Simida Sumandea 2013-10-22 10:20:00
Like many others essays of this week’s blogging, mine has the same questions. What is gender and what is sexuality. To be more precise could we find another body binary that we could deconstruct? If there is this binary sexuality-gender, could we talk about other constructed binaries within our body? like respiration-x, or circulation-x. What other relations can a body create? Could we deconstruct the body in its wholeness? This would probably take us back to Deleuze concept the “body without organs”. In the Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick talks about Roland Barthes liberation from from the binary prison. Once this achieved a state of infinite expansion is possible. In other words the world itself is not a structure anymore, but rather a set of arbitrarinesses. So Deleuze starts to make a lot more sense when he talks about a body without organs where the mouth could very well serve as any other orifice. The question is how much can we deconstruct and why stop at a certain point. Sedgwick attempts an answer and clearly states that he disagrees with Barthes, but to me his answer is a circular one. He says that the deconstructive contestations occur “ only in the context of an entire cultural network of normative definitions”; doesn’t this idea draws us back to where we started off with. Foucault as well as Buttler think that culture itself instituted these binaries that denied the right to choose of everyone, that it is the culture which constructed these concepts. I hope things will clarify when we will have a deeper look in today’s session.Simida Sumandea 2013-10-22 10:20:00
Like many others essays of this week’s blogging, mine has the same questions. What is gender and what is sexuality. To be more precise could we find another body binary that we could deconstruct? If there is this binary sexuality-gender, could we talk about other constructed binaries within our body? like respiration-x, or circulation-x. What other relations can a body create? Could we deconstruct the body in its wholeness? This would probably take us back to Deleuze concept the “body without organs”. In the Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick talks about Roland Barthes liberation from from the binary prison. Once this achieved a state of infinite expansion is possible. In other words the world itself is not a structure anymore, but rather a set of arbitrarinesses. So Deleuze starts to make a lot more sense when he talks about a body without organs where the mouth could very well serve as any other orifice. The question is how much can we deconstruct and why stop at a certain point. Sedgwick attempts an answer and clearly states that he disagrees with Barthes, but to me his answer is a circular one. He says that the deconstructive contestations occur “ only in the context of an entire cultural network of normative definitions”; doesn’t this idea draws us back to where we started off with. Foucault as well as Buttler think that culture itself instituted these binaries that denied the right to choose of everyone, that it is the culture which constructed these concepts. I hope things will clarify when we will have a deeper look in today’s session.some reflexions
As the American Psychological Association suggests, and as what I understand, the term “Sex” means one’s biological status and is “typically categorized as male, female or intersex”; “Gender” means all of those “attitudes, feelings and behaviors that a given culture associates with one’s biological sex”, like a sediment, or the norm that this culture or society historically and politically constructs; “Gender Identity” refers to the person’s own feeling/sense of his or herself: she was a born as a girl (sex) but she feels that she’s more like a boy and thus her gender identity does not agree with the social or cultural expectation of her gender; “Gender expression” means the way this person acts, like “his clothing, communication patterns or interests”, and it is not necessarily conform with or reflect his gender identity (he’s hiding his feelings) nor necessarily the gender norm; “Sexual orientation”, I am not sure if I can understand this term as “Sexuality”, refers to “the sex of those to whom one is sexually and romantically attracted”, for example: heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual. (http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf)
Sometimes I think the world that I live is not as binary as the formula “Male V.S. Female”. At first, the binary may be formed for some reasons like production and reproduction, the domination of the material means the power, to some degree the power influences the structure and the structure contains the power. I feel that in the very reality which sometimes people cannot catch, the space is totally random. We have always been told that every one is different, it’s true, but on the top and as a whole, those differences may be too tiny, sútil and dependent, so we are just human. And that’s all. Females and males may share many same attributes but the social norms suggests us what should do, and this historical procedure is so long and beyond consciousness, we make the performance our true life. But, if the world is not binary, when a woman win a game over the men, probably I won’t be very excited and say that “we women can do it”, I may just think that That person can do it. It seems that the social norm is changing with the time and the power, have the oppression reduced a little bit? Does the absence of oppression to some degree means disorder?
Should we read the screenplay or should we rewrite it?
This week’s readings made me rethink discourses on gender and on sexuality. First, Butler had my attention when she started to talk about gender as a social construction that is performed. It is true that sex is easily determined for the biological distinction between men and women is physically observable. Now how does one determine […]
And what about masculine femininity?
In the chapter that we have read of her book Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam makes the following statement regarding the role of female masculinities: “[F]emale masculinities are framed as the rejected scraps of dominant masculinity in order that male masculinity by the real thing” (935). So, there is a relation of dependency: dominant masculinity needs these female masculinities in order to exist, it is, to set themselves as real and the only real. To gives us an example of female masculinity, she quotes the movie Goldeneye (1995), where the Ian Fleming’s character, James Bond, is the main personage. In this film, the character that symbolizes the female masculinity is M, the chief of the Secret Service [I remember here another Bond movie, The Spy who loved me (1977), where the Russian spy could also be seen somehow as a female who has or uses masculinity. I have to confess that I only like the old James Bond movies, the ones with Sean Connery and Roger Moore). But, there is a mention of other character: Agent Q. This gay masculinity, says Halberstam, also helps to demonstrate the dependence of dominant masculinities on minority masculinities.
But, I think that besides female masculinities and gay masculinities, we could also find another “category” or “type” (I don’t like to use this kind of words, but I don’t find others for the moment) that also demonstrate the dependence of dominant masculinities on minority masculinities. This group represents what I call “masculinity femininity”. It could be circumscribed in the sphere of the biological male sex, but in terms of gender they do not represent declared gay masculinities. This kind of men are those who, for instance, have an heterosexual life, are recognize in the social hegemony and also could be part of the so called “patriarchy”. Nevertheless, in some moment of their lives they have a desire that the social hegemony would consider feminine. This kind of “masculinity femininity” is most of the time surreptitious, but, as feminine masculinity, it also could be used to construct dominant masculinities. Nevertheless, it also could disrupt the dominant masculinities.
I want to make clear my point with an example. There is British-Canadian movie called Love and Death on Long Island (1997). It is the adaptation of the book of the same name by the British author Gilbert Adair. Both, the book and the movie, have a clearly inter-textual relation with the novel Death in Venice (1912), by Thomas Mann and the movie of the same name directed by Luchino Visconti in 1971. The plot of Love and Death on Long Island could be synthesize as follows: a British widower writer (Giles De’Ath), who is a serious man (a classic representation of a mature heterosexual man) and lives a lives “out of the world”, centered in his work. One day, product of a “chance” he goes to the cinema and by mistake enters to see an American movie called Hot Pants College II. When he discovers the mistake, stands up, but suddenly saw the image of a young man (Ronnie Bostock) who astonished him immediately. After this “encounter”, he got obsessed with this actor, investigates about him and discovers that he lives in Long Island. So, he decided to go there. Once there, after series of events, finally meets Ronnie, who is married and represents the dominant masculinity (is young masculine idol for teenage girls, for instance). At the beginning, their relationship is friendship (of course, Giles wants more than friendship), but after another series of events, Giles confesses Ronnie that he is in love with him. The last one was shocked, despises the writer, but his dominant masculinity suffers a shake.
With this example I only want to say that there could be other kind of marginalized masculinities that, on the one hand, make possible the dominant masculinity but, on the other, also destabilize it. Giles helped to build Ronnie's masculinity, but also has an impact on it.
[Note: the actors of the movie are John Hurt (Giles De’Ath) and Jason Priestley (Ronnie Bostock)].
Here is the scene when the actor Ronnie astonish Giles:
Here is the trailer (unfortunately it is in German, the only version available on Youtube, but the plot of the movie could be understood):
Gender and sex
This week, I was very interested in Butlers’ excerpt of Performative acts and gender constitution as I relate her critique to feminism to our discussion last class. When considering gender within the simplistic dichotomy patriarchy/women oppression, one’s assumes the universalism in terms of gender being homogeneous within each category (all men as oppressors and all women as victims). Subsequently, as we noted in class, the use of “we” erases all differences of race, class or gender in this case that might unify in order to achieve some goals at first, but then alienate those who cannot identify with the generic model.
But life is not that simple. Authors such as Butler, Sedgwick or Halberstam just argued how the lines among sex, gender and sexuality easily become blurry when analyzing social constructions, discourses or even characters that once traditional identifies as representative of masculinity (James Bond).
To be honest, I am still confused about these concepts as I still believe we are born with a distinctive set of chromosomes that serves to place us in different categories (regardless how arbitrary this classification is), either female, male or hermaphrodite. Now, as we enter in all social, cultural, political etc. constructions we identify ourselves, perceive our bodies and our bodies/identities are perceived in multiple, infinite ways even within a predominant heterosexual framework. Then I will agree with Butler that sexuality and gender are constructed, “(gender) then can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent and yet one is completed to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers.” (908) However, I am not sure that her proposal to reduce gender to a sustained performative act on a social stage would accomplish to change or acknowledge the influence of rigid parameters such as heterosexual framework and sexual difference. She does mention that we have to “reread the texts of Western philosophy” from the point of view of the marginalized and “establish philosophy as a cultural practice” (910) when in reality we still observe a system of social punishment for those who do act according to the norm or when political correctness avoids conflict and, therefore, open discussion.
I would very appreciate if we can work on the transfers or conceptual common grounds between sex, gender and sexuality, so I can see the gray areas.
Gender and sex
This week, I was very interested in Butlers’ excerpt of Performative acts and gender constitution as I relate her critique to feminism to our discussion last class. When considering gender within the simplistic dichotomy patriarchy/women oppression, one’s assumes the universalism in terms of gender being homogeneous within each category (all men as oppressors and all women as victims). Subsequently, as we noted in class, the use of “we” erases all differences of race, class or gender in this case that might unify in order to achieve some goals at first, but then alienate those who cannot identify with the generic model.
But life is not that simple. Authors such as Butler, Sedgwick or Halberstam just argued how the lines among sex, gender and sexuality easily become blurry when analyzing social constructions, discourses or even characters that once traditional identifies as representative of masculinity (James Bond).
To be honest, I am still confused about these concepts as I still believe we are born with a distinctive set of chromosomes that serves to place us in different categories (regardless how arbitrary this classification is), either female, male or hermaphrodite. Now, as we enter in all social, cultural, political etc. constructions we identify ourselves, perceive our bodies and our bodies/identities are perceived in multiple, infinite ways even within a predominant heterosexual framework. Then I will agree with Butler that sexuality and gender are constructed, “(gender) then can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent and yet one is completed to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers.” (908) However, I am not sure that her proposal to reduce gender to a sustained performative act on a social stage would accomplish to change or acknowledge the influence of rigid parameters such as heterosexual framework and sexual difference. She does mention that we have to “reread the texts of Western philosophy” from the point of view of the marginalized and “establish philosophy as a cultural practice” (910) when in reality we still observe a system of social punishment for those who do act according to the norm or when political correctness avoids conflict and, therefore, open discussion.
I would very appreciate if we can work on the transfers or conceptual common grounds between sex, gender and sexuality, so I can see the gray areas.
What Is Masculinity?
The article that I found most interesting this week was Judith Halberstam’s “Female Masculinity,” maybe because I had never read this text before, and also I like that it comes from a 1998 book (relatively recent). I found her argument that “what we understand as heroic masculinity has been produced by and across both male and female bodies” to be very interesting, and when coupled with the pop culture examples she gave, also very convincing. I had never thought about the construction of masculinity as a phenomenon that is so intrinsically linked with alternative masculinities; as Halberstam explains, “masculinity becomes legible as masculinity where and when it leaves the while male middle-class body” (936) and “the shapes and forms of modern masculinity are best showcased within female masculinity” (936). What I also found very interesting was her assertion that “although we seem to have a difficult time defining masculinity, as a society we have little trouble in recognizing it” (935) – as I read this, I found myself nodding along.
What I would have liked from the article, however (and maybe this is not a valid criticism as it is important to keep in mind that what we read are excerpts and not the entire text) is a closer definition of what exactly we do identify as masculinity, because after reading the excerpt, I still don’t feel as if this question is clear in my mind. I thought the examples of Don Juan and James Bond in Goldeneye (1995) were indeed helpful, especially the more fleshed-out example of James Bond. I found it effective that Halberstam not only pointed out that without his ‘toys’ and equipment a lot of Bond’s masculine flair, if you will, vanishes, but that M, Moneypenny and Agent Q really represent more convincing models of masculinity – and it’s interesting to think of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall (2012) within this paradigm as well, because I think the argument in M’s case especially very much stands. This example was very effective to me as I was reading Halberstam’s argument, especially when she succinctly says that “the masculinity of the white male, what we might call ‘epic masculinity’, depends absolutely […] on a vast subterranean network of secret government groups, well-funded scientists, the army, and an endless supply of both beautiful bad babes and beautiful good babes, and finally it relies heavily on an immediately recognizable ‘bad guy’” (937). This explanation was very helpful as it related to the immediate context of Goldeneye, and as Halberstam pointed out, essentially all other Bond movies, but I would have also benefited from the article providing a broad definition of what exactly it identifies as ‘epic masculinity’ – what the article identified as something that we all have a hard time describing but something that we do quickly recognize. I look forward to furthering this discussion in class if we have time!
What Is Masculinity?
The article that I found most interesting this week was Judith Halberstam’s “Female Masculinity,” maybe because I had never read this text before, and also I like that it comes from a 1998 book (relatively recent). I found her argument that “what we understand as heroic masculinity has been produced by and across both male and female bodies” to be very interesting, and when coupled with the pop culture examples she gave, also very convincing. I had never thought about the construction of masculinity as a phenomenon that is so intrinsically linked with alternative masculinities; as Halberstam explains, “masculinity becomes legible as masculinity where and when it leaves the while male middle-class body” (936) and “the shapes and forms of modern masculinity are best showcased within female masculinity” (936). What I also found very interesting was her assertion that “although we seem to have a difficult time defining masculinity, as a society we have little trouble in recognizing it” (935) – as I read this, I found myself nodding along.
What I would have liked from the article, however (and maybe this is not a valid criticism as it is important to keep in mind that what we read are excerpts and not the entire text) is a closer definition of what exactly we do identify as masculinity, because after reading the excerpt, I still don’t feel as if this question is clear in my mind. I thought the examples of Don Juan and James Bond in Goldeneye (1995) were indeed helpful, especially the more fleshed-out example of James Bond. I found it effective that Halberstam not only pointed out that without his ‘toys’ and equipment a lot of Bond’s masculine flair, if you will, vanishes, but that M, Moneypenny and Agent Q really represent more convincing models of masculinity – and it’s interesting to think of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall (2012) within this paradigm as well, because I think the argument in M’s case especially very much stands. This example was very effective to me as I was reading Halberstam’s argument, especially when she succinctly says that “the masculinity of the white male, what we might call ‘epic masculinity’, depends absolutely […] on a vast subterranean network of secret government groups, well-funded scientists, the army, and an endless supply of both beautiful bad babes and beautiful good babes, and finally it relies heavily on an immediately recognizable ‘bad guy’” (937). This explanation was very helpful as it related to the immediate context of Goldeneye, and as Halberstam pointed out, essentially all other Bond movies, but I would have also benefited from the article providing a broad definition of what exactly it identifies as ‘epic masculinity’ – what the article identified as something that we all have a hard time describing but something that we do quickly recognize. I look forward to furthering this discussion in class if we have time!
Post modernism and European memory
Last week, I went to a conference held by the Cenes and presented by Eva Thompson.
The scholar from Rice University was questioning the construction of historical memory focusing on the post 2WWEurope. Eva Thompson noticed a switch from the 19th chauvinism of historians to the 20th century attempts to think about European memory as an opening to communication and reconciliation. But this so called “common” European memory proved to exlude the reality of historical events in Eastern Eurpean. Her thesis is that doing so, scholars have made of historical memory a tool of neocolonialism: Eastern Europe in the European memory is the Other of Western Europe, and an object of science studied despite or without the knowledge of empirical facts and of Eastern European scholars.
Eva Thompson then argued that “You can theorize after the facts, not before”, and that the memory of a country should be built on empirical facts and coming from “internal” studies. The result of her studies showed Eastern Europe as the product of a colonialist mind, and the object of a distortional historical, that did not “take into account the voices of the Eastern countries.” The project of a Europe becoming a common ground for nursing the wounds around sites of memory should include Eastern Europe memory based on the study of real facts, such as what the Nazi party did in Poland to Polish citizens.
Three main questions and comments came out from that conference that I would like to share with you as a field of reflection for our class:
First, the idea that theory should come after the study of the facts could be discussed. Do you think assessing historical events and memory has to be done through practical studies and that a scholar has to know exactly every thing that happened before theorizing?
Secondly, I noticed the importance of the emotion that the researcher felt, during her speech and study, as she was herself Polish: it sounded like it was as much a academic concern that she was experiencing, as a personal fight and defense. I wondered how much can a scholar put of himself when studying either empirical facts or theory, or, as it is clear that we always study what we are personnally concerned with, how can this be a tool of our research and not an impediment?
My last question, that I actually asked at the end of the conference, was the use of the terminology when trying to construct a memory leading to reconciliation (probably inspired by the attention we are paying in class to language as a way to shape knowledge and content): I could not help but notice that the scholar was constantly using metonymy when referring to the group of actors in 2WW Europe, such as “the German did that”, “the Poles were that”, “the French did…”.
I wondered if building a “common” European historical memory should not start with constructing another way to refer to it. Not only those metonymies were reconveying the traditional colonialist opposition between Them and Us that was actually in question in the presentation, whether the scholar was aware of it or not, but it also carried with it a lot of emotional tension, palpable into the room. Should not language be carefully approached and used in historical theory?
