Cross-Dress This Way

The three of us met in the Jean Yawkey Center before making our way to Starbucks. Between the two places, there were a few sidelong glances, which were followed by heads that quickly turned as the people in question conferred with one another. Overall, the reactions were pretty minimal.

However, most striking to us were not other people’s responses but the change we felt in our own behavior. As females, there is a subconscious awareness of how our clothes fit, how our hair looks and how we appear to other people. Assuming the character of a man, we felt a different type of agency. When we sat down, we took up as much room as we felt necessary to be comfortable and talked about whatever we felt like talking about. Dressed in our usual “girl” clothes, we could have done the same, but assuming the character of guys made us feel unapologetic about it.

Although we eventually returned our usual garb, we were glad that, at least an afternoon, we got to experience what it feels to be the other half of the binary.

Of course the picture you se in the post is a much more realistic depiction of what we looked like, but this link is also a beautiful example of cross-dressing and the social construction of gender:
http://thebostonbazaar.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/bearded-ladies-hit-the-runway-in-berlin/

The term queer functions both as a noun or adjective and as a verb. Queer theory is more preoccupied with the noun and verb role as they are used to categorize, and interpollate certain people for the purpose of generating and continuously perpetuating heteronormativity. One definition found in an online dictionary for queer is "strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different". A definition that presumes to synthesize itself from politically correct terms cannot avoid being involved in politics as it engages in juxtaposing the conventional to the odd in a pair of the male/female, presence/absence type, impregnating a relationship of domination and repression. In Queer Theory, the term queer refers to people of a sexual orientation other from the sanctioned heteronormative one.
Its verb form remains very interesting for it is telling of the interpolative politics that perpetuates the regime of heteronormativity. In the Oxford English Dictionary to queer, the verb is defined as "To ask, inquire; to question". This verb definition is revealing of prosecutive function that "queering" somebody or something plays in an established order. Indeed a non-straight sexual orientation is questioned, analyzed as an anomaly, even pathologized rather than seen as a presence in itself. It is prosecuted. It is made to be seen by the masses as odd and strange.
Lesbian and gay gender identity has been either ignored or stereotyped in film, literature and lived experience. This has led queer studies theorists to research masculinity in women and its connection to real or perceived lesbianism.
Queer theory emphasizes the instability and fluidity of gender and sexual categories and rejects the idea that our identities are somehow fixed or determined by our gender or sexual preference. Judith Butler’s “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” embraces gender and masculinity as undefined; something that is shaped by the individual, not by men or society. This is what makes one masculine or feminine exists independently of sex and gender.
In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” Butler resists identification as a lesbian. This is not because she is homophobic but because the term is made by homophobic discourse. She engages in lacanian discourse and supports her discussion on Lacan's thoughts about the paradox of identifying with one's sexuality. Sexuality is a drive, and like all drives is an expression of the death drive, an effort to escape the realm of the symbolic and experience the real. Identity on the other hand is a product of the symbolic and can only exist there. Thus a marriage between sexuality and identity would be a marriage between the real and the symbolic, an impossible marriage.
Going back to the fluidity of gender and its lack of agency in determining femininity and masculinity there are psychoanalytic approaches that assume that female masculinity mimics male masculinity. Queer theorists believe femininity exists independent of sex and gender. In fact, female masculinity disrupts traditional studies of masculinity, whereby masculinity always amounts to social, political and cultural effects. As Foucault suggests, discursive productions construct the “truth” about a person and this truth is aimed at making the person conform to the contemporary norms of heterosexuality. We can recognize that people draw lines between normal and abnormal, and these discursive formations have real affects on those deemed to belong to each group.
The boundaries of gender are continually being challenged, projecting faith in a future that holds promise for the “transcendence” of gender. Butler foretells movement beyond traditional gender roles to refashioned and more flexible gender motifs or perhaps even to the eradication of gender altogether.

Feminism: A Critical Conversation

In “Bodies that Matter,” Judith Butler argues that gender is a performance. She discusses the concept of drag and how it hyperbolizes the signifiers of gender because they depend on categories of masculine and feminine. By discussing drag, Butler brings attention to the instability of gender roles because drag is an explicit, self-conscious performance of masculinity or femininity.

Men and women perform the heterosexual “norms” expected of them. She explores the reason behind these expectations as a connection between gender and sexuality. Butler explains that sexuality is “regulated” in order to “police” and “shame” gender. There is a lack of support of sexual difference, as it is attributed as a gender difference, not sexual difference, in the form of homophobia. Gay men are called “feminine” and lesbians deemed “masculine.”

In “Sorties,” Helene Cixous explains that differences in the norms of sexuality are only tolerated if they are closeted or expressed. She believes that people repress homosexuality, but it comes out in “various signs” that relate to the individual. She explores the idea of bisexuality being recognition of plurality and the masculine and feminine in one subject.

While Butler is more concerned with the social/cultural construction of gender, Cixous is concerned with hierarchical values in regard to language. She says the binary is created by language and always have the threat of violence in them because they are based on power. Cixous’s argument compares the activity/passivity binary to the man/woman binary, and says that the woman is either passive or does not exist when it comes to roles in relationships; everything always relates back to the figure of the father.

Butler discusses the hierarchal struggle between heterosexual/homosexual, instead of man/woman. She believes that the problem is not solely due to subversion, but sees it as a “struggle.” She states that there are ways in which to deal with the imbalance of power, asking how to go about fixing the problem.

Cixous discusses Freud’s view on the difference between men and women as anatomically based. Cixous disagrees and writes that it is not the parts that matter, but the sexual desire. A woman, and others around her, does not understand where her desire exists. She writes that this is due to phallocentrism, which has no origin, but just simply has always already existed. Phallocentrism, relating to the domination of men in every discourse, is the “enemy” of all, men and women both. From it stems the subordination of women, in that if the man is privileged over the woman, he gains hierarchal power, and therefore gains control. This affects the way the system is run altogether.

In Butler's and Cixous’s writing, there exists a level of stylistic difference when regarding the writing style of each respective author. Butler, who speaks to heterosexuality as an inherent “act” performed by the individuals within hetero-normativity, displays her language as readable, conclusive and dialectic. She orchestrates her essay with an air of “performance.” It is (at times) humorous, inquisitive, and written within the constraints of common jargon. The essay itself is critical and reflexive. Butler emphasizes the role of repetition, thus also emphasizing the play on heterosexuality as a “performance.” This re-illustrates Derrida's theory of iterability (or repletion within repetition).

Cixous’s work focuses on the construct of language itself within the identity of hetero-normative/homosexual idealism. She evocates the problematic circumstances surrounding the word “feminist.” Cixous is highly inventive in her essay. Borrowing many of her ideas from Foucault, she “plays” with the language that she uses. She is intentional vague in her syntax so as to further convey the arbitrary language employed when attempting to identify sexuality.

Thoughts on Ken Rufo's Baudrillard : Marxism and the "impossible exchange"

In his post, Ken Rufo points out the supposedly contracting nature of Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernist ideology. Says Rufo: “People say he was a postmodernist, whatever that means, but he repeatedly disavowed the label and said that he was actually arguing against postmodernism.” Because Baudrillard identifies with other ideologies, such as Marxism, the guest blog post paint’s Baudrillard’s beliefs as being illegitimate.

It becomes important to understand that postmodernist theory is not a sequel to modernism; while some of the aspects between the two are similar, postmodernist theory should be regarded as a separate entity from its predecessor. Modernism and Postmodernism are both interested on the fragmentation of reality. However, unlike modernism, postmodernist theorists embrace this fragmentation.

Baudrillard maintains that mass imagery brings a universal language and a system of belief to a culture where consumerism is a way of life. The imagery found in commercials, advertisements and film reinforce this way of life, telling us what it means to be a part of the “modern world”. Postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard uses the term “the loss of the real” to describe how images created by the mass media become more than what they represent.

Baudrillard’s postmodern views could easily be misinterpreted as an allegory about the media’s responsibility in influencing the American culture’s obsession with materialism and consumption. This is why it appears that he “begins as a Marxist”.

Says Rufo: “Sometime later…Baudrillard sets out to explain how the commodity can be understood as a sign in and of itself, and vice versa, how the sign is understood as a form of commodity logic.”

The criticism of a culture for placing too much value on goods or services is known as Marxism. According to Marx, a culture that places collective value on material items is devaluing social equality and preventing people from forming genuine relationships with each other. Baudrillard agrees with this, stating that recurrent media images take on a hyperreality. That is, our mental images have been created through our constant exposure to recycled media deceptions.

However, Baudrillard’s explanation of this relationship disputes Marxism. Baurdillard is saying that this relationship between signs and commodity is necessary in American culture, because it shapes our understanding of the world.

As for Ken Ruffo's discussion and illustration of Baudrillard's orders of illustration, they interestingly lead to the very intriguing idea of "impossible exchange". The continual deferring of reality, does not continue infinitely, as Saussure would say, but finally hits a wall past which meaning cannot be deferred. Thus reality refuses to be explained or theorized into language, manifesting itself in the very rare form of the unexplained, the unfathomable. Baudrillard says that the more we defer meaning the more likely we are to hit this wall, and it seems to me that an instance of this is the state of genetics today.

After the project of the human genome was realized and the entire genetic map of the human being was produced, scientists have found more anomalies and irregularities than they have found patterns. They have found more exceptions to what they thought the rule was , than rules themselves. It looks like in genetics- where meaning was quickly being deferred further and further still, and scientists and non-scientists had the feeling that they were getting closer and closer to real knowledge- finally hit a wall where exchange of meaning value was no longer possible, the wall past which exchange is impossible.

Arthur Miller: The Problematic Farmer Scholar

For our blog this week, we chose to discuss the playwright and author Arthur Miller. Here is a link to the interview that we are going to examine in our post:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4369/the-art-of-theater-no-2-arthur-miller.

In the introduction to the interview, the interviewers discuss in length the simplistic and humble living that Miller has established. They discuss the “white farmhouse” that Miller lives in with his family and how they “found the playwright, hammer in hand, standing in dim light, amid lumber, tools, and plumbing equipment.” They go on to say that, “He welcomed us, a tall, rangy, good-looking man with a weathered face and sudden smile, a scholar-farmer in horn-rimmed glasses and high work shoes.”

Miller is portrayed throughout the duration of the interview as a humble and reasonable man, whose approach to his own literary technique and literary achievement are both honest and truthful. Miller discusses his works objectively as though they are simple accomplishments, rather than the mass successes they actually are. He elaborates on the differences between writing plays and writing short stories, and denotes his opinions on each.

Miller discusses the relationship between classic and contemporary literature, as well as what must be done to bridge the gap between the two. He discusses as a young playwright, admiring the styles and “blank template” that is often associated with Greek theatre. That is to say, that to Arthur Miller Greek Theatre exists as a simulacrum. A representation of a representation or as a copy without an original. Through these templates, he is able to create his works. Arthur Miller also discusses the arbitrary nature of writing itself, more specifically in the art of prose.

Miller considers the oppositional binary between spoken word (theatre) versus written word (short story). Miller discusses how subjects that are “harder to write” translate better into plays. When writing a short story, in which Miller conveys more of his “simpler” ideas, he feels guilt associated with not writing plays. Miller also discusses how mistakes are more plainly visible in plays than in short stories, where audiences are more capable of deciphering mistakes than a reader would.

He also discusses the idea of a hero and how a hero is created within a play. He says that all experience is “schematic” in that the authors of plays do not often let the characters remove themselves from the dreadfulness that is their world. The hero is perceived as such because he offers some form of “enlightenment” from the despair. This often makes theatre highly predictable.

He discusses his distaste for the lack of tragedy in common theatre. Like how Oedipus breaks a taboo, or in Lear when two of his daughters kill himself. The hero’s crime must be civilizing; the crime must be something that goes against his own world. It is predictable because in the beginning, whatever that crime is, is established right away, and we know that this is what is going to happen later.

Miller appears to view himself as an authority as a playwright, but not as an author. He is almost discrediting the art of being an author, in that it is more simplistic than being a playwright. He is oversimplifying when he does not consider individual skill. He removes himself from his quaint country home into an edifice separated from his habitual life: his wife, his daughter, his horses.

He views himself as a man who writes plays, but at the end of the day, still a man. He is different because he refuses to accept his position as “Arthur Miller, the playwright.” He is the creator of The Crucible or Death of a Salesman, but he prefers to keep his writing life separate from the rest of his life. He doesn’t want the position where he lives his life thinking constantly of his writing. Sometimes he wants to view something like the sunrise as any other man, not just the author.

On his influence by other playwrights, he says that he is not intentionally influenced, but it still happens because he has read their plays.

When asked what he is writing next he says that he has several things started in a very casual manner. He is not pretentious about his work. He conceptualizes his art, as in literature, in a way that shows that writing is very rigid, there is a formula for it, and it should not be worshipped. In regards to his short stories, he explains that there is a distinct manner in which he writes. He is discrediting himself.

The interviewer asks him specifically, “What do you think happened in New York?” He answers by saying, “Something I never thought could happen. The play was never judged as a play at all. Good or bad, I would never know what it was from what I read about it, only what it was supposed to have been.” While Miller seems to be discrediting his role as an author, at the exact same time, he is giving the position that he understands his work’s entire story presented from beginning to end.

The Tease

The missing piece in the puzzle of language, like the missing piece in the puzzle of humans' desire for wholeness, guarantees our never-ending longing for something, and a never-ending generation of language. Our desire is continuously displaced among different objects as we see in them possible solutions to fill a void that is constitutive and therefore impossible to fill. Once we achieve an object of desire, we see that it doesn't provide what we were looking for. How could it? Pure wholeness seems to be only touched asymptotically by the subject, never reached, but impressing upon the human mind the impression that it can be. Identically, the signifier will only refer us to another signifier for the signified is the missing piece, and only as such it is constituent of language. As long as we are alive, we are only teased it seems to me. We are teased with the seemingly extreme proximity of something that we will never reach. We are teased in believing that we can reach a meaning that is not even there.
Dr. Shelden's explanation of the death drive makes me thing that the "death drive" is our reaction at acknowledging the teasing nature of life; the way we react when we acknowledge that reaching wholeness could not be possible to us. At certain moments, tired of pursuing objects of desire that only displace desire and do not satisfy it, the death drive takes place. We long for and reach the only wholeness that is possible to the human condition. Tired of pursuing a wholeness that seems to be impossible to reach-wholeness through building a satisfied, self-sufficient identity through the means of inner structures and constructions- we wholeheartedly resign to the only possible wholeness, letting go of all the structures that we have built to separate us from the universe, and reaching the only wholeness possible to us, that of dying as a subject and becoming part of the universe. Lacan 's example is orgasm, a moment when merging with a human partner, one actually lets go of all subject identity. It seems that the French have come very close to this wisdom by calling orgasm "la petite mort"- the little death, as Dr. Shelden explains. Other instances might be deep meditation and other spiritual, religious experiences. But is orgasm always an expression of the death drive?
Lacan claims the death drive is manifested in the sexual act and orgasm because it is the moment when people forget themselves. This is interesting because you can still have other things on your mind at the moment of orgasm. For some, there may be theatrics or performance involved so their partner is aware of the pleasure they are experiencing. Or they may just not have a satisfying enough orgasm to shatter their sense of self. It just might not be the same for all people all of the time. It is also possible that there could be other moments or other ways of achieving a manifestation of the death drive. Listening to a piece of music might cause some to forget the world and their sense of self. Other instances might be deep meditation and other spiritual, religious experiences. Or people commit crimes in moments of passion that arguably cause them to forget who they are and what they are doing or the consequences of it. In other words, does the death drive always have to be manifested in sexual gratification? Are there not other things ways of experiencing jouissance?
To add a piece of interesting information, we can relate the death drive to a notion in psychology called "flow". Unlike the death drive, which is the total disinvolvment with the physical word, flow is the experience of optimal functioning. The death drive is the complete detachment from oneself and one's identity. Flow is the result of an increase in brain functioning, when one is totally involved in the moment, focusing on one specific task. This total involvement reinforces an aspect of one's identity, since identity always exists within the symbolic.

The Camera's Lens, Self-Lovin', and Taking Apart a Baby's Heart

Jacques Derrida was a post-structuralist who believed in a decentered universe. He asserted that there was no center or “norm” to how things work. The documentary Derrida allegedly captures the spirit of Derrida in his true light; however, as he points out himself, it cannot be purely authentic to his behavior in the documentary. He knows he is being filmed and alters his way of living in ways that he realizes (by wearing clothes rather than his normal pajamas and bath robe) and in ways he couldn’t even recognize.
In the beginning of the film, Derrida goes through the simple process of putting on his jacket and walking out the door. While this seemingly every day, mundane act appears normal onscreen, Derrida looks at the camera, laughs, and apologizes for not saying hello. He then says, “It’s a bit difficult…” Before exiting, Derrida stops in the doorway to explain to the directors the process in which he is about to proceed to get his hair cut. This is clearly not a matter in which he does every time he wants a haircut, further proof that the “truth” is no longer apparent the moment the cameras came into his life.
The filmmakers, not Derrida, are responsible for the “center” or “norm” which now exists for Derrida. Regardless of the fact if Derrida is meant to stop and explain his every movement or action to the camera, the directors left the footage in the film on purpose. The filmmakers are proving there is no legitimate structure or center to the way things work. The directors do not simply tell Derrida to act as though they do not exist and go about life in that manner; their known presence is intentional.
They probe Derrida with questions which they know will be difficult and of interest to Derrida and the future audience. When one director asks him about his thoughts on love, Derrida is apprehensive to respond. In an intellectual setting, which is where he sits in that moment in the film, this question appears normal. It is doubtful that this question is asked of him every day after his morning coffee. They also strive to ask him deliberate questions about matters they know will spawn interesting thoughts. Derrida and crew are standing in a museum when the director asks Derrida what he thinks of the oiled painting of himself hanging above. He responds that it makes him “very anxious.” It is unlikely (but supposedly probable) that Derrida would on any given day head over to a museum to look at pictures of himself. The filmmakers, however, are interested in this response to his own image.

The filmmakers are going into Derrida’s life to disrupt his everyday routine in order to make a good film. They unhinge his normal activities by making simple processes more complicated, and siege him with questions they know will draw interest. The directors are not necessarily looking for a Derrida living through the mundane acts of his life, but for a candid, in-the-moment perspective of an intellectual whose thoughts and beliefs may be portrayed expressively in a documentary-type film. While this tactic provides Derrida’s “true” perspective, the center is lost in his typical day-to-day moments, and the “true” Derrida does not actually exist.
The lyric “I’m in love with a Jacques Derrida/Read a page and know what I need to/Take apart my baby’s heart” corresponds to Derrida’s thoughts on love between the “I” and the “Other.” While the “I” represents the way in which a person views himself, the “Other” refers to the outsider’s perspective. Derrida believes in a highly narcissistic purpose behind love; meaning the individual loves the aspects of another person which they can attribute to themselves directly. Scritti Politti singing “I’m in love with a Jacques Derrida” may symbolize a person loving another who shares Derrida’s view on love. This person knows what they “need to take apart my baby’s heart” because they know what it is about themselves that person loves. If you take away those characteristics, or alter them in some way, it emphasizes the death of love; or highlights the difference between an individual loving a person or the individual loving something about that person. When you know something about how your partner loves, you retain a lot of power over that person.

This is also tied to Derrida’s explanation of the word “love.” He theorizes love as a philosophical concept that he cannot begin to talk about. When the film maker asks him to “say something about love,” Derrida shrugs and explains that he has nothing to say. Love is the origin of philosophy. To speak about love, is to speak about the origin of philosophy. Derrida explains how the genesis of love is consistently “caught” between the “who” and “what.” Do we love someone for WHO this person is? (Their specificity/their “oneness”) Or do we love this person for WHAT they are. (How they view you as their lover? Their mannerisms….etc.) This, according to Derrida, is problematic. To love someone for “who they are,” is to call into question two things. One is the Cartesian idea of the “self.” [Cogito, Ergo, Sum] The self is fragmented. It is not whole. And the second is to the concept of “being.” What does it mean to be? How are we possibly able to use these unstable groundings as the reason/cause for “love?” Derrida believes that love is reflexive. Reflexive love is merely the appropriation of the other as the self. This is due to the fact, that love is narcissistic. You only love someone, for how they love you. He speaks about the “movements of the heart,” which, in turn, are nothing more than the qualities of the person you “love.” This unfortunately leads to what Derrida calls the “death of love.” This is the deconstructing process surrounding the elements of said emotion. When asked to “say something about love,” Derrida simply did the very thing that he does best. He deconstructed it.