Ok, she extends corsets to silicon implants, big deal (I don't mean to be bilious). Why does this need to be said with 8 syllable words?
>It's about imagining a social role, I think -- other people are watching
>you, see, and you're locked into this dialectic with them. Even if
>you ignore them, they're watching you and can potentially get in
>your face at any moment. Butler's point has to do with the invisibility of
>lesbian women, they're fitted into this heterosexual role, and end up
>acting that way (i.e. being afraid to kiss their partner in public,
>internalizing homophobia, etc.). So the performative isn't just any old
>street scene, it's the point at which subjects start messing with the
>script and create theater of their own.
In other words, precisely the thing that Lawrence Goodwyn wrote about in *The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America* (Oxford University Press, 1978). I don't have the book at hand to quote from directly at the moment, but if I remember correctly, he wrote about the importance of the people *recognizing* that they were acting contrary to the way they were supposed to: they recognized that they were acting together rather than as atomized parts, and they recognized that this was important.
>Butler's hope is that by thinking through all this agency stuff, we'll
>understand our limitations better, and then move past them, somehow, via
>that performativity thing. That's where *I* have problems with Butler,
>myself -- I find her solutions to be too limited, she doesn't stress the
>aesthetics or materialities of rebellion quite enough. But her basic
>theoretical exposition is pretty sharp.
I find her "theoretical exposition" sharp only in that it looks formidable. I find it pretty much empty of anything new, though. I'm still waiting for answers to two questions: 1) What is new here?; 2) What is new here that must be expressed in the way she expresses it?
Bill