Performative Acts And Gender Constitution Summary

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Performance exists first, then gender. Gender does not occur from an internal essence. We as a society, are unable to acknowledge that we’re performing our gender, we believe it’s inherent. Performance is learned by what is already historically dictated as gender and is acted out by the individual through performance of the body. The act of doing one 's body comes from history that is shared and developed over time. Butler argues that gender is

Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” calls for a new way to view sex and gender. Butler argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo”. In this case, gender is not constituted by what one is, but rather what one does; the performative acts constitute gender. In other words, gender is not the starting place; it is an identity repeatedly constructed throughout time. Butler is trying to show us a feminist perspective of sex and gender. She attempts to follow Beauvoir’s path in a fight against society norms.

The Study of Performativity In Judith Butler’s opinion, the gender identity is created through a series of performances. The ideal form of gender identity should be clear and definite which has regulated all the qualities that each gender should have. For example, a man's body should be massive, his thoughts should be logical; the way he thinks and takes actions should have a clear determination. On the other hand, a woman’s body should be exquisite and a woman needs to be sentimental and emotional. When she is faced with difficulties, she is always undecided to take any action.

Judith Butler questions the belief that behaviors of either sex are natural. She proposes a rather radical theory that gender is performative and that sex is constructed. When gender is being performed, it means that someone would take on a role, acting in such a way that gives society the idea of their gender and constructs part of their identity. To be performative means that we produce a series of effects.Gender is constructed and is not in any way connected ‘naturally’ to sex.

Gender identity and its roles in 17th and 19th century England were regarded as rigid fact — definite and unyielding. The adherence to these social protocols was of utmost importance. Masculinity was viewed as being dominant, assertive, and bold, whereas femininity involved beauty, obedience, and chastity. The theatre became a method of challenging this rigid social concept. Both William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest explore these public values through their characters. Wilde and Shakespeare’s use of gender reversals satirize the traditions of social order, marriage, and gender responsibilities at the time, thereby revealing that gender is not absolute.

Spargo goes on to address some of the criticisms of Foucault and how these failing have been addressed as queer theory has developed. The most significant of these criticism as addressed by Spargo was Foucault’s focus on masculine sexualities . Spargo explores the relationship of the production of sexuality to gender through a discussion of Judith Butler. Butler argues that gender is produced and understood via cultural discourse in the same way as sexuality . Gender according to Butler is

Gender is defined in Undoing Gender in an act of improvising within a scene of constraint, where one that is always within a social context, and never outside of the ideology. Butler expresses that Undoing Gender expresses an understanding of how “restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life” might be undone. She stresses throughout the reading that this process of undoing is not something that is negative or

Her essay deals with the conceptual presence of gender within society that functions as the primary element in expected behavioral roles. Drawing upon previous philosophic and psychoanalytic thought, Butler espouses a theory rooted in the concept of social agents that "constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all matter of symbolic social sign." (Butler 270) Butler asserts that gender is not based on an internal identity or self-definition, but rather on perceptory, reflective notions of performances. Gender itself, in its unstable temporality, is defined by Butler to be "an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts"--an ephemeral performance from which social constructs are formed. (Butler 270) In this analysis, Butler establishes the notion of gender as an abstracted, mass perception which is rendered concrete by the fact of its common acceptance. It is a shared reality of the public, it's existence is a consequence of society's mutual acknowledgment. In this light, Butler describes the concept as being purely temporal--the appearance and perception of gender constitutes its reality. As a result, the examination of gender construction is the examination of its performative, perception-based manifestation. Upon breaching the collective assumption of the actuality of gender, its mutual acceptability is undermined, rendered unstable, and therefore, non-existent.

“Performative utterances do not describe but perform the action they designate” (Culler 96), and the repetitive assertions from the white man placed upon the black man results in him being inferior. The white man’s performativity about Butler’s idea of gender trouble, that gender, sexuality and biological makeup are not correlated. It also refers to oppressions of genders that do not fit the norm of society. For Butler gender acts “as a strategy for survival within compulsory systems, gender is performative with

Therе arе mаny wаys in which tо exаmine the cоncept оf gеnder. Mаny pеоplе simplу detеrmine gеnder as a divisiоn intо mаle аnd femаle but it becоmеs mоre difficult with theоry. In Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution she says that gender is an act that is repeаted, reеnacted and re-еxperienced (Butler, 1988:906). It is a performance that is impоsed to individuаls by mаny outsidе sоurces thrоughout histоry such as the sоciety. She аlso аdds that sоciety mоlds us into how we view “men” and “women” shоuld act or behavе. We wеre raised to behаve in cеrtain wаys that оur pаrent’s beliеve were traits of a prоper lаdy or a gentlemаn becаuse they too, were rаised with the same understаndings.

In 1990 Judith Butler first published her book Gender Troubles, where she questions gender roles. Butler theorizes that gender, as in male and female, is a type of societal/gender colonialism created to keep people who do not fall within the gender roles from being part of the mainstream society. In her 1999 preface, in which she addresses the impact her book had in the decade since its original publication, Butler expresses the concern she had with the “heterosexual assumption in feminist literary theory (61).” Butler utilizes the works of other feminist philosophers to further demonstrate the inconsistency, and disconnect between fighting for women rights and fighting for human rights. Judith Butler makes an interesting argument on the failure to recognize the spectrum of gender, however, she makes a compelling argument on the use of language perpetuating a patriarchal society.

Juliet Mitchell concurs with Butler's view in her critique; Psycho-analysis and Feminism (1974), where she attempts to show that "gender is constructed rather than biologically necessitated" and sees importance be place upon identifying the "precise developmental moments of that construction in the history of gendered subjects." This is similar to Butlers demand for a genealogical inquiry into gender construction. Butler draws on Jean Paul Sartre's essentialism; "existence precedes essence", and Simone de Beauvoir's concept that "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman." Judith Sargent Murray argues that when born we are "tabula rasa"; a blank slate, therefore concurs with the idea that one is not born a woman; our gender is constructed. Donna Haraway adopts Murray's concept later, suggesting we rid of our cultural baggage and accept our identity's as hybrid. In her feminist discourse Butler maintains this idea that a sense of `womanness' is not prescribed at birth, but is in fact constructed by society through experience and life. Gender is not something you are but something you do; "gender, sexuality and the self do not exist before they are performed in a social context." Butler's `Gender Trouble' seeks to discover, however if there is "some commonality among "women."..independent of their subordination by hegemonic, masculinist cultures?" Butler questions if there are, perhaps certain natural elements that are "specifically

Gender performativity is related to performance and shares elements with it, but it has no subject. She explains, “The action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established” (178). Performativity creates a fictional reality in which gender and its roles are determined according to a men/women binary distinction. According to her, the category of Women from which the feminist struggle arises is different from this political, hierarchical myth based on

This idea is relevant because on the stage, the Restoration actress, is nothing but an ornament in the male gaze. This attitude is apparent as Thomas Shadwell links the new phenomenon of female performers with painted theatrical scenes, both innovative commodities for audience consumption: