Sex PositiveFeminism Queer Theory and the Politics of Transgression

Elisa Glick

AbstractFrom the feminist lsquosex warsrsquo of the 1980s to the queer theory and politics of the1990s debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of con-temporary theoretical social and political demands This article seeks to intervenein these debates by challenging the terms through which they have been denedInvestigating the importance of lsquosex positivityrsquo and transgression as conceptual fea-tures of feminist and queer discourses this essay calls for a new focus on the politi-cal and material effects of pro-sexuality

Keywordspro-sexuality transgression sex wars queer theory identity politics sexual revol-ution capitalism postmodernism subjectivity agency power discourse style

I do not believe that we can fuck our way to freedom(Pat Calia Macho Sluts)

Introduction

This paper offers a critique of those contemporary pro-sex and queertheories that encourage us as feminists and sexual minorities to fuck ourway to freedom I will consider the historical and material conditions thatproduced the questions pro-sex discourses have asked the effects of askingthese questions and the politics of their silences In this project I questionthe usefulness of discourses that glorify lsquodestabilizingrsquo sexual practicesthose which are seen to lsquotroublersquo ndash to borrow Judith Butlerrsquos formulationndash the categories of sex and sexuality Let me emphasize from the outsetthat I am not arguing against the practices of butchfemme drag SM orany other form of ritualized sexual or gender play instead I am insistingthat we must interrogate the claims that we are making about such cul-tural practices This critique then is not lsquoanti-sexrsquo but rather refuses to beeither lsquoforrsquo or lsquoagainstrsquo sex and particular sexual styles

FEMIN

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Feminist Review ISSN 0141-7789 printISSN 1466-4380 online copy Feminist Review Collective

My analysis begins by focusing upon the politics of the pro-sexualitymovement as they have been articulated in the feminist sex wars and in thediscourses of queer theory In feminismrsquos sex wars of the 1980s pro-sexfeminists argued persuasively I think that radical feminismrsquos represen-tation of women as disempowered actors fails to see women as sexual sub-jects in their own right This argument has been widely circulated and iselaborated in well-known lsquosex positiversquo andor anti-censorship feministcollections such as Caught Looking Powers of Desire and Pleasure andDanger (Snitow et al 1983 FACT 1992 Vance 1992) Althoughfeminists comprise a large segment of the pro-sexuality movement somepro-sex activists including transgender gay bisexual and SM radicals donot align themselves with feminism at all I want to emphasize that myessay does not provide an overview of the pro-sexuality movement Ratherthan attempt to offer a broad history of pro-sexuality I explore the specicconnections between 1980s pro-sex feminism and the new queer theoryand politics that emerged in the 1990s While I distinguish between thesetwo movements historically politically and as modes of social critique Iseek primarily to theorize their continuities that is I am conceptualizingpro-sex feminism and queer theory as two faces of lsquosex positivityrsquo in orderto investigate the politics that emerge from various kinds of pro-sex argu-ments

The central task of this project then is to examine the political and mate-rial effects of the pro-sexuality movementrsquos effort to construct a radicalsexual politics In the rst part of this essay I seek to account for thecurrent imbrication of the sexual and the political More precisely I tracepro-sex theory and practice to the ideology of the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo andthe consumerist social logic of contemporary capitalism My analysis thenexplores the relationship of pro-sexuality to the identitarian ethos that hasdened the new social movements since the 1950s and 1960s A vision ofpolitics that asserts the interlocking of public and private spheres the poli-tics of identity conceptualizes individual andor collective identity not onlyas a basis for political organization but also as a site of political activismitself As I argue pro-sexrsquos promotion of transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies can be traced to a foundational tenet of iden-tity politics the personal is political With this link between the pro-sexuality movement and identity politics in mind the second part of thisessay considers Butlerrsquos work as an example of contemporary performa-tive theories of sex and sexuality that celebrate the politics of genderfuckI am interested most of all in theorizing the silences in pro-sex and queertheories What are the questions that these discourses cannot ask and whycanrsquot they ask them

FEM

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Identity liberation and the politics of pro-sex

The question of 1980s lesbian feminism lsquoIs SM feministrsquo became in thequeer 1990s lsquoIs SM subversive or genderfuckrsquo There are of coursecrucial differences between these two questions Whereas the rst questionaddresses a collectivity the second focuses on individual practices Further-more what is at stake in the rst question ndash the relationship of a particu-lar sexual practice to the teachings and politics of feminism ndash is replacedin the second question by the issue of the lsquoresistancersquo the practice producesNevertheless for both categories of social critics the discussion is essen-tially about what kind of sex counts as progressive In other words thepolitical assumptions behind the two questions are identical By rankingsexual practices in terms of their subversiveness pro-sex activists repeatthe logic of radical feminism with one distinction they valorize the trans-gression of lsquofemale sexualityrsquo instead of its consolidation and expression1

Certainly pro-sex feminism is much closer to the ideologies of radicalfeminism than its proponents acknowledge As OrsquoSullivan argues aboutthe lsquounexpected connectionsrsquo between lesbian feminists and leather dykeslsquoanti-sm dykes and the object of their anger sm dykes have more incommon than they might want to admitrsquo (1999 99) Although the questfor a politically correct lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo (that is a sexuality puried ofmale sexual violence and aggression) is replaced by the quest for a politi-cally incorrect sexuality that transgresses movement standards in bothcases certain sexual practices are valorized for their liberatory or destabil-izing potential Building upon the theory and activism of pro-sex femin-ism queer theories that have argued for a lsquogenderfuckrsquo sexuality implicitlysuggest that genderfuck is the lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo that lesbian feministswere looking for all along As Sawicki has argued both radical and pro-sex feminisms put forward an ahistorical theory of sexuality and sexualdesire (1991 34ndash6) It might seem intuitively that the pro-sex positiontends to encourage us to stake our political project on the liberatory valueof sex per se whereas the radical feminist position reads lsquosexual freedomrsquoas freedom from oppressive sexual relations Actually both camps have aliberatory view of sexuality that is grounded in an ahistorical and indi-vidualistic concept of freedom as lsquofreedom from repressive normsrsquo(Sawicki 1991 36) While radical feminists see lsquofemale sexualityrsquo asrepressed by lsquothe patriarchyrsquo the pro-sexuality movement sees repressionas produced by heterosexism and lsquosex negativityrsquo ndash cultural operationsoften seen as institutionalized in feminism itself Creet for example assertsthat the lesbian SM community has often railed against lsquoMother Femin-ismrsquo whose sexual prescriptiveness is equated with the heterosexism andlsquoanti-sexrsquo attitudes of dominant institutions (1991 145) In this respect asLewis argues lsquolesbian SM sets up feminism as its otherrsquo (1994 89)

ELISA G

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SITIVE

21

However as I have been arguing this opposition is a distortion to theextent that it fails to recognize the similar forms that for example lsquoprorsquoand lsquoantirsquo SM arguments take to put it another way in this differencethere is also identity Ultimately both pro-sex and radical feminists repro-duce the ideology of personal emancipation within contemporary capital-ist society by making the liberation of sex a fundamental feminist goalFinally the attention to the social dimension of sex one of feminismrsquoskey insights is eclipsed by a political program that advocates the self-transformation of sexual relations ndash relations seemingly separated fromtheir locations in political and economic systems

Despite the similarities between the political effects of both campsrsquo theoryand activism pro-sexrsquos tendency toward libertarianism invests this move-ment with an unique relationship to questions of sexual freedom It is well-known that the pro-sexuality movement emerged as a response to radicaland anti-porn feminists such as Dworkin and MacKinnon who advocatethe use of censorship and other forms of state repression in order tocontain sexual violence against women These radical feminists tend todeny the possibility of individual or collective resistance through sexualityeven as they prescribe the parameters for a properly lsquofeministrsquo sexualityReacting against radical feminismrsquos proscriptive approach toward sexu-ality pro-sex feminists have continued to make sex the issue but they havedone so by arguing for the centrality of sexual freedom in womenrsquosstruggles against oppression Unfortunately this effort to prioritize sexualfreedom often means that for the pro-sexuality movement womenrsquos liber-ation is essentially a project of personal sexual liberation Refusing to con-ceptualize sexual relations only in terms of social regulation pro-sexfeminists such as Echols Rubin and Vance reject sexual repression favorfreedom of sexual expression and claim that dominant congurations ofpower do not prevent women from exercising agency Indeed pro-sexfeminismrsquos endeavor to cultivate sexuality as a site of political resistance isperhaps its most inuential contribution to contemporary queer theoryand politics

To be sure the pro-sex argument that the production of sexuality withinpower relations does not preclude agency for women but in fact canenable it has become the theoretical foundation for 1990s discourses ndash likeButlerrsquos ndash that valorize lsquodestabilizingrsquo sexual practices Consider this impor-tant passage from Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble

The pro-sexuality movement within feminist theory and practice has effectivelyargued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse andpower where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phalliccultural conventions The emergence of a sexuality constructed (not determined)in these terms within lesbian bisexual and heterosexual contexts is therefore

FEM

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not a sign of a masculine identication in some reductive sense It is not thefailed project of criticizing phallogocentrism or heterosexual hegemony Ifsexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations then the pos-tulation of a normative sexuality that is lsquobeforersquo lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyondrsquo poweris a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream one that post-pones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilitiesfor sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself This critical task pre-sumes of course that to operate within the matrix of power is not the same asto replicate uncritically relations of domination It offers the possibility of a rep-etition of the law which is not its consolidation but its displacement

(Butler 1990b 30)

Butler argues for a model of localized resistance from within the terms ofpower Like the 1980s pro-sex feminists with whom she allies herself sheseeks to negotiate sexuality from inside power relations and deliberatelyresists constructing sex as a prediscursive utopia beyond the law In thisrespect Butler and other descendants of the pro-sexuality movementcannot be charged with the naive libertarianism that holds up an emanci-patory ideal of sexual pleasure as freedom And yet Butlerrsquos claim thatthere are forms of repetition which do not consolidate but instead displaceand recongure lsquoheterosexual and phallic cultural conventionsrsquo relies uponher specic readings of sexual styles that transgress the matrix of powerAfter the passage quoted previously for example she goes on to assert thatbutch and femme sexualities in lesbian culture do not replicate hetero-sexual constructs but in fact lsquodenaturalizersquo them effectively subverting thepower regime of heterosexuality itself (1990b 31) I will explore this topicin more detail below at this point in my argument however I want toemphasize the status of transgression in Butlerrsquos work and that of her lsquopro-sexrsquo predecessors

To take up this project it is worth recalling Foucaultrsquos enormous inuenceon theorists of sex and sexuality Butler quite rightly points to the tensionin Foucaultrsquos work between his lsquoofcialrsquo claim that lsquosexuality and powerare coextensiversquo and his utopian references in The History of SexualityVolume I (1990) and Herculine Barbin (1980) to a proliferation of bodilypleasures that transgresses the limits of power (Butler 1990b 96ndash7)Indeed Foucault forcefully critiques the theory and practice of emancipa-tory sexual politics while nonetheless celebrating a reorganization oflsquobodies and pleasuresrsquo that in his view characterizes lsquomomentsrsquo of trans-gression such as those that take place within the SM scene (Foucault1989 387ndash8 Simons 1995 99ndash101) This struggle between opposites inFoucault points to an antagonism of interests at the center of his social cri-tique In her analysis of this antagonism Fraser argues for separatingFoucaultrsquos work into an lsquoimmanentistrsquo strand (lsquohumanismrsquos own immanentcounterdiscoursersquo) and a lsquotransgressiversquo strand which as Fraser asserts

ELISA G

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23

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

FEM

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theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

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privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

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42

My analysis begins by focusing upon the politics of the pro-sexualitymovement as they have been articulated in the feminist sex wars and in thediscourses of queer theory In feminismrsquos sex wars of the 1980s pro-sexfeminists argued persuasively I think that radical feminismrsquos represen-tation of women as disempowered actors fails to see women as sexual sub-jects in their own right This argument has been widely circulated and iselaborated in well-known lsquosex positiversquo andor anti-censorship feministcollections such as Caught Looking Powers of Desire and Pleasure andDanger (Snitow et al 1983 FACT 1992 Vance 1992) Althoughfeminists comprise a large segment of the pro-sexuality movement somepro-sex activists including transgender gay bisexual and SM radicals donot align themselves with feminism at all I want to emphasize that myessay does not provide an overview of the pro-sexuality movement Ratherthan attempt to offer a broad history of pro-sexuality I explore the specicconnections between 1980s pro-sex feminism and the new queer theoryand politics that emerged in the 1990s While I distinguish between thesetwo movements historically politically and as modes of social critique Iseek primarily to theorize their continuities that is I am conceptualizingpro-sex feminism and queer theory as two faces of lsquosex positivityrsquo in orderto investigate the politics that emerge from various kinds of pro-sex argu-ments

The central task of this project then is to examine the political and mate-rial effects of the pro-sexuality movementrsquos effort to construct a radicalsexual politics In the rst part of this essay I seek to account for thecurrent imbrication of the sexual and the political More precisely I tracepro-sex theory and practice to the ideology of the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo andthe consumerist social logic of contemporary capitalism My analysis thenexplores the relationship of pro-sexuality to the identitarian ethos that hasdened the new social movements since the 1950s and 1960s A vision ofpolitics that asserts the interlocking of public and private spheres the poli-tics of identity conceptualizes individual andor collective identity not onlyas a basis for political organization but also as a site of political activismitself As I argue pro-sexrsquos promotion of transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies can be traced to a foundational tenet of iden-tity politics the personal is political With this link between the pro-sexuality movement and identity politics in mind the second part of thisessay considers Butlerrsquos work as an example of contemporary performa-tive theories of sex and sexuality that celebrate the politics of genderfuckI am interested most of all in theorizing the silences in pro-sex and queertheories What are the questions that these discourses cannot ask and whycanrsquot they ask them

FEM

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Identity liberation and the politics of pro-sex

The question of 1980s lesbian feminism lsquoIs SM feministrsquo became in thequeer 1990s lsquoIs SM subversive or genderfuckrsquo There are of coursecrucial differences between these two questions Whereas the rst questionaddresses a collectivity the second focuses on individual practices Further-more what is at stake in the rst question ndash the relationship of a particu-lar sexual practice to the teachings and politics of feminism ndash is replacedin the second question by the issue of the lsquoresistancersquo the practice producesNevertheless for both categories of social critics the discussion is essen-tially about what kind of sex counts as progressive In other words thepolitical assumptions behind the two questions are identical By rankingsexual practices in terms of their subversiveness pro-sex activists repeatthe logic of radical feminism with one distinction they valorize the trans-gression of lsquofemale sexualityrsquo instead of its consolidation and expression1

Certainly pro-sex feminism is much closer to the ideologies of radicalfeminism than its proponents acknowledge As OrsquoSullivan argues aboutthe lsquounexpected connectionsrsquo between lesbian feminists and leather dykeslsquoanti-sm dykes and the object of their anger sm dykes have more incommon than they might want to admitrsquo (1999 99) Although the questfor a politically correct lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo (that is a sexuality puried ofmale sexual violence and aggression) is replaced by the quest for a politi-cally incorrect sexuality that transgresses movement standards in bothcases certain sexual practices are valorized for their liberatory or destabil-izing potential Building upon the theory and activism of pro-sex femin-ism queer theories that have argued for a lsquogenderfuckrsquo sexuality implicitlysuggest that genderfuck is the lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo that lesbian feministswere looking for all along As Sawicki has argued both radical and pro-sex feminisms put forward an ahistorical theory of sexuality and sexualdesire (1991 34ndash6) It might seem intuitively that the pro-sex positiontends to encourage us to stake our political project on the liberatory valueof sex per se whereas the radical feminist position reads lsquosexual freedomrsquoas freedom from oppressive sexual relations Actually both camps have aliberatory view of sexuality that is grounded in an ahistorical and indi-vidualistic concept of freedom as lsquofreedom from repressive normsrsquo(Sawicki 1991 36) While radical feminists see lsquofemale sexualityrsquo asrepressed by lsquothe patriarchyrsquo the pro-sexuality movement sees repressionas produced by heterosexism and lsquosex negativityrsquo ndash cultural operationsoften seen as institutionalized in feminism itself Creet for example assertsthat the lesbian SM community has often railed against lsquoMother Femin-ismrsquo whose sexual prescriptiveness is equated with the heterosexism andlsquoanti-sexrsquo attitudes of dominant institutions (1991 145) In this respect asLewis argues lsquolesbian SM sets up feminism as its otherrsquo (1994 89)

ELISA G

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21

However as I have been arguing this opposition is a distortion to theextent that it fails to recognize the similar forms that for example lsquoprorsquoand lsquoantirsquo SM arguments take to put it another way in this differencethere is also identity Ultimately both pro-sex and radical feminists repro-duce the ideology of personal emancipation within contemporary capital-ist society by making the liberation of sex a fundamental feminist goalFinally the attention to the social dimension of sex one of feminismrsquoskey insights is eclipsed by a political program that advocates the self-transformation of sexual relations ndash relations seemingly separated fromtheir locations in political and economic systems

Despite the similarities between the political effects of both campsrsquo theoryand activism pro-sexrsquos tendency toward libertarianism invests this move-ment with an unique relationship to questions of sexual freedom It is well-known that the pro-sexuality movement emerged as a response to radicaland anti-porn feminists such as Dworkin and MacKinnon who advocatethe use of censorship and other forms of state repression in order tocontain sexual violence against women These radical feminists tend todeny the possibility of individual or collective resistance through sexualityeven as they prescribe the parameters for a properly lsquofeministrsquo sexualityReacting against radical feminismrsquos proscriptive approach toward sexu-ality pro-sex feminists have continued to make sex the issue but they havedone so by arguing for the centrality of sexual freedom in womenrsquosstruggles against oppression Unfortunately this effort to prioritize sexualfreedom often means that for the pro-sexuality movement womenrsquos liber-ation is essentially a project of personal sexual liberation Refusing to con-ceptualize sexual relations only in terms of social regulation pro-sexfeminists such as Echols Rubin and Vance reject sexual repression favorfreedom of sexual expression and claim that dominant congurations ofpower do not prevent women from exercising agency Indeed pro-sexfeminismrsquos endeavor to cultivate sexuality as a site of political resistance isperhaps its most inuential contribution to contemporary queer theoryand politics

To be sure the pro-sex argument that the production of sexuality withinpower relations does not preclude agency for women but in fact canenable it has become the theoretical foundation for 1990s discourses ndash likeButlerrsquos ndash that valorize lsquodestabilizingrsquo sexual practices Consider this impor-tant passage from Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble

The pro-sexuality movement within feminist theory and practice has effectivelyargued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse andpower where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phalliccultural conventions The emergence of a sexuality constructed (not determined)in these terms within lesbian bisexual and heterosexual contexts is therefore

FEM

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not a sign of a masculine identication in some reductive sense It is not thefailed project of criticizing phallogocentrism or heterosexual hegemony Ifsexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations then the pos-tulation of a normative sexuality that is lsquobeforersquo lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyondrsquo poweris a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream one that post-pones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilitiesfor sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself This critical task pre-sumes of course that to operate within the matrix of power is not the same asto replicate uncritically relations of domination It offers the possibility of a rep-etition of the law which is not its consolidation but its displacement

(Butler 1990b 30)

Butler argues for a model of localized resistance from within the terms ofpower Like the 1980s pro-sex feminists with whom she allies herself sheseeks to negotiate sexuality from inside power relations and deliberatelyresists constructing sex as a prediscursive utopia beyond the law In thisrespect Butler and other descendants of the pro-sexuality movementcannot be charged with the naive libertarianism that holds up an emanci-patory ideal of sexual pleasure as freedom And yet Butlerrsquos claim thatthere are forms of repetition which do not consolidate but instead displaceand recongure lsquoheterosexual and phallic cultural conventionsrsquo relies uponher specic readings of sexual styles that transgress the matrix of powerAfter the passage quoted previously for example she goes on to assert thatbutch and femme sexualities in lesbian culture do not replicate hetero-sexual constructs but in fact lsquodenaturalizersquo them effectively subverting thepower regime of heterosexuality itself (1990b 31) I will explore this topicin more detail below at this point in my argument however I want toemphasize the status of transgression in Butlerrsquos work and that of her lsquopro-sexrsquo predecessors

To take up this project it is worth recalling Foucaultrsquos enormous inuenceon theorists of sex and sexuality Butler quite rightly points to the tensionin Foucaultrsquos work between his lsquoofcialrsquo claim that lsquosexuality and powerare coextensiversquo and his utopian references in The History of SexualityVolume I (1990) and Herculine Barbin (1980) to a proliferation of bodilypleasures that transgresses the limits of power (Butler 1990b 96ndash7)Indeed Foucault forcefully critiques the theory and practice of emancipa-tory sexual politics while nonetheless celebrating a reorganization oflsquobodies and pleasuresrsquo that in his view characterizes lsquomomentsrsquo of trans-gression such as those that take place within the SM scene (Foucault1989 387ndash8 Simons 1995 99ndash101) This struggle between opposites inFoucault points to an antagonism of interests at the center of his social cri-tique In her analysis of this antagonism Fraser argues for separatingFoucaultrsquos work into an lsquoimmanentistrsquo strand (lsquohumanismrsquos own immanentcounterdiscoursersquo) and a lsquotransgressiversquo strand which as Fraser asserts

ELISA G

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23

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

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theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

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inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

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privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

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SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

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42

Identity liberation and the politics of pro-sex

The question of 1980s lesbian feminism lsquoIs SM feministrsquo became in thequeer 1990s lsquoIs SM subversive or genderfuckrsquo There are of coursecrucial differences between these two questions Whereas the rst questionaddresses a collectivity the second focuses on individual practices Further-more what is at stake in the rst question ndash the relationship of a particu-lar sexual practice to the teachings and politics of feminism ndash is replacedin the second question by the issue of the lsquoresistancersquo the practice producesNevertheless for both categories of social critics the discussion is essen-tially about what kind of sex counts as progressive In other words thepolitical assumptions behind the two questions are identical By rankingsexual practices in terms of their subversiveness pro-sex activists repeatthe logic of radical feminism with one distinction they valorize the trans-gression of lsquofemale sexualityrsquo instead of its consolidation and expression1

Certainly pro-sex feminism is much closer to the ideologies of radicalfeminism than its proponents acknowledge As OrsquoSullivan argues aboutthe lsquounexpected connectionsrsquo between lesbian feminists and leather dykeslsquoanti-sm dykes and the object of their anger sm dykes have more incommon than they might want to admitrsquo (1999 99) Although the questfor a politically correct lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo (that is a sexuality puried ofmale sexual violence and aggression) is replaced by the quest for a politi-cally incorrect sexuality that transgresses movement standards in bothcases certain sexual practices are valorized for their liberatory or destabil-izing potential Building upon the theory and activism of pro-sex femin-ism queer theories that have argued for a lsquogenderfuckrsquo sexuality implicitlysuggest that genderfuck is the lsquofeminist sexualityrsquo that lesbian feministswere looking for all along As Sawicki has argued both radical and pro-sex feminisms put forward an ahistorical theory of sexuality and sexualdesire (1991 34ndash6) It might seem intuitively that the pro-sex positiontends to encourage us to stake our political project on the liberatory valueof sex per se whereas the radical feminist position reads lsquosexual freedomrsquoas freedom from oppressive sexual relations Actually both camps have aliberatory view of sexuality that is grounded in an ahistorical and indi-vidualistic concept of freedom as lsquofreedom from repressive normsrsquo(Sawicki 1991 36) While radical feminists see lsquofemale sexualityrsquo asrepressed by lsquothe patriarchyrsquo the pro-sexuality movement sees repressionas produced by heterosexism and lsquosex negativityrsquo ndash cultural operationsoften seen as institutionalized in feminism itself Creet for example assertsthat the lesbian SM community has often railed against lsquoMother Femin-ismrsquo whose sexual prescriptiveness is equated with the heterosexism andlsquoanti-sexrsquo attitudes of dominant institutions (1991 145) In this respect asLewis argues lsquolesbian SM sets up feminism as its otherrsquo (1994 89)

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

21

However as I have been arguing this opposition is a distortion to theextent that it fails to recognize the similar forms that for example lsquoprorsquoand lsquoantirsquo SM arguments take to put it another way in this differencethere is also identity Ultimately both pro-sex and radical feminists repro-duce the ideology of personal emancipation within contemporary capital-ist society by making the liberation of sex a fundamental feminist goalFinally the attention to the social dimension of sex one of feminismrsquoskey insights is eclipsed by a political program that advocates the self-transformation of sexual relations ndash relations seemingly separated fromtheir locations in political and economic systems

Despite the similarities between the political effects of both campsrsquo theoryand activism pro-sexrsquos tendency toward libertarianism invests this move-ment with an unique relationship to questions of sexual freedom It is well-known that the pro-sexuality movement emerged as a response to radicaland anti-porn feminists such as Dworkin and MacKinnon who advocatethe use of censorship and other forms of state repression in order tocontain sexual violence against women These radical feminists tend todeny the possibility of individual or collective resistance through sexualityeven as they prescribe the parameters for a properly lsquofeministrsquo sexualityReacting against radical feminismrsquos proscriptive approach toward sexu-ality pro-sex feminists have continued to make sex the issue but they havedone so by arguing for the centrality of sexual freedom in womenrsquosstruggles against oppression Unfortunately this effort to prioritize sexualfreedom often means that for the pro-sexuality movement womenrsquos liber-ation is essentially a project of personal sexual liberation Refusing to con-ceptualize sexual relations only in terms of social regulation pro-sexfeminists such as Echols Rubin and Vance reject sexual repression favorfreedom of sexual expression and claim that dominant congurations ofpower do not prevent women from exercising agency Indeed pro-sexfeminismrsquos endeavor to cultivate sexuality as a site of political resistance isperhaps its most inuential contribution to contemporary queer theoryand politics

To be sure the pro-sex argument that the production of sexuality withinpower relations does not preclude agency for women but in fact canenable it has become the theoretical foundation for 1990s discourses ndash likeButlerrsquos ndash that valorize lsquodestabilizingrsquo sexual practices Consider this impor-tant passage from Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble

The pro-sexuality movement within feminist theory and practice has effectivelyargued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse andpower where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phalliccultural conventions The emergence of a sexuality constructed (not determined)in these terms within lesbian bisexual and heterosexual contexts is therefore

FEM

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not a sign of a masculine identication in some reductive sense It is not thefailed project of criticizing phallogocentrism or heterosexual hegemony Ifsexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations then the pos-tulation of a normative sexuality that is lsquobeforersquo lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyondrsquo poweris a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream one that post-pones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilitiesfor sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself This critical task pre-sumes of course that to operate within the matrix of power is not the same asto replicate uncritically relations of domination It offers the possibility of a rep-etition of the law which is not its consolidation but its displacement

(Butler 1990b 30)

Butler argues for a model of localized resistance from within the terms ofpower Like the 1980s pro-sex feminists with whom she allies herself sheseeks to negotiate sexuality from inside power relations and deliberatelyresists constructing sex as a prediscursive utopia beyond the law In thisrespect Butler and other descendants of the pro-sexuality movementcannot be charged with the naive libertarianism that holds up an emanci-patory ideal of sexual pleasure as freedom And yet Butlerrsquos claim thatthere are forms of repetition which do not consolidate but instead displaceand recongure lsquoheterosexual and phallic cultural conventionsrsquo relies uponher specic readings of sexual styles that transgress the matrix of powerAfter the passage quoted previously for example she goes on to assert thatbutch and femme sexualities in lesbian culture do not replicate hetero-sexual constructs but in fact lsquodenaturalizersquo them effectively subverting thepower regime of heterosexuality itself (1990b 31) I will explore this topicin more detail below at this point in my argument however I want toemphasize the status of transgression in Butlerrsquos work and that of her lsquopro-sexrsquo predecessors

To take up this project it is worth recalling Foucaultrsquos enormous inuenceon theorists of sex and sexuality Butler quite rightly points to the tensionin Foucaultrsquos work between his lsquoofcialrsquo claim that lsquosexuality and powerare coextensiversquo and his utopian references in The History of SexualityVolume I (1990) and Herculine Barbin (1980) to a proliferation of bodilypleasures that transgresses the limits of power (Butler 1990b 96ndash7)Indeed Foucault forcefully critiques the theory and practice of emancipa-tory sexual politics while nonetheless celebrating a reorganization oflsquobodies and pleasuresrsquo that in his view characterizes lsquomomentsrsquo of trans-gression such as those that take place within the SM scene (Foucault1989 387ndash8 Simons 1995 99ndash101) This struggle between opposites inFoucault points to an antagonism of interests at the center of his social cri-tique In her analysis of this antagonism Fraser argues for separatingFoucaultrsquos work into an lsquoimmanentistrsquo strand (lsquohumanismrsquos own immanentcounterdiscoursersquo) and a lsquotransgressiversquo strand which as Fraser asserts

ELISA G

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23

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

FEM

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theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

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27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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28

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

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transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

FEM

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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42

However as I have been arguing this opposition is a distortion to theextent that it fails to recognize the similar forms that for example lsquoprorsquoand lsquoantirsquo SM arguments take to put it another way in this differencethere is also identity Ultimately both pro-sex and radical feminists repro-duce the ideology of personal emancipation within contemporary capital-ist society by making the liberation of sex a fundamental feminist goalFinally the attention to the social dimension of sex one of feminismrsquoskey insights is eclipsed by a political program that advocates the self-transformation of sexual relations ndash relations seemingly separated fromtheir locations in political and economic systems

Despite the similarities between the political effects of both campsrsquo theoryand activism pro-sexrsquos tendency toward libertarianism invests this move-ment with an unique relationship to questions of sexual freedom It is well-known that the pro-sexuality movement emerged as a response to radicaland anti-porn feminists such as Dworkin and MacKinnon who advocatethe use of censorship and other forms of state repression in order tocontain sexual violence against women These radical feminists tend todeny the possibility of individual or collective resistance through sexualityeven as they prescribe the parameters for a properly lsquofeministrsquo sexualityReacting against radical feminismrsquos proscriptive approach toward sexu-ality pro-sex feminists have continued to make sex the issue but they havedone so by arguing for the centrality of sexual freedom in womenrsquosstruggles against oppression Unfortunately this effort to prioritize sexualfreedom often means that for the pro-sexuality movement womenrsquos liber-ation is essentially a project of personal sexual liberation Refusing to con-ceptualize sexual relations only in terms of social regulation pro-sexfeminists such as Echols Rubin and Vance reject sexual repression favorfreedom of sexual expression and claim that dominant congurations ofpower do not prevent women from exercising agency Indeed pro-sexfeminismrsquos endeavor to cultivate sexuality as a site of political resistance isperhaps its most inuential contribution to contemporary queer theoryand politics

To be sure the pro-sex argument that the production of sexuality withinpower relations does not preclude agency for women but in fact canenable it has become the theoretical foundation for 1990s discourses ndash likeButlerrsquos ndash that valorize lsquodestabilizingrsquo sexual practices Consider this impor-tant passage from Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble

The pro-sexuality movement within feminist theory and practice has effectivelyargued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse andpower where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phalliccultural conventions The emergence of a sexuality constructed (not determined)in these terms within lesbian bisexual and heterosexual contexts is therefore

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not a sign of a masculine identication in some reductive sense It is not thefailed project of criticizing phallogocentrism or heterosexual hegemony Ifsexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations then the pos-tulation of a normative sexuality that is lsquobeforersquo lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyondrsquo poweris a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream one that post-pones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilitiesfor sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself This critical task pre-sumes of course that to operate within the matrix of power is not the same asto replicate uncritically relations of domination It offers the possibility of a rep-etition of the law which is not its consolidation but its displacement

(Butler 1990b 30)

Butler argues for a model of localized resistance from within the terms ofpower Like the 1980s pro-sex feminists with whom she allies herself sheseeks to negotiate sexuality from inside power relations and deliberatelyresists constructing sex as a prediscursive utopia beyond the law In thisrespect Butler and other descendants of the pro-sexuality movementcannot be charged with the naive libertarianism that holds up an emanci-patory ideal of sexual pleasure as freedom And yet Butlerrsquos claim thatthere are forms of repetition which do not consolidate but instead displaceand recongure lsquoheterosexual and phallic cultural conventionsrsquo relies uponher specic readings of sexual styles that transgress the matrix of powerAfter the passage quoted previously for example she goes on to assert thatbutch and femme sexualities in lesbian culture do not replicate hetero-sexual constructs but in fact lsquodenaturalizersquo them effectively subverting thepower regime of heterosexuality itself (1990b 31) I will explore this topicin more detail below at this point in my argument however I want toemphasize the status of transgression in Butlerrsquos work and that of her lsquopro-sexrsquo predecessors

To take up this project it is worth recalling Foucaultrsquos enormous inuenceon theorists of sex and sexuality Butler quite rightly points to the tensionin Foucaultrsquos work between his lsquoofcialrsquo claim that lsquosexuality and powerare coextensiversquo and his utopian references in The History of SexualityVolume I (1990) and Herculine Barbin (1980) to a proliferation of bodilypleasures that transgresses the limits of power (Butler 1990b 96ndash7)Indeed Foucault forcefully critiques the theory and practice of emancipa-tory sexual politics while nonetheless celebrating a reorganization oflsquobodies and pleasuresrsquo that in his view characterizes lsquomomentsrsquo of trans-gression such as those that take place within the SM scene (Foucault1989 387ndash8 Simons 1995 99ndash101) This struggle between opposites inFoucault points to an antagonism of interests at the center of his social cri-tique In her analysis of this antagonism Fraser argues for separatingFoucaultrsquos work into an lsquoimmanentistrsquo strand (lsquohumanismrsquos own immanentcounterdiscoursersquo) and a lsquotransgressiversquo strand which as Fraser asserts

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

23

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

FEM

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000

24

theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

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27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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000

36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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42

not a sign of a masculine identication in some reductive sense It is not thefailed project of criticizing phallogocentrism or heterosexual hegemony Ifsexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations then the pos-tulation of a normative sexuality that is lsquobeforersquo lsquooutsidersquo or lsquobeyondrsquo poweris a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream one that post-pones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilitiesfor sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself This critical task pre-sumes of course that to operate within the matrix of power is not the same asto replicate uncritically relations of domination It offers the possibility of a rep-etition of the law which is not its consolidation but its displacement

(Butler 1990b 30)

Butler argues for a model of localized resistance from within the terms ofpower Like the 1980s pro-sex feminists with whom she allies herself sheseeks to negotiate sexuality from inside power relations and deliberatelyresists constructing sex as a prediscursive utopia beyond the law In thisrespect Butler and other descendants of the pro-sexuality movementcannot be charged with the naive libertarianism that holds up an emanci-patory ideal of sexual pleasure as freedom And yet Butlerrsquos claim thatthere are forms of repetition which do not consolidate but instead displaceand recongure lsquoheterosexual and phallic cultural conventionsrsquo relies uponher specic readings of sexual styles that transgress the matrix of powerAfter the passage quoted previously for example she goes on to assert thatbutch and femme sexualities in lesbian culture do not replicate hetero-sexual constructs but in fact lsquodenaturalizersquo them effectively subverting thepower regime of heterosexuality itself (1990b 31) I will explore this topicin more detail below at this point in my argument however I want toemphasize the status of transgression in Butlerrsquos work and that of her lsquopro-sexrsquo predecessors

To take up this project it is worth recalling Foucaultrsquos enormous inuenceon theorists of sex and sexuality Butler quite rightly points to the tensionin Foucaultrsquos work between his lsquoofcialrsquo claim that lsquosexuality and powerare coextensiversquo and his utopian references in The History of SexualityVolume I (1990) and Herculine Barbin (1980) to a proliferation of bodilypleasures that transgresses the limits of power (Butler 1990b 96ndash7)Indeed Foucault forcefully critiques the theory and practice of emancipa-tory sexual politics while nonetheless celebrating a reorganization oflsquobodies and pleasuresrsquo that in his view characterizes lsquomomentsrsquo of trans-gression such as those that take place within the SM scene (Foucault1989 387ndash8 Simons 1995 99ndash101) This struggle between opposites inFoucault points to an antagonism of interests at the center of his social cri-tique In her analysis of this antagonism Fraser argues for separatingFoucaultrsquos work into an lsquoimmanentistrsquo strand (lsquohumanismrsquos own immanentcounterdiscoursersquo) and a lsquotransgressiversquo strand which as Fraser asserts

ELISA G

LICK

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SITIVE

23

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

FEM

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24

theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

28

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

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particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

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SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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4 SP

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42

lsquoaspires rather to lsquotransgressrsquo or transcend humanism and replace it withsomething newrsquo (1989 57) If Fraser seeks to separate these two aspectsof Foucaultrsquos social theory it is precisely because they are fundamentallyinconsistent In other words one cannot really reconcile the claim that lsquosexis an instrument of domination tout courtrsquo (Fraser 1989 60) with theclaim that the regime of sexuality can be resisted through a counterfocuson bodies and pleasures which somehow successfully transgress disci-plinary power As I have been suggesting this contradiction is constitutiveof Foucaultrsquos project which seeks to locate a de-repressive theory of sexu-ality alongside a transgressive aesthetics It is not therefore surprising thatthis contradiction has been inherited by some of Foucaultrsquos most inuen-tial followers (such as Butler and Rubin) many of whom are widely recog-nized as the pre-eminent voices of pro-sex feminism and its contemporarysuccessor queer theory

In both its feminist and queer incarnations pro-sex theorists and prac-titioners contradict their own logic by idealizing the subversive potentialof transgressive practices that dislocate and displace the dominant As Fer-guson asserts about pro-sex feminism the pro-sexuality paradigm is basedupon the following claim lsquoSexual freedom requires oppositional practicesthat is transgressing socially respectable categories of sexuality and refus-ing to draw the line on what counts as politically correct sexualityrsquo (1984109) This refusal lsquoto draw the linersquo actually remains within the schema ofsexual hierarchy and value that sex radicals set out to critique in the rstplace pro-sex theory leaves intact the notion that some sexualities aremore liberatory than others and the most liberatory ones of all shouldserve as the foundation for a politics of resistance With this in mind I willargue that pro-sex theory has set up transgressive sexual practices asutopian political strategies and in the process has inadvertently endorsedthe emancipatory sexual politics that its Foucauldian supporters meant tooverthrow

Although many pro-sex theorists have objected to the ranking of sexualpractices enacted by radical feminists ndash arguing instead that no sex act canbe labeled as either inherently liberating or essentially oppressive (Sawicki1991 43 Echols 1992 66) ndash the pro-sexuality movement suggests thattransgressive sexual identities and practices offer a privileged position fromwhich to construct a truly radical sexual politics Rubin makes this pointexplicitly in her groundbreaking essay lsquoThinking sexrsquo Sixteen years afterits initial publication in 1984 Rubinrsquos work remains a milestone in femin-ism for its impassioned and insightful defense of sexual minorities in theface of an oppressive system of sexual stratication and erotic persecutionwhich includes but is not limited to state repression through sex lawWidely seen as a foundational text of gay and lesbian studies and queer

FEM

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24

theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

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000

28

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

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4 SP

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000

30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

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42

theory Rubinrsquos essay applauds pro-sex feminists for their rejection of thereactionary sexual puritanism of radical feminism and for their strongafliation with sexual nonconformity and oppositional desires practicesand fantasies

The womenrsquos movement may have produced some of the most retrogressivesexual thinking this side of the Vatican But it has also produced an excitinginnovative and articulate defense of sexual pleasure and erotic justice Thislsquopro-sexrsquo feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians whose sexuality does notconform to movement standards of purity (primarily lesbian sadomasochistsand butchfemme dykes) by unapologetic heterosexuals and by women whoadhere to classic radical feminism rather than to the revisionist celebrations offemininity which have become so common

(Rubin 1992 302ndash3)

Although she duly notes the contributions of lsquounapologetic heterosexualsrsquoand lsquowomen who adhere to classical radical feminismrsquo Rubin is most inter-ested in pro-sex feminism because of its commitment to erotic diversity andits valorization of those transgressive practices and identities that are onthe lsquoouter limitsrsquo of institutional and ideological systems that stratify sexu-ality (1992 281) As her essay makes clear she is interested in these prin-ciples precisely because her project locates pro-sex feminism within thelarger framework of a radical sexual politics of erotic dissidence As aresult sexually dissident lesbians such as SM dykes become for Rubinprivileged bearers of the pro-sex ethos Although she never explicitlyclaims that such transgressive sexualities will liberate us she subtly pro-motes the idea that marginalized practices can form the basis for a gen-uinely radical vanguard politics because they disrupt naturalized norms(in this case lsquomovement standards of purityrsquo)

This thematics of transgression returns us to the issue of Foucaultrsquos impacton theorists like Rubin Valverde points to the tension in lsquoThinking sexrsquobetween Rubinrsquos Foucauldianism and her afliation with liberal sexologyAt the root of this contradiction lies Rubinrsquos notion of lsquosex nega-tivismrsquoa sexological terms which is Valverde argues explicitly incompatiblewith Foucaultrsquos critique of the repressive hypothesis However as alreadysuggested here I believe Rubinrsquos competing allegiances actually reproducea contradiction in Foucaultrsquos own work Like Foucault Rubin wrestleswith the contradiction between her avowed adherence to a de-repressiveview of sexuality and her tendency to associate resistance with the dis-ruptive forces of transgression Focusing on the liberation of sexual pleas-ure as the organizing principle for political activism Rubinrsquos work movestoward a lsquopluralistic sexual ethicsrsquo ndash an ethics of sex positivity and eroticdiversity that risks replacing social liberation with personal liberation(1992 283)

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

25

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

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SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

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42

Using Rubinrsquos work as a case in point it becomes apparent that theproblem with the pro-sexuality position is not that it revalues disparagedsexual identities and styles but that it stops there In other words whilequeerness for example is revalued the political and economic conditionsthat are responsible for its devaluation remain unchallenged It is withinthe context of these unarticulated challenges that we must begin to his-toricize the politics and theory of pro-sex In particular the pro-sexualitymovementrsquos attempt to offer a defense of the subversive potential of sexand to recuperate a theory of transgression for politics needs to be tracedto the lsquosexual revolutionrsquo of the 1960s and 1970s

We have heard perhaps too much that the womenrsquos and gay liberationmovements contributed to a dramatic reshaping of sexuality in the 1960s(DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 325) It is also worth remembering thatsuch movements as Weeks points out lsquogrew explicitly in opposition to thedominant tendencies of the decadersquo (1985 20) Indeed the lsquoswingingsixtiesrsquo and its ethos of sexual ecstasy can be traced to the hegemony oflsquosexual revolutionrsquo that emerged in the 1950s in conjunction with a newmaterial logic engendered by the culture of commodity production As UShistorians DrsquoEmilio and Freedman point out lsquothe rst major challenge tothe marriage-oriented ethic of sexual liberalism came neither from politi-cal nor cultural radicals but rather from entrepreneurs who extended thelogic of consumer capitalism to the realm of sexrsquo (1989 302) In a wordPlayboy For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and other proponents ofsexual freedom the lsquoliberationrsquo of sexuality meant that sex was liberatedto become lsquoa commodity an ideology and a form of ldquoleisurerdquo rsquo (Zaretsky1976 123) By the 1960s the movement for sexual liberation had madestrange bedfellows of the lsquoplayboysrsquo and lsquocosmorsquo girls of the singles culturendash who eagerly embraced the commodication of sex that characterized thenew consumerism of the era ndash and the hippie counterculture which pro-moted sexual freedom as a form of rebellion against this very same mate-rialistic and consumerist culture (DrsquoEmilio and Freedman 1989 306)Despite these contradictions in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and1970s I want to stress that even seemingly opposed quests for sexualfreedom took identical forms they displaced the political onto the sexualby framing the pursuit of sexual pleasure in the vocabulary of revolution-ary social change In so doing they became the forerunners of the con-temporary lsquosex positiversquo movement which locates political resistance inthe transgression of sexual limits

Why is this connection between pro-sex and the logic of sexual liberationmystied by postmodernist and poststructuralist descendants of pro-sexuality like Butler Clearly most pro-sex discourses have been fairlyexplicit about their relationship to liberatory sexual politics As the

FEM

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26

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

27

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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28

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

INIS

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

FEM

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

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G 2

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

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42

inuential pro-sex anthology Pleasure and Danger reveals the pro-sexu-ality movementrsquos emphasis on sexual pleasure sought to lsquo[join] sexual liber-ation with womenrsquos liberationrsquo (Echols 1992 66) Furthermore many ofthe most prominent activists in the pro-sexuality movement ndash SM orleather queers in particular ndash have thought of themselves as lsquocontinuing theunnished sexual revolution of the 1960srsquo (Tucker 1991 12) These directadmissions of pro-sex theoristsrsquo libertarianism expose for us the more com-plicated liberatory impulses at work in the discourses of Rubin and Butler

Like Rubin and Butler many promoters of transgressive or lsquodestabilizingrsquosexual practices lose sight of their own recapitulation of sexual libera-tionist rhetoric Claiming that the transgressive desires and practices theyadvocate are not lsquoinherentlyrsquo subversive these queer theorists exploit theauthority of theory as a safeguard which then enables them to celebratethe play of difference and desire that constitutes the butchfemme SM orfetish scene Reich offers an example of this argument in lsquoGenderfuck thelaw of the dildorsquo when she asserts that lsquogenderfuck structures meaning ina symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender anddestabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex gender and sexualpracticersquo (1992 113) and that lsquogenderfuck as a mimetic subversive per-formance simultaneously traverses the phallic economy and exceeds itrsquo(1992 125) Like Butlerrsquos famous lsquosubversive repetitionrsquo and Dollimorersquosinuential lsquotransgressive reinscriptionrsquo Reichrsquos work participates in animportant trend to valorize a politics of performance that inverts regu-latory regimes while deecting claims to authenticity Proponents of suchlsquosubversive reinscriptionsrsquo celebrate as Dollimore puts it

a mode of transgression which nds expression through the inversion and per-version of just those pre-existing categories and structures which its humanistcounterpart seeks to transcend to be liberated from a mode of transgressionwhich seeks not an escape from existing structures but rather a subversive rein-scription within them and in the process their dislocation or displacement

(Dollimore 1991 285)

The theoretical refusal of the familiar story of sexual liberation does notundermine the material effects of this discoursersquos valorization of trans-gression By holding up sexually dissident acts as valuable political strat-egies these pro-sex and queer theories promote a lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo thatSinger describes as the sine qua non of the sexual revolution (1993 115)

The valorization of this kind of lsquopolitics of ecstasyrsquo has prevented the pro-sexuality movement from engaging with critiques that have been leveledagainst it by anti-racist anti-imperialist and materialist feminists Theo-rists including hooks and Goldsby have suggested that the radical sexualpractices celebrated by Butler and Bright in fact reflect the power and

ELISA G

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privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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28

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

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42

privilege of institutionalized racial and class differences In her importantcritique of Jennie Livingstonrsquos film Paris Is Burning hooks readsHarlemrsquos black and latino drag balls as celebrations of whiteness impli-cating both the filmmaker and the drag queens in a perpetuation of lsquoclassand race longing that privileges the ldquofemininityrdquo of the ruling-class whitewomanrsquo (1992 148) In Bodies that Matter Butler responds to hooksrsquoscritique by seeking to address the thematics of racial identification andinvestment But the specific problems of ambivalent identification pic-tured in Livingstonrsquos film are ultimately subsumed to a more generalconcern with ambivalence as a characteristic of all identification As Tylerhas persuasively argued about camp however what counts as subversivedepends upon who performs the act in question as well as the conditionsof reception in a society dominated by a lsquowhite and bourgeois imaginaryrsquo(1991 58) As thinkers and activists engaged in struggles for humanfreedom including sexual freedom we need to ask ourselves how do sex-ually dissident styles reproduce relations of domination Before promot-ing such cultural practices as forms of political resistance we mustconsider how these practices operate in a system of racist and capitalistsocial relations

Using the pro-sexuality movementrsquos recent valorizations of butchfemmeas an example I want to stress the importance of assessing transgressivesexualities in relation to dominant social political and economic for-mations As such historians and theorists of lesbian culture as Davis ampKennedy (1993) Feinberg (1993 1996) Hollibaugh amp Moraga (1992)and Nestle (1987 1992) have demonstrated butchfemme is a sexual stylethat developed within working-class and variously raced communities inthe 1930ndash50s As these writers have suggested butchfemme must beunderstood in the context of various struggles for social change under-taken by working-class people people of color and gay lesbian bisexualand transgendered people Despite this insight feminist and queer theo-rists like Case and Butler efface the histories and contexts of gay lives byglorifying butchfemme roles as performative surface identities uncom-plicated by race or class and detached from specic communities and inter-ests2 Though she rightly criticizes the feminist movement for its rejectionof working-class butchfemme culture Case herself elides the experienceand struggles of butches and femmes In her well-known work on thefeminist theater company Split Britches Case asserts

butch-femme seduction is always located in semiosis The point is not toconict reality with another reality but to abandon the notion of reality throughroles and their seductive atmosphere and lightly manipulate appearancesSurely this is the atmosphere of camp permeating the mise en scegravene with lsquopurersquoartice In other words a strategy of appearances replaces a claim to truth

FEM

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Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

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SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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42

Thus butch-femme roles are played in signs themselves and not in ontolo-gies The female body the male gaze and the structures of realism are onlysex toys for the butch-femme couple

(Case 1993 304ndash5)

Here Case presents Split Britches lsquoironizedrsquo theatrical performance as theapotheosis of what it means to lsquobersquo a butch or femme lesbian As a resulther account of butch-femme seduction retreats from materiality and intoan aestheticized lsquohypersimulationrsquo of butch and femme desires (1993 304)Following Baudrillardrsquos postmodernist theory of seduction as a lsquosimu-lationrsquo that undermines the principle of reality Case embraces a purely dis-cursive construction of reality (Baudrillard 1988 156) Reducing livedexperience to the signs and symbols of representation Case removesbutchfemme practices from social reality so thoroughly that they becomelinguistic and discursive objects in semiotic play

By suggesting that performance and style can dispense with political real-ities Case and Butler may have provided the theoretical foundation forrecent popular celebrations of stylish yuppie butchfemme lesbians inwhich passing and class privilege masquerade as politics Tellingly thesevalorizations of the lsquonew lesbian chicrsquo in both the straight and gay pressclearly distinguish lsquothe new butchfemmersquo from the unpretty politicizedworking-class butches and femmes of the 1950s3 In fact this disparagingrepresentation of 1950s butchfemme culture as confrontational and resis-tant may say more about our contemporary retreat from political activitythan anything else as Davis and Kennedy have argued the lsquoculture ofresistancersquo fostered by the lesbian bar scene of the 1940s 1950s and early1960s did not necessarily lead to collective struggle for social change Infact Davis and Kennedy contrast a butchfemme lsquoculture of resistancersquo ofthe 1940s and 1950s with the organized movement for gay and lesbianliberation that in many respects superseded it in the late 1960s and 1970s(1993 183ndash90) Their designation of butchfemme as lsquoprepoliticalrsquo withrespect to gay liberation seems to me to assume that a gay politics of iden-tity is the only or best form of political activity for queer people anassumption I want to challenge We cannot afford to idealize the past butneither can we afford to overlook the material risks that butches andfemmes took in forging a community as they lived ndash and sought to trans-form ndash their own history As the contemporary co-optation of the strugglesof lsquogender outlawsrsquo suggests we have emptied the political and economiccontent of our analysis only to legitimate a commodication of lesbianculture for both gay and straight consumers4

Though some promoters of lsquothe new lesbian chicrsquo do question the politi-cal effects of lsquolifestyle lesbianismrsquo these writers tend to marginalize or glossover such concerns in order to celebrate a substitution of style for politics

ELISA G

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29

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

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30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

FEM

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

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35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

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42

Consider this typical passage from Blackman and Perryrsquos lsquoSkirting theissuersquo

Todayrsquos lesbian lsquoselfrsquo is a thoroughly urban creature who interprets fashion assomething to be worn and discarded Nothing is sacred for very long Con-stantly changing she dabbles in fashion constructing one self after anotherexpressing her desires in a continual process of experimentation How do weassess that uidity politically

(Blackman and Perry 1990 77)

Unfortunately Blackman and Perry never answer their own question aboutthe political implications of a postmodernist valorization of fragmentationand spectacle instead they imply that the racist and homophobic policiesof Thatcherite Britain make lsquoself-expression through fashionrsquo the onlyform of viable political action (1990 77ndash8) This disengagement with poli-tics simply celebrates a commodication of sex and gender withoutseeking to challenge institutionalized power Activists working for theliberation of people of color women and sexual minorities must assess thepolitical costs of excluding material contextualization from our analysesBy privatizing the sexual in our own theory and politics we have reducedsexuality to a matter of style and redened political resistance in terms oflifestyle fashion and personal transformation5

Why does the pro-sexuality movement need to make claims about the waytransgressive identities and sexualities ndash divorced from institutionalizedpower relations ndash function as political practices that work toward socialchange What political agenda is advanced by these strategies If as Rubinstates the feminist pro-sexuality movement has been led in part by sexradicals ndash butchfemme and SM lesbians in particular ndash it should not besurprising that much of the activism and writing of pro-sex tends to berepresentative of communities that organize politically around identity cat-egories From SAMOISrsquo Coming to Power (1987) to Caliarsquos Public Sex(1994) this work advocates sex as a site of feminist andor lesbian praxisand celebrates the liberatory value of marginalized sexual practices andidentities for women and queers I would contend that the promotion of apolitics grounded in transgressive sexual styles is a necessary effect of thelogic of identity politics and as such must be understood in terms of thecentral role identity politics has played in social and political movementsin the second half of the twentieth century

In the US the new social movements of the 1950s 1960s and early 1970sndash such as the civil rights movement black nationalism and the womenrsquosand gay liberation movements ndash championed a new denition of politicscentered on collective and individual identity In doing so they broadenedthe scope of lsquothe politicalrsquo to include not only the institutions of the public

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

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000

30

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

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EVIE

W N

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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4 SP

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42

sphere (state apparatuses economic markets and the arenas of public dis-course) but also everyday individual and social life including the intimatesphere of personal life While these social movements effectively exposedthe interpenetration of the political and the personal they also reconcep-tualized political struggle in terms of the afrmation or reclamation ofonersquos collective identity As Kauffman puts it

Identity politics express the principle that identity ndash be it individual or collec-tive ndash should be central to both the vision and practice of radical politics Itimplies not only organizing around shared identity as for example classicnationalist movements have done Identity politics also express the belief thatidentity itself ndash its elaboration expression or afrmation ndash is and should be afundamental focus of political work

(Kauffman 1990 67)

Perhaps because the focus on identity itself tends to abstract it from socialprocesses these social movements laid the groundwork for a new morepuried brand of identity politics to emerge in the late 1970s 1980s and1990s ndash a movement away from identity politicsrsquo previous integration ofthe collective and the individual and toward an even greater focus on iden-tity itself (Kauffman 1990 75ndash6) In short what was once lsquothe personalis politicalrsquo has become lsquothe political need only be personalrsquo By creating aclimate in which self-transformation is equated with social transformationthe new identity politics has valorized a politics of lifestyle a personal poli-tics that is centered upon who we are ndash how we dress or get off ndash that failsto engage with institutionalized systems of domination

The theory and activism of the pro-sexuality movement has been shapedby this identitarian logic which is invested in politicizing self-explorationlifestyle and consumption as radical acts Given the currency of perfor-mative theories of sexuality and gender in feminist and gaylesbian studiessome might argue that the valorizing of transgressive sexual practices byqueer theorists like Butler Case and Dollimore is precisely not invested inthis kind of identitarian logic Butler for example explicitly frames herwork in terms of a critique of identity arguing for a performative pro-duction of identity that seeks to deconstruct ndash and displace the importanceof ndash dominant identity categories I do not want to contest this What I amsuggesting is that this brand of queer theory reinscribes itself in the logicof identity through the very mechanisms by which it claims to challengeit

Despite their anti-essentialist critiques of mainstream gay politics of iden-tity pro-sex and queer theories that valorize transgression make self-exploration and the fashioning of individual identity central to politicalstruggle This focus on self-transformation divorced from the collective

ELISA G

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ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

31

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

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32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

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37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

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39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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4 SP

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G 2

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42

transformation of institutionalized structures of power reproduces the pit-falls of the liberal gay rights movement that politicizes lsquolifestylersquo ndash forexample lsquobuying pinkrsquo ndash as a strategy for social change Since this newqueer and genderfuck theory premises itself upon a deconstruction of iden-tity categories it is in the contradictory position of critiquing identity cat-egories as a foundation for politics while placing the practices associatedwith them at the center of its own politics now the destabilizing of iden-tity ndash instead of identityrsquos elaboration ndash in cultural practices is seen as apolitical challenge to systems of domination

Resistance in the land of gender trouble

According to Bergman lsquothe person who has done the most to revise theacademic standing of camp and to suggest its politically subversive poten-tial is Judith Butlerrsquo (1993 11) Bergman of course is referring to Butlerrsquosexamination of how the cultural practices of drag and butchfemme parodythe concept of a lsquonatural sexrsquo or true gender identity In her inuentialGender Trouble (1990b) Butler argues that these practices expose boththe heterosexual lsquooriginalrsquo and its gay lsquoimitationrsquo as cultural constructsphantasmatic in that neither can attain the status of an authentic genderreality In so doing she reveals gender as an lsquoactrsquo inscribed upon subjectsby sustained repetitions that are performative not expressive lsquoGender isthe repeated stylization of the body a set of repeated acts within a highlyrigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearanceof substance of a natural sort of beingrsquo (1990b 33) On the one handButler uses this theory of gender as performative in order to argue that thecompulsory repetitions that govern gender are a form of social regulationOn the other hand her desire to theorize agency for subjects from withinsuch regulatory practices leads her to collapse performativity into style amove which allows her to valorize particular lsquosexual stylizationsrsquo as prac-tices that subvert sexist and heterosexist norms I want to explore thistension between regulation and resistance in order to put pressure onButlerrsquos notions of identity agency and power

How do practices like drag and butchfemme function as subversive repe-titions within the cultural norms of sex and gender For Butler agency isnot located in a pre- or extradiscursive space but rather within the gapsof dominant sexgender ideology gaps that may be exploited for theproject of social transformation Arguing that cultural construction doesnot preclude agency she sees a practice like drag as resistant insofar as itworks to denaturalize to reveal the ctive status of coherent identities andto subvert to repeat and displace normative cultural congurationsSignicantly Butler never delineates what constitutes a lsquodisplacingrsquo of

FEM

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000

32

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

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33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

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G 2

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

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of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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4 SP

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42

dominant conventions When pressed by interviewer Liz Kotz she statesthat lsquosubversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated Infact what I mean by subversion are those effects that are incalculablersquo(Butler 1992 84 emphasis added) In order to understand this strikinganti-empiricism we must take stock of the way in which Butlerrsquos theory ofsubversion is grounded in discourse

If as in Butlerrsquos formulation identity is an effect of discursive practicessubversive lsquodisorderingsrsquo of gender coherence mark the exhaustion of iden-tity itself identity is unable to signify once and for all because it inevitablygenerates lsquoeffects that are incalculablersquo an undecidability that exceeds sig-nication Theorizing subversion as the site of proliferating indeter-minable meaning that is always and already at the core of identity Butlerlocates agency in representation and therefore can only theorize socialtransformation as a process of lsquoresignicationrsquo that somehow reconstructsthe real Referring to Foucaultrsquos theory of power as it is elaborated in TheHistory of Sexuality I she asserts lsquothe juridical law the regulative lawseeks to conne limit or prohibit some set of acts practices subjects butin the process of articulating and elaborating that prohibition the law pro-vides the discursive occasion for a resistance resignation and potentialself-subversion of that lawrsquo (1993 109) These lsquodiscursive occasionsrsquo forresistance exist because for Butler relations of power have both regulat-ing and deregulating effects and thus they are always able to lsquogenerate theirown resistancesrsquo (Ebert 1996 216) Of course at the heart of Butlerrsquosproject is an attempt to reformulate the very concepts I have just beeninvoking identity power agency discourse and material reality Butlerwants to unsettle these categories by for example refusing to theorize lsquosexrsquoas outside or prior to discourse and power instead she illuminates lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo or regulatory norms through which lsquosexrsquo is itselflsquomaterializedrsquo (1993 10 35) Butlerrsquos model may at rst appear to allowfor a promising rethinking of the relationship between the material and thediscursive The trajectory of her argument however short circuits thispossibility since she effectively collapses the distinction between discourseand materiality by privileging a lsquoformativersquo discursive practice whichmakes the material its lsquoeffectrsquo (1993 2) Although discursive interventionscertainly have material effects in the production of the real how exactlythe process of resignication works toward political and social changeneeds to be explained6 I would contend that the valorization of lsquoresigni-cationrsquo as a political strategy is complicit with political and economicsystems that mystify the relationship between signs and things and actu-ally works to obscure the kind of agency shaping social relations

Interestingly enough Butler herself addresses this problem when she askslsquoWhat relations of domination and exploitation are inadvertently sustained

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

33

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

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4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

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G 2

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42

when representation becomes the sole focus of politicsrsquo (1990b 6) Thisis a question Butlerrsquos work cannot answer because of her investment inpoststructuralist and postmodernist theories of the subject which evadecoming to terms with their own linguistic idealism7 Butlerrsquos representa-tional politics I want to insist are awed by her failure to consider thehistorical and material conditions that have participated in the productionof her conception of resignication as resistance By not linking herspecically linguistic notion of a uid performative subject to the contextof capitalism she cannot acknowledge the relationship of her theory tonew exible organizational forms of production and consumption Harveyanalyses the shift to lsquoexible accumulationrsquo that has occurred since theearly 1970s contrasting the rigidity rationalization and functionalism ofpostwar Fordism with the development of exibility in labor marketsmanufacturing and production and mass consumption Pointing to ex-ible accumulationrsquos reduction in the lsquoturnover timersquo or lifespan of producedgoods Harvey writes that

exible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by amuch greater attention to quick-changing fashions and the mobilization of allthe artices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this impliesThe relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all theferment instability and eeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that cel-ebrates difference ephemerality spectacle fashion and the commodication ofcultural forms

(Harvey 1990 156)

Harvey argues that the new culture of accelerated consumption reects anincreased emphasis on change and fashion that is key to the protabilityof exible production systems If postmodernism is as Hennessy assertsthe lsquocultural commonsense of post-industrial capitalismrsquo then we mustbegin to assess lsquoto what extent the afrmation of pleasure in queer poli-tics participate[s] in the consolidation of postmodern hegemonyrsquo (1996232ndash3) As Harveyrsquos model suggests the celebration of a politics of styleby postmodernist social theorists like Butler accepts and accommodatesthe increasingly uid logic of commodication and so may unintention-ally work to maintain exploitative social relations Indeed Butlerrsquos theoryof lsquosubversive reinscriptionrsquo fetishizes the fragmentation and masking of apostmodernist aesthetic that is itself implicated in the aestheticization ofpolitics and the consumerist strategies of contemporary capitalism

Like other poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists who have notconfronted their relationship to a social totality Butler valorizes a uiditythat is produced by the global mobility of multinational capitalism AsChomsky argues the new global economy has not only orchestrated thecontinued exploitation and conquest of the lsquothird worldrsquo but also the

FEM

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4 SP

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G 2

000

34

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

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36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

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38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

development of lsquothird worldrsquo conditions at home In the 1980s and 1990sthe US as elsewhere has been characterized by an increased disparitybetween the rich and the poor An unrelenting war against women peopleof color working people the unemployed and the lsquoundeservingrsquo poor hasresulted in signicantly higher poverty rates Since the mid-1980s hungerhas grown by 50 and now affects approximately 30 million Americans(Chomsky 1993 280ndash1) Given these enormous social costs I believe it isour responsibility as social theorists to demystify a lsquouidityrsquo that has beenproduced at the expense of so many people in the US and throughout theworld When we settle for merely celebrating prevailing social conditionswe miss an opportunity to work on developing authentic forms of politi-cal resistance

Keeping this argument in mind I want to return to Butlerrsquos work in orderto explore the problem of a politics of representation As I have been sug-gesting Butlerrsquos notion of resignication as agency has become the per-sistent problem in her theory ndash a problem that her work since GenderTrouble has made even more clear In her more recent work Butler hasdeclared that lsquodrag is not unproblematically subversiversquo (1993 231) thusattempting to stress the lsquocomplexityrsquo of performing gender norms and alsoto distance herself from those lsquobad readersrsquo who saw her theory as legiti-mating transgressive cultural and sexual practices as uncomplicated formsof recreational resistance In fact I will be suggesting that this kind of legit-imation is precisely what Butlerrsquos work confers By asserting that drag islsquonot unproblematically subversiversquo Butler claims to be attending to boththe constraining and enabling effects of performativity However thismove moderates her theory of performativity without actually complicat-ing it leaving intact her fundamental emphasis on transformation throughresignication Butlerrsquos gesture towards lsquocomplexityrsquo is nevertheless thebasis for her insistent disavowal of the popular slippage between genderperformance and style Rather than acknowledge her relationship to thepopularized version of her work8 she dismisses such interpretations aslsquobad readingsrsquo and refuses to be held accountable for what she has else-where called lsquothe deforming of [her] wordsrsquo (1993 242)

Well there is a bad reading which unfortunately is the most popular one Thebad reading goes something like this I can get up in the morning look in mycloset and decide which gender I want to be today I can take out a piece ofclothing and change my gender stylize it and then that evening I can change itagain and be something radically other so that what you get is something likethe commodication of gender and the understanding of taking on a gender asa kind of consumerism

(Butler 1992 83)

It is worth noting that in the above remarks Butlerrsquos lsquobad readerrsquo speaks

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

35

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

in the rst-person (lsquoI can take out a piece of clothing and change mygenderrsquo) whereas Butler dissolves the category of the lsquoselfrsquo into the nor-mative processes of gender construction Butlerrsquos work then focuses onthe abstract performative rather than a concrete performance or the actorwho does the performing Seeking to contest the metaphysics of substancethat sees an identity behind its cultural expressions she repeatedly refersto drag cross-dressing and butchfemme as lsquocultural practicesrsquo no longerattached to the subjects who enact them As Butler triumphantlyannounces lsquothere need not be a ldquodoer behind the deedrdquo rsquo (1990b 142)

Is this move toward desubjectication the only way to formulate agencyand structure together as Butler would have us believe It is worth remem-bering that lsquomen make their own history but they do not make it just asthey pleasersquo (Marx 1963 15) Underscoring the social dimension of sub-jectivity Marxism and the tradition of radical philosophy conceptualizesubjects as emerging with and through social relations relations thatrender agents simultaneously self-determining and decentered both thesubjects and objects of social and historical processes Nevertheless Butlerimplies that the only way to oppose individualism and voluntarism whiletheorizing agency in terms of lsquothe power regimesrsquo that lsquoconstitutersquo thesubject is to do away with the subject itself Of course Butler contendsthat the displacement of the subject is an effect of the discursive operationsof power in modern culture As she asserts in Bodies that Matter lsquoSub-jected to gender but subjectivated by gender the ldquoIrdquo neither precedes norfollows the process of this gendering but emerges only within and as thematrix of gender relations themselvesrsquo (1993 7) At the center of this Fou-cauldian critique of the subject is a deconstruction of the concepts ofcausality effect and intention But this new project returns us to somefamiliar problems In their contributions to Feminist Contentions (1995)social theorists Benhabib and Frazer have questioned the ramications ofButlerrsquos erasure of subjectivity for feminist theory and practice Inresponse Butler has insisted that she is deconstructing the subject andlsquointerrogating its constructionrsquo rather than simply negating or dismissingit (1995 42) However Butlerrsquos notion of the subject as an lsquoeffectrsquo of lsquothepowerdiscourse regimersquo mysties the distinction between subjects and theprocesses through which they are in her terms lsquosubjectedrsquo and lsquosubjecti-vatedrsquo Finally her model provides a lsquorethinkingrsquo of agency that actuallydisappears the subject into the eld of power itself

This theoretical framework accounts for Butlerrsquos focus on the politicalresistance generated by lsquocultural practicesrsquo rather than lsquosubjectsrsquo Arguingagainst feminisms that saw practices like drag and butchfemme as eithermisogynist or heterosexist Butlerrsquos work argues for the political use-valueof these sex and gender practices as they are performed in gay and lesbian

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

36

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

communities Nevertheless Butlerrsquos reaction to the popularization of herideas expresses an academic distancing from a material reality in whichlsquosubversive bodily actsrsquo are lived experiences The terms of Butlerrsquos discourseproduce this disengagement from the category of experience which issimply not operative in her work Furthermore given the social and econ-omic basis for its postmodernist displacement of the subject Butlerrsquos dis-course ndash to borrow Huyssenrsquos formulation ndash lsquomerely duplicates on the levelof aesthetics and theory what capitalism as a system of exchange relationsproduces tendentially in everyday life the denial of subjectivity in the veryprocess of its constructionrsquo (1986 213) Implicated in these systems ofdomination Butlerrsquos disavowal of subjectivity denies rather than challengesinstitutionalized power As I have argued Butler can only conceptualizeresistance as a subversive play of signication Therefore her theory ofresignication as agency requires her to textualize transgressive practicesIn this model it would seem that any attention to praxis ndash not just the facileversion she parodies as lsquobad readingrsquo ndash would be construed as voluntarism

But Butler herself recognizes the risks involved in her textualization of sex-ually transgressive practices celebrating the free play of resignication astylizing of gender brings her work dangerously close to the so-called lsquobadreadersrsquo who conceptualize gender as fashion and celebrate a politics ofstyle It is for this reason that in Bodies that Matter Butler retreats fromher earlier unqualied valorization of proliferation and indeterminacythereby implicitly pointing to the limitations of that position Arguing forthe interrelationship between sexuality and gender queer theory andfeminism Butler asserts

The goal of this analysis then cannot be pure subversion as if an undermin-ing were enough to establish and direct political struggle Rather than denatu-ralization or proliferation it seems that the question for thinking discourse andpower in terms of the future has several paths to follow how to think poweras resignication together with power as the convergence or interarticulation ofrelations of regulation domination constitution

(Butler 1993 240)

Trapped in the terms of her own discourse Butler cannot answer this ques-tion Butlerrsquos difculty is that she wants both to reject the voluntaristgender-as-drag reading and to valorize lsquosubversive repetitionsrsquo that use aes-thetic play to stylize sex and gender thereby commodifying the sign ofdifference itself

Butlerrsquos effort to take up the question that functions as the point of depar-ture for Bodies that Matter ndash lsquoWhat about the materiality of the bodyJudyrsquo ndash is an admission of the limitations of her theory to engage withmaterial conditions of existence which are not reducible to the process of

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

37

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

signication (1993 ix) In a telling footnote Butler refers us to Althusserrsquoscaveat regarding the modalities of materiality lsquoOf course the materialexistence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not havethe same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a riersquo(quoted in Butler 1993 252 footnote 13) Although Butler would thusseem to concede that materiality cannot be lsquosummarily collapsed into anidentity with languagersquo she nevertheless adheres to a linguistic and dis-cursive idealism that sees materiality in terms of its signication thusrewriting the relationship between representation and the real (1993 68)As Bodies that Matter makes explicit Butler undertakes to reconceptual-ize materiality as lsquoa process of materializationrsquo and an lsquoeffectrsquo of power(1993 2 9) Thus she reproduces her theory of subjects as lsquoinstitutedeffects of prior actionsrsquo (1995 43) declaring lsquo ldquoMaterialityrdquo designates acertain effect of power or rather is power in its formative or constitutingeffectsrsquo (1993 34) Since Butler follows Foucault in adopting a conceptionof power as discursive her theory of materiality and materializations ulti-mately becomes indistinguishable from the domain of the discursive nowreworked as the site through which materiality is lsquocontingently constitutedrsquoas lsquothe dissimulated effect of powerrsquo (Butler 1993 251 footnote 12) Inother words where Althusser distinguishes between modalities of materi-ality Butler however dispenses with those distinctions In the end thisallows her to reassert the primacy of discourse Butler claims that lsquoAlwaysalready implicated in each other always already exceeding one anotherlanguage and materiality are never fully identical nor fully differentrsquo (199369) What she presents here as a deconstruction of classical notions ofmatter language and causality deliberately seeks to displace the point atwhich materiality exceeds language (Ebert 1996 212) As a result thisformulation which claims to theorize the difference between language andmateriality in the end reafrms their sameness or identity With this inmind I believe that Butlerrsquos theory needs to be evaluated in terms of thekind of politics it suggests and proscribes

It is my contention that Butlerrsquos work is both reective and constitutive ofa political climate that has emerged in conjunction with the aesthetics ofpostmodernism In this regard Butlerrsquos discourse participates in a con-temporary trend that valorizes the subversive value of representation andfantasy Declaring her afnity with the politics of ACT UP [AIDS Coali-tion to Unleash Power] and Queer Nation Butler celebrates lsquothe conver-gence of theatrical work with theatrical activismrsquo an lsquoacting outrsquo that is atonce a politicization of theatricality and a lsquotheatricalization of politicalragersquo (1993 233) Halberstam advocates this brand of politics in her recentwork on the political strategies of lsquoimagined violencersquo

groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP regularly create havoc with their

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

38

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

particular brand of postmodern terror tactics ACT UP demonstrations further-more regularly marshal renegade art forms to produce protest as an aestheticobject Protest in the age of AIDS in other words is not separate from rep-resentation and lsquodie-insrsquo lsquokiss-insrsquo posters slogans graphics and queer pro-paganda create a new form of political response that is sensitive to andexploitive of the blurred boundaries between representations and realities

(Halberstam 1993 190)

Like queer theorists Berlant and Freeman Halberstam valorizes the lsquodie-insrsquo and lsquokiss-insrsquo graphics and posters of ACT UP and Queer Nationwithout even assessing the political effectiveness of their production ofprotest as an aesthetic object9 As queer and AIDS activists we must con-sider the limitations of a site-specic activism that is expressed in symbolicand aesthetic terms a focus on performance and display that avoids con-fronting political and economic processes as they function globally and aremanifested locally

It is not my intention to trivialize the work of organizations such as ACTUP that have made vital contributions to AIDS education and awarenessand have tirelessly advocated for people living with HIV and AIDS I alsobelieve that both Butler and Halberstam are right to suggest that spectaclecan operate as an effective form of resistance However the history oflsquobread and circusesrsquo alone should remind us that spectacle also serves as ameans of social control As Marx suggests in The Eighteenth Brumairethe state will necessarily promote the aestheticization and theatricalizationof politics in order to build a sense of community beyond the circulationof capital10 Especially in todayrsquos mass-mediated culture of image andinformation spectacle must be understood as the epitome of the dominantculture it serves according to Debord lsquoas total justication for the con-ditions and aims of the existing systemrsquo (1994 13) Cultural activism thenis limited by the very degree to which the production of protest as an aes-thetic object refunctions and yet preserves the aestheticization and com-modication of politics that proliferates in modern culture

Not surprisingly theorists like Butler and Halberstam who valorize thesubversive value of representation and aesthetic expression tend also topromote fantasy as a potent political strategy For these poststructuralistand postmodernist critics fantasy counts as political intervention becausein the textualized postmodern world the real is itself phantasmaticButlerrsquos defense of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe in her 1990 article lsquoTheforce of fantasyrsquo (1990a) offers a prototypically idealist celebration of thepolitical use-value of fantasy Elaborating upon this position Butler tellsinterviewer Liz Kotz that

what fantasy can do in its various rehearsals of the scenes of social power is

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

39

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

to expose the tenuousness moments of inversion and the emotional valence ndashanxiety fear desire ndash that get occluded in the description of lsquostructuresrsquo Howto think the problem of the ways in which fantasy orchestrates and shatters rela-tions of power seems crucial to me

(Butler 1992 86ndash7)

As Butlerrsquos claims suggest those pro-sex feminists who advocate the valueof fantasy in reconstituting the real put forward a theory of fantasy that isactually similar to that of anti-porn feminists both camps blur the bound-aries between representation and reality

Taking pro-sex discourse about SM as an exemplary case we can see thatthe valorization of radical sexual practices as politically subversive oftendepends upon collapsing the distinction between fantasy and reality Inconcrete terms is female domination (FD) a theatrical conversion ofgender relations that empowers women This is precisely what McClin-tock suggests in Social Textrsquos special issue on sex workers (1993) a politi-cally engaged contribution to pro-sex feminist theory Minimizing thematerial conditions which inevitably structure any performance of SMpaid or unpaid McClintock claims that lsquoSM performs social power asscripted and hence as permanently subject to changersquo (1993 89) Despiteher celebration of SMrsquos power reversals even McClintock concedes thatFD may lsquo[enclose] female power in a fantasy landrsquo and so lead to thereconstitution of male domination once the scene is over (1993 102)11 AsStabile argues in her persuasive critique of McClintockrsquos project lsquominor-ityrsquo populations must question whether the enactment of fantasies can altermaterial social political and economic realities

in reference to the man who pays to be spanked diapered breastfed or forcedto lsquocrawl around the oor doing the vacuum with a cucumber up his bumrsquo we need to ask what material changes are effected once the investment bankerhas removed the cucumber from his ass and returned to his ofce

(Stabile 1995 167)

Stabilersquos analysis points to the contradiction at the heart of pro-sexualitypolitics whether enacted in the private theater of the scene or on stage ata fetish club gay or leather bar transgressive sexual practices and stylestend to promote an individualistic concept of agency neglecting to engagewith the political and economic contexts that most sex radicals recognizeas oppressive

The advocacy for transgressive sexual practices as political strategiesreects an utopian longing in contemporary politics and theory an ideal-ization of sex that contradicts queer theoryrsquos effort to construct an anti-essentialist politics Indeed I would argue that the eagerness of theoristslike Butler to celebrate a politics of sexual semiotics has been the downfall

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

40

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

of this theoryrsquos political usefulness We must move beyond the fetishizingof sexuality as style and style as politics In order to do so feminist andqueer theorists and activists must pay attention to the ways in which wemay be reproducing cultural ideologies that privatize the sexual andeschewing a politics of collective social change for a highly localized poli-tics of personal transformation We cannot proclaim any cultural practicessexual or otherwise as resistant without examining how these practicesfunction within the racist imperialist and capitalist social formations thatstructure contemporary society Most of all we must work to producesocial theory that enables a multi-issue and anti-identity politics in whichthe question of whether or not certain sexual practices subvert the domi-nant will nally cease to matter

Notes

Elisa Glick is a graduate student at Brown University She is currently at work onher dissertation about modern gay and lesbian identities and the contradictions ofcapitalism

I am grateful to Nancy Armstrong Anthony Arnove Carolyn Dean Jim HolstunLloyd Pratt Kasturi Ray Ellen Rooney Carol Stabile and Carolyn Sullivan forreading this article and generously offering their comments and ideas

1 Ferguson contrasts radical and libertarian feminisms in lsquoSex war the debatebetween radical and libertarian feministsrsquo I have adopted Fergusonrsquos modelbut use the term lsquopro-sexrsquo to identify the movement Ferguson labels lsquoliber-tarianrsquo See also Echolsrsquo lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in which Echols critiques thosefeminisms that have abandoned their lsquoradical rootsrsquo in favor of conservativelsquocelebrations of femalenessrsquo Echols prefers the term lsquocultural feminismrsquo for thetheory and politics of what I call lsquoradical feminismrsquo

2 I also have in mind a much quoted and discussed passage on butch-femmedesire in Butlerrsquos Gender Trouble (1990b 123) Since I will examine Butlerrsquoswork in detail in the next section of this essay I will conne my remarks hereto Casersquos article lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo

3 For a discussion of lesbianism as radical chic in the mainstream media seeKasindorfrsquos lsquoLesbian chicrsquo For a political critique of this article see Schwartz(1993) For examples of the promotion of a politics of style signs and symbolsin the lesbian and queer community see Blackman and Perry Stein andWhisman

4 Berlant and Freemanrsquos inuential work on Queer Nation revels in this com-modication of queer sexualities celebrating consumerism as a strategy forsocial change For a critique of Berlant and Freeman and an important dis-cussion of the suppression of class analysis by queer politics and theory seeHennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

41

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

5 Hennessy critiques postmodern lesbian and gay theory that represents sexualityas style in Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993 91)

6 See Skillenrsquos useful discussion of discourse phenomenalism and the problem ofconfusing ideology and its effects in lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes ofproductionrsquo

7 For a discussion of Butlerrsquos representational politics within the context of post-modernist social theory see Stabile lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misal-liances and missed alliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Hennessy offers anexcellent analysis of Butlerrsquos politics of resignication and its relationship to theretreat from historical materialism in queer theory See Hennessyrsquos lsquoQueer visi-bility in commodity culturersquo

8 For an example of the popularization of Butlerrsquos theory see Powers lsquoQueer inthe streets straight in the sheetsrsquo

9 On the conjunction between art and protest in ACT UP see Crimp Crimp andRolston and Saaleld and Navarro For a defense of ACT UPrsquos media politicssee Aronowitz On the limitations of cultural activist art as a substitute forpolitical activism see Fieldrsquos Over the Rainbow Money Class and Homo-phobia (1995 121ndash32 173)

10 Harvey discusses Marxrsquos opposition to the aestheticization of politics in TheCondition of Postmodernism (1990 108ndash9) For an elaboration of Marxrsquosattempt to divorce theater from history in the context of links between sexualand economic formations see Parkerrsquos lsquoUnthinking sexrsquo

11 Butler herself offers a similar critique of the ways in which lsquophallic divestiturersquomay actually function as a strategy of self-aggrandizement See Butler lsquoThebody you wantrsquo (1992 88)

References

ARONOWITZ Stanley (1995) lsquoAgainst the liberal state ACT-UP and the emer-gence of postmodern politicsrsquo in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (1995)editors Social Postmodernism Beyond Identity Politics Cambridge CambridgeUniversity PressBAUDRILLARD Jean (1988) Selected Writings Stanford Stanford UPBENHABIB Seyla BUTLER Judith CORNELL Drucilla and FRASER Nancy(1995) Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange New York RoutledgeBERGMAN David (1993) editor Camp Grounds Style and HomosexualityAmherst Univesity of MassachusettsBERLANT Lauren and FREEMAN Elizabeth (1993) lsquoQueer nationalityrsquo inMichael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressBLACKMAN Inge and PERRY Kathryn (1990) lsquoSkirting the issue lesbianfashion for the 1990srsquo Feminist Review 34 66ndash78

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

42

BRIGHT Susie (1990) Susie Sexpertrsquos Lesbian Sex World Pittsburgh Cleismdashmdash (1991) lsquoInterview with Andrea Junorsquo ReSearch 13 194ndash221BUTLER Judith (1990a) lsquoThe force of fantasy feminism Mapplethorpe and dis-cursive excessrsquo Differences A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 2(2) 105ndash25mdashmdash (1990b) Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity NewYork Routledgemdashmdash (1992) lsquoThe body you want interview with Liz Kotzrsquo Artforum November82ndash9mdashmdash (1993) Bodies that Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo New YorkRoutledgemdashmdash (1995) lsquoContingent Foundationsrsquo in Benhabib Butler Cornell and Fraser(1995)CALIFIA Pat (1988) Macho Sluts Los Angeles Alysonmdashmdash (1994) Public Sex The Culture of Radical Sex Pittsburgh CleisCASE Sue-Ellen (1993) lsquoToward a butch-femme aestheticrsquo in Henry AbeloveMichele Aina Barale and David M Halperin (1993) editors The Lesbian and GayStudies Reader New York RoutledgeCHOMSKY Noam (1993) Year 501 The Conquest Continues Boston SouthEndCREET Julia (1991) lsquoDaughter of the movement the psychodynamics of lesbianSM fantasyrsquo Differences A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3(2) 135ndash59CRIMP Douglas (1988) editor AIDS Cultural AnalysisCultural Activism Cam-bridge MIT PressCRIMP Douglas and ROLSTON Adam (1990) AIDS DEMO GRAPHICSSeattle BayDAVIS Madeline and KENNEDY Elizabeth Lapovsky (1993) Boots of LeatherSlippers of Gold The History of a Lesbian Community New York RoutledgeDEAN Carolyn (1996) Sexuality and Modern Western Culture New YorkTwayneDEBORD Guy (1994) The Society of the Spectacle New York ZoneDrsquoEMILIO John and FREEDMAN Estelle (1989) Intimate Matters A History ofSexuality in America New York Harper and RowDOLLIMORE Jonathan (1991) Sexual Dissidence Augustine to Wilde Freud toFoucault Oxford Oxford University PressEBERT Teresa L (1996) Ludic Feminism and After Postmodernism Desire andLabor in Late Capitalism Ann Arbor University of Michigan PressECHOLS Alice (1992) lsquoThe taming of the idrsquo in VANCE (1992)FACT BOOK COMMITTEE (1992) Caught Looking Feminism Pornographyand Censorship East Haven LongRiverFEINBERG Leslie (1993) Stone Butch Blues A Novel Ithaca Firebrandmdashmdash (1996) Transgender Warriors Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaulBoston BeaconFERGUSON Anne (1984) lsquoSex war the debate between radical and libertarianfeministsrsquo Signs 10(1) 106ndash12FIELD Nicola (1995) Over the Rainbow Money Class and HomophobiaLondon Pluto

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

43

FOUCAULT Michel (1977) lsquoA Preface to transgressionrsquo Language Counter-Memory Practice Selected Essays and Interviews Ithaca Cornell UP pp 29ndash52FOUCAULT Michel (1980) Herculine Barbin Being the Recently DiscoveredMemoirs of a Nineteenth Century Hermaphrodite New York Pantheonmdashmdash (1989) lsquoSex power and the politics of identity interview with Bob Gallagherand Alexander Wilsonrsquo Foucault Live New York Semiotext(e) pp 382ndash90mdashmdash (1990) The History of Sexuality Volume I An Introduction New YorkVintageFRASER Nancy (1989) Unruly Practices Power Discourse and Gender in Con-temporary Social Theory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressHALBERSTAM Judith (1993) lsquoImagined violencequeer violence representationrage and resistancersquo Social Text 37 187ndash201HARVEY David (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity An Enquiry into theOrigins of Cultural Change Cambridge BlackwellHENNESSY Rosemary (1993) Materialist Feminism and the Politics of DiscourseNew York Routledgemdashmdash (1994ndash95) lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo Cultural Critique 2931ndash76mdashmdash (1996) lsquoQueer theory left politicsrsquo in Saree Makdisi Cesare Casarino andRebecca E Karl (1996) editors Marxism Beyond Marxism New York RoutledgeHOLLIBAUGH Amber and MORAGA Cherrie (1992) lsquoWhat wersquore rollinrsquoaround in bed with sexual silences in feminismrsquo in Joan Nestle (1992) editor ThePersistent Desire A Femme-Butch Reader Boston AlysonHOOKS bell (1992) lsquoIs Paris burningrsquo Black Looks Race and RepresentationBoston South EndHUYSSEN Andreas (1986) After the Great Divide Modernism Mass CulturePostmodernism Bloomington Indiana University PressKASINDORF Jeanie Russell (1993) lsquoLesbian chic the bold brave new world ofgay womenrsquo New York 10 May pp 30ndash7KAUFFMAN LA (1990) lsquoThe anti-politics of identityrsquo Socialist Review 21(1)67ndash80LEWIS Reina (1994) lsquoDis-graceful Imagesrsquo Della Grace and Lesbian Sado-masochismrsquo Feminist Review 46 76ndash91MARX Karl (1963) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte New YorkInternationalMCCLINTOCK Anne (1993) lsquoMaid to order commercial fetishism and genderpowerrsquo Social Text 37 87ndash116NESTLE Joan (1987) lsquoButch-femme relationships sexual courage in the 1950srsquo ARestricted Country Ithaca FirebrandOrsquoSULLIVAN Sue (1999) lsquoWhat a Difference a Decade Makes Coming to Powerand The Second Comingrsquo Feminist Review 61 97ndash126PARKER Andrew (1993) lsquoUnthinking sex Marx Engels and the scene of writingrsquoin Michael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressPOWERS Ann (1993) lsquoQueer in the streets straight in the sheetsrsquo Village Voice29 July 24 30ndash1

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

44

FOUCAULT Michel (1977) lsquoA Preface to transgressionrsquo Language Counter-Memory Practice Selected Essays and Interviews Ithaca Cornell UP pp 29ndash52FOUCAULT Michel (1980) Herculine Barbin Being the Recently DiscoveredMemoirs of a Nineteenth Century Hermaphrodite New York Pantheonmdashmdash (1989) lsquoSex power and the politics of identity interview with Bob Gallagherand Alexander Wilsonrsquo Foucault Live New York Semiotext(e) pp 382ndash90mdashmdash (1990) The History of Sexuality Volume I An Introduction New YorkVintageFRASER Nancy (1989) Unruly Practices Power Discourse and Gender in Con-temporary Social Theory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressHALBERSTAM Judith (1993) lsquoImagined violencequeer violence representationrage and resistancersquo Social Text 37 187ndash201HARVEY David (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity An Enquiry into theOrigins of Cultural Change Cambridge BlackwellHENNESSY Rosemary (1993) Materialist Feminism and the Politics of DiscourseNew York Routledgemdashmdash (1994ndash95) lsquoQueer visibility in commodity culturersquo Cultural Critique 2931ndash76mdashmdash (1996) lsquoQueer theory left politicsrsquo in Saree Makdisi Cesare Casarino andRebecca E Karl (1996) editors Marxism Beyond Marxism New York RoutledgeHOLLIBAUGH Amber and MORAGA Cherrie (1992) lsquoWhat wersquore rollinrsquoaround in bed with sexual silences in feminismrsquo in Joan Nestle (1992) editor ThePersistent Desire A Femme-Butch Reader Boston AlysonHOOKS bell (1992) lsquoIs Paris burningrsquo Black Looks Race and RepresentationBoston South EndHUYSSEN Andreas (1986) After the Great Divide Modernism Mass CulturePostmodernism Bloomington Indiana University PressKASINDORF Jeanie Russell (1993) lsquoLesbian chic the bold brave new world ofgay womenrsquo New York 10 May pp 30ndash7KAUFFMAN LA (1990) lsquoThe anti-politics of identityrsquo Socialist Review 21(1)67ndash80LEWIS Reina (1994) lsquoDis-graceful Imagesrsquo Della Grace and Lesbian Sado-masochismrsquo Feminist Review 46 76ndash91MARX Karl (1963) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte New YorkInternationalMCCLINTOCK Anne (1993) lsquoMaid to order commercial fetishism and genderpowerrsquo Social Text 37 87ndash116NESTLE Joan (1987) lsquoButch-femme relationships sexual courage in the 1950srsquo ARestricted Country Ithaca FirebrandOrsquoSULLIVAN Sue (1999) lsquoWhat a Difference a Decade Makes Coming to Powerand The Second Comingrsquo Feminist Review 61 97ndash126PARKER Andrew (1993) lsquoUnthinking sex Marx Engels and the scene of writingrsquoin Michael Warner (1993) editor Fear of a Queer Planet Queer Politics and SocialTheory Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressPOWERS Ann (1993) lsquoQueer in the streets straight in the sheetsrsquo Village Voice29 July 24 30ndash1

FEM

INIS

T R

EVIE

W N

O 6

4 SP

RIN

G 2

000

44

REICH June L (1992) lsquoGenderfuck the law of the dildorsquo Discourse Journal forTheoretical Studies in Media and Culture 15(1) 112ndash27RUBIN Gayle (1992) lsquoThinking sex notes for a radical theory of the politics ofsexualityrsquo in Vance (1992)SAALFIELD Catherine and NAVARRO Ray (1991) lsquoShocking pink praxis raceand gender on the ACT UP frontlinesrsquo in Diana Fuss (1991) editor InsideOutLesbian Theories Gay Theories New York RoutledgeSAMOIS (1987) editor Coming to Power Writings and Graphics on Lesbian SMBoston AlysonSAWICKI Jana (1991) Disciplining Foucault Feminism Power and the BodyNew York RoutledgeSCHWARTZ Deb (1993) lsquoThe days of wine and poses the media presents homo-sexuality litersquo The Village Voice 8 June 34SIMONS Jon (1995) Foucault and the Political London RoutledgeSINGER Linda (1993) Erotic Welfare Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age ofEpidemic New York RoutledgeSKILLEN Tony (1985) lsquoDiscourse fever post-Marxist modes of productionrsquoRadical Philosophy Reader London VersoSNITOW Ann STANSELL Christine and THOMPSON Sharon (1983) editorsPowers of Desire The Politics of Sexuality New York Monthly ReviewSTABILE Carol (1994) lsquoFeminism without guarantees the misalliances and missedalliances of postmodernist social theoryrsquo Rethinking Marxism 7(1) 48ndash61mdashmdash (1995) lsquoRev of Social Text 37rsquo Discourse Journal for Theoretical Studies inMedia and Culture 17(2) 163ndash71STEIN Arlene (1989) lsquo ldquoAll dressed up but no place to gordquo Style wars and thenew lesbianismrsquo OutLook 1(4) 34ndash42mdashmdash (1993) lsquoThe year of the lustful lesbianrsquo Sisters Sexperts Queers Beyond theLesbian Nation New York PlumeTUCKER Scott (1991) lsquoThe hanged manrsquo Leatherfolk Radical Sex People Poli-tics and Practice Boston AlysonTYLER Carole-Anne (1991) lsquoBoys will be girls the politics of gay dragrsquo in DianaFuss (1991) editor InsideOut Lesbian Theories Gay Theories New York Rout-ledgeVALVERDE Mariana (1989) lsquoBeyond gender dangers and private pleasurestheory and ethics in the sex debatesrsquo Feminist Studies 15(2) 237ndash54VANCE Carole S (1992) editor Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexu-ality London PandoraWEEKS Jeffrey (1985) Sexuality and its Discontents Meanings Myths andModern Sexualities London RoutledgeWHISMAN Vera (1993) lsquoIdentity crises who is a lesbian anywayrsquo in Stein(1993)ZARETSKY Eli (1976) Capitalism the Family and Personal Life New YorkHarper and Row

ELISA G

LICK

ndash SEX PO

SITIVE

45