expression of repressed sexuality and identity. Still, I don’t think even my drag queen friends were aware of the intricate triangular relationship between sex, gender and performance. Of course, this difference is what Butler says is crucial. I guess I’ll have to tote my Norton to the next show and let everybody know what’s really going on.

FICTIONAL CHIC
Clelebrity examples of gender bending are always interesting and influential, I suppose. Patti Smith dressed in men’s clothes to speak out against the male domination of Rock n’ Roll. David Bowie was “cool” as Ziggy Stardust,?a fictional, genderless poet character from Mars. I just don’t see the acceptance crossing beyond the boundaries of rock’s trendy tolerance yet.

WRAP IT UP, I’LL TAKE IT
So, for those who feel no affinity for their body’s sex, gender becomes a performance. Those?who seem to align “naturally” with the law of heterosexual coherance are also performing a learned behavior. In essence, gender is nothing more than a social construct, not a reality. We all just play our roles as a collective, striving for acceptance by the whole… or challenging the confines of the social construct called identity.