Judith Butler’s article The psychic life of power was the most interesting from this week’s reading. The article in a way summarized the nature of relationship between us and the external power that in turn shape us and make us “perform” certain aspects of ourselves. Butler mentions, “Power that at first appears as external, pressed upon the subject, pressing the subject into subordination, assumes a psychic form that constitutes the subject’s self-identity” (Butler, 3). I find this fascinating. As Tauva mentioned in her post, is there nothing natural in individual’s identity? This question goes all the way back to Lacan’s argument that we form our identity in relationship to others. The mirror image has a lot of truth in it. We look into the mirror and find the “other” in that image. And as we live our lives, we continuously find the “others” images to shape ourselves. Even the others’ image seeps into our language. In Korea, many of the middle school and high school demand that they wear uniform. This uniform is a lot like the Japanese uniforms and Korean society has taken this image of their school uniform as our norm. A lot of Japanese language and music had become one with Korean language as well after the colonization. The external power had been in some ways, “internalized.” I agree with Tauva’s question: is there anything natural about identity and how it’s formed? Is identity a form of collage and performance we adapt from the external powers? I was also blown away by the idea of gender as an imitation of representation. Performing drag does not necessarily mean that you are homosexual and I think this was very true. Then in terms of assuming this “other” role, who can really say what is the true nature of someone’s identity or gender or sexuality? I also found it very interesting that even in homosexuality versus heterosexuality that power relationship is played to sustain each other’s identity. Butler argues, “For a gay or lesbian identity position to sustain its appearance as coherent, heterosexuality must remain in that rejected and repudiated place. Paradoxically, its heterosexual remains must be sustained precisely through insisting on the seamless coherence of a specifically gay identity” (Butler, 149). The power and the subject intertwine and form this strange coexistence that creates each other’s existence and help sustain it. I see an endless circle of repetition. But in a way, a very fascinating repetition.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Power and Identity, Gender and Performance
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I just have to tack on to your concluding positing of Butler here, Heejung, because you point out something I hadn't really recognized/realized before reading your blog: the reinforcing quality of the hetero-/homosexuality binary. We've talked a lot about the deconstruction of binaries, whether or not the center holds, etc., and I am just wondering what happens when you deconstruct this particular binary, or, has Anzaldua, to chose an example from someone we've studied, already done this? Is sexual orientation an inherent category of definition--an identity, even, perhaps--which does not need a center to define it/give it meaning (but then again, male/female is often presented as a binary, and not an inherent anatomical difference)? Is such a thing as an "inherent binary," as I am labeling it, even possible? Can a binary not have a center and simply exist alone? What is the center, here? What entity cements the definitions of hetero-/homosexuality, and the sustaining (to appropriate your word, Heejung) relationship the terms have with one another? Do they need each other to define themselves (as Western thought suggests with binaries)? Who says, this is what straight identity looks like, this is what gay identity looks like; This is masculine identity, this is feminine identity; this is Californian identity, this is Georgian, etc.? Individuals themselves, mass culture, ISAs, all the above? Everything is both/and, right?
ReplyDeleteTo go back to the question I've posed before, are there natural, inherent aspects of our identity, or is everything artificial, constructed--performed, even? I am not purposely trying to disappoint Prof. Goodwin here by not taking a position (again), but my questions are truly questions which I don't have even subjective answers to. This is the closest I can come: I want to believe that an individual's identity does not rely on the identity of someone else's (or a group of someone elses') to define itself against, but what is something if at least part of its definition does not rely on what it is not? But I hate definition based on lack (maybe that's me being a woman rebelling against Freud). I personally don't want to be defined by what I am not. And, ultimately for me, binaries do not allow for the "gray" areas inbetween (I am going back to Anzaldua again with her concept of a middle ground, or a borderland). Who wants to live in a black-and-white world that doesn't leave room for the legitimization of gray areas?