Butler’s Gender Trouble: The Beginning of Part 3 Subversive Bodily Acts

I will attempt two give a brief summary of the two sections in Part 3: Subversive Bodily Acts. However, we have all come to realize the depth of complexity in Butler’s analysis of other experts in the field of Gender Studies. To decode every one of her sentences would take me a lifetime, so I will focus on the points that I found to be most pivotal to her arguments.

I: The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva

Before stating a summary of this section, I will define two important terms used in Kristeva’s theories on genderized language. The ‘Symbolic’ is defined as the paternal law that structures all language signification, the idea that our language inherently is confined by language that is male centered. The second term is ‘semiotic’, which is the construction of reality through symbolic meaning. Butler critiques Kristeva’s ‘theory of the semiotic dimension of language’, drawing on insights that Kristeva makes with her theory but also posing the limitations of the theory.

Kristeva uses Lactanian’s narrative, which assumes that cultural meaning “requires the repression of the primary relationship to the maternal body” (108). Poetic language is defined as an attempt to reclaim the maternal body within the framework of language. It is a linguistic device that fractures and multiplies meaning. Kristeva adds on to this Lacatian idea of the suppression of the maternal body by claiming this phenomena transcends cultural construction. She claims that the maternal body as “bearing a set of meanings that is prior to culture itself” (109). Butler is most critical of Kristeva’s attention to subversion of the dilemma of the ‘maternal body’ and questions Kristeva’s argument of removing the maternal body from the construction of society.

Kristeva uses drive theory in her discussion of the maternal body being confined by language. She claims these drives to emerge before they are placed into linguistic terms that ultimately repress and eliminate these drives. The maternal “signifies both libidinal dependency and the heterogeneity of drives” and the maternal body “signifies the loss of coherent and discrete identity” (113). The drives of maternity ultimately set-up a system of the dependency on the mother, which is defined though the Symbolic. Kristeva believes the semiotic to be repressed by the Symbolic and the Symbolic to be the hegemonic system that is briefly ‘troubled’ by the semiotic. Her purpose becomes to differentiate between the semiotic and the Symbolic.

Butler’s criticism is seen when she discusses Kristeva’s subversion of the maternal body’s connection to heterogeneity, rather than deconstructing the construction of the maternal body’s dependency on heterogeneity discourse. Bultler uses Kristeva’s work to illuminate new claims that Kristeva overlooks, such as the mandate of maternity “as a compulsory defense against libidinal chaos” (117). She discusses this aspect through a discussion of homosexuality and how it deviates from the maternal symbol in lesbianism. A lesbian must go through a series of displacements in order to avoid the maternal drives. An internalized ‘heteronormalcy’ is constructed through biological justification and the lesbian woman is the divergent, the psychotic.

The ultimate error of Kristeva’s theory according to Butler is subversion of the connection between culture and this maternal being. She states:

The law that is said to repress the semeiotic may well be the governing principle of the semiotic itself, with the result that what passes as “maternal instinct” may well be a culturally constructed desire which is interpreted through naturalistic vocabulary. And if that desire is constructed according to a law of kinship which requires the heterosexual production and reproduction of desire, then the vocabulary of naturalistic affect effectively render that “paternal law” invisible. (123)

II: Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity

This section discusses Foucault’s ‘genealogical critique’ of the gender binary that does not support divergence from maleness or femaleness. According to Butler, Foucault argues that there is no inherent “sex” and a failure to recognize the sex binary reinforces the subjugation of all people. He believes in the necessity of deconstructing the ‘sexed body’ and understanding the power dynamics of the binary. Foucault uses the case study of Herculine, a hermaphrodite that was biologically said to be a girl but showed secondary male sex characteristics and physical features, ultimately choosing a male identity later in life. Foucault focuses on the period of h/er life in which s/he is has not yet became classified as a male by law. He claims this part of Herculine’s life to be ‘non-gendered’, meaning s/he is not forced to comply to the conventions male or female norms, and thus, experiences happiness in this gender confusion. However, Butler refutes this point claiming that Herculine struggled a lot during h/er period of being non-gendered because s/he did not fit into a category of the gender binary. Herculine’s case becomes an ultimate example of ‘gender trouble’ because s/he upset that gender/sex binary and challenges the distinction between heterosexuality and lesbianism.

In the “Concluding Unscientific Postscript”, a discussion of the construction of sexed biological language is seen through Dr. David Page’s research, where the lab tried to discover the biological factor that differentiated the sexes. The way in which the Y chromosome was discussed feeds into the male dominant heterosexual discourse, in that the Y chromosome is inherently responsible of maleness and the absence of this, is femaleness. The language went as far as to reinforce the active and passive roles of the chromosomal make-up of men and women respectively! Again, the case of hermaphrodites upsets this research because their chromosomes do not always correspond to the physical characteristics we associate with being a man or a woman, such as the penis and the vagina. However, Butler still expresses problems with the binary because hermaphrodites and people that upset this biological binary are seen as divergent and lacking of the proper assets the understood as being inherently man or women biological features.

Perhaps discussing sex is not as gender neutral or exclusive as we are taught to believe? Biology has even been genderized. And Butler believes troubling the assumptions of nature are imperative to deconstructing the oppressive factors of the gender binary.