Feminism and Gender Theory
Butler, J. (1990). Subjects of sex/gender/desire in Gender trouble (pp. 1-34). New York: Routledge.
Bartky, S. L. Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. In R. Weitz (Ed.), The politics of women’s bodies: Sexuality, appearance, and behavior (pp. 25-45). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hammonds, E. (1994). Black (w)holes and the geometry of Black female sexuality. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.
Connell, R. W. & Messerschmidt, J.W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, 19, 829-859.
It could just be that its been a very long week and I'm extra agreeable at this point, but I enjoyed all the articles and had no qualms or disagreements anywhere! This was an interesting collection of work from authors who approached the idea of gender identification from a different angle in each article.
In her very dense article: “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire”, Judith Butler is responding in large part to the notion of feminism put forth during the second wave. She is responding to the idea that feminism is supposed to be extending the representation of “women” in politics and language, but has largely missed how the category of “woman” is “produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.”(2) Her critique questions how effective the feminist movement is if it seeks greater political representation for the notion of “woman” as a subject when it is a category constructed by politics itself. Butler argues that politics and language have constructed the idea of gender categories in a system of compulsory heterosexuality, which naturalizes the position of the male and creates the subjecthood of “woman” in relation to man. To Butler, the “being” of a gender is an effect which is a product of a binary heterosexual hegemony, which if disrupted, according to Foucault, would dissipate the category of sex and therefore gender too.
Next up Sandra Lee Bartky presents a Foucaultian argument of how feminine gender roles are created and maintained today. Her argument stems from Foucault’s work on Bentham’s panopticon which we looked at earlier this year. The disciplinary state of “conscious and permanent visibility” of the panopticon which induces self discipline is applied to the body. Bartky examines the Foucaultian self-disciplinary practices that construct and maintain visible femininity in three ways. First are the practices that produce a body of a small effeminate proportions by means of dieting and exercise to meet the requirements of femininity. She supplements this with a discussion of women’s exercise being relegated to aerobics and calisthenics; not lifting weights like men do because women are working out with a different purpose than men.
Women’s requirement to remain petite and not gain muscle mass is related to Bartky’s second practice of self-discipline regarding the spatiality in which women feel socially constrained to carry themselves in a far more closed and spatially restricted manner than men. Lastly, women ornament their bodies through a variety of “feminine” practices such as makeup, fashion selection, hair dressing, shaving and waxing. Always under the patriarchal panopticon which imposes these feminine standards, women undergo much self-discipline to fit into society’s institutionalized heterosexual masculine-feminine binary.
In Black (W)holes and the geometry of Black female sexuality. (More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory), Evelynn Hammonds engages with the silenced subject of Black female sexuality. Struggling with the White normative state of existence, and the seeming need to identify as a Black lesbian rather than just a lesbian (which on its own would connote a White lesbian), Hammonds wants to revisit feminism with a new look from Queer theory. Part of the problem Hammond argues, is “a question of knowing about the production of black female queer sexualities.”(4) Yet since black female sexuality has been largely a product of silence, erasure and invisibility in dominant discourse, Hammonds asks: “are black lesbian sexualities doubly silenced?”(4) In other words, the visible White female sexuality inadvertently shapes the invisible Black female sexualities which are inseparable.
Hammond is looking for Black feminist theorists to reclaim their sexuality through a counternarrative and power analysis that positions the black female as the subject. Her goal is not only to make black females more visible, this would not undo the history of erasure or challenge the power structures that created that invisibility; Hammond wants to create a “politics of articulation” whose focus would be black female agency to interrogate the power constraints that created the “politics of silence” from which their sexualities have been produced.
In the final article of our diverse collection of gender theories, RW Connell maps the recent history of hegemonic masculinities. Having got its start as a generalized “male sex role” theory in social psychology, the concept came under criticism with increased recognition of varying levels of masculinity and oppression between men, especially between straight men and gay men. These themes of power and differences were coupled with Gramsci’s idea of hegemony in the context of masculinity, which helped understand masculinity as a practice of dominance over women as well as other men. This hegemonic masculinity was not enacted by many men, nor was it violent in nature; the hierarchy was constructed through culture, institutions and persuasion.
Approximately twenty years after the term was coined, Connell, as one of the founding scholars, sought to review the concept and suggest several reformulations. The most interesting of these reformulations concerns gender hierarchy, and the need for more focus on gender relations rather than on the sole activities of men because “gender is always relational, and patterns of masculinity are socially defined in contradistinction from some model…of femininity.”(848) Most feminist research would contextualize femininity as only subordinate to masculinity in gender relations under patriarchy, but Connell reminds us that women are central in helping to construct masculinities as well; women are the mothers, schoolmates, girlfriends, sexual partners and wives.(848) In other words to better understand hegemonic masculinity we need to understand the holistic relationship of gender relations, and to recognize “the agency of subordinated groups as much as the power of dominant groups in the mutual conditioning of gender dynamics…”(848)
What do you think Hammond would have to say about this suggestion of Connell's? Hammond is looking for counternarratives and politics of articulation to better define the marginalized subjecthood of Black female lesbians, and here Connell is suggesting that you cannot separately analyze genders, they are always relational and must be looked at in terms of their dynamics.
Can a gender be considered exclusively from others, can a gender be independently defined as theorists like Hammonds seem to advocate for, or are gender relations inextricable and formulated completely in relation to each other? Where would each of these theorists sit on the subject?
Could the Foucaultian self-discipline model presented by Bartky work in terms of keeping various masculinities in gendered roles in a way similar to her femininity argument?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hey I just wanted to say that this is the week I'm taking off the blog. See you all in class on Tuesday.
I really enjoyed the Bartky article especially and it got me thinking about a lot of things.
My initial answer to your question Andrew was "yes", the Foucauldian self-discipline model that Bartky presented would work in terms of keeping various masculinities in gendered roles in a way similar to her femininity argument.
But having recently read about the normalization and regulation of female bodies and the idea that 'society' tries to control female behaviour by regulating women’s body image makes me realize how complicated a question this actually is.
Connell's hegemonic masculinities and gender dynamics and power relations show how complex (the construction and maintenance of) gender roles are. It seems clear that self- surveillance and monitoring are not unique to female bodied persons. I can't help but recall Marty's example earlier about the mirror by the shower, which I think speaks to this and asks: who put the mirror up by the shower and why there/ who is the intended body in the mirror or 'audience'? I'm sure that different gendered bodies have internalized the ways that their specific bodies could be 'deviant', but all bodies are critiqued as being imperfect (or, like Barkty suggested, "destined in some degree to fail" p.34).
I think it's impossible to escape self-monitoring in the time and place in which we live, and Foucault's normalized bodies seem to be easily applied to any sort of body.
Do we think that living in a time where our identities must be expressed through our external bodies, that we have much room for individuality within the confines of our gendered roles? Could deconstructing normalized gendered roles liberate us, or do we need something speficic to define ourselves (e.g., could the need to identify as a "Black" lesbian come into play here?), something more concrete - even if it might be patriarchal and oppressive?
First off, thanks Nat for bringing up my shower comment from the week on Foucault. I also thought about the full-length mirror in my bathroom again, and thought that my own self-surveillance could pose a possible challenge to Bartky’s main argument, which I’ll get to in just a bit. As Andrew has already demonstrated, Bartky uses Foucauldian theory to show us how feminine gender roles are constructed and maintained in the modern era. However, she also points to a major flaw in Foucault’s work, the absence of a concerted effort to see the differences in the construction of female and male bodies.
I found it interesting that I did not pick up on the absence of women in Foucault’s work on the discipline directed at the body that creates docile bodies, which accompanied the rise of parliamentary institutions and a new conception of political liberty. Bartky is critical of Foucault’s treatment of the body, arguing that he “treats the body throughout as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women did not differ and as if men and women bore the same relationship to the characteristic institutions.” (27) This is a valid and thought-provoking argument and I hope we explore it a little more in class. Does Foucault’s perceived ignorance of gender, and the possibility of a difference in the construction of male and female bodies, influence his overall argument that with modernity comes the construction of docile bodies? Bartky thinks he is “blind to those disciplines that produce a modality of embodiment that is peculiarly feminine,” and I agree that something different goes into the construction of “normal” female and male bodies. (27)
My question is this: can we begin to think that Foucault’s work on modernity and the rise of the capitalist mode of production requires an explanation of the differences in bodily forms and conceptions of the body? Please, bear with me on this. The capitalist mode of production (factory work, etc) required bodies to do work, bodies that would clock in and clock out at certain times, perform repetitive and structured tasks, and remain in place while performing those tasks. I think Foucault is concerned with the construction of docile bodies, bodies that will stay in line and perform work tasks, and not the construction of different forms of docile bodies. Basically, I’m saying that perhaps Foucault is concerned with docility and how docile bodies are necessary for the particular kind of system of production we now find ourselves in and that this does not require an explanation of the gendering of male and females.
I somehow feel defensive of Foucault’s work and hope that he never intended his work to reproduce the sexism which is endemic throughout Western political theory, like Bartky says he is guilty of doing. However, despite posing my question about gender in Foucault’s work, I have to admit that I do side with Bartky. When Foucault talks about military barracks, he is implicitly talking about men – there is no question. My overall question is more about Foucault’s overall argument and the fact that capitalism doesn’t require male or female bodies, but docile bodies of any form.
Bartky states that we are born male or female, but not masculine or feminine. She examines the disciplinary practices that produce feminized bodies. Getting back to my full-length bathroom mirror again, what does my own self-surveillance of my male body do to Bartky’s argument that there are particular disciplinary technologies that create female bodies? I think that it shows the blurring of the line between male and female. I believe that the idea of a normal man is changing. Take David Beckham for instance. Beckham is most definitely masculine, but the image of masculinity associated with Beckham is one of a well-groomed, well-dressed, and “pretty.”
Moving on, I want to discuss Hammonds article because I’m interested in who gets to talk and theorize about what. Hammonds discusses the doubly invisibility of black lesbians, first as black women and second as lesbians. She believes that terms like lesbian, gay, butch, femme, etc. are defined with white as the normative state of existence; much like Bartky thinks that Foucault defines the normal body as male. She is interested in the construction of black female queer sexualities and how they are shaped by silence, erasure and invisibility in dominant discourses. In order to re-think and theorize the black female queer sexualities she proposes two projects. The first is specifically reserved for white feminists and the second is reserved for black feminist theorists. As a white heterosexual male, am I not allowed to help Hammonds with this project?
Thanks to Andrew for the thorough summaries and to everyone for their interesting responses. Once again, we have a rich set of questions through which to work.
In response to Andrew's query about Connell and Messerschmidt's argument in relation to Hammonds' essay: My sense is that Hammonds also views gender as relational, and, conversely, that Connell and Messerschmidt would agree with Hammonds' claim that the specificities of particular gender identities (e.g., white heterosexual men, black lesbians) must be subject to investigation. Indeed, Connell's and Messeschmidt's own research histories are defined by just this sort of specificity. Their point, then, is not that a research study that focuses solely on black lesbians would be invalid, but rather that such a study should always consider the construction of that identity, these women's experiences, etc. in relation to other identity categories and experiences. And this is exactly what Hammonds advocates for (e.g., "How does the structure of what is visible, namely white female sexualities, shape those not-absent-though-not-present black female sexualities which, as O'Grady argues, cannot be separated or understood in isolation from one another" (p. 4).
Having said all this, I think there are significant theoretical and political differences between these authors and Andrew's suggestion that we consider how they, plus Butler and Bartky, conceptualize the subject is a good one.
I would also like to discuss, in class, Nat's and Marty's ideas about how Bartky's analysis of women's subjection to disciplinary power might be applied to men. And I think it will be key to ask, as always, which men?
Marty is struck by Bartky's critique of Foucault and specifically his failure to acknowledge that men and women are differently docile. I'm not sure that pointing to Foucault's concern with a specific context--work under industrial capitalism--explains his failure, though. As you point out, Foucault is implicitly referring to men when he writes about army barracks. I would argue the same is true of the disciplined body of the factory worker. Of course, Foucault's failure to explore the gendered construction and division of labor reflects absences in much Marxist theory. Feminist responses to these absences have been concerned to show that perhaps capitalism does require and depend on male and female bodies (or systems of gender difference), in contrast to Marty's suggestion that it does not.
Finally, Marty asks if as a white male he is excluded from the projects Hammonds asks. My quick response is: no. Or at least not if Marty considers himself a white feminist. Of course it could be argued that Hammonds imagines feminists as women, but I think what she's referring to is a theoretical position rather than an essential embodiment. Anyhow, let's talk about this further.
See you in class.
Post a Comment