Quick Note from Reading #7

So this is a big 'un. A lot more complex. Harder to understand. Theoretical, etc. Judith Butler's book Gender Trouble. Here's my selected quote:

"The theories of feminist identity that elaborate predicates of color, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and able-bodiedness invariably close with an embarrassed "etc." at the end of the list. Through this horizontal trajectory of adjectives, these positions strive to encompass a situated subject, but invariably fail to be complete. This failure, however, is instructive: what political impetus is to be derived from the exasperated "etc." that so often occurs at the end of such lines? This is a sign of exhaustion as well as of the illimitable process of signification itself. It is the supplement, the excess that necessarily accompanies any effort to posit identity once and for all. This illimitable et cetera, however, offers itself as a new departure for feminist political theorizing."

Okay - I had to read this over and over again. I gather that what she means is that the notion of a "subject" (man or woman) for Butler is formed through repetition, through a "practice of signification." Butler uses examples of "parody" (drag for example) that shake up normative ideas and make apparent the invisible assumptions about gender identity. There are illimitable (i.e. in the et cetera) ways of asserting one's identity. According to Butler, positive politics can emerge from redeploying practices of identity and exposing failed attempts to "become" one's gender.

Hmmm. Chew on that for awhile. Today I have rehearsals for my own choreography which I initially termed "Gender in Choreography" however as of last quarter I started thinking of it merely as "Identity Studies" and in this quarter, because of my use of video as the medium in which to present my work, I think of this project as "How We Perceive Identity." It's never-ending....