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p.14.Butler J. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1997.p.14.205Mcllvenny. P. Talking Gender and Sexuality. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002. p.153.206Mann B. Women's Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment. Oxford UniversityPress, 2006. p. 91.207Chambers S.A., Terrell C. Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics.
Routledge, 2008. p.155.208Butler J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. p.147.20453subvert these gender norms. For Butler, the "task is… how to repeat, or, indeed torepeat and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gendernorms that enable the repetition itself”209. The extent to which the subject hasagency to alter the norms is not clearly defined by Butler.
Salih in reviewingGender Trouble writes, "at times it sounds as though the subject she describes is infact trapped within a discourse it has no power to evade or to alter. In which case,“how to repeat” will already be determined in advance, and what looks like agencyis merely yet another effect of the law disguised as something different"210.By parody of "drag", Butler demands subversion of binaries of sex/gender orinterior/exterior.
Drag challenges any internal structure of heteronormative ideasascribing determined meanings to genders. As long as heteronormativity has thecentrality, the relation between the term "woman" as a signifier will be guaranteedwith fixed meanings, therefore the significations cannot be undermined. "There isneither a single nor a guaranteed way of contesting heteronormativity" 211. Thefixed significations assigned to genders as their normal and original meanings, indifferent times and spaces should be identified to be re-signified and subverted.The same way that Butler undermines the binaries of culture/nature, andsex/gender, in her book "The Psychic life of Power", she undermines the bordersbetween the conscious and unconscious, inner and outer, the norms and desires aswell as the subject and agency.
While social norms imply outside, psyche refers toinside "self-affection, seemingly consonant with the subject resistant toalienation"212. Psyche is not reduced to social, but stays in the mid-way betweensociety and unconscious. "Power is never merely a condition external or prior tothe subject, nor can it be exclusively identified with the subject"213.
The subject asthe site of this ambivalence sustains power through reiteration.209. Ibid. p.148.Salih S. Judith Butler. Routledge, 2002. p. 58.211Lloyd M. Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power and Politics. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2005. p.148.212Kirby V. Judith Butler: Live Theory. London: Bloomsbury Publication, 2006. p.121.213Butler J. The Psychic life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1997.p.16.21054Butler in response to Foucault's internalization and Althusser's interpellationholds that "passionate attachment" sets the process of subjection and it is a point ofdesire.
The child's attachment to its major caregiver is essential condition of itssurvival. "If the child is to persist in a psychic and social sense, there must bedependency and the formation of attachment: there is no possibility of not loving,where love is bound up with the requirements for life214. She maintains, “nosubject emerges without a 'passionate attachment’ to those on whom he or she isfundamentally dependent (even if that passion is ‘negative’ in the psychoanalyticsense)’’. Attachment that is essential for persistence entails individual's alienationfrom one's own desires.
"The desire to persist in one's own being requiressubmitting to a world of others that is fundamentally not one's own"215. Thisdependency provides the aspect of the subject related to subjugation.In this same way, we shape a passionate attachment to norms that promisesocial recognition and identification.
These attachments guarantee the survival ofsocial norm, at the heart of which lies heteronormativity.Though the dependency to the world of others guarantees the subject'ssurvival, the individual desires to return back to that attachment which isforeclosed. She has to break from this attachment to be accepted socially, whilealways desiring it. Actually, Butler is producing not binary worlds, but dialecticsof alienated world saturated with norms and desired world.
In fact, norms produceour desires. The foreclosed norms are desired more. The subject's desire forattachment, while sustains him as a subordinate subject, triggers his desires forunaccepted norms. "To the extent that norms operate as psychic phenomena,restricting and producing desire, they also govern the formation of the subject andcircumscribe the domain of the livable sociality"216.214.
Ibid. p.8.. Ibid. p.28.216Butler J. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1997.p.21.21555To desire the condition of one’s own subordination is thus required topersist as oneself".217 While, subjugation enters psyche, the desire to thatpassionate attachment opposes the norms. Therefore, psyche remains a point oftension between subjection and agency.
The norms, being psychic, are vulnerablebecause of the desire to escape alienation and return to the individual's own beingwhich is not populated by other's thoughts. At the same time the norms have to befollowed because they promise the subject's identity. Subjection "allows subjectsto be recognized; and provides them with an entry to, and a narrational trajectorywithin, the wider sociocultural field"218."The subject is preoccupied with what is behind it, the subject draws itscontent from this capacity to turn back, by which it is led to make its own the lawwhich is imposed on it from without"219.
The subject, while under subjugation,reflexively claims his own dependency.Butler's views on the interaction of agent with the discursive structure seemto be associated with Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. The affinity betweenGiddens' structuration and Butler's performativity is mainly evident in theiremphasis on the interaction of agents and the structures, and on the repeatedpractices of agents, as well as on the fluidity of both the social structures and theidentity of human agents.The dualistic relationship of structure and agency is established in Giddens'theory of structuration.
It will be used as a supportive theoretical frameworkthrough the present thesis. Structuration theory "is concisely defined as thereconciliation of actions and collectivities"220. It is a bridge reconciling thetraditional split between agent and structure. Neither the subjects are determinedby objective social structure, nor is the structure the product of human agents'subjective interpretations. Rather, there is a mutual interaction between them.217. Ibid.
p.9.Brady A., Schirato T. Understanding Judith Butler. London: SAGE Publication, 2011. p.26..219Macherey P. ut of Melancholia: Notes on Judith Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection.Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society,16 (1), 2004, pp.7-17.220Giddens A., Turner J.H. Social Theory Today. California, Stanford University Press, 1987. p. 274.21856Both Butler and Giddens share the idea that the subject being produced by thediscourse has agency to transform that very discourse. Both theorists emphasizethe role of the subjects' action in reproduction of new norms and thereby newsocial system. According to Giddens, "A social practice plays a part inreproduction of a wider social system"221.
Parallel to Giddens who maintains, "Theproduction of a society is a skilled performance"222, Butler emphasizes on thesignificance of "performance" in subversion of the prevailing norms. As a subjectwithin the net of power relations, they enjoy the agency to change the existingnorms.According to Giddens, agent is "an active subject situated in time and place.Such a conception of agency links it to social structure"223.
"Structures shape socialinteractions by providing the rules and resources that allow agents to act". Rulesprovide the agents a potential of what to do and how to do. Resources are "thecapacities that human agents may be able to use for achieving their purposes ofsocial interaction"224. Although according to Giddens, the subject's action isdefined by the rules and resources of the structure, he believes in "two-way" powerrelations. Based on Giddens' conceptualization of "two-way" power relations, theactor though in subordinate position is in power relations.
"The very fact ofinvolvement in that relationship gives him or her a certain amount of power overthe other"225.Agents use the rules and resources of structure and in repeating these actionsreinforce the structure. Giddens holds that structure "consists in the persistence orrepetition of behaviors" of the actors. These actions reproduce the structure. Theessential feature of the agent is reflexivity. That is, the actors routinely monitor the221Giddens A. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis.University of California Press, 1979. p.211.222Giddens A.
New rules of sociological method: a positive critique of interpretative sociologies. The University ofMichigan, 1976. p.15.223Tucker K. Anthony Giddens and Modern Social Theory. SAGE Publications Ltd, 1999. p. 80.224Bryant C., Jary D. Anthony Giddens: Critical Assessments, London and New York: Routledge, Volume 1, 1977.P. 356.225Giddens A. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis.University of California Press, 1979. p.6.57flow of their activities and expect others to do the same for their own.
They alsomonitor aspects of the context"226. The reflexivity of the knowledgeable agentsleads to actions that are transformed and therefore the structure is transformed aswell, proving the fluidity of structure and identity of subjects.1.3. The role of Islam in constructing Iranian women's cultural identityIn Iran, religion has played a central role throughout history and mainly incurrent Islamic Republic of Iran. It pervades the cultural and political structuresand constitutes the framework of ideas. Since religious institutions and authoritiesinfluence social and political arenas of contemporary Iran, it is certainly bound upwith relations of power.
Therefore, religion is one of the boundary marker sourcesthat identifies in-groups and out-groups, the accepted normal subjects from defiantabjects. The role of religion, as a dominant logos in constituting the meanings andconsequently in constructing the identities cannot be underestimated. Here, it isexplored how Iranian Islamic discourse defined women and their place in society.To illuminate the issue, Quranic statements are referred to demonstrate the originalview of Islam on women.
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