+
From: "Gregory A. Coolidge" <gcoolidg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 13:25:42 -0700 (PDT)
you are quite correct on two accounts. Butler does deny that there is
anything
which could be called the nature of Woman, and she clearly is, despite
her denial, a post-structuralist. What makes her a post-structuralist is that
she appropriates the non-essential, socially constructed subject of Foucault
(the archetype post-structuralist) as the foundation of her theoretical
apparatus. This is quite apparent in 'Bodies That Matter", where she
pays homage to Foucualt, in the introduction, and where she strongly
maintains that there is absolutely no essential humanness which determines
one's sex. One's sex(identities, desires, behaviors) are entirely social
constructions (although one's sex is not the exact duplicate of any particualr
norms, practices, etc.). One's sex, is a unique combination of the discursive
elements that have fused, at any given moment(such creation is continuous),
to create a unique sexual subject (along with a gendered subject). To disagree
with an earlier post, 'fucking' (how one acts sexually, with whom, and for
what reasons) is a part of one's 'sex' (one's sexuality) that is created
as a material element within a body that is inundated by power. Butler
maintains that heterosexuality (fucking only those of the opposite sex) is
the dominant discursive formation in Western society, although it is not
complete in its hegemony, since many diverse sexualities reveal themselves
(are performed) within the formations of power.
Greg Coolidge
Univ. of Calif., Riverside