gender trouble couplets

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gender trouble couplets, volume 1. Copyright © 2019 by A.W. Strouse. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

An excerpt of this work was previously published in Lunch: http://www.lunchreview.org/gender-trouble-couplets-volume-1.

First published in 2019 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way.https://punctumbooks.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-51-9 (print)ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-52-6 (ePDF)

doi: 10.21983/P3.0266.1.00

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Book design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei

contents

Preface by Anna M. Kłosowska xiii

1

“Women” as the Subject of Feminism 1

The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire 11

Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate 15

Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond 27

Identity, Sex, and the Metaphysics of Substance 37

Language, Power, and the Strategies of Displacement 61

For Henry Berman Shapiro

Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore, tu se’ solo colui da cu’ io tolsi lo bello stilo che m’ha fatto onore.

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Preface

Like an interior design collaboration between Michel Houellebecq and Martha Stewart, putting together a medieval verse form and queer theory is not only mag-nificent and original, it breathes the rarefied air that hipsters are trying to reach in vain when they turn, af-ter vinyl, to cassette tapes. A.W. Strouse’s short com-mentary on the first chapter of Judith Butler’s monu-mental volume Gender Trouble is not only original and fully unexpected, it’s sublime.

By short commentary, I mean quite technically the learned medieval form used by Latinate and Islami-cate cultures who inherited it from Hellenized Ro-mans and Jews in late-antiquity Alexandria, or from Greek schoolmasters in Byzantium. In medieval read-ing practice, three types of commentary are common. The middle commentary is what we would call today a translation or modernization. The long commentary

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explicates all the difficulties and nuances of the text, line by line. It is similar to the modern companion, or the full set of footnotes. It is especially common for legal or the most popular literary texts, such as Ovid’s Heroides. In the age of print, it was often set in the three margins around the original text, which was printed in the center. It is usually twice or three times longer, often many more, and it dwarfs the original text on the page, while still preserving the hierarchy of values. The page distribution, with the original text in the center and in larger print, makes it look like a precious jewel in a properly humble setting. The short commentary, naturally, is the summary of the text. The present, suc-culently original volume, is a short commentary in verse. Verse form was not unusual for medieval com-mentaries of all three types. The reader will feel like they’ve stepped into a time machine, taking the most beloved queer theorist with them, to disembark in Paris or Oxford or Venice, circa 1290, to have a drink with Roger Bacon or Dante, or maybe Marco Polo.

Why put one of the most famous and still one of the most urgently relevant critical theory texts of the 1990s into a form not used since Petrarch studied at Bologna? A form later reserved for teaching reluctant children manners, as in:

The Goops they talk while eating,And loud and fast they chew;And that is why I’m glad that IAm not a Goop — are you?

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For a very good reason, indeed. Not only is this verse version of Butler’s immortal, slender volume good fun, it will also help the students digest and remember the turns of Butler’s argument. As we all know, Butler writes like a congenial, more elastic friend of Derrida: very down to earth, but nearly impossible to recall at length if you are reading her for the first time. Unless you are a mathematical genius or the kid who, during Spring Break, sits in a café at the University of Chi-cago discussing neo-communist thought while the rest of your age group has sex on the beach, the level of abstraction may not appeal to you. In terms of cultural references, it’s hard to thrill to discussions of Monique Wittig if you’ve never before read any Wittig, and are later unlikely to do so. As a result, for most mortals, the experience of reading Gender Trouble is like alpine skiing: great on paper, difficult in practice.

The thesis of Gender Trouble — like all brilliant state-ments, including E = mc2 — is something that, nowa-days, even a Catholic small-town twelfth grader knows; that is, gender is performative and its apparently un-shakeable stability is not stable, natural, nor original, but it derives its illusion of permanence mostly from sustained repetition. It’s a self-stylization with a history. So far, so pedagogically unproblematic. But, as anyone who has ever assigned university or college students Gender Trouble to read knows, that assignment works just as great (not) as assigning Lacan’s Seminars. Take a whole semester to read three of the shorter essays, and it will be the most memorable class that these 11/2

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students ever took. Assign the whole volume to a large class for this week’s discussion, and be prepared to do all the unpacking yourself — unless there is a conserv-ative straight male in the classroom, who will gladly mainsplain it. Later, the vegan student with long hair and felt slippers will confess when they tried to read it out loud, the squirrel outside their window fell asleep with a nut still in her mouth. It’s hard to be thrilled by discussions of 1968 lesbians when they are the same age as your grandmother.

This rhymed version solves the problem. It draws a clever cartoon map of the text that is memorable and manageable, navigable and fun. It’s a commentary that helps us remember every turn of Butler’s thought, and also a work of art that one fondly remembers reading. It’s a subversive, secret adventure. If kitsch is art remis au goût du jour, remade to suit today’s taste, this marve-lous poem remakes 1990s feminist philosophy au goût de Dante, to the taste of Heloise and Hrabanus Maurus and Jean de Meun. It’s not just great art, it’s high camp: a loving assassination. It’s a marvelous, maximalist tour de force that plays with a famously minimalist author. Foucault once said that his generation, so cocky about having revolutionized and reimagined the world, had not invented a single new sexual pleasure. I think it doesn’t matter that we haven’t, if we are the first to read such a sparkling thing as this poem.

— Anna M. Kłosowska

Gender Trouble Couplets, Volume 1

1

1

“Women” as the Subject of Feminism

But must there be a Womankind?A female Heart and female Mind?For Feminism to existthen must there be a Second Sex?If Feminism’s greatest goalsare liberated gender rolesthen Gender we presume as given — it is the base from which we’re driven.This Woman then would constitutethe prosecutor of our suitand she’s the one politicallywhom we are serving ferventlyand She’s the one we’d representwith Feminism’s argument.Yet “Politics” is no sure termnor “Representing” very firm.

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Well Representing helps, it’s trueto win a Civil Right or twobut it oppresses us as well.A man-made mold or iron shellit must distort what it would show(at least that’s how I read Rousseau).But we have tried to representthis Woman to her betterment — to find a language or discoursethat we could use as a resourceto make this Gender visibleand make our protest critical.Indeed there’s some necessityin razing visibilitysince Woman’s life is not presentedin ways with which we’re well contented.And so it seems we need a Woman — the a priori Subject given.Yet Woman is no longer stable — a term whose standing’s now ill-able — because there is of course debateon what by “Woman” we’d relatefor surely there aren’t Absolutesnor Truth that “Woman” constitutes. Now first of all there is some doubton what the Subject’s all about.I’m sure by now that you will knowthe theories of Michel Foucault,who claims that Power will create

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the Subjects it would subjugate.This Power works by prohibition,by regulation, limitationand discipline for our protection(perhaps with choices and election)and so its Subjects are controlledas Power shapes them in its mold,for it defines and then producesthese Subjects for its certain uses.If this be true then we must askwhat is the “Subject” of our task? If Feminism takes as giventhat there are Subjects known as women,how can we trust this formulationthat’s simply Power’s machination?In fact the Subject whom we’d freeis Power’s Subjectivity.This system made those very Subjectsaccording to its rules, and its checksdictate those terms, so we will findthat we are caught up in a bind. The Subject is the question crucial.It is to Feminism centralbecause the Subject is includedby what is otherwise excluded.It is created by Repressionand so it makes up our Oppression.The chains that bind it once it’s rationed

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hide beneath the form that’s fashioned.Repressive practices don’t “show”(at least that’s how I read Foucault).And so the Subject’s a constructionthat’s made by Politics’ production.And when we think of Politicsin terms of States and their Subjects,we would conceal the operationsof Power and its own relations.The legal forces must inventthe Subjects whom they’d represent.The Law produces and concealsthe Subject who to Law appeals.This “Subject before Law” is prizedas premise that is naturalized — this process magnificently making Law’s legitimacy. And so it’s not enough to trycorrecting Patriarchy’s lieby finding ways to representthis Woman with good faith intentby showing literarilythis Subject more compellingly.For we must also undertakea study of the things that makethis Woman as a Categoryand Subject whose goals liberatorywe would support, but who’s producedby structures we’ve not yet deduced.     

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So when we ask about this Subjectwho stands before the Law’s strict compactnow we must entertain the thoughtthat actually the Subject’s not.Perhaps it is just fictional,a myth or construct cynical?     The Law makes fables that would trick us,ascribing reality statusto Law and its dutiful subjectswho stand before the Law’s strict precepts.     The Feminists who speak of womenwould act as if one thing is given,and yet the term is hardly stable — to mean one thing it is ill-able — nor can command the strong assentof those whom it would represent.For what we would a Woman callis more than that, since it’s not all — not everything that she would be.The term’s not used exhaustivelyand Gender is not constitutedcoherently but convolutedparticular to Time and Place,to Class or else to different Race.For clearly Gender intersectswith Race and Class and Creed and Sexand every which Identitywe formulate discursively!

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And so it’s not yet possibleto keep this Gender in control.It’s caught in many intersectionsand mired in interconnections.For Feminism then the case isthere’s no one universal basis.And there is no Identitythat can exist cross-culturally.

To say it somewhat with more candor:there’s not just one form of Oppressor.A patriarchy universalas concept isn’t all that usefulbecause so many different contextsthere are in which Oppression exists.Nor can we look at the specificsto find examples of our concepts,thus making them illustrationsof principles that beg our questions.     We’re quick to label as one statusthe Patriarchy’s weight upon usin order that we show the wisdomof the claims of Feminism.So as a shortcut we createda Woman who is dominatedby a force that’s universal — a Subject who is shared by all.     

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A universal Patriarchyappears now like so much malarkey. And yet this other concept — Woman — is waiting still to be disproven.Can Woman ever preexistOppressor’s grinding her to grist?Or is it just in nation Stateswhere Woman as a group relates?Will Woman always be definedagainst and within male Mankind?And is there any Femininethat every Woman has within?Some Essence that’s not Masculine — a Universal Feminine?Within the Gender Binarysits Woman in her fineryand yet without that boundaryno females have camaraderie. Whatever specificityaccrues to Femininityis cut off analyticallyand ghettoized politicallyfrom every which Identitylike Class and Race/Ethnicityand so the so-called Unityof Woman’s Subjectivityis filled with ambiguityand riddled with disunity.Of course the source of all its force?Representational discourse!

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Now has this sketch exploratorydestabilized the categoryof Woman seen as seamless seta notion we must now reject.And these domains exclusionaryreveal of course the regulatoryconsequences of the constructionwhen put to our emancipation.Indeed there is much fragmentationin Feminism’s coalitionand even there’s some oppositionfrom women whose representationwould never fit so seamlesslyin Feminist femininity.If Feminism’s the suggestionthat there is a Representationfor all of those Feminist Subjectswhom Feminism itself thus constructs,then this has had the consequenceof failing those constituentswhom Feminism representsnot giving an accounting forRepresentation’s power hoard.         We can’t appeal to Strategyto justify this Categoryas though for purposes strategicthis Woman needs must be our Subject.All strategies will mean much more than what they are intended for

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and in this case exclusion might bean unintended Exigency:by having fixed a stable Subject,Representation’s a false project. Of course we cannot just refuseRepresentation. We must usethe Language and the Norms todaywhich make the field on which we play.There is no place outside this locus.Therefore its practice is our focus.We must address in any eventwhat Marx termed “historical present”and so within the present frameour task will be to give a nameto features of the Binarywhich would construct the Categoryin structures now contemporarywhich certain Selves would naturalizeand others would immobilize. So now within our Politicswhich some would call “post-feminist”we must interrogate this given — the subjects who are known as “women.” We must critique this entitywhich is human Identityand track the Genealogy of Gender as Ontology.Then with smarter formulation

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we can advance representation.We necessarily critique the theory feminist and seekescape from the necessityof holding an Identity. To pose a rhetorical question:Isn’t it actually the notionof the category of Womanthat thwarts goals of Representation?Or perhaps it’s that the Constructionof the category of Womanis made partly through regulationand serves as a reificationof what is a gendered relation?Is Gender’s categorizationheterosexualization? Is Feminism not contraryto reify the category? If Gender as a stable notioncan be no longer our foundationthen we must probe the nitty-grittyand question Gender Identity.Now if we make Identitya problematic entitythen we might trace politicallywhat forces work juridicallyand seek a Genealogy of the very Ontologyand set out in our inquiryto deconstruct the Binarythat forms the Gender category.

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2

The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire

But as we now critically questionthe age-old category Woman,the category’s invocationprecludes perhaps Representation.Now does it really make much sensethat all the Subjects it presentswould be constructed by exclusionof those not granted its inclusion?And what would be the real relationsof forms of Power’s dominationsand forms as well of its exclusionsustained by that Representation?We talk of Woman’s Unityconstructing Solidaritysupposing shared Identity

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and yet we always must rememberthe split between what’s Sex and Gender.Created we that fine distinctionto torque the ancient formulationwhich claimed that one’s Biologywould make a person’s Destiny.By separating Sex and Genderwe must indeed now reconsiderhow it’s in fact that culturallythat we’re constructed sexually.And so we know that always Genderdoes not result from Sex; and neitheris Gender nearly quite so fixedas naturally as we are sexed.Therefore the Subject’s Unityis not made with impunitybut as it were ALWAYS ALREADYcontested even by the Bodywith Gender’s multiplicity eschewing fixed Identity.Then Sex is by definitionagent of Gender’s deconstruction!If Gender is just culturalwhile Sex purely is naturalit isn’t necessarilythat Gender follows naturallybut actually there is distinctionbuilt right into the assumption. If even Sex is Binaryit’s not therefore necessary

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that Man’s construction perfectlyinforms male bodies totally.Perhaps the sexes seem to bean opposition Binarybut there’s no reason it’d be truethat Gender’s numbered just at two.A binary gender systemrelies on the common wisdomthat Sex is merely a mirrorreflecting a natural Gender.A Subject’s own Identityshould not assume prioritysince perhaps the Subject’s formationis buried in the wrong foundation.For Feminism there’s no Womanfor our way of Representation.

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3

Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate

Is Gender what you have or be?Is Gender just made culturally?Could we construct it differently?Is there a possibilityof any gender agency? Is Gender’s universal axisthen always framed as different Sexes?And is there ever any Genderthat’s to the gendered Subject prior?Now some would say this very notionof Gender as man-made constructionfunctions deterministicallyor even syllogisticallyencoding Bodies culturally

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in meanings anatomicallyassigned and coded passivelyas though it weren’t Biologybut forces awfully culturallythat thereby frame our destiny.And then in Simone de Beauvoir(within her classic oeuvre) arethese thoughts you may have read before:A woman’s not as woman bornbut she becomes as she would learn.Preceding Gender? There’s an ego,an Agent (whom we call Cogito)who at some point takes on a Genderand therefore might have picked the other.Construction then is not a choice?Or does compulsion steal one’s voice?And does compulsion come from Sex?Or made as Culture so expects?         In fact there isn’t any Bodywhich would not ALWAYS ALREADY beencoded by us culturallyso that it’s just fallaciouslysome preordained Biologyis basis for Ontology.It looks like Sex by definitionis Gender, which is a construction.And then this issue of constructionmust founder on the rock, conventiondebating if the Will has force

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or if some Fate would Will coerce?Given then such characteristics,it all is traced back to Linguistics:how our debate is so constrainedbecause (as I have just explained)the Body’s written in these termsreceiving as a set of Normsa Will that is appropriativeor otherwise interpretative — and so the Body’s made to fitthe meanings inscribed onto it.The Body too is a construction,its meaning post hoc through deduction.And neither does it exist everas prior to that marker Gender.Therefore critiquing insistencethat the Body has existenceboth in and through this mark of Genderwe simply cannot any longerassume the Body’s neatly filledwith Essence or that it’s instilledwith whatsoever Self has willed.So have not we discovered whetherit’s either Sex or either Genderthat’s firstly fixed, or is it free?Or what if what it’s seen to beis actually a limitationand just a pre-fab suppositionwhich is some claim of Humanismwrecking all our radicalism?

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Now this intractabilityin the impossibilityof truly analyzing Gender — because it’s really made by Culture — exposes there’s a quandarywhere Discourse builds a boundarythat’s set within a Hegemonicconstructing system so Platonicwhich degrades corporealityand promotes rationalitysince Language always will constrainall Being to its own domain(with Gender acting as its Name).But whether Gender’s culturalor if it’s biologicalor if it is linguisticalALWAYS ALREADY it’s sexual — an assumed Significationthat is put in a relationof a kind of oppositionagainst some certain kind of Otherwho would partake a different Gender.         Though Gender is relationalit’s not ergo just personal;because the Universal Personis set against the other Womansince Woman always is the Bearerwho carries with her marks of Gender

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while Manliness and Personhoodare simply One — it’s understood.         And yet to add a complication:there is a deeper contradictionwhich we might call a paradox;though Sex is Woman, she’s the Sexwho is not One (I do not lie:I read it in Irigaray).All Words are phallologocentricand so the Masculine Linguisticmeans Woman is not thinkable:a Sex un-representablewho is a Multiplicityillegible to Unity.         And then in Simone de Beauvoir(within her classic oeuvre) arethese thoughts you may have read before:the Woman always is the Otherwho is the very mark of Gender.According to Irigaray(whom I cite true and do not lie)the Woman cannot signify.

And so it’s dialecticallythat excluded entirelyis this Other’s Identitydenied in Sign’s economyso that metaphysically

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imposed is the Hegemonythat structures Subjectivity.         And yet what is the Metaphysicspresumed to be the Subject’s substance?And who is it shaping this complexof the Sex and the Gender matrix?Alas the humanistic conceptof the human as a so-called Subjectassumes that there’s a Person(or as it were a singular human)who is an agent of an actionwho’s got a certain characterwhich forms within a basic coreupon which is a Gender, orthere’s someone whom we’d call a Personwhom we deem capable of Reasonwho simply has some attributesnow added onto Human roots.This universalist conceptionthat views the Human as a Personprovides a point for our departurein theorizing social Gender.If Gender’s really a positionconstructed within a relationamong Subjects whose Constructionsupplies their social constitutionand Gender follows that relation,then Persons cannot simply “be”except as they are socially.

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And Essence must be relativeto that discourse relations giveand discourse more determinativeand Gender’s then not substantivebut formed by discourse culturaland, too, by terms historical.         And therefore the Feminine Sexis only linguistic Absence — the frank impossibilityof any such grammaticallynamed Noun which is substantivelynot really a Reality.According to Irigaraywhom I would cite without a lie,it’s actually her point of viewto show such Substance isn’t truebut merely is a social forceproduced my Masculine Discourse.This Absence isn’t marked as such — an argument that very muchopposes what de Beauvoir’s thought(that Woman’s marked and Man is not).Irigaray’s Sex is not Other — the lack that defines the Male Gender.The Feminine therefore can’t bedefined thus theoreticallysince Language would be phallocentric;the Female Sex is not a Subjectand there is no representation

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for any female/male relationif linguistic economyis made by Masculinity.         Between any social positionswe surely can make some distinctionson what is perceived as the Subjectwithin the given social context.The very circularityof Feminism’s inquiryis underscored by the positionswhich locate Gender inside Personsand those who claim the very notionwhich views the Human as a Personwho is positioned as a Subjectwithin the sexist pre-modern constructwithout the possibilityboth structurally, semantically,of female positivity.         And then in Simone de Beauvoir(within her classic oeuvre) arethese thoughts you may have read before:the very notion of the Subjectwithin the existential projectwhich takes shape from Misogynyis therefore ALWAYS ALREADYa Masculine, a Universalwithin the framework existentialdefined precisely as it’d differ

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from what it makes its female Otheroutside its universal Normsin singular, embodied forms.         Some say de Beauvoir wants to fightfor Woman, so she’ll have the rightto be a Subject existentialin these same terms now universal.But she rejects a cool Abstractand disembodied, male Subjectas well as the disparagementof disavowed embodimentprojected on the Feminineas though the body’s Female. Thento link corporealitysomehow with Femininityas a gesture just restricts the Body and the Female Sexas if it follows logicallyhowever paradoxically:Man is Incorporealityand tool of Rationalitywho only then is ever free.And so de Beauvoir’s propositionwould seem to start to beg the question:Exactly what is this negationby which male identificationis all Universalityand makes Corporealityconstrued as Femininity?

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The Master-Slave dialecticprovides some terms analogicfor this Gender asymmetryprefiguring an Economythat signs for Masculinity,creating always its very Subjectin terms of course of this self-same lack.

And then in Simone de Beauvoir(within her classic oeuvre) arethese thoughts you may have read before:whether some Femininityis an instrumentalityof Freedom and of Existenceor limiting as an Essencewhich shows that the Embodimentinforming all her argumentis actually the reproductionof old Descartes and his distinctionof Body as different from Freedomyet I assert the contraryagainst the ancient binarywhich sets up that dualityof Mind and Body hierarchy — where de Beauvoir sees as synthesisin her compelling analysisand claims this very dualismwould follow Phallocentrism.        

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Tradition philosophicalthrough Plato, Sartre, or Husserlinsists on the distinctivenessof Body against Consciousness.This slash between the body, soulin Plato, Sartre, or Husserlsupports regimes politicalas well as psychologicalthat thus are hierarchical:For what by Dualism is meantbut fleeing from Embodiment?And scholars now can documentthe many texts that representthe Mind as Masculinity,the Body, Femininity.So every single Reproductionof Mind and Body in distinctionrepeated thus conventionallycreates a Gender hierarchy.But in de Beauvoir’s formulationthere is always this separationof Freedom and the human Body — a Mark that’s frankly shoddybecause it’s not along the axisof Gender and the Sexes — but an old Cartesian distinctionin dire need (I think) of revision.De Beauvoir’s point officiallyis that this Femininityis marked on Body by Discourse

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then leaves men’s bodies (but of course)unmarked as though universal;but what is seemingly worse still:according to Irigaray(and yet again I do not lie),the Marked is always like the Markerso Self is always like the Other;thereafter all Significationis man-made and (as a construction)puts Woman as an Othernessand cannot grasp the differencesbut gives a Label or a Nameand therefore marks it as the same.

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4

Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond

De Beauvoir and Irigaraydon’t either of them ever liebut differ each in how they seethe patterns forming structurallyin Gender’s own asymmetry.For one, it’s dialecticallyin misfired reciprocity.To the other, it’s dialectichiding what’s monologic.The epistemologicalas well as ontologicaland even system logicalare by Irigaray exposed.And yet whatever else she showsis undercut: analysis

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has failed in its ambitiousness.For can we just identifyeconomies that signifyboth always monolithicallyas well as monologically,transcending terms made culturallyas they are made historicallyin many different far-flung contextswhich each have differences of Sex?For is it not Imperialismor even like Phallocentrismto ignore all the operationsof different ways there are Oppressions?To simply note the many culturesas other kinds of othered Othersis another amplificationof the very same, tired constructionand again an appropriation(maybe an unthought repetition)and gesture of colonizationby which the Phallus, too, would function.         Of course as Feminists we seekto explicate and to critiquemanly claims so totalizingeven in our own theorizing.         To name just one Identityof a singular enemyalso mimics the strategy

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of Masculine Patriarchyand doesn’t offer any morethan terms of the Oppressor, orif such totalizing tacticswould work well in both these contextsthen such gestures colonialistare not then purely masculinistbut can texture any relationwith a hint of subordination.         Nor yet can we make the assumptionthat there is one discrete Oppressionthat has a sequential existencealong a certain model axisthat has a structure horizontaland thus ignores all factors social.Nor may we use another modelthat takes a shape that’s verticalthat would rank different Oppressionsin groups of causal-linked relationspresuming some originations,preserving thereby derivations.The field of Power whose structureis the colonial gestureencompasses also the axisof differences of the Sexesso that its very differentialis not at all hierarchicalin terms of Phallocentrismor Racism or Classism,

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each stemming from some first positionas though the primary conditionof originary oppression.And so the false appropriationof an Other’s own suppressionis never just exclusivelyenjoined by Masculinity.         Now these debates in Feminismthat dwell on an Essentialismraise many a pertinent questionabout a Masculine Oppressionand universal claims to freea Feminist Identity.Well any universal claimtakes as its standpoint that old sameand shared Epistemologywhich simply makes apologyfor some outdated Unityascribed to Femininityas being Sexualityand linked up with Maternity.To me the globalizing gesture(already I’ve said in this chapter)has generated quite a numberof critiques quite admonitoryof Gender as a categoryand Woman as exclusionarywhen she is seen as unitaryand this negates entirely

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the full, rich multiplicity— intersections politicallyand socially and culturally —and fits them all in one constructionand patly labels it a “woman.”          Some thinkers seek a formulationof Feminism’s coalitionwhich won’t assume essentiallywhat always Woman needs must be.And so the identificationof those who are in that positionsometimes articulated as Womanmight join to foster coalition.Now clearly this coalitionaltransformation is politicaland yet the form of coalitions(assemblages of new positions)cannot be set, not pre-determinedwithout inviting inadvertentproblems caused by limitationon shaping a new coalition.Insisting on a Unityassumes that Solidarityis somehow purely fundamentalto any action instrumental.And yet perhaps the coalitioncould well accept a contradictionand see inherent fragmentationfurthering democratization.

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Might not it be that Dialogis really just a Monologthat is specific culturallyand bound to historicity?And therefore the Power relationswhich fuel such basic limitationson working dialogically require, too, our scrutiny(or else the dialogic modelwould recapitulate the liberalassumption always of some equalwho as a Subject must agreeon what would count as Unity).But it is just a fallacyto invoke Woman, as though sheis solely one Identityor Class, Age, Race/Ethnicityand of one Sexuality.          And so by making the assumptionabout the baked-in incompletionthat allows that categoryto be open permanently — as an ideal that is normativewithout its being demonstrative — we ask if it is necessaryto attain any unitarysolidarity as a goalfor each action political?Is not all such regimentation

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the cause or root of fragmentation?Might not it be that coalitionmight better pursue desired actionembracing at once fragmentationagainst that very Unityof Woman as Identity?

The Norm of Solidaritypromotes an exclusivityat level of Identityexcluding possibilityof every set of proposed actionswhich might well cause disliked disruptionsto break out at the very borderthat’s between the Self and its Other.

This Unity indeed as goalis always just conceptualand Unity’s provisional — in every form contextualnot bearing any expectationthat every Feministic actionmust now arise in Unityof one same fixed Identity.And action then could now beginas every which and way, “women”excluded once, can now join in.And this anti-foundationalapproach that’s coalitionalas a new form political

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assumes neither Identitynor any so-called Unity.                 Advancing thus Identityin Culture’s terms of Unityinstates always a definitionpreventing thereby the creationof any identity conceptsnew-made in political actions.So any call to Unitycannot expand Identity.         But when the old Identitiesand representing entitiesno longer are only the Subjectwhich fuels our political project,well then can new Identitiesarise in new exigencies.Certain political practicesnow arranged on new-found axisesdevised on a contingent basiscan come about then as the case is.So a structural politicalthat now is coalitionalneed not expand the categoryto make it somewhat unitarybut offers more complexityto Self as multiplicity.        

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If Gender’s a complexitywhose claim to a totalityis ALWAYS ALREADY deferred(its self-same essence not affirmed)then to affirm Identityconflicting in disunity allows structure that is hodge-podgeof sundry, open assemblagepermitting both convergencesas well as those divergencesthat without Telos normativedenies closure definitive.        

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5

Identity, Sex, and the Metaphysics of Substance

Oh! what is an Identity?And what can ground the certaintyIdentities are actualand all are self-identicalpersisting, as though they’re the same — coherent, single, with one name?And even more importantlydoes Gender have Identity?We can’t discuss Identityunless we make an inquiryinto something that comes priorwhich of course is human Gendersince never are there human Personsexcept as we are gendered constructs.        

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It seems to me now that the notionof Human Being as a Person(as one who has some agency)makes claims to an Ontology — an argument about the Beingimplicit in one’s social Meaning.And yet this takes elaborationand questioning of the assumptionthat actually the context socialexists outside (as an external)with somehow a true Personhoodeither already understoodas Consciousness or else as Reasonor as moral deliberation.The question of Identityis (within most Philosophy)almost always one centered onsome internal criterionpresuming continuityto Self as one Identity(of just one Person throughout Time).But such conjectures are not mine.

Instead I ask to what degreedo regulations that we seeas Gender’s social formulation — constructing its dualist division — not constitute Identitycreating in realitythe mere coherence of Subjects

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with their self-identical status?Is it not that Identityderives from Normativityassigned as if it comes from Naturewhen it’s a descriptive feature?In other words Identitywhen seen as Continuityis not a tick of Personhood(as is thus often understood)but it’s a trick made sociallyby norms constructed culturallyof intelligibilitydictating legibility.         In as much as Identityis linked to Sexualityas well as Sex and Gender normsthen in the way the Person formsthere is a problematic questionwhich is open to a decontsruction.And now we track the emergenceof beings whose supposed coherenceappears to make them Persons, buttheir Gender makes us wonder whattheir essence is, which won’t conformto any culture’s Gender normby which the Person is defined — so we are caught up in a bind.        

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Genders are intelligibleand somehow they are integralto structures institutional — coherences relational — maintaining their continualIdentities as Sexualas Gendered and Desirable.In other words there are Spectersof discontinuous vectorsproduced and then prohibitedby Laws which all have limiteda Gender to perceived connectionof linking Sex with its Expression.         And yet by now I’m sure you knowthat that’s the point made by Foucault.For as he ironically terms itSex’s truth is made by the norms ititself makes as Identityin forming Sexuality.Well Heterosexualizationalways makes the instantiationof a discursive oppositionbetween what’s seen as Feminineand what’s construed as Masculine(where these two terms are understoodas attributes of Personhood).And yet the culture gives the Normsby which all gendered selves have formsand Norms require and insist

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that selves can only then existwhen Gender follows from its Sexas well when gender practicesshould follow normatively eitherthe custom of their Sex or Gender:Identity’s relationalto structures, which (politicaland made by the customs cultural)would shape our sexualities.             Since some Gender Identitiesmust fail already to conformto suit the letter of the normthey seem impossibilitiesor as it were monstrosities. And yet these rare Identitiesprovide us opportunitiesto open up the very termsof identitarian norms.

When Identity is legibleand therefore it’s intelligible,that’s when the matrix singularcreates it own peculiardeep link within compulsoryHeterosexuality’sdiscursive regularitiesthat make up Sex Identities. Identity’s made by the forceof Power ruled through its Discourse.

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Then is Gender Identitynot made by regulatoryand erstwhile a compulsoryHeterosexuality?         Or would maybe that explanationactually be totalizationwhere Heterosexualityjust takes the place that logicallywas held by Phallocentrismas sole cause of all Sexism?            We learn from France whose Feministsas well as her Post-Structuralistsmake no agreement uniformthat would define that “Power” term.Consider all the oppositionsamong the various positions.We have at first — I would not lie — the views of Luce Irigaraywho says there is no Sex but One(the Masculine whose productionopposes any other Genderwhich simply is the male one’s Other.And then as you are sure to knowthere is the point made by Foucaultwho sees both Masculinityas well as Femininityand even Sexualityas all one single entity

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built up by discursivityof science and modernity. And then of course I’d not renegethe work of one Monique Wittigwho keys Sex as a categoryto the regime regulatory of the condition compulsoryof Heterosexualityconstructed as the Feminineby universal Masculine.But Wittig as you surely knowagrees in essence with Foucaultthat Sex will end when finally weo’erthrow what’s the Hegemonyof Heterosexuality.         These models each explanatoryshow Sex as a categorybut understood in different termsof Power in its many forms.So what’s the possibilitythat we can think complexityof all these fields of power, orhow all them mash together; forthe theory of sexual differencesuggests that there’s no real existencegranted the Female as a Subjectbecause she’s totally the Objectwithin a representationalprogram or system conventional.

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She’s always the Representationand hence without representation.Irigary’s Ontologythen argues somewhat subtlya Woman’s what can’t simply bebecause she is the very Differencewho’s baked already into Essence — she’s not just the Opposite Sexin contrast to manly Subjectsnor’s she just the Opposite Genderopposed to the Masculine Other — she’s really the economyof Opposition’s binary(the secret, monologic planwho’s used constructing human Man).         Yet all agree despite differencethat Language makes from Sex Substanceor a self-identical Beingas though not a way of seeing.Discourse conceals! We cannot bea Sex or Gender essentially.So now again I do not liewhen I say that Irigaraywould claim that Grammar’s no indexof what is Gender or is Sexfor Grammar privileges the modelof Gender as the foundationaland Binary in oppositionbetween — within — representation.

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Irigaray says that this Grammar(subtending to its take on Gender)assumes that Man and Masculineand Woman and the Femininecreate a kind of Binarywhich masks a higher harmony — the singular Hegemonyof one sole Masculinitythat shuts up Femininityas site of Multiplicityagainst the Phallic Unity.

Also by now I’m sure you knowthat Sex’s Grammar for Foucaultimposes the Gender Binarythrough a system regulatoryshrinking the Multiplicityof any Sexualitythat might disrupt Hegemony.

Yet nor would I ever renegeon noting how Monique Wittigexamines Sex’s Binaryin terms of a compulsoryHeterosexualityand aims to squash that tyranny — advancing a true Humanismthat’s free from any rank sexism.And elsewhere she views the promotion,the profusion, indeed diffusion,

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of all economies eroticthat are not strictly phallocentricas ways that we might flatly freeSex, Gender, and Identity.And Wittig sees the Lesbianas pushing back from restrictionof any Gender Binaryimposed by Sexuality.         But in her humanist assumptionthe modes of all significationas well as all representationare not under interrogation.But rather self-determinationaffects the rehabilitationof existential agencygranted to Lesbianity.Therefore she won’t critique the Subjectwho is Patriarchy’s Symbolic.Effectively her argumentnegotiates some replacementof the universal Subject, Manwith a new one, the Lesbian.So the Woman-Is-Sex equationis just a Masculine conflationencoding Femininityas sexed Corporeality — hence, a refusal to grant womenthe freedom that’s granted men.

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To break Sex as this propertymight phase out the misogynywhich makes Sex a synecdochefor all of Femininity.

Gender Wittig sees as indexfor the old opposition, Sex,and claims there only is one Genderwhich is used always in singularwhere the Masculine is generalas a non-gendered Universal.And Wittig calls for the destructionof Sex as made by this constructionwhere Woman must assume the statusof Subjecthood that is denied us.As we move toward that destructionthe Woman still must somehow functionas universal point of viewand as particular one, too.So Wittig’s view of the Lesbian(replacing her in the Subject, Man)confirms the normative promiseof Metaphysics of Substance(the ideals of Humanist ethics).

So Wittig does not quite complywith insights from Irigaraybut she defends that the presumed Personwho’s equated perhaps with Freedomassuming a status pre-social

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for a freedom that’s universal,subscribing as well in essenceto a Metaphysics of Substanceresponsible for the productionof Sex as a hidden construction.         Well the Metaphysics of Substanceis something that scholars would nuancein discussions contemporaryof Nietzschean philosophy.And in setting out to teach meabout works by Friedrich Nietzsche,says Harr: the methodologyfor building up Ontologyis trapped in Illusions of Being — in fallacious, dumb ways of seeing — mistaking Grammar’s prerequisiteof the Subject and the Predicateas though they were Realityof some one true Identityat levels of Ontology(of Substance and of Attribute) — Constructions Wittig would disputebecause they serve to institutean Order and Simplicityin some one true Identity.They don’t present and can’t revealan Order that is really Real.

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This criticism Nietzscheanexplains the pickle we are in:psychological categoriesgovern at last the theoriesof Gender and Identityand give to them Reality.For Haar and for other such criticsthis is a false Metaphysicsand offers critique of the notionof Psychological Personwho’s viewed as a substantive thing(or — if you prefer — like das Ding). Psychological categoriesderive from false preliminaries(assumptions of Identities)which is the belief in Languagewith all of its messy baggage.

Now Grammar made Descartes presumeego cogito ergo sum.But does “I” think? No! Certainly!The truth is that thoughts come to me.Really the Subject’s false conceptionmerely arises from the fictionthat any kind of Unitybegins in words’ Reality.

And as Wittig has shown moreoverthere isn’t a Language sans Gender.Wittig analyzes the Grammar

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of French as it pertains to Genderand through this work in Wittig’s eyesthis Gender not only qualifiesbut constitutes the Epistemeby which this Gender we would deemas somehow universalized.(Although of course Wittig realizedit’s not the same in French and Englishthis gendering grammatical-ish.)Nevertheless the mark of Genderis always just as Grammar’s renderedwith Person always as a bearerlinguistically as some one Gender — a primitive Ontologythat is a built-in Binary.Arising from Ontologythis Gender is Philosophy.And Wittig’s views corroboratedby discourses so saturatedwith implicit Ontologyin Sex and Sexuality.

The claim that one may simply bea Sex or Sexualityis clearly symptomaticalof Western metaphysicalassumptions about Substanceswhere Genders seem as Essences.And in the case of men and womenthis would subordinate the notion

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of Gender to Identityand furthermore the fallacythat Person can a Gender bepresumes some state of prior Essencethat’s coupled with presumed existenceor sense of self-identitythat’s linked to Sexuality.

In a pre-feminist contextwhich would confuse Gender with SexGender’s a mode of Unityfor embodied Identityopposed to some Sex Oppositewhose structure’s a prerequisiteto build an oppositionalcoherence individualamong Desire, Sex, and Gender,inside a Self that they each render.            Assumption that one just can bea given, sexed Anatomyis undermined by observationof gendered psychic disposition.“I feel like a Woman” is truebecause Aretha has sung “Youmake me feel.” So always the Otherinvoked is an opposite Gender — a formulation that coercesthe Binary it thus imposes.        

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Gender can be a Unityof Sex and Sexualityonly when Sex is understoodas equal to what Gender wouldand only when Desires beHeteronormativity — performed in terms of a relationwhere Sex is made in opposition.Indeed for Gender’s Unitythere ALWAYS ALREADY needs must beHeterosexuality.            Heterosexualityproduces uniformityof gendered terms that constitutea Binary we must refute.         Well there is a presuppositionwithin this very Gender relationof a casual reproductionof Sex and Sexualityfor Gender is Desire, orDesire’s Gender. Furthermorewithin this certain Unityconstructed metaphysicallySex, Gender, Sexuality — with each one in this Trinitynow all unlocked by just one key:Heterosexuality.

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A naturalistic paradigmwhere Sex and Gender intertwinewith these in continuityto lusting Sexualityas basis of Identityand for a paradigm expressivewhich sees the Self as successiveto Sex and Gender and Desireand not to such expression prior — are both what Luce Irigary(I paraphrase but do not lie)sees as a wish to reify.         This sketch of Gender gives a cluefor the substantializing viewand its deeper Metaphysicsas linked to Power Politics.The instutionalityof the rank compulsoryHeterosexualityrequires Gender’s Binarywith one term, Masculinitydemarked from Femininity — a demarcation overallclearly Heterosexual.

And then this differentiationof two intertwined oppositionscreates a strong consolidationor a presumptive Unity

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both within Masculinityand in Femininitythrough terms of Sexuality.

Now the displacement strategyof relational Binaryform of its ontological stance(the Metaphysics of Substance)claims Gender’s dueling categoriesare made within its binaries.And then I’m sure that you will knowthat that’s implicit in Foucault:Sex, he says, as categoryis product of an inventoryproduced within Modernityby modes of Sexuality.And the strange, tactical productionof that old, discursive constructionof our Sex within a Binaryconceals of course the primaryaims of the secret apparatuswhich postulates that both the Sexesare cause of Sexuality.Here’s a conclusion that he draws:“It is an effect that seems the cause.”Regimes of Sexualityby functioning discursivelyinstate the Gender Binaryand thus make Sex a category.        

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In an intro Foucault would writeto notes by a hermaphrodite(a certain Herculine Barbinwhose journals — in Foucault’s jargon — show “practices” that would critiqueModernity and its technique).Heterosexuality — which cannot grasp an Identitythat thwarts its Sexuality.

From norms this Herculine departshaving both male and female parts.Moreso the system just has shelvesfor filing certain gendered Selves.And those conventions that producea Self in terms of Sex, reducethe Self to either He or She — a frame that Herculine’d exceedsince Herculine deploys the termsof Gender using “both” its formsand thus exceeds the fineryset up by Gender’s Binary.Conversing disconcertingly, Heterosexualityand Homosexualityare advanced anatomicallyin a discontinuityof Heterogeneitythat’s cut off paradoxically.by “Hetero”-sexuality

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(undermining subversivelythat Metaphysics of Substanceonce seen as the very Essenceof identitarian Sex).

Foucault sees Herculine’s ex-perience as some Pleasures thatare like the “grin” without the “cat!”And Pleasures thus are figured hereas qualities that don’t adhereto any abiding Substancewhich thus suggests the happenstanceof all gendered experiencenot apprehended as Substanceor the hierarchical Grammarof a Noun and Modifier.

Through this reading of Herculineour Foucault claims that he has seenexposure ontologicalof attributes accidentaland postulates Identityas restricted culturallyin principles of hierarchy.And this insight wholly dispenseswith Genders any Substancesso it’s no longer possibleto hold the gendered Subject wholesubsuming Gender dissonanceinto a prior essence, as

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if men might act quite Feminineyet with some manly underpin(a “man” who is Ontologyor figure of Biology).But the notion of this Substanceis just a fictitious essenceproduced through the compulsoryconstruction of coherencywhich orders neatly Attributesinto the Gender Absolutes.         And so it seems this dissonancemust undermine the Substance stance.Appearance of a Self that’s genderedis by a Regulation renderedwhich marshals forced coherencesinto some fictive Substances.The exposure of this productionas made by Regulationby resisting assimilationwith attributes, or any quirktransgressing the same old frameworkas certain dissonant Adjectiveswould redefine the Substances(the Nouns that they would modify).And so we may hypothesithat this explodes as forgeriesall of Gender’s categoriessince they include what they exclude(as we quite rightly must conclude).

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But if supposed Substancesare nothing but coherencesof contingently made construction,of attribute in regulation,then the very Ontologyis formed quite artificiallyand so a superfluity.         So as this now is broken downwe see that Gender’s not a Noun.But neither is it made from setsof some free-floating sobriquets.We can’t deny that its effectis made within the old Subject(mainly when performativelyit is imposed coercivelywhen Power wants coherency).

In Metaphysics of Substancea Gender’s merely Performancewhich makes up that Identitythat Gender would presume to be.         In the terms that I’m construingGender simply is a Doingand not the doing of a Subjectwho before the Deed could exist.In the project liberatoryof thinking the category — outside Metaphyiscs of Subtance —

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there is certainly relevancefor what some critics would teach meabout words by Friedrich Nietzsche.“There is no Being just the Deed.”

Now Nietzsche might not have agreedbut let me state a corollary:There is no Gender categoryand no Gender Identitybehind Performativityand this makes the very expressionthat’s presumed to have been their Essence.

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6

Language, Power, and the Strategies of Displacement

But so many Feminist screedspresume a Doer does the Deeds.Unless at first an Agent beit seems there’d be no Agencyand hence no mode of transformationfor protesting our domination.But Wittig is ambiguouswhen it comes down to these Subjects.On one hand, Wittig would disputethe metaphysic Absolute.But on the other, she explainsthe human Subject she retains(the Agent individualas locus metaphysical).The Construction she diagnoses

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but meanwhile she still presupposesa Doer who’s behind the Deedand yet acknowledges the needto know Gender’s performative.

So the dispute that she would giveregards the temporalityof conflating fallaciouslythe cause of Gender with resultsso it’s the Sequence that she faults.

And yes! by now I’m sure you knowthat Wittig’s sharing with Foucaultthe trace of the old Marxist notionof what’s known as Reification:she tells us that the major gistof material-feministapproaches to this problem show(you know she echoes with Foucault)that what appears as Originfor the Oppressions we are inis in fact like a mark imposedwithin the Discourse of our foes.

The “Myth of Woman” manifestsonly through a False Consciousness.And thus this mark can’t pre-exist:Oppression marks out what Sex isand tells that our Sex be takenas a priori Subject given.

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So Sex, which looks like true perceptionis really just a myth’s construction;and meanwhile, yet the Oppressorproclaims that Sex is like Nature(according to CompulsoryHeterosexuality).

For Wittig, the Homosexualis a proposition radical — a desire liberatorywho would transcend the category.So Sex can’t simply be erasedor obfuscated or effacedby contesting effectivelyHeterosexuality.

But when I cite Irigaray?Believe you me! I do not lie.She argues flatly: Gender’s markmust be seen the crucial partthat operates foundationallyin the field of Ontology.For Wittig, Language is a toolwhose structures metaphysicalare in no way misogynist — only the application is.

Irigaray would like to seesomehow the possibilityof a new sign Economy

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that might escape the Mark of Genderwhich in fact is the erasureby the Phallologocentricof the Female from its rubric.

Irigaray says: Binaryexcludes all Femininity.And Wittig claims that this positionis the re-consolidationof the old, sexist mythic fiction.

Drawing on Simone de Beauvoir(within whose classic oeuvre aresome thoughts you may have read before),Wittig says that there’s no such thingas writing that is Feminine.For Wittig, there is no debatethat Language serves to subjugatebut in her methodologyshe views all words materiallywith words even an institutionthat might portend a Revolution.Language is a concrete practicemaintaining the very actionsof Individuals, and henceweakening by the consequenceof concerted collective actionfrom within the linguistic Fiction.

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If the category of Sex(as Wittig astutely suggests)is produced as a categoryby the framework of mandatoryHeterosexuality — to always restrict Identityalong a normative axisof the two opposing Sexes,Homosexualitymay overthrow Hegemonyof Sex as a category.

But Wittig also takes an issuewith using Genital Tissueorganizationallyto construct us sexually — as an Economythat counters Subjectivitymarked by Woman’s supposedlydistinct, natural Gender functionin Sexual Reproduction.

Now all this great proliferationof pleasure through Imaginationsuggests a Feminine formationof Eros’s certain diffusionas though opposed to the constructionof supposed Genitality.

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In a sense the Lesbian Bodyis an inverted kind of theoryof Freud’s old Sexualitywhich claimed superiorityof Phallic Sexuality(over former Analityand polymorph Perversity).Only an Invert (in Freud’s terms)fails to reach the Genital norms.Critiquing GenitalityInversion is used criticallyand praised by Wittig (preciselyas that one Sexualityoperating politicallyas a post-genitality).

In Heterosexism’s Matrixthe development of the Sexesis always their Normalization.And so Wittig’s mobilizationas well as radical subversionof this old, Freudian Inversionmay just however reinscribethe structure she would undermine.

If every anti-genitalis seen as oppositionalinto the structure sexualthen would not then the Binaryjust reproduce quite endlessly?

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Well the psychoanalysisof which Wittig’s opponent isproduced as a consequencea double bind, since in a senseshe assumes in her argumentFreud’s theory of developmentwhich although it’s now “inverted”isn’t therefore just subverted.

So Polymorph Perversityassumed as being primarybefore the added Mark of Sexis then in Wittig’s work expressedas being highest in degreeof human Sexuality.(Perhaps she underestimateshow Language always propagatesthe Mark of Gender, which she’d labeldisposable and variable.)       In the Lacanian theorya prohibition primarywould operate more forcefullyand really less contingentlythan practice regulatorylike the kind of categorywhich by now I am sure you knowis theorized by Michel Foucault.        

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In Lacan (I do not lie)it’s just as in Irigaray:Sex is not a categorythat is formed in a Binarywhich would retain as its basisa Substantive Metaphysicsbut it is a fictive construction — i.e., the Masculine Subject — produced when Father’s Law prohibitsevery desire of Incest,forcing the Heterosexualinto timeless deferral.

The Female’s never just a markor attitude or added part.The Feminine is like a lackon which the Law will then unpacka set of different rules linguisticthat’s signified by the Symboliccreating the Sexual Differencegiving Lacanian inference:that by the Founding Prohibitiondoes the masculinist positionhave individualization — a heterosexualizationof and through the Law of the Fatherwhich would bar the Son from Motherso ever even their relationis also an Instantiationof that same old Law of the Father

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(whereas always a girl’s desirefor both her Father and her Motherrequires that she be the bearerof the mark of Maternity).So both male Masculinityas well as Femininityare instituted from withinthe prohibitions that producesuch Subjects for their certain useso Genders made unconsciouslyemerge in an Imaginaryof Gendered Sexuality.         The appropriation Feministof the Sexual Differenceattempts to see the Femininebut not as it’s been grounded ina Metaphysics of Substancebut just as a wordless Absenceaffected by the male rejectionwhich grounds all Signification(indeed through this very exclusion).         The Feminine as Excludedwithin that frame (it is concluded)betrays the possibilityof shaking the Hegemony.         The works of Gallop and of Rosein different ways would both propose

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the same very constructed statusof all the Sexual Difference — its basic instabilityand consequent dualityof the same Law whose point would bethe Sexual Identity.

Now Wittig in the French contextwould argue that the Differenceis actually a replicationof an old abstraction.         This neglects unconscious realmsin which Repression overwhelms:emerging in the Essencesit undercuts coherences.As Rose points out (and I agree)a construction of Identityalong the disjunctive axisof the Male and the Female sexesis bound to fail. Yes! the Repressedemerges. And when it’s expressedreveals the Self ’s constructedness:Prohibition’s Identitymust fail at self-same Unity.Paternal Law’s a bumbling whimwho aids us in o’erthrowing him!         The differences that now emergewithin these Schools — as they diverge —

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regard a quarrel over whetherone now can ever just recoversome Sexuality beforethe Law, or in Self ’s true coreor after Law, post-genital.(But then it’s paradoxicalthat Polymorph Perversityin both views theoreticallytrumps any Sexuality.)

Yet no agreement here at allabout the nature of the Law:the psychoanalytic Subjectwould be produced within the Matrixconjoining with elusive Substance.

Wittig’s existentialismassumes an essentialism:there’s a Subject who’s pre-socialyet it seems the Law paternalis really quite less unitarythan Structuralist Imaginary.

But the quarrel seems to turn onthe ancient articulation — subversive Sexualityof unknown temporality.It grows before the Law’s imposed?Or after Law has been opposed?Or during Law in constant fight?

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Now it seems here we should invitean insight, which I’m sure you knowderives from old Michel Foucaultwho claims that Sexualityis Power’s own Ancillary(against a naïve postulationof any great Emancipationof some new Sexualitywhich from the Law somehow is Free).

But we must argue after allthat both “before” and “after” Laware modes of temporalityand each is made discursivelyand each involved within the termsof Hegemony’s wicked norms.So there’s no radicalityin any Sexualitythat could escape the reigning Lexof prohibitions around Sex.         And, too, by now I’m sure you’ll knowsuch prohibitions (says Foucault)would make the Subject — whose productionis of and in this prohibition — could have no Sexualitybut Power’s Subjectivity.For Power rather than the Lawwould saturate quite nearly allthough its differences relational

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both productive and juridical.And hence the Sexualityas Power’s Subjectivityis not a simple replicationand not the Law’s mere repetitionrepeating Law’s economyof Masculine Identity.To mute the possibilityof any Subjectivitywhich thwarts intelligibilityexpands then quite effectivelywhat’s created culturally.         A Sex that is post-genitalhas undergone some criticaland Feminist interpretationand Lesbian appropriationof post-sex Sexualitythat’s purported to be free.

Through a process exclusionaryPower’s pattern regulatoryrestricts the meaning seen to beHeterosexualityand Homosexualityand any sites of a Transgressionas well as resignification.

That both Heterosexismand Phallologocentrism

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augment themselves through repetitionof ontological positionand even of their inner logicand thereby their own metaphysic — this does not always just implythat Repetition ought to die.If Repetition must persistwithin the way that we existas Culture’s own Identitiesthen we must pose some inquiriesabout what kind of repetitionmight further as a new subversionand call the System into question.If there is Sex and Personhoodbut only as they’re understoodby Power as it dictates termsfor working only in its norms,then what’s the possibilityof holding the Identitybut playing with those terms’ inversionand acting out their own subversion?

Whereas Foucault’s ambiguousabout how Power’s practiceswould play out so discursivelyto produce a categoryand Wittig says that the Constructionis joined to Human Reproductionyet other forces help producethe Subjects for their certain use

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for reasons we can scarce deduce.The Sciences are so infusedwith Power and are so reduced.And Medicine’s conjoined with Lawin ways that aren’t yet clear at all.         It seems to me discursivelythere is so much complexityto Gender’s form as a construction — a promise or an invitation?How the regulatory fictionfacilitates its deconstruction!

Nor is it just a failed projectof critiquing the Law’s compactas if critique politicalundoes the forces cultural.

If someone’s Sexualityis constructed culturallywithin all Power’s own relationswell then our very postulationsof any Sexualityoutside Power’s Hegemonyare an impossibilitynot practical politicallypostponing the possibilityof thinking Sexualitysubverting its Identity

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within the given set of termsdetermined first by Power’s norms.         Within such norms to operatethen would not simply replicateuncritically the same relationof Power with its domination.Instead the Law in replicationmight refuse all consolidationand offer up a new subversion.Rather than Sexualityequal to Masculinityand Phallus’s proclivitywe can somewhat more playfully — through subversive operation — re-perform identification.         So if in Rose’s explanationany such identificationis truly (Rose says) phantasmaticthen really it’s axiomaticthat one can perform Identityin ways that show its fantasy.         If there’s no exit radicalfrom its constructions culturalit’s still for us to ask the questionhow one might act one’s construction.Are not there forms of repetitionthat aren’t just idle imitation

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not merely social Reproductionbuilding up Law’s consolidation?But what are new configurationsand what convergent matriceswould undo these interstices?The truth of Power’s hierarchyin modern Sexualityis not the simple augmentationof crystal-clear consolidation.Since they’re contested sites of meaningSex and Gender invite re-readingas each is Multiplicityholding the possibilityof working to subversivelyperform their lack of Unity.         Proposing no Ontologyand no PhenomenologyI don’t endeavor to lay outwhat Gender’s being’s all about.Yet I presume that to “be” Genderedis just a construct that is rendered — an object of investigationthat maps out Self as a constructionwithin the bounds politicalin the mode ontological.

So to call Gender a “construction”is not making any assertionthat it’s ergo artificial

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where this is oppositionalcontending with Reality.But as a GenealogyI seek within this inquiryto know that discursivitywithin the plausibilityof the relational Binary.And now I am eager to wagerthat configurations of Genderassert their own Realityto augment their Hegemony.

And then in Simone de Beauvoir(within her classic oeuvre) arethese thoughts you may have read before:A woman’s not as woman bornbut she becomes as she would learn.“Woman” simply marks the processesof acting liminal statuseswithout an end or originand therefore it always is opento a radical interventionas well as resignification.Even when Gender would concealin forms that often may feel real,well this congealing’s simply socialnot guided by some Telos final.         So Gender’s just a repetitionor really a stylization —

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a set of acts that over timecongeal along an ordered lineproducing somehow appearanceof a Being with a Substance.         To do the genealogyof Gender as Ontologywould deconstruct thus the Appearanceinto such acts sans a Substanceand locate these acts within framesbuilt by Power for its own aimsconforming to the names it names.         To show as mere contingencywhat seemed like a necessityhas been one of the major partsof Criticism after Marx.

But now this task must intersectwith the Gender of all Subjectsadmitting possibilityforeclosed by Power’s policywhich structures its Ontology.         So later my analysisinvestigates the Structuralistaccount of Difference Sexualas this may still prove possiblecontesting modes of Power, forthe presumed coherence of Gender

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and sex’s univocity(within the system binary)are now revealed as idle fictionswhich just allow consolidationsof Power’s Masculinityand Heterosexuality.         Also we must view the Bodynot as such a surface readyto receive Significationbut a scene of a contestation — a blurry set of boundariescontrolled by Power’s functionaries.        No! Sex is not Identitybut a performativitywhich is in fact not a “to be.”

And when Gender has been denaturalizedand its social construction realizedand the terms of Gender re-mobilizedso that the terms that once had crystallizedeven in the Feminist enterprisecan now all be somehow re-stylized then can Gender Trouble be strategized,reconfigured, performed, and satirized.

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A.W. Strouse teaches medieval literature at The New School. Strouse is the author of My Gay Middle Ages (punctum books, 2015) and Transfer Queen (punctum books, 2018).