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 occupylinguistic structures construct the self. The
structure or discourse of gender for Butler, hoe!er, is bodily and non!erbal. Butler"s theory
does not accept stable and coherent gender identity. #ender is $a styli%ed repetition of
acts . . . hich are internally discontinuous . . .&so that' the appearance of substance is
precisely that, a constructed identity, a performati!e accomplishment hich the mundane
social audience, including the actors themsel!es, come to belie!e and to perform in the
mode of belief( )Gender Trouble*. To say that gender is performati!e is to argue that gender
is $real only to the e+tent that it is performed( )Gender Trouble*.
2. There is no self preceding or outside a gendered self. Butler rites, $ . . . if gender
is constructed, it is not necessarily constructed by an ,-" or a ,e" ho stands before that
construction in any spatial or temporal sense of ,before." -ndeed, it is unclear that there can
be an ,-" or a $e( ho had not been submitted, subjected to gender, here gendering is,
among other things, the di.erentiating relations by hich spea/ing subjects come into
being . . . the ,-" neither precedes nor follos the process of this gendering, but emerges
only ithin the matri+ of gender relations themsel!es( )Bodies that Matter*.
3. Performativity of gender is a stylied 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 arri!ed on the
scene( )Gender Trouble*. $#ender is an impersonation . . . becoming gendered in!ol!es
impersonating an ideal that nobody actually inhabits( )inter!ie ith 0i% 1ot% in Artforum*.
". Biological se# is also a social construction$gender su%sumes se#. $According to
this !ie, then, the social construction of the natural presupposes the cancellation of the
natural by the social. -nsofar as it relies on this construal, the se+2gender distinction
founders . . . if gender is the social signi3cance that se+ assumes ithin a gi!en culture . . .
then hat, if anything, is left of ,se+" once it has assumed its social character as gender4 . . .
-f gender consists of the social meanings that se+ assumes, then se+ does not accrue social
meanings as additi!e properties, but rather is replaced by the social meanings it ta/es on5
se+ is relin6uished in the course of that assumption, and gender emerges, not as a term in a
continued relationship of opposition to se+, but as the term hich absorbs and displaces
$se+( )Bodies that Matter*. Butler also rites $- thin/ for a oman to identify as a oman is
a culturally enforced e.ect. - don"t thin/ that it"s a gi!en that on the basis of a gi!en
anatomy, an identi3cation ill follo. - thin/ that ,coherent identi3cation" has to be
culti!ated, policed, and enforced5 and that the !iolation of that has to be punished, usually
through shame( )inter!ie ith 0i% 1ot% in Artforum).
&. 'hat is at sta(e in gender roles is the ideology of heterose#uality. $To claim that
all gender is li/e drag, or is drag, is to suggest that ,imitation" is at the heart of the
heterosexual project and its gender binarism, that drag is not a secondary imitation that
presupposes a prior and original gender, but that hegemonic heterose+uality is itself a
constant and repeated e.ort to imitate its on ideali%ations. That it must repeat this
imitation, that it sets up pathologi%ing practices and normali%ing sciences in order to
produce and consecrate its on claim on originality and propriety, suggests that
heterose+ual performati!ity is beset by an an+iety that it can ne!er fully o!ercome7.that its
e.ort to become its on ideali%ations can ne!er be 3nally or fully achie!ed, and that it is
constantly haunted by that domain of se+ual possibility that must be e+cluded for
heterose+uali%ed gender to produce itself( )Bodies that Matter*.
). Performativity of *ender (drag) can %e su%versive. $8rag is sub!ersi!e to the
e+tent that it re9ects on the imitati!e structure by hich hegemonic gender is itself
produced and disputes heterose+uality"s claim on naturalness and originality( )Bodies that
Matter*.
+. But su%version through performance isn,t automatic or easy. -ndeed, Butler
complains that people ha!e misread her boo/ Gender Trouble. $The bad reading goes
something li/e this: - can get up in the morning, loo/ in my closet, and decide hich gender
- ant to be today. - can ta/e out a piece of clothing and change my gender, styli%e it, and
then that e!ening - can change it again and be something radically other, so that hat you
get is something li/e the comodi3cation of gender, and the understanding of ta/ing on a
gender as a /ind of consumerism. . . . &treating' gender deliberately, as if it"s an object out
there, hen my hole point as that the !ery formation of subjects, the !ery formation of
persons, presupposes gender in a certain aythat gender is not to be chosen and that
,performati!ity" is not radical choice and its not !oluntarism . . . ;erformati!ity has to do
ith repetition, !ery often the repetition of oppressi!e and painful gender norms . . . This is
not freedom, but a 6uestion of ho to or/ the trap that one is ine!itably in( )inter!ie ith
0i% 1ot% in Artforum). Butler also rites that $it seems to me that there is no easy ay to
/no hether something is sub!ersi!e. <ub!ersi!eness is not something that can be
gauged or calculated . . . - do thin/ that for a copy to be sub!ersi!e of heterose+ual
hegemony it has to both mime and displace its con!entions( )inter!ie ith 0i% 1ot% in
Artforum*.