Questions in order-add you answers in any state!

Thea:

1) What is performativity?

Performativity is Judith Butler's offering to gender theory which is influenced by Derrida's reading of Kafka's 'before the law', a parable in the trial. In the short story the one who9 waits for the law sits vefore the door of the law and attributes a certain force to the law for which it waits. The anticipation of an authority conjures its object.
Performativity works in two ways:
a)Performance of gender is not conscious like Goffman's performance, it revolves around the anticipation of a gendered essence which it sees as outside itself (Butler 2007)
b)Secondly performatviity is a repetition, a ritual, which achieves effects through naturalization of the body, the naturalization that occurts centres around the heterosexual matrix which is prevalent in popular discourse. The ‘heterosexual matrix’ Butler argues is upheld through the discourse on ‘sex-as-nature’ but also through the arbitrary category ‘gender’, which suggests that gender is the formed, shaped and culturally coherent embodiment of a sexual identity.

Gender is not a noun, nor a free-floating set of attributes. Instead Gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence, you've got to make sense, you have to fit in, in order to be understood and accepted. You have to be heteronormative. The perfromance of gender is a doing, it is the deed which is gendered not the doer, gender does not require a gendered subject which pre-exists the deed.

2) How is heteronormativity represented in the garden of Eden?

Genitals stand as a sign of inner hidden substance which classifies a body/person as male or female. The social importance of genitals is that they stand as signs of reprodcutive capacity. Like no other place, the Garden of Eden is an environment where the physical union of persons with complementary genitals can co-exist. It is the site where the belief that two mutally exclusive and exhaustive categories of people exist in order to reproduce was created. And on the other side it is the reason why those who use their genitals for purposes other than heterosexual reproduction are othered, alienated and subordinate by popular discourse.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, chs. 2-3, has historically been taken to endorse male normativity, especially in sexuality. The view that Adam is the normative sexual being to whom Eve is subordinate has shaped gender attitudes for the Western religious tradition.

I will adress a few ways in which heteronormativity is represented in the Grden of eden: 1) The true sexual nature Adam 2) God's curse on Eve and 3) Adam's naming of the woman.

Many feminist theologians have tried to argue that Adam was androgenous and that eve and adam were created from one embodiment of human kind, this posits that female subordination only came about after eve cursed. However God 'built' the woman out of the 'earthling'. This implies that one came out of another rather that a seperation of a whole into two halves.

God's address to Eve states: "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you." genesis verse 3 chapter 16, this highlights how desire and sexuality if heterosexual. When eve takes the fruit off the tree and gives it to adam, God is greatly angered, but adam responds by saying 'The woman you gave me, she gave me from the tree, and [that's why] I ate,' (3.12), trying to place the blame on god for providing a defective woman. This highlights that womans role is to conduct heterosexual reproduction, and that this is the centre of their difference.

To quote von Rad, who writes that, 'Name-giving in the ancient Orient was primarily an exercise of sovereignty, of command', it could be argued that Adam giving a name to 'the woman' implies his mastery over her. Genesis 2:20 quotes 'So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found', then Adam said , “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man” and "The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living". This renders 'woman' as rooted in nature, to be mothers and to partake in child birth because the differences between men and woman appear incommensurable in genesis.

Buter, Judith (2007) Gender Trouble. London: Routledge [1990]
Gellman, Jerome (2006) 'Gender and Sexuality in the Garden of Eden' in Theology & Sexuality
Volume 12(3): 319-36

Ina:

3) How is heteronormativity and the ideology of the garden of eden infiltrated contemporary society?

The belief that human beings fall into two distinct and complementary categories, male and female, has influenced contemporary society in several ways:

a) Heteronormative society holds that only males can be attracted to females, and only females to males, and that’s the way it should be. moreover, each gender has certain natural roles in life (e.g : woman = home, children & man = public, money)

b) Social life in heteronormative society is set up in such a way as to
privilege and revere the (male) masculine and to relegate the feminine to objects of ridicule or desire. For example, we can see this in women driver jokes, wife jokes,
mother-in-law jokes etc. Furthermore, a whole industry ranging from hard porn and prostitution to soft-core advertising markets women’s bodies as objects of
consumption by men.

c) Lesbian, gay, and bisexual behaviour is normally strongly disapproved --> often results in an internalisation of homophobia. For example, most heteronormative societies only have boxes for “male” and “female” on administrative forms. We have Women’s and Men’s washrooms, but few spaces for those who consider themselves transgendered. Moreover, the institution of marriage is usually been viewed as valid in the eyes of the state only if existing between a man and a woman. The use of the word 'gay' to describe something stupid or unfortunate

d) instant surgery of babies with indecisive genitals to fix them into one gender category


4) To what extent can we dismiss the issue of biology and 'natural science' when talking about gender and sexuality?


Judith Butler's theory has often been criticised for failing to take into account the materiality of the body. From my understanding, Butler does not dispute the materiality of the body, but aks how materiality itself has come to be. As such, we need to think about sex as a norm that is imposed on us, and not primarily neccessarily grounded in biologal facts.

As matter of fact, we cannot make a clear-cut distinction between what is material and what is cultural. This is because we simply cannot conceive of material things such as the body without using a variety of culturally mediated assumption defined by what is (and what is not) sayable and thinkable in a certain historical period. As such, we perceive the body through a cultural lense


Take the example of impregnation. Common held assumption is that because you can become pregnant, you are obciously a woman. And while this link is of course valid, there are many female bodies which cannot be impregnated (female infants and children, older women), and there are all of those who just dont want to have babies. Therefore it can be said that reproduction is no the salient feature of being female. Sexing of the body comes about by the imposition of a norm, not a neutral description of biological contraints.

This can also bee seen in our continued inability to definintively define female anatomy despite great scientific effort. Let's take the example of the G-Spot: It's existence has not been proven a 100%, and scientist struggle to define what and where it actually is (Hyde 2008).


Also, the assumption of two distinct anatomical sexes only makes sense within a framework that presumes that we have 'naturally' evolved for heterosexual reproduction. this seems to be a false assumption based on cultural stereotypes. Zoology provides us with a great example (Bagemihl, 1999): There are a hundred of species which have same sex relationships and indulge in pratices such as caressing, kissing and penis fencing (love it!). For example, same-sex dolphins have group sessions of mutual caressing and sexual activity.

But back to Butler: Her theory allows us to begin to see 'sex' as an effect if a complex interplay between culturally defined modes of thinking about sex and the boud in process. Biology and culture are mutually defining processes that are never quite complete and always subject to variation as they complete themselves.


Bibliography
Bagemihl, B. 1999, Biological Exuberance. Animal Homosexuality and
Diversity. New York: St. Martin's Press
Butler, J. 1993, Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge
Hyde,M. "The Human Body Indeed Remains the Final Frontier" in The Guardian, 23th of February 2009

Clare:

5) Is the search to transcend the 'self' by 'performing' drag simply a circular argument?

6)

Ieva:

7) What would Butler's garden of eden look like?


+ 8) Does Butler provide us with ways to challenge the heteronormativity within society?

9) Can we ever avoid identity categories? How do we minimize the violence of the other by exclusion? Is it ever possible? How do we escape this violence and yet not become politically passive?

10) Why is it so easy to be heterosexual yet so subversive to be homosexual?

11) How do you see the discourse of gender binary oppositions would have developed, lets say, in 50 years time?
Identity categories are slowly becoming less static, and possibly in time identity categories will be accepted as more fluid. Discourses on heterenormativity and identity categories should reach wider audiences....

12) The terminology and the language used in academic discourses is often very specific and complicated. How do you think this might be affecting the level of understanding and accessibility for wider audiences that do not necessarily come from the academic arena? Do you not think that this aspect might be excluding non-members and might be an elitist in itself? If so, what possible problems and consequences could arise from this inaccessibility and do you think that the scholarly work is as effective as it might have been hoped for?

13) To what extent is the garden of eden ideology, sexual difference and performativity packaged up and sold to us through TV shows such as how to look good naked or what not to wear? How to this type of self-image programmes reinforce the masculinity/ feminity binary?

In 2004 Trinny and Suzzanah produced an episode of what not to wear which addressed the confused identities of poorly dressed young mums...
The episode contained a narrative of progress whereby any woman, if she tries hard enough, and consumes the right products, can become her ‘true’ self (Weber, 2005).

Like Gods Laws outlined when Eve and Adam enter into the garden of eden, having an identity acceptable to trinny and suzzanah who claim to represent the general public by being our fashion police they also have a strict set of laws which you have to follow in order to fit in. For instance: The presenters examine their wardrobes, often discarding or destroying items, they subject the participant to scrutinise themselves and be scrutinised by being gazed at in a 360 degree panopticon mirror. They are given £2,000 to spend, on the first day they shop on their ‘own’ while being filmed, on the second, Trinny and Susannah evaluate the clothing that has been bought and finally their hair and make-up is styled. The revelation – the ‘new’ woman is revealed to herself in a mirror, her true identity is revealed, she is no longer a social outcast.

Like Butlers groundbreaking work of performativity, the show higlights the discourse of the production of the self (Rose, 1989). This self is by no means finally produced, but requires constant re-production under an internalized and external gaze (Weber, 2005).

Trinny comments about one of the participants husbands: “he got back a woman he thought he’d lost, and I think that’s a big thing for a man when a woman has kids, that they sort of – sometimes stop being a wife” (BBC1, 2004).This violently embroils the fabricated gender binary constructed in the show with heterosexuality, the role of the mother, desire and image as identity. Like the Gaze of God in the Garden of Eden, self-image shows expect us to constantly gaze at ourselves and imagine ourselves as entities which need to be represented by a system of signs familiar to mainstream culture, it so happens that this is a masculine gaze and a patriarchal culture, so 'women' are viewing themselves without a great deal of agency from a alienated standpoint.