Judith Butlers 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination' Essay

Judith Butlers 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination' - Essay Example She is not a feminist. She departs from feminist theory to do other things. Drawing ideas from other writers and philosophers, her methods are rich and interesting and many feminists are struck and excited about her work. But other writers and thinkers see her ideas as taking away from the real and practical needs of women. Discussion Butler (1989) tries to ask essential questions. For example, she asks, once the subject "outs" her- or himself, is that person "free of its subjection and finally in the clear'?† (308). Or does the the subjection continue? But what does the following mean, characteristic of Butler's writing: "Can sexuality even remain sexuality once it submits to a criterion of transparency and disclosure .." (309) For something to determine itself, some other must exist to make this determination, and what is it this other? This other is a "prior to" and it is the most interesting thing which Butler says, I believe. Her thought is easily confusing unless one grab s hold of that idea. She is looking for the prior and I believe she is asking does whatever the prior is establish sexuality or is the prior already a sexually determined object. There is a danger that coming out "reinscribes the power domains that it resists" and that it is part of the "heterosexual matrix that it seeks to displace" (309). One must try to locate the "framework that privileges heterosexuality as origin". Butler would like to use the concept of the speech act (from philosopher John Austin) to say the way one creates being is the way in which one may create herself or himself. There is a difficulty perhaps always in this activity as one must ask who it doing the creating? From what position is the creating done, that of homosexuality or heterosexuality? I think it is important for Butler, because she wants to produce an original, defensible "I' that is thoroughly lesbian or homosexual, without the pejorative connotation. But that is her very problem. the pejorative co nnotation is already tied into the words and their origin from the heterosexual point of view. Butler would like to reach a non-reflexive position that perhaps is neither heterosexual nor homosexual. Butler has to establish, more or less a "private language", one that is not derived from the present language, because the present language already has the power relationships of sexual identities established in it - that is a man, and that is a woman. But Butler seeks "that grid of cultural intelligibility that regulates the real and the nameable' (312). 'Lesbian' exists as an 'abiding falsehood' in present discourse Hence as a falsehood, the being of lesbianism is denied, it has been erased from discourse. She and others must place it back, but it cannot be done under present 'existing regulatory regimes'. These regimes had wrongly created the category in the first place. There must be a prior for Butler. For example there is no prior to 'gender', hence the concept of ‘drag†™ itself is an original model, â€Å"gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original â€Å" (her italics 333). Butler goes further and even makes heterosexuality a model for which there is no original. Her supporting writers then say that concepts of sexuality are socially constructed and not original forms that are necessary in some accepted way. She argues, "...there are no secondary consequences which retrospectively confirm the originality" of the original model (313). Because heterosexuality must always be in the act of replicating and emulating itself, there is always the risk that it will lose itself. I have a friend who says he must always prove to himself ‘not homosexual' by always repeating it or comparing himself to