диссертация (1169135), страница 12
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Ibid. p. 16.18249subject simultaneously emerges as a ‘site’) … The subject is the linguisticoccasion for the individual to achieve and reproducelinguisticconditionofintelligibility,theits existence and agency. No individual becomes asubject without first becoming subjected or undergoing "subjectivation"188. In thissense subjection allows the individual be recognized in sociocultural field.Subjection to gender norms promises one's identity. "Yet because anatomicallysexed bodies do not provide a permanent foundation of gender, this process of selfunderstanding and self-representation must recur constantly189.Butler argues that gender is product of performative actions, yet it does notrefer to performing a single action.
“Gender is the repeated stylization of the body,a set of repeated acts within a hugely rigid regulatory frame that congeal over timeto produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being”190.Butler denies the existence of any actor behind action or any performerbehind performance. "gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subjectwho might be said to pre-exist the deed”191. This view refers to poststructuralistidea that there is no identity outside of language in the sense that not only one'sidentity does not originate from her essence in pre linguistic stage, but also thediscourse produces the identities, which it names as intelligible representing thevery discourse. In Butler's words the consequence is that "bodies are producedwhich signify that law on and through the body”192.
The subject as the effect ofdiscourse is constituted by gender acts that are inseparable from the body. Theseacts seem so natural and essential to the body that their imitative nature is notthought. Nevertheless, drawing a distinction between gender acts and the body ofthe performer one might suspect the naturalness of these acts. With the example of'drag queen", Butler displays how the artificial and imposed genders that we wearin surface, look as our natural identity.
While drag queen is a man, he wear188. Ibiid. Pp10-11.. Turner W.B. A Genealogy of Queer Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. p.110.190Butler J. Gender trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. p.33.191Ibid. p. 25.192Ibid.
pp. 134-135.18950women's cloth and performs the imposed practices. The biological male bodyembodies femininity through well-rehearsed performance and imitation. “Inimitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—aswell as its contingency”193. Unlike performances of drag queen, who imitates apre-written act, the subjects imitate gender acts, which are themselves, copyaiming to maintain the culture and the survival of the subject within it.By "performances", Butler means, "reenactments of prior performanceswhich are socially recognizable and normatively re-enforced with a culture"194.More precisely, performativity is "reit-erative and citational practice by whichdiscourse produces the effects that it names"195.Butler, in order to clarify the role of "citational politics", gives the exampleof midwife crying, "It's a girl".
Through this "performative statement", the midwifeassigns girling and femininity to the newborn and produces that which shenames196, and curtails the production of any other genders.Butler derives "performative citationality" from Derrida's notion ofiterability. By iterability, Derrida means that "any form of words used inperformative utterance (e.g., I pronounce you man and wife) can be used in morethan one, indeed in innumerable situations… [hence], iterability is a fundamentalfeature of performative"197.
In this same way, Butler believes that the categories ofgender identity are constantly recited in boundless social situations to remainnormative. The recitation of gendered categories in performative utterance acrosscontexts values the normativity of those identities. "In reporting on the words andimages of others in evaluative utterances normative identity categories and culturalvalue discourses are recited or resisted198. The citation of certain cultural codes in193Ibid. p.
137.Sherlock S. The Performativity of Value: On the Citability of Cultural Commodities. Lexington Books, 2013. P.36195Butler, J. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of "sex". New York: Routledge, 1993. p. 3.196. Ibid. p. 7197Balfour I. Late Derrida. Duke University Press, 2007 p.229.198Sherlock S. The Performativity of Value: On the Citability of Cultural Commodities. Lexington books, 2013.
P.35.19451everyday performances produces a subject in certain gender identity. The subject isnot confined to stable identity imposed by authoritative discourse. Beingconstructed as an effect of citationality, the subject has the potential of alterationthrough different recitations giving different signification to gendered identity thatdisturbs the current signification. The construction of gender is in the process ofrepetition. "It is inevitable that each subsequent citation will diverge slightly fromthe previous one and it is this which makes gender transformation possible"199.Subjects' citation of gendered identity in daily socializations conveys thesignification of gender through the discourse.
"The meaning of genders changeover time because no repetition of the signs that convey gender meaning canremain identical to a pervious repetition"200."Subversion does not happen automatically and its effects cannot bepredicted in advance…any… practice of subversion, must target the coherence ofsex/gender desire and undermine the very internal/external distinction ofsex/gender201.Reiterations are capable of rematerializing the imposed regulations. Thus,she emphasizes on the necessity of "reiteration" of materialization to avoidquestioning of the hegemonic domain- according to Butler, the hegemony ofheterosexuality.
The same way that recitations establish authoritative norms, theyhave potential of subverting the established norms.Butler writes, "The one who acts, acts precisely to the extent that he or she isconstituted as an actor, and hence, operating within a linguistic field of enablingconstraints from the outset"202. This seemingly paradoxical statement about the"enabling constraints" is the basis of Butler's views on agency. The subject gainssubjectivity through being addressed, hailed and recited by others. The subjectproduced by discourse is enabled by that very discourse when the discourse199Mcllvenny.
P. Talking Gender and Sexuality. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002. p.153.Turner W.B. A Genealogy of Queer Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. p.110.201Chambers S.A., Terrell C. Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics. Routledge, 2008. p.153.202Butler J. Excitable speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. 1997. P.16.20052addresses her as a social actor and she acquires social existence within therelations of power. She is able to use that speech against its original purposes,”therefore reconfiguring the “chain of resignification whose origin and end remainunfixed and unfixable”203."The subject is itself a site of …ambivalence in which the subject emergesboth as the effect of a prior power and as the condition of possibility for a radicallyconditioned form of agency"204. The subject in the process of subordination isconditioned by the potentials of agency.
The subject as the site of prior powerrefers to before, at the same time the subject as the effect of power refers tounpredictable future. In this break of before and after, there remains no presence.In fact, the signification of subject that is gained through reiteration might differfrom that intended by power. "Since discourse is not original, it will always escapethe complete control of the intentional, speaking subject"205."Because there is no guarantee that each new speaking of woman, forexample, will re-inscribe past significations, because a new speaking of womaninhibits a new space and time and new context; agency is possible206.
In thisindeterminacy of chain of significations, the subject enjoys agency to take the riskof reinterpreting the term of women; a re-signification that is neither the priormeanings attributed to the term, nor does it convey the future expectations."Heteronormativity will be subverted- the norm will be gradually weakened,undermined, eroded from within- whenever the presumption of heterosexuality nolonger holds207.However, “Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary sceneof agency”208, the subject, constituted within the discourse enjoys agency to203. Ibid.
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