WEEK 3 Butler AND Zizek Critically Queer - Copy PDF

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Readings areJUDITH BUTLER- CRITICALLY QUEER & SLAVOJ ZIZEK- FANTASY AS A POLITICAL CATEGORY. Exploring Butler's theory of identity as performative, power of language and its transformative power, identity as interpellation, queering spaces, Zizek's ideology of the paradox of truth. Relating Butler a...

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WEEK 3 EN122 MODES OF READING LECTURE JUDITH BUTLER- CRITICALLY QUEER & SLAVOJ ZIZEK- FANTASY AS A POLITICAL CATEGORY PERFORMING IDENTITY AND POLITICS JUDITH BUTLER • •

One of the founding figures in queer theory and post-structuralist feminist theory How identities are gendered and the process it comes to be

SLAVOJ ZIZEK • • • •

Maverick philosopher therefore can be quite shocking but still give some useful insights into politics and culture Mostly concentrated on popular culture and ideology eg film, advertising Relationship between power and desire- how they work together in terms of the ways in which we understand ideologies and how it works today Eclectic in his theories- Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, visual theory- therefore huge range of influences in his work

BUTLER- EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE • • •

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Language has material effects on our lives, culture and politics eg speech/discourse has the power to injure bodies Idea also explored with Stuart Hall- language and discourse we participate in has real and actual effects Draws from J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts: “I pronounce you man and wife” (invokes convention through repetition) or “Long live the Queen”- authoritative speech carries an invocation of convention- draws on certain conventions that have been the norm Brings into effect the institution of marriage, family, monarchy, state power etc History and social context transmute speech into action (the power of discourse)- words have effects in whatever claims they may be functioning Transforming terms of engagement: queer and black Changing the terms of engagement because words have effects and connotations- eg definition of queer has been transformed historically Queer- from abjection and shaming via activism it now has a set of affirmative meaningsnow due to LGBT movements, queer has a positive meanings Emphasis on the language of politics Shift in the conception of black identity from the 1970s to the 1990s- different definitions to signify blackness ‘Blackness’ had different meanings and connotations in certain historical periods, signifies different political meanings in historical junctures From unifying framework across differences (common experience of racism and marginalization) to a disaggregation of interests and identities Words- not stable entities and have in fact a complex relationship to meaning and production of reality

BUTLER- IDENTITY AS PERFORMATIVE •

Exclusionary and freedom-giving (“a necessary error”)

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Identity- not something we are born with Working against what she calls an existential argument that states we are born in a particular gender/racial identity Identity is something we are constantly producing – we take on certain identities in different moments in life even though we know those identities don’t entirely contain the complexities of our beings That way of expressing your identity doesn’t represent the multitudes of selves we have therefore not exclusionary- we are performative beings while having its limitations at the same time No prior self- the performance itself constitutes the self Example of drag performances- exposes the naturalisation of gender norms through miming and hyperbole without necessarily subverting them Man taking on a hyperbolic femininity- in doing so, exposes masculinity and femininity as constructs- we can take on anyone

Judith Butler- “Your Behaviour Creates Your Gender” YouTube video • • • •

We have taken on a role, acting/role-playing in some way For something to be performative suggests it produces a certain kind of effects We act as if being a man or woman is an internal reality/ fact about us but in actuality it is a phenomenon that is constantly produced all the time Controversial but that is her claim

BUTLER- IDENTITY AS INTERPELLATION • • • • • • •

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Speech and discourse have real material effects- linked to the idea of gender as a performance Butler and Zizek draw from Marxist theorist Althusser: The ‘I’ or our subjectivity only comes into being when we are hailed, called, named Franz Fanon- experience of walking down the street and being called a “black man”- became aware of his identity and subjectivity as a black man when called We think of our subjectivity in certain ways because we are named as such Social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject “It’s a girl”- naming/calling becomes the moment of identity formation- linked to the heterosexualising law- girling process- citing the norm in order to be a viable subjectnewborn being named as a girl is already interpolated in her gender identity Gender the very first thing labelled to a baby – why? Controversy surrounding Canadian couple who didn’t want to know the gender of their baby Allows Butler to argue that femininity is thus not the product of choice but the forcible citation of a norm (power) Recognition forms that subject- what individuates us So there is a instability and incompleteness of subject formation due to impossibility of a full recognition Name calling- reduces someone from the complexities in the process of their identity formation Birth of an infant already forces her into a normative gender identity

BUTLER IN RELATION TO BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA • • • • • •

Novel draws attention to identity as performance- theatre as a metaphorical and literal figure, acting Identity- performance and interpellation- named and hailed as subjects- Indians, Pakis etc Characters act out parts or want certain parts both on the stage and in real life Question of resistance: are we imprisoned in the naming or can we resist? How can we forge alternative/non-formative identities? Real-life consequences- amount of violence in present times eg bullying in schools for boys not acting as boys or girls not being feminine enough Diverging from these norms pay huge price- structural violence for those who oppose normative gender identities

ZIZEK- PARADOX OF TRUTH • • • • • •

Post- truth: word of the year in 2016 Living in an era of post-truth Definition- ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief Idea of the real and the truth that Zizek looks through the lens of fantasy and ideology is actually playing out in front of us Alternative facts: Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway Alternative facts- falsehood or truths?

IDEOLOGY • • • •

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How do we understand ideology? ‘False consciousness’- classical definition in the Marxist sense Imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence (Althusser) Eg American Dream- powerful hegemonic ideology, whatever point of the social hierarchy you occupy is imaginary to the reality of America- creating the idea that America is the land of freedom Ideology is the world we create around us What kind of the world are we creating? We are inscribed into ideology through complex processes of recognition Ideology brings to the fore inherent antagonisms materialised in external structures Examples of utility/the everyday that we think are beyond ideology in fact present patterns of ideology/deeply ideological- the feature that effectively sustains identification…is not the obvious one, the big ‘official’ insignia, but a small feature, even the one of taking a distance toward the official insignia Ideology found in places we don’t expect them to be in – ways universities are laid out, how buildings are built Therefore ideologies exceeds politics-“So, paradoxically, the dangerous ingredient of Nazism is not its ‘utter politicization’ of the entire social life, but on the contrary, the suspension of the political via the reference to an extra- ideological kernel, much stronger than in a ‘normal’ democratic political order” (703) Zizek argues that the way in which ideological structures function is not necessarily where we are looking for them eg music that Hitler loved was not the obvious authoritarian music

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We have to look in the ‘somewhere else’ rather than the obvious structures of power – links to fantasy and desire as the space of the other where the process of ideology is actually carried out Trump’s Wall- obvious example of power being exerted

STRUCTURE OF FANTASY • • • •

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Not interested in obvious examples but in marginal spaces Ideology as distance between our symbolic universe and fantasmatic inner life “Fantasy…constitutes our desire, provides its co-ordinates- i.e., literally ‘teaches us how to desire’” The desire staged in a fantasy is ultimately not the (fantasizing) subject’s own desire but the desire of his/her Other: fantasy is an answer to the question, “What am I for the Other? What does the Other want from me?” “The relationship between fantasy and the horror of the Real that it conceals is much more ambiguous than it may seem: fantasy conceals this horror, yet at the same time it creates what it purports to conceal, its ‘repressed’ point of reference”

ZIZEK IN RELATION TO BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA • • • •

Thatcherism as ideology- real and fastasmatic ‘Real’ effects- dismantling of the welfare state, free markets, controls on immigration, deregulation Zizek interests in the ‘fantasmatic’- notions such as tradition, nationalism, racism, homophobia- where do these structures of feelings come from? What is the relationship between the real and the fantasmatic? Kureishi’s novel interrogates the conjoining of these two notions in which ideology takes place...