In “Performative Acts and Gender
Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” Judith Butler
follows up on her thought in publications such as "Gender Trouble", "Critically Queer" and "Bodies that Matter". Butler's agenda is that gender roles are assigned
through the "performance" of socially sanctioned practices (from the
way we dress to the way we move all the way to the way our social position is perceived).
For Butler, one is not born a man or a woman, one simply acts as
a man or a woman act. Gender, in other words, is constituted through performance
and it is perfomativity that governs gender division.
This gender division is for Butler the result
of a binary system that also bears within it power relations. In other words,
roughly speaking, the female "performance" is of subordination to
men. On the other hand, binary oppositions always have liminal spaces between
them and this is where subversiveness can come into play (see also Butler's
"Subversive Bodily Acts"). Since gender identity is the result of
social construction (or constitution in Butler's words) mediated through acts,
it follows that acts can also serve to challenge these social constructions.
Social expectations and taboos confine the acts that we perform ("you
can't dress a baby boy pink and a baby girl blue"), but these can also be
challenged thus undercutting these constricting social norms. This makes
performance in Butler's eyes not just a site for gender oppression but also a
potential form gender resistance an liberation.
Somewhat similar to Erwing Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Butler sees to social arena as a
theatrical stage on which we all play our assigned roles. Much like Foucault's
concept of Discourse in writings like "The
Subject and Power", Butler sees our gender roles as part of a discursive
array through which power relations operate. To be sure, Butler therefore
rejects any existentialist "natural" view of gender. Butler's essential
point in "“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" is that acts
assigned with gender significance (like wearing make-up, for example) should
not be treated as "natural" and that a careful critical scrutiny of
them can go a long political way for gender equality and liberation.
Additional books by Butler to check out:
