On deck: Gender and Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theory!!!
Okay, so I'm technically conflating four different theories. I apologize. But I've been reading theories of the oppressed for so long now that I had to barrel through the last set as speedily as possible, so as to consolidate my disappointment in the human race and its ignorant ways. However, I hope that the existence of such theory can illuminate and transform our flawed conceptual frameworks... or at least would, if more people were actually taught their premises.
So, the goal of GLGQ is, no surprise, to examine gender dynamics in canonical literature, and to question the categorization of gender - yet another socially constructed binary which is utterly contingent on historical and social programming, rather than, say, biology.
I must admit that I was at first puzzled as to how biology can't be considered an essential difference - until I realized that we're not just talking genitals. Dominant discourses tend to posit the notion that there exists an "essence" of masculinity and femininty - but of course there isn't. Any survey of world cultures clearly illustrates that how a culture defines culture roles varies - there's no basis for believing women or men to be characteristically, "naturally" anything in particular - we learn our roles from our society. Or, as Simone de Beauvoir says, "One is not born a woman - one becomes a woman." True dat! And God forbid you fail to conform to the gender expectations of your society. Thanks to institutionalized, internalized and inter-gender sexism, I can't even choose flat heels and no make-up without getting comments, usually from my "sisters." Sheesh.
I digress. Or do I?
Anyway, Klages points out that once again, poststructuralist thought has revolutionzed traditionally humanist ways of defining the self. Whereas humanism likes a very pretty notion of a "pure selfhood" - some indescribable core essence within us, which makes us so uniquely us - poststructuralist theory ruptures this monolithic sense of the individual, instead aknowleding the subjectivity of the self. That is, "Human identity is shaped by language, by becoming a subject in language... The shift from 'self' to 'subject' also marks the idea that subjects are the product of signs, or signififers, which make up our ideas of identity. Selves are stables and essential; subjects are constructed, hence provisional, changing, always able to be redefined or reconstructed..." (Klages 112).
I don't know about you, but one of these paradigms lines up with the world that I can observe, whereas the other suddenly seems like the Disneyland version of reality -- a nice thought, and a good time, but certainly a superficial production that is propped up by individuals and institutions alike.
Anyway, Foucault (again!) is greatly credited for breaking open categories of sexual codification, and Judith Butler wrote that "gender is not simply a social construct, but rather a kind of performance" (Klages 118). She poked at Freud's theories and introduced the idea of bricolage - one of my favorite research-y words - into the construction of identity.
Tyson lays out some very insightful sections breaking down and differentiating - as much as is needed - between lesbian, gay, queer and gender theory. To be sure, they all stem from a desire to examine both how identity is portrayed / coded by social cues, conventions, or disruptions and call to our attention that a binary cultural categorization of sexuality is needlessly arbitrary (and carry often punitive consequences). Likewise, the recognition and inclusion of L/G/Q writers has worked to expand the canon. What I really love about this "blinders off" attitude is the way it allows scholars to examine what authors were really (probably) trying to say, as well as how it was received - sort of illustrating the bizzare nature of communal blind spots, such as Emily Dickinson's erotic women-identified poetry. Everyone, not just lesbian/gay/queer writers, qualifies for a gender theory analysis.
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