Nothing Essential

                Helene Cixous and Judith Butler are both post-structuralist feminists.  Both theorists discuss the notions of masculinity and femininity, but while Cixous acknowledges binaries that are constructed by language, Butler examines the need for those concepts, which she sees as essentializing, in feminism.  Cixous, in her essay “Sorties,” begins her conversation by emphasizing the hierarchy of binaries and how they have influenced philosophical and literary history.  The notion of “difference” controls all thinking and naturalizes the superiority that is established from those differences.  She shows that logocentrism and the existence of the active/passive binary have created a man/woman binary in which the man is always privileged, yet she sees that the binary is unstable.  Her discussion centers on a desire to deconstruct language and the masculine/feminine binary, indicating the influence of Derrida in her work.  

                Cixous argues against Freud and Jones, who identify a “specific femininity” and reinforce phallocentric superiority (Rice & Waugh 233).  She writes, “We must guard against falling complacently or blindly into the essentialist ideological interpretation, as, for example, Freud and Jones, in different ways, ventured to do” (Rice & Waugh 232).  In this sense, Cixous, influenced by Lacan, is not essentialist as Foucauldians would argue.  Rather, she acknowledges the existence of the binary and looks to deconstruct that.  She views the binary and history’s use of the binary as something constructed in the symbolic through language.  This structure is ideological rather than essential, as we interpret her argument.  Although she stylistically rejects the masculine linear style of writing, her rejection of that style could be seen as a further attempt to deconstruct the binary rather than an essentializing quality of her work.   She writes that were the language and binaries to be deconstructed, “That which appears as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ today would no longer amount to the same thing.  The general logic of difference would no longer fit into the opposition that still dominates.  The difference would be a crowning display of new differences” (Rice & Waugh 234).  Therefore, gender is something that is created within the realm of language rather than essential.  This deconstruction, she argues, would allow the woman to reach jouissance and liberation.  

                Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, focusing on language, influences Cixous’s work.  Ashley Shelden’s guest post argues that, “There is no human subject, for Lacan, before language,” showing that there is no identity.  Furthermore, the idea of identity creates anxiety as the subject knows that it will always be lacking and unstable.  Cixous, in using Lacan’s theories, shows that the deconstruction of language and therefore the binaries is what will allow a woman to achieve jouissance and a destabilization of the self.        Butler, in Bodies that Matter, argues that gender is a performance rather than something essential.  To Butler, a Foucauldian, resists identity politics and the notion of an essential feminine.  Further, she rejects naturalizing a gender identity.  For Butler, gender is an example of iteration, showing that heterosexuality is always already a performance.  Through the influence of Derrida, she finds that the subject does not have a center and is not autonomous, indicating that there is nothing essential about someone, and therefore there is no essential feminine.  She finds Cixous’s work problematic, criticizing it for essentializing the feminine.  Contrary to Cixous, Butler uses a more traditional and linear style of writing, further denying the existence of an essential feminine.  For Butler, there is no essential masculine or feminine because of the performative nature of gender.  

                Heterosexuality as a performance demonstrates that the gender norms are constantly at risk and unstable.  Referring to gender norms, she writes, “Such norms are continually haunted by their own inefficacy; hence the anxiously repeated effort to install and augment their jurisdiction,” (Rice & Waugh 247).  Here she acknowledges that gender norms need to be maintained and therefore do not embody someone.  According to Aurelia Armstrong, “a Foudauldian approach to identity production demonstrates the role played by cultural norms in regulating how we embody or perform our gender identities.”  Armstrong indicates that Butler’s rejection of the essential feminine in feminism for it generalizes and establishes gender norms that insist on an identity and stable subject.   There is no stable subject, according to Butler, and it is through the performance of gender that the male/female binary is created and stabilized to begin.

Heterosexuality depends on stabilizing the binary between male and female, but according to Butler, drag disrupts this binary and emphasizes that gender is a performance and not an essence.  She writes, “What is ‘performed’ in drag is, of course, the sign of gender, a sign that is not the same as the body that it figures, but cannot be read without it,” (Rice & Waugh 247).  Drag therefore shows that the normativity of heterosexuality is illogical and must be a performance, because its dependence on masculinity and femininity insists on those essential qualities, which Butler finds impossible.  Butler therefore uses drag to emphasize that gender is only a performance.  

In terms of the “feminine” role in feminism, we argue that femininity is a capitalist construct projected on society through the hegemony.  For example, the ideal feminine identity accepted in the 1950’s and even before and after was one of being a housewife submissive to the needs of her husband.  This projection was offered through ISAs which as Althusser and Marxists argue construct the hegemonic ideals and perpetuate them in society.  Females believe their femininity is part of being a free autonomous subject with a unique personality when in fact they are being controlled internally.  Therefore, we would agree more along the lines of Butler through a Marxist approach that femininity is a performance that has been projected by the hegemony onto females through ISAs in a way that makes females believe they are choosing within their femininity but they are actually being interpellated by that femininity.  There is no gender binary because gender socialization is a corporate construct and therefore is a performance.  In this way, we are all in drag because a female only dresses as a female because it is a social construct, and a male only dresses as a male because it is the social, capitalist construct; however, if it weren’t for the hegemony a male may be dressing as a female and vice versa.  Therefore, the only reason there is a feminine identity to begin with is because the hegemony has created a notion of feminine through the corporate culture and projected it through ISAs.  The repetition of femininity, particularly through ISAs that privilege masculinity and normalize heterosexuality, shows that gender norms are always at risk of destabilizing.  Hence, there is no place for the “feminine” in femininity because outside of the social structure the feminine doesn’t exist.