On the Performativity of Murder: The Female Offender Revisited

Abstract

The deconstruction of Woman came onto the feminist agenda in the wake of deconstruction and the move away from a universal, unified, and stable Cartesian subject. Is it possible that a female serial killer emigrating from a rural area of Norway in the early 1880s might contribute to this endeavour? Do we, in fact, need the female serial killer in order to transgress the very idea of Woman? In this article I discuss how violence and murder have been used to construct gender and to uphold the idea of Woman as inherently lacking, but also how murder may be applied to counter such ideas; by way of theory, but also by way of staged performance. It takes its point of departure in the ideas behind the play Alias Belle Gunness—A Serial Killer from Selbu, written by the author as a critique of the biological determinism of Camille Paglia, for whom transgressive action is a priori male, and (male) sexuality the dynamic principle behind culture (Paglia & Synnevåg 2000). I propose that adequate theory about human subjectivity is crucial in order to defeat biological determinism and the idea of Woman, but perhaps not enough, as we may also have to intervene in the cultural imaginary. Different writing methodologies and different formats, such as the concert or the play, may also contribute with new theory and knowledge.