Grecia Hernandez
September 07, 2010
PS 110
Essentialist Claims Disable Effective Politics
Feminism is supposed to open new possibilities in the world of politics. According to Judith Butler, these possibilities are only possible through a certain deconstruction of categories that are based on essentialist claims. Benhabib’s understanding of feminism and the politics it should seek are fundamentally rooted in the socially and foundational constructed concepts of self, subject and agency. The main debate between the two philosophers comes from their different versions of what agency is. Butler’s account of gender performativity enables a destabilization of gender categories/norms and puts forth a convincing conception of agency through the process of contestation, reconstruction and resignification. Benhabib however, falls short in opening new doors for feminist politics and instead falls into the same trap of putting forth a subject or self before the doing of politics which only limits and constrains the advancements that feminism seeks.
A central key to understanding “Gender Trouble,” is Butler's account of gender performativity and what it means to learn one’s gender. In her view, gender is not something that is natural it is rather a doing of gestures, of bodily acts that have through time, been rooted in some feminine or masculine identity. One learns to perform their gender through the socially constructed actions pertaining to that specific gender. The doing of gender is what creates the inner gender identity that is believed to be natural. She explains that it is through the repetition of bodily acts, gestures and desires that the production of gender is made and then it is internalized in its belief that it is a natural substance, “Acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body … Such acts, gestures enactments generally construed, are performative …” (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 185). What is being argued is that there is no naturalness to be found in gender identity. The acts and bodily gestures that seek to compose a gender identity are forged; they’re nothing but fabrications of social discourses and bodily signs with no “natural” foundation (Butler, 185).
Gender performativity is significant to Butler’s argument because the grounds for any identity to be a natural one are eliminated: gender has no ontological status. This explanation is extremely important for the kind of politics that could emerge from Butler’s account. With an elimination of an ontological status of an identity, the emergence of new discourses is enabled. “That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality. This also suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of social discourse and [used as] public regulation, (Butler, 186). Gender performativity has produced an illusion of an interior core, merely to organize and regulate society and politics. In other words it has fabricated and placed heterosexuality as the privileged norm and has excluded those that fall outside this norm. This is problematic for the kind of politics feminism should seek because the presumption that a specific gender identity is natural render some lives unintelligible. If there is an established identity as the “norm” then the politics that emerge from that are tainted by the very cultural constructions feminism seeks to be liberated from.
Butler’s account of gender performativity avoids falling into the trap of conceiving of cultural construction in terms of either free will or determinism in that no theory of the self is given. There is no “self” in Butler’s view, so nothing can be said to determine the self. Focus is placed on the subject and how it is produced. The subject is a category made through language and so is completely different from conceptions of the “self” (Feminist Contentions, 135). Gender performativity is not a behaviorist model and does not seek to determine anything: “A performative act is one which brings into being or enacts that which it names, and so marks the constitutive or productive power of discourse … [When] words engage actions or constitute themselves a kind of action, they do this not because they reflect the power of an individual’s will or intention, but because they draw upon and reengage conventions …” (Feminist Contentions, 134). To clarify, the subject is distinct from the self, and what Butler seeks to understand is how this subject is produced. The notion of a “self,” has no place in Butler’s account of gender performativity and therefore cannot be said to be determined by anything. Free will or anything else that is internal cannot determine how society will perceive or judge that individual. Society will judge based on how well a gender identity is performed.
Seyla Benhabib’s account of agency requires a concept of the “self,” and of free will, this is because politics require agents in order to be autonomous. Therefore she finds many issues with Butler’s account of gender performativity. However, Benhabib fails to notice that Butler does not offer a theory of the “self” and that for Butler the subject is distinct from the self proposed by Benhabib. Benhabib’s issue with Butler’s account of gender performativity is: “I doubt whether Butler’s performative theory of the constitution of gender identity can do justice to the complexities of the ontogenetic origins of gender identity in the human person on the one hand, and whether this view can anticipate, indicate a new configuration of subjectivity (Benhabib, Feminist Contentions, 108). In Benhabib’s view, Butler’s gender performativity has failed to give the possibility of agency or self-reflexivity, which is needed to determine, “What mechanisms and dynamics are involved in the developmental process through which the human infant becomes a distinct self with the ability to speak its language and the ability to participate in [society]” (Benhabib, Feminist Contentions, 109). This is why Benhabib is so critical of Butler’s conception of the subject but she does not realize the distinction made by Butler in her explanation of what it means to constitute a subject and how it is distinct from a concept of a “self.”
The distinction between what it means to be constituted and what it means to be determined is made in Gender Trouble in the discussion of signification and is crucial to understanding Butler’s argument. Butler states, “When the subject is said to be constituted, that means simply that the subject is a consequence of certain rule-governed discourses that govern the intelligible invocation of identity. The subject is not determined by the rules through which it is generated because signification is not a founding act …” (Butler, 198). Benhabib does not understand this distinction however and so misunderstands the entire account put forth by Butler on gender performativity. Butler’s argument is that Benhabib (in misunderstanding gender performativity) has made the mistake of repositioning the subject behind the deed and consequently reduced gender performativity to a theatrical performance; she assumed that there was an actor behind the performance (Lecture, 09/08). “The category of ‘intention,’ indeed, the notion of ‘the doer’ will have its place, but this place will no longer be behind the deed as its enabling source. If the subject—a category within language and, hence, distinct from what Benhabib will call a ‘self’—is performatively constituted, then it follows that this will be a constitution in time, and change the ‘I’ and ‘we’ will be neither fully determined by language …” (Butler, Feminist Contentions, 135).
Butler argues that for Benhabib to place the doer before the deed is to fall into the same trap that so many other feminists do and therefore fails to enable the politics needed for feminism. To assume or claim that any identity (be it gender, racial or ethnic) has some essentialist foundation is extremely dangerous for politics. This because when such a claim or assumption is made, it risks becoming a normative category. Normative categories then create serious issues for those who fall outside of the norm, it excludes through its exclusionary practices (Lecture, 09/01). It is important to clarify that Butler’s goal is not to eliminate the subject entirely but to interrogate it and question how it came to be produced. She believes that there is no state of nature, or any natural state of being (Death of Man) and that everything society knows is culturally constructed. The subject cannot displace itself far enough from the very thing that produces it so if there is a self, it is not natural or pure. Essentialist claims should have no place in politics, according to Butler because it creates exclusionary categories. If any politics should emerge from feminism, there needs to be a deconstruction of the very subject of feminism, and of the categories it seeks to represent.
Deconstructing the subject of feminism in Butler’s view is required in order to help realize the radical democratic impulse of feminist politics. This requires a destabilization of normative categories. Butler’s account of drag as a subversive bodily act is important because it is through such acts that the destabilization of norms can occur. In Gender Trouble, Butler explains drag as an imitation of gender: “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency” (Butler, 187). The denaturalization of sex and gender occurs in drag’s performance of a feminine identity, an identity believed to be “natural” or “inherent.” Drag exposes gender identities as false, and easily replicated. Drag destabilizes the idea that a true, natural gender identity is possible. It mocks the very idea of an imagined identity (Lecture, 09/02). This sort of deconstruction undermines the categories put forth by norms and enables the reestablishment of new categories that remain open to contestation; open to new interpretations so as to avoid exclusionary categories. This deconstruction is needed for feminist politics because in Butler’s view, feminist politics should question and contest the very basis of feminism and the goals it seeks to achieve. This questioning and contestation is done through deconstructing and destabilizing gender norms and is highly democratic because it doesn’t just assume, it questions and interrogates the way an identity or category comes into being.
For Butler, agency is found through the continuous contestation following the formations of categories and through resignification. “Paradoxically, the re-conceptualization of identity as an effect, that is, as produced or generated, opens up possibilities of ‘agency’ that are insidiously foreclosed by positions that take identity categories as foundational and fixed, (Butler, 201). For Butler, construction does not go against agency, she recognizes that it is required for politics: “[construction is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible,” (Butler, 201). Agency is also possible through resignification, or the repetition of new bodily acts and gestures. These new acts will require time in order for there to be a meaning cemented within them, but she allows for this possibility to occur.
Benhabib’s accounts of subject and agency have to do with the self and it is only through this stable subject that feminist politics can emerge. She criticizes Butler’s “Death of Subject, as incompatible with the goals of feminism. “The situated and gendered subject is heteronomously determined but still strives toward autonomy. I want to ask how in fact the very project of a female emancipation would even be thinkable without such a regulative principle of agency, autonomy and selfhood,” (Benhabib, Feminist Contentions, 21). She does not realize that Butler has put forth several accounts of agency (through the reconstruction of new categories, contestation and resignification), whether these accounts are easily accessible is hard to determine but their existence cannot be denied). Butler does not believe in the nature of man or the nature of a subject, and Benhabib takes this to mean that she wants to do away with the subject altogether.
Butler’s main goal is to deconstruct the essentialist claims that feminists have so often used to give their arguments credibility. She suggests that, “The identity categories often presumed to be foundational to feminist politics…. simultaneously work to limit and constrain the very cultural possibilities that feminism is supposed to open up,” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 201). She puts forth a more convincing account of agency through her explanation of drag and how it destabilizes gender identities as well as in her explanation of contestation and resignification. Benhabib’s account of agency while it is more accessible does not open up the kind of politics required for advancement. Butler’s account of agency is more difficult to fulfill and would take a lot of time, but it would fulfill feminism’s purpose.
Works Cited
Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser. Feminist Contentions. New York & London: Routledge, 1995. Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York & London: Routledge, 1990. Print.
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