Judith Butler Notes on Feminist Theory

519

General Idea

Butler explains gender beyond heterosexual patriarchal ideals

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Speech acts and illocutionary gestures

. We may sum up Austin's theory of speech acts with the following example. In uttering the locution "Is there any salt?" at the dinner table, one may thereby perform the illocutionary act of requesting salt, as well as the distinct locutionary act of uttering the interrogatory sentence about the presence of salt, and the further perlocutionary act of causing somebody to hand one the salt.

Action theory

Basic action theory typically describes action as behavior caused by an agent in a particular situation. The agent's desires and beliefs (e.g. my wanting a glass of water and believing the clear liquid in the cup in front of me is water) lead to bodily behavior (e.g. reaching over for the glass).

Phenomenological theory of acts

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called “intentionality”, that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something.

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Idea of society attributing an idea on a person as an object rather than the person attributing ideas on themselves as a subject

Gender is not stable. It is in flux and changes over time according to social norms and acts.

Gender is performed through movement gesture and enactments. And through repetition.

520

Gender is an idea that society has come to place on people regardless of their biological development. And people who have the idea placed upon them tend to act in ways that will fit with this social norm of behavior that the are expected to have.

But if gender is a series of repeated acts through time then we can escape these confines and you can redefine gender identity. Acting in a new repeatable way, or acting in different ways regardless of keeping it definable.

Argues against the phenomenological model of Gender being fixed and the idea that the acts or behavior a person exhibits are generated in solo accordance with their gender.

Reiterates that Gender is a performance and does not need to conform to biology consistently.

I. SEX/GENDER Feminist and Phenomenological Views

History of feminists criticizing social structures of sex and sexuality imposed on women.

Desire to separate Sex and Gender. And thereby dispelling the myth of females always needing to act "feminine" and by extension males needing to act "masculine".

Idea of the body as “an historical idea”

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The body is constantly embodying social and historical ideas of gender (which are in flux because of changing ideas through decades and across cultures).

And we can describe gender more truly through expanding our idea of phenomenology by including acts of performance and ascribing that content to gender identity separate from sex and biological development.

Not all embodied women/men have the same lived experience. Being a woman/man is not the same to every woman/man.

…...................Semantics...

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More on distinction between sex – biology and gender- cultural interpretation

sex = female gender = feminine

To have to fit yourself into an idea that may not actually represent you, limiting your potential.

Failing to do gender correctly leads to punishment / not procreating / not copying your genes?

But gender is really made up of those repeatable actions, and are unnatural and false since there is no singular way to express a gender.

Feminist argue that the personal is political... meaning a woman's subjective experience of being a woman is not only effected by society's idea of what being a woman/feminine is, but is, in return and by her actions and presentation she is helping to perpetuate that very social structure.

Is to be a woman to be oppressed?

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II Binary Genders and the Heterosexual Contract

The heterosexual system of marriage is normalized for the convenience of reproduction and continuation of the human race. Not necessarily because same-sex attraction is dominant in all species.

It is further perpetuating this system of hetero-normality to create a binary gendered system. Male/Female.

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Gender is an act.... quote

Repetition

Public display

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theatrical performance vs public display … playing with gender

Performance, just a play, not reality. Real life, danger, questioning.

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 QUOTE

"Genders, then, can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent. And yet, one is compelled to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers, in which gender is stabilized, polarized, rendered discrete and intractable. In effect, gender is made to comply with a model of truth and falsity which not only contradicts its own performative fluidity, but serves a social policy of gender regulation and control. Performing one's gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all. That this reassurance is so easily displaced by anxiety, that culture so readily punishes or marginalizes those who fail to perform the illusion of gender essentialism should be sign enough that on some level there is social knowledge that the truth or falsity of gender is only socially compelled and in no sense ontologically necessitated."

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III Feminist Theory....

Basically she says that there is no singular point of view of “woman” but that they are for sure socially and historically constructed

Foucault quote on 530

T.Frederick - Deleuze: Societies of Control

Tyson Frederick

Art 282b: Grad. Sem. In Contemp. Art History: Empathy

Professor Anthony Raynsford

5/14/2012

Blog: Deleuze - Societies of Control

                It is in great interest that we assess the power and informative device known as “space”.  Spaces exist in many environments but are approached in such a way that they take on certain “controlling” circumstances per space.  Gille Deleuze is looking at space as it pertains to an enclosure of rules set down by a controlling body above and beyond the space but passively imbued within.  For each space is controlled in a certain way that we step into the space with a presupposed set of rules and conduct to follow by.  These may have many effects on the viewer or the occupier but it might be said that space can embody a meaning or we can have empathy or attached transient feeling upon entering a certain area or space.  Deleuze is not emphasizing the importance of the propositions within the space but by whom and for what purpose these prepositions may be generated or come from in origin and how we often misinterpret the meanings of spaces.

                In this reading, I am finding that the main retort against powers and systems of control are that there is a coercive feeling of unacknowledged force in which the operators and occupiers of a given space may not necessarily be aware of all the conditions with which they work or for what circumstances they work.  This reminds of the “alienation” and “injustice” that ties to the worker and there space, the worker and there product, which is re-appropriated, through current culture and social structure and belief in capitalism, to that person which is called the “producer” rather than “laborer” The “laborer” is being demoted as a means of production like a machine, yet the laborer doesn’t benefit from the production the way the “capitalist” does and thus is “cut-short” of what they actually deserve being either the object of their creation or the result of their object created.  The worker is viewed as a piece, even though they are the sole responsibility for the creation of an object.  This refers to the trickery of coercion and space.

                It is hard to imagine that the structures and “molds” that we live within are something else from what they seem.  They seem to be perfected structures to those with which project their idea, i.e. the owners, the capitalists in control.  We may not like to believe that we live in a circumstance other than the one we imagine ourselves to be in, but it is not impossible to believe that we have been deceived through our senses, being they are limited in capacity.  In the same case, those people that hold their positions of power, slightly reinterpreted as a greater good, are in a position of being deceived by their own actions, for they may not understand anything more than their own behavior and structure they live within.  Perhaps by looking at the true nature of space, as something moldable, bendable and interpretable, we can come to a better understanding of the way in which man, or the capitalist, promotes a certain way of believing and thus resulting in a certain type of action.  

T.Frederick - Worringer: Abstraction and Empahthy

Tyson Frederick

Art 282b: Seminar in Comtemporary Art History: Empathy

Professor Anthony Raynsford

Blog: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy 1

5/12/2012

It seems there is a difference to Worringer about the meaning of beauty in a “thing”, i.e. a natural thing versus an artistic thing.  How do we relate these, how do we define them?  Are they the same or are they parallels?  It would be worth noting that scientific discovery is continued to be made every day, redefining definitions of what was.  The way that visual spatial aspects attract the viewer are justified in modern art critique because, according to my reading of Worringer, aesthetic judgments have been placed in relation to the subject, the viewer; everything becomes relative to the viewer, the object has a direct connection through empathy with the current subject.  Worringer proposes that this is only one of two contraries that exist when considering the beauty of an artistic object.  Hence he thinks artistic objects and natural objects may be similar in nature but not exactly the same.  He is reconsidering our definitions of thing and art object. 

                Perhaps not all artistic objects are to be viewed in regards to their beauty and the way one might transcend their own ideas into an artistic object.  The condition of nature, “in so far as by nature is understood the visible surface of things.”  He argues that, “natural beauty is on no account to be regarded as a condition of the work of art.  This being said he strives for an anti-thesis, or “counter-pole to aesthetics which proceed not from man’s urge to empathy but his urge to abstraction”.

                This urge to abstract the object to disassemble from the norm leads, for me, to my own abstract work.  My abstractions want to leave a fleeting, moving away from transition of what was originally placed, labeled, or claimed. 

                The importance to defining negative aspects of process, failure, skepticism, and risk are part of everyday life and every artist.  How might documenting the “unknown” or the “failure” provide an opposite effect of empathy to imitate or self-replace, to embody the object as it seems?  When we see the beauty in something we see the beauty in ourselves but when we see the disgust of something we don’t see the disgust in ourselves.  This is perplexing.

These aspects were shunned to be reported or displayed in any way other than those of “natural beauty”.  How perhaps does something hideous get explained in a heroic way, in a natural way, in a false way to say the least?  For Worringer it does not truly get expressed this way, and I feel this is where abstraction is born for Worringer.  Why should we not show the nuisances of the artistic life, or life in general within artwork?  This perhaps is the question, “why do we leave certain things out?”

                By taking a generally known idea or process into a new dialogue or context referring to the dissolution of its representation, the inharmonic juxtapose of beautifying the grotesque, the untrue nature of what has been presupposed through culture. Society, and art historical dictation and critique, the artist can imply that cultural and societal values of art and life in general may not be represented in and as of its true nature.  Worringer’s work is about questioning what appears to be of “norm” but is not necessarily true. 

Frankl

Frankl: Principles of Architectural History

Architectural is not a familiar field of my study but it is interesting to read Frankl’s ideas. “Buildings may last mechanically and chemically longer than pictures, but their life span as living works of art is often much shorter.” This reminds me of a lot of occasions where I have conversations with people about art and design. Majority of people believe that the two are totally different disciplines. I personally believe that the two share more similarity than difference. People tend to emphasize the essential functionality of design which categorizes design as artistically non-expressive. Then I raise the case of architecture, which is also functional. Most people agree that architecture is a form of art while other designs are not. And I cannot understand. Is it because the act of commission? But numerous artists receive commissioned projects as well, meaning they start an artwork knowing it is for a particular client and a defined purpose if not completely specific.

I am not advocating that every single design is a unique piece of artwork, but I am simply addressing that design derives from art. Even computer-generated illustration artists need to have strong foundation of basic drawing skills (at least the good ones). Ideas for design come from life just as art does. I think the vastest difference between art and design is the distribution. Not all, but many products of design are created to be manufactured and widely distributed. On the other hand, artwork is absolute unique. The case of printmaking is somewhere in between. I don’t know. With today’s technology I feel like there is a growing bitterness against the field of design, but I do believe the art and design should stilled be considered closely related.

Back to the reading, Frankl moved onto the connection between architecture and people. “People are part of architecture,” he said. “A building dies as soon as the life within it has vanished, even if we know the customs of the people who once belonged to it.” It is an interesting approach of linking human’s activities with architecture. I partially agree, but believe that architecture has its own life circle. When the function or purpose of the structure has changed, for example a church created for devotional prayers built eighty years ago now becoming a tourist spot, I look at it as a new life begins. I understand that the structure no longer serves the same purpose as its creator intended, but it is certainly not the end. I believe that all things have their life circle. Even though a lot of them are invented and created by human beings, once they are incorporated in our life and utilized in a certain environment, they begin their own life. Walking into an abandoned building, one will find the space is now filled with dust and corners of walls are covered by spider webs. It is like the structure has made friends with nature after people move out. I know it is a less rational understanding of architecture, but in this restless contemporary world, I feel like I need to pay more attention to our living environment, the things that we create and the subsequences that we cause. This way we will become more humble and more humane.