Abstract
This paper will focus on Judith Butler's work on gender and performativity. It will use Butler's notion of gender as performativity and the example of drag queen as a way to understand the reality of female gender from unreal one. It will explore that the reality of gender is not fixed as we generally assume it to be and it will expose the weakness of gender reality to create a true model of gender. This essay examines the works of Angela Carter. The novel under the study is The Passion of New Eve (1977). Understood through the lens of Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Evelyn, manifests the idea that gender identity is not fixed in nature but it relies on culturally constructed signification. He will emphasize that gender is something that is attached into the body through socialization, and not something that is ?xed at birth. It will be manifest how Evelyn as female gender constructs a new subjective performativity. Evelyn does this with his queer appearance and his transformation opens up some paths for the Third gender.
Highlights
Weiss (2005) explains that the British philosopher of language, John L
According to Johnson, (1977) Austin’s How to Do Things with Words is an attempt to draw up a list of what Austin calls “performative utterances” (144)
If a person makes a performative utterance, Austin argues that: he is doing something rather than merely saying something...Suppose, for example, that in the course of a marriage ceremony I say, as people will, “I do” ...or suppose that I tread on your toe and say “I apologize”...In [such] cases it would be absurd to regard the thing that I say as a report of the performance of the action which is undoubtedly done...We should say rather that, in saying what I do, I perform that action. (Weiss, 76)
Summary
Weiss (2005) explains that the British philosopher of language, John L. Drawing on Austin, Judith Butler applies the notion of the performative to gender, and introduces performativity as a mode of analysis or approach to issues of language, culture and society She develops her understanding of performativity by using John Austin’s How to Do Things with Words as a crucial resource. Are these two different senses of ‘performativity’ or do they converge as modes of citationality?” (Weiss, 77) She later addresses the instability that ensues when attaching language philosophy onto speculations about the body, and Butler argues that the two are invariably related: The speech act is at once performed (and theatrical, presented to an audience, subject to interpretation), and linguistic, inducing a set of effects through its implied relation to linguistic conventions. Austin’s theory of performativity can lead to an understanding of how some utterances create the construction of female identity in society and there is a force beyond these speeches to create a regularised female identity
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