27 pages • 54 minutes read
Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory
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Literary Devices
The Analogy of Theater
In “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” Butler repeatedly makes analogies to theater, acting, and the stage. The analogy of social life to the theater appears frequently in anthropology and other disciplines, but Butler uses theater as a comparison, contrast, and starting reference point.
At the beginning, when Butler discusses the various meanings of “act,” they begin by referencing theatrical “acting,” i.e., performing a non-real role often using a pre-determined script. This meaning serves as a starting point for understanding gender performance. Although Butler goes on to discuss how performative acts are constitutive—they create a phenomenologically real experience for their participants—the theatrical metaphor reminds the reader that gender has, at its core, no essential reality.
Butler also uses the theater as a point of contrast. Unlike theater, where the actor is aware that they are playing a role and of the origin of the script, in performing gender actors believe in the truth of the role they are playing and are unaware of the origins of the script they are performing. Butler points out that a theater is a space where the audience assumes they are seeing non-real events. Consequently, a theater is not often a place for corrective action. A man wearing women’s clothes in a Shakespeare play might be celebrated by the same people who would recoil from or commit violence against a man wearing women’s clothes in ordinary life.
The Vignette of the Bus
Butler says, “the sight of a transvestite onstage can compel pleasure and applause while the sight of the same transvestite on the seat next to us on the bus can compel fear, rage, even violence” (527). The “bus” mentioned in this comparison appears several more times in Butler’s essay, creating a concrete visual image of a place for gender-based violence. Though the violence is not depicted, the image of the bus takes the reader out of the abstract discussion of socially constitutive processes and places them in an everyday experience of the way gender is policed to maintain social norms. This image highlights the importance of the issues that Butler is discussing.
Deconstructionism (Radical Thought Requires Radical Expression)
Butler has often been criticized for their difficult and complex writing style. They have responded to these complaints by pointing out that there is a power in difficult language that simple and straightforward prose lacks. It is the power to demand attention. Although Butler’s ideas, when divorced from the nuance of their theoretical context, are not complicated, Butler signals their importance by embedding them in a network of others’ ideas and connecting them with various fields and contemporary political issues.
Anti-Rhetoric and the Erasure of a Call to Action
In “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” Butler suggests that the essay will end with a call to action and an explanation of how to battle gender roles. Butler says:
In the course of making my argument, I will draw from theatrical, anthropological, and philosophical discourses, but mainly phenomenology, to show that what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo. In its very character as performative resides the possibility of contesting its reified status (520).
However, at the end, Butler offers a negative: “If this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished to expand the cultural field bodily through subversive performances of various kinds” (531). Instead of a call-to-action or how-to that offers the readers a guide for deconstructing gender roles, Butler warns against forgetting that gender is a constructed category. This is no accident. Butler repeatedly warns against overly simplistic thought in feminist activism. Butler argues that errors in thinking will result only in undermining the feminist cause. Butler does not offer a plan for political action, because one goal of the essay is to make readers reconsider their assumptions. By not including a plan of action, Butler conveys a different message. They exhort their reader to think carefully and clearly and not assume the naturalness or inescapability of any phenomenon, even if it seems strategically beneficial to do so.
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