Butler's Theory Research Articles

Unveiling Violence and Masculinity through a Psychoanalytic Study of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (1977), Sarah Kane' Blasted (1995) and The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in Bosnian War (1996) by Matei Visniec

The examination of violence and its association with masculinity is depicted in three distinct plays: Blasted, written by Sarah Kane in 1995; Curse of the Starving Class, authored by Sam Shepard in 1977 (it was made into a Hollywood film in 1994); and Matei Vişniec’ The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War (1996). Utilizing a qualitative approach, this study employs close textual analysis and an extensive review of relevant literature to examine the representation of violence and masculinity in theatrical framework while also exploring the wider societal implications of such portrayals. The chosen plays present a wide range of viewpoints regarding violence, encompassing both highly intense manifestations of violence and the repercussions of warfare on the individuals. This analysis utilizes Judith Butler's theory of gender construction and Antonio Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty in order to examine the ways in which these plays either challenge or uphold conventional gender. Furthermore, it investigates the intricate correlation between trauma and aggressive conduct as depicted in the plays. By going deeply into the text and exploring its underlying concepts, it reveals the crucial function of theater in tackling and evaluating complex social problems. The plays act as a mirror for society viewpoints, forcing readers and the audiences to face uncomfortable truths about aggression, masculinity, and emotional anguish. The impacts of trauma on individuals and communities are brought to light. These plays demonstrate how war trauma can induce rage and promote violent behavior. It also highlights the power of theater to challenge harmful social conventions and catalyze positive social change by challenging traditional gender roles and power dynamics. Improving the audiences understanding of cultural attitudes and potential paths for societal change, this study contributes significantly to the assessment of violence and masculinity as depicted in theatrical performances.

Performativitas Gender Crossplay: Membangun Persona Bishoujo Pada Male to Female (M2F) Crossplayer

This study discusses crossplay efforts in building the Bishoujo persona in M2F crossplayer as a form of fluid crossplay gender performativity referring to Judith Butler's theory. This research is a quasi-ethnographic research in Bandung which involves 3 research subjects taken using perposive sampling technique. Data were collected through field observations, social media and in-depth interviews. The results shows that the bishoujo persona was built by emphasizing the similarities with the characters shown in the crossplay. In the process of performing the persona, the three respondents tried their best to match their character through costumes and make-up. The beautiful bishoujo female persona which is more sexy and erotic clearly shown by two respondents. Besides that, it is not only sexy and beautiful, but the female fighter persona or female fighter character with sharper eyes and the ability to use a sword also appears in the bishoujo persona. While one respondent described the bishoujo persona as being more cheerful, with rounder eyes and a loving nature. This is in accordance with Butler's statement that gender identity appears to be seen as something fluid that can move and change in different contexts and times.

Subverting Gender Bias: "The Manly Woman" in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love

This paper examines the representations of the white woman in cross-cultural marriage in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love in a contemporary deconstructive theory. The paper applies Judith Butler's revolutionary theory of gender and identity constructivism and performativity to clarify how the protagonist fights the gender norms and performances by having masculinity codes as a revolting means for emancipation. The paper tends to explore how colonial hegemony can create a cultural distance which is forced against the white woman by this marriage. It investigates the sociopolitical spatial divisions through the eye of the white woman who struggles because she chooses an ethnic husband. The paper applies a feminist theoretical framework to describe the prejudice and bias that appear after this marriage. "The manly woman" is the white woman who wears masculine features to subvert and oppose the gender bias which applies to her femininity.

The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Life Cycle of Tourist Destinations from Tour Operators and Hoteliers' Perspectives

Purpose: This study explores the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector and tourist destinations by expanding the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model, thus providing a more comprehensive understanding of the pandemic's influence on destination and insights for developing effective revitalization strategies for tourism destinations. Design/methodology/approach: Employing a qualitative research approach, the study utilizes the TALC model to conduct qualitative interviews with tour operators and hoteliers, aiming to gather nuanced insights into the im-pacts of the pandemic on tourism destinations. Nine tour operators and four hoteliers participated in the online interviews. Data analysis was driven by the interview responses, and thematic analysis was guided by concepts of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts and the six stages of Butler's TALC model. Findings: Severe impact of the pandemic on tourism businesses, encompassing a decline in tourist arrivals, business closures, and substantial job and income loss. Tourist destination impacts can be classified into four distinct stages― stagnation, exploration, involvement, development, and consolidation providing a structured framework for inter―preting the evolving dynamics of tourism destinations. Contextual issues and diverse approaches are suggested to revitalize tourist destinations in order remain attractive, competitive, and sustainable. Research limitations/implications: The restriction of the sample size to only two tourism sectors and generalizing findings due to the exploratory and qualitative nature of the research. Originality/value: It provides insightful of pandemic impacts on tourist destination and relevant strategies, drawing upon Butler's theory. The practical implications for destination management and stakeholder engagement are in-strumental in shaping the development of effective destination management strategies.

Unveiling Multidimensional Meanings: A Critical Analysis of Jungkook's "3D" Lyrics Using Fairclough's CDA Theory and Butler's Sexual Performativity Theory

This article offers a in depth study of the lyrics of BTS's song "3D," employing Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis as the research’s approaches. The study investigates how the song deviates from traditional masculine narratives by integrating components of worry and compassion into its portrayal of masculinity, offering an alternative conceptual framework for understanding gender roles. The findings highlight the role of the song in both support and questioning established gender standards, so illustrating the significant influence of media on the formation of masculinity. This study is limited to single song lyrics. It is necessary for further exploration into the portrayal of gender in media through diverse methodologies and active engagement with fan perspectives. This piece holds significant academic value as it contributes to the understanding of gender portrayal in media and its impact on societal gender norms.

“Live like a Man:” Analysing The White Tiger’s Balram Halwai in a Patriarchal India

Gender, as a socially constructed role that societies assign to individuals based on their perceived sex, has been significantly influenced by social and cultural norms throughout history (Connell 1987, 70). In patriarchal societies like India, the concept of masculinity is particularly shaped by the prevailing social and cultural factors. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of masculinity through the character of Balram Halwai in Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008). The primary focus of this study lies in exploring how rigid gender roles contribute to the perpetuation of child abuse and child labour under the guise of upholding “masculinity.” By employing R.W. Connell's theory of masculinities, Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, structural functionalism perspectives on gender, the paper delves into the character of Balram Halwai to investigate the profound impact that social expectations and gender roles have on his psyche. Furthermore, the paper investigates the extreme measures Balram undertakes in his pursuit of embodying the societal ideals of being a “man.” This study offers an intricate multidimensional exploration of masculinity in a patriarchal Indian context, uncovering the ways in which social expectations and gender roles can profoundly impact individuals’ lives.

Ciclo de vida de experiencias comunitarias de turismo en la cuenca del Lago de Pátzcuaro

This research is aimed at analysing community tourism experiences in the Lake Patzcuaro basin, based on Butler’s theory of the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) adapted to the rural tourism context. The experiences of Yunuen, La Pacanda and Cerro Sandio were analysed. The information was obtained by literature research and field work. This was systematised by experience and by categories of analysis. The categories corresponded to community development processes and key factors identified in the development of Mexican community tourism experiences. In total, four processes and ten factors were recognized. To determine the phase of each factor in the TALC, the systematised information was contrasted with the adaptation made from the Butler model. The results show that Yunuen is the experience with the greatest consolidation. In terms of processes, those for physical development are in the development and consolidation phases, while those for environmental development are in the exploration and involvement phases. Additionally, it was determined which phase had a greater number of factors. The result shows that the majority are in the development phase. It is concluded that this adaptation of Butler's theory can serve as a guide to visualize challenges and potentialities of community tourism experiences and stands out as a tool for comparison and contrast between similar destinations.

Creation and subjectivity in the construction process of the artist-subject Maxwell Alexandre

The article aims to reflect on the complex network that shapes the construction process of the artist Maxwell Alexandre, supported by the subjectivity theories of Vincent Colapietro and Judith Butler. The choice of this artist is justified by the fact that his work moves between the traditional arts circuit and digital networks, which shows redundancies, ambiguities and disruptions that would reveal his originality. The paper is an unfolding of research, at Master's level, which comprises the mapping of Alexandre's Instagram profile and points to the formulation that the set of shared practices, from exhibition in the gallery to performance on the social network, constitute his poetic project in permanent expansion.

“This Is Your Safe Space”: The Intersections of Rurality, Ethnicity, and LGBTQIA+ Language Educator Identity in the Southeastern U.S.

AbstractIn the contexts of the Southeastern U.S. and globally, the ascendance of parental rights bills has sought to limit what can be discussed in the classroom related to gender and sexuality as well as limiting access to healthcare for transgender, gender non‐conforming, and non‐binary individuals (HRC, 2023). In language education, scholastic and pedagogical pursuits related to the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ students in classrooms and educators have emphasized consideration of the interconnectedness between language teachers' identities, pedagogical decisions, and place (Coda, 2021; Fogle & Moser, 2017). In rural spaces, language educators can experience increased emotional labor and marginalization (Acheson et al., 2016; Moser & Wei, 2021); however, there is limited attention to rural LGBTQIA+ language educators in contexts such as the Southeastern U.S. Drawing from a larger mixed methods study of LGBTQIA+ rural language educators in the Southeastern U.S., this study centers on one focal participant, Mariana, a cisgender, pansexual ESL educator. Utilizing Butler's (1990) theory of gender performativity and Crenshaw's (1989) intersectionality, findings draw attention to the intersections between Mariana's gender and sexual identities, rurality, and ethnicity, highlighting the tensions and contradictions related to identity performance, pedagogy decisions, and allyship efforts.

The Body that Writes: Gender, Class and the Abject Female Body in Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites (2013)

Hannah Kent’s debut novel Burial Rites (2013) is a historical true-crime novel that recovers the story of a female perpetrator, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, sentenced to death for her part in a gruesome double murder in nineteenth-century Iceland. This article reads Kent’s novel, which draws on painstaking research, as a work of feminist revisionism that is part of a genealogy of historical fiction by and about women that seeks to adopt and indeed adapt the true-crime genre for the recovery of historical women’s voices from the margins, the best-known example of which remains Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). However, while Kent’s work shares many features with Atwood’s work, I contend that what sets Burial Rites apart from its predecessors is the way Kent skillfully handles Agnes’s ambiguous body as text. The article consequently models a reading of Kent’s true-crime feminist historical fiction via Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance to reveal how the novel unpicks the workings of gender, class and sexuality in nineteenth-century Iceland in a bid to retrieve Agnes from historical archival obscurity and restore her as part of feminist historiography. 

WITH OR AGAINST HAYDEN WHITE? REFLECTIONS ON THEORY OF HISTORY AND SUBJECT FORMATION

ABSTRACTThis article reflects on Hayden White's understanding of the subject and explores how best to move forward discussions in theory of history after his arguments about narrativity. To do so, I reconsider his arguments in light of more recent feminist and queer theorizations. Through a reconstruction of the current international new wave of feminism and LGBTQ+ activism as a rich and complex social movement that involves a narration of its own (practical) past, I will recontextualize and revaluate White's insight from the perspective of Judith Butler's theory of subject formation. The argument will unfold in four parts. First, I will recall White's ironic and existential stance on language and narrativity in the representation of reality and in relation to social beliefs. Second, I will again raise the question of the value of narrativity, as framed by White, in the context of the publication of a recent feminist manifesto. It is here that another issue will emerge as crucial: the relationship between the limits of linguistic self‐consciousness and the question of the subject. In the third part, my argument will take a partial turn “against White” and toward Butler's subject formation theory. My claim will be that there is a residue of the belief in the sovereign individual in White's insistence on self‐consciousness. However, I will also show that his suspicion regarding the psychological impulse toward narrative closure can be re‐elaborated as the challenge Butler is facing with their theory of subject formation: that of critically resisting the belief in our being coherent and self‐sufficient individuals. In the fourth part, I will present Butler's refiguration of the thesis of the subject's opacity in terms of the primary relationality that binds human beings to one another, and I will offer a new understanding of the individual, norms, agency, infancy, and ethics. Finally, I will conclude that we are bodies in history and that theory of history can find a promising line of research through this conception of the subject, a conception that reframes how we understand the intimate links between political consciousness, historicity, and embodiment. I also claim that this line of research constitutes an ethics for our historical undoing.

The Impact Of Cyber Espionage Issue On Maritime Security Cooperation Between Indonesian National Police And Australian Federal Police

In international law, espionage committed by one country against another in the form of wiretapping is a form of violation of international law and can disrupt relations between the two countries concerned. In this case, Australia had wiretapped Indonesian executive officials such as the President and his deputy in 2013. The action caused the intensity of the relationship between Indonesia and Australia to heat up. In this case, the geographical proximity between Indonesia and Australia causes the two countries to need each other, especially in dealing with cross-border crimes involving the two countries. This research intends to find out how the influence of Australia's wiretapping actions in Indonesia to the bilateral cooperation in handling transnational crimes. This research will use Butler's conflict management theory to examine the resolution of the conflict and how the resolution affects the cooperation between the two countries. From this research, it is known that the actions taken by Australia made the relationship between Indonesia and Australia tense. This was followed by the termination of bilateral cooperation projects between Indonesia and Australia. One of the areas of discontinued cooperation is cooperation in combating transnational crimes between the Indonesian National Police (Polri) and the AFP. This situation will create a loophole for perpetrators of cross-border crimes in carrying out their actions between the two countries, one of the most vulnerable transnational crimes is related to people smuggling. This affects the maritime security sector between the two which must be anticipated immediately.

Still Resisting Left Melancholy? Chinese New Leftist theatre’s inheritance and resistance in Che Guevara (Qie Gewala) (2000–1)

As the fin-de-siècle New Leftist champions of revolution, Zhang Guangtian, Huang Jisu and Shen Lin struck a melancholic note with their collaborative play Che Guevara (Qie Gewala) (2000-1) on the postrevolutionary, depoliticized Chinese stage. Why do these Chinese theatre-makers still carry on ‘left melancholy' amid the worldwide postrevolutionary arena that has bid ‘farewell to revolution'? Whose memories and histories do these artists attempt to reclaim and retrieve through this melancholy? How do affective and Marxist theories of ‘left melancholy' expand the perceptions of recurrent revolutionary pathos in post-revolutionary Chinese leftist theatre? How does the play's radical recuperation of leftist theatrical techniques, in turn, reinterpret ‘left melancholy' and resist the marketized, depoliticized trends? This article attempts to depart from and expand the current academic focus on ‘left melancholy', which has been largely confined to Western leftist theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Wendy Brown and Enzo Traverso, to the postrevolutionary Chinese context. Integrating Western theories with Chinese interpretations of the concept by New Left scholars such as Wang Hui, along with Judith Butler's theory of subjection (1997), I argue that Che Guevara extends the connotation of left melancholy as a ‘performative paradox’ between an existential, passive despair and a radical, active aesthetic agency of hope to counteract the depoliticized trend of commercial theatre, through an exploration of its affective, theatrical and ideological significance.

Joy and the mop: The role of film in doing and undoing gender in entrepreneurship

AbstractEntrepreneurship remains principally constructed as a masculine activity performed by men, suggesting that women entrepreneurs continue to experience contradictory gendered expectations whereby they are both evaluated against male norms and expected to display culturally acceptable forms of femininity. While there is a growing body of critical literature on gender and entrepreneurship, limited work explores the audio‐visual modalities of how gender performances reinforce and/or subvert gendered expectations in women's entrepreneurial activities. Considering this gap, we follow the feminist tradition of elaborating gender theory through film as an important medium of cultural production and transmission. By drawing on Butler's theory of gender performativity, we explore how a successful woman entrepreneur is represented in the semi‐fictionalized film, Joy. Using a critical social semiotic approach, we analyze how the audio‐visual aspects of the gender performances in Joy unfold across time and space to construct expectations of women's entrepreneurship. From our analysis, we make two principal contributions. First, we examine how the medium of film simultaneously reinforces and subverts the gendering of entrepreneurial activity. Second, we propose three sub‐genres of gender performance—exaggerated femininities, instrumental masculinities, and situational gender (in)congruity—that can serve to subvert stereotypical expectations about women's entrepreneurship.

Becoming a Woman-Man

Abstract The phenomenon of female cross-dressing and gaining the social role of a man has been witnessed in the tribal patriarchal society of the remotest parts of the Dinaric region since the nineteenth century. Once found within both Slavic and Albanian populations, today sworn virgins have been rapidly vanishing, and are rarely still found in northern Albania. The fact that occurrence was equally common among Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim populations in the remotest mountain regions points to the phenomenon's ancientness. As women who aspired to the social status of men, sworn virgins did not cease to be women; only the “degree” of their womanhood or manhood varied. Examining this social phenomenon as a third gender, this article contextualizes it through Judith Butler's theory of performativity. It also focuses on the relatedness of the phenomenon to the ancient past, turning to existing theories, but also providing an original contribution to the third gender debate.

‘I spend lots of time on my appearance’: unpacking Chinese academic women’s gendered subjectivities through the lens of bodily performance

ABSTRACT Through the use of photovoice interviews as a research method and drawing on Butler's performativity theory, this article investigates the performative constitution of the subjectivities of three academic women in Chinese non-elite universities by unpacking the multiple meanings of their aesthetic experiences. The study reveals that these women emphasized their bodily performance in the workplace, paying particular attention to their physical appearance, including dressing and using make-up, to explicitly perform their femininity. In this study, academic women’s gendered subjectivities are produced by repetitive performative feminine bodies under the control of wider regulatory forces in terms of gender norms and institutional discourses. Our findings suggest that gender norms of beauty in the Chinese context have a profound impact on the three Chinese academic women’s choice of dress and appearance management. We conclude that (i) femininity matters during the process of academic women’s gendered subjectivity construction in the Chinese academic context; and ii) multiple and sometimes contradictory wider regulatory forces within and beyond the academia shape Chinese academic women’s bodily performance and, therefore, produce academic women’s gendered subjectivities.

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Lakota basketball and racism: Performance, performativity, and engaged acrimony

SummarySporting contests between communities actively engaged in societal struggle comprise an event I call “engaged acrimony.” In these sporting contests, ideas of sport as promoting harmony get tested and often give way to demonstrations of vitriol that mirror actual relations. In this article, I discuss Lakota basketball teams from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as they played against neighboring white teams, examining how their responses to racism were safely expressed within and around sporting events. I analyze two of the best‐known instances of engaged acrimony using Turner's sense of performance and Butler's theory of performativity. In doing so, I offer an understanding of how Native communities can fashion an empowering response to racism.

Dressing Masculinity in the Nineteenth-Century, or Feeling Tight Around the Collar

Abstract By examining a cache of mid-nineteenth-century daguerreotypes, it becomes evident that, for the middle-class young men who sat for these portraits, masculine vestimentary self-representation was not a simple task. This article sheds light on the crisis in the regime of masculine domination and white supremacy, twin forces deployed in France with and for the development of the modern capitalist system. Stemming from a perceived physical degeneracy in men's bodies, this feeling of crisis was alleviated by scaffolding these bodies with normative and pseudo-scientific tailoring practices. In these daguerreotypes, the young men photographed used various accessories and embellishments to push against the dark uniformity of men's clothing and demonstrate their own idiosyncratic singularity. By reading this vestimentary play alongside Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, the true decentering power of fashion accessories, particularly in men's fashion in the nineteenth century, is revealed.

혐오발언, 주체의 행위성, 몸의 수행성

Hate speech is any form of expression that vilifies and discriminates against individuals or groups based on their identity, including race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and more. However, hate speech is not merely an emotional expression; it can often be intertwined with fake news and logical reasoning that appears convincing. This article explores Judith Butler's theories on hate speech, how she resists it, and how to draw a good life out of a bad life. Firstly, it examines the limitations of the traditional dichotomy between reason and emotion and how it relates to issues such as hate speech, fake news, and post-truth. Secondly, it analyzes hate speech as either an illocutionary or perlocutionary speech act, and reviews legal cases related to hate speech in the USA through Judith Butler's Excitable Speech(1997). Thirdly, it explores Butler's analysis of Freud's work in The Force Of Nonviolence(2020), including his ideas about the importance of emotional ties and communities of feeling, and how he aimed to overcome blind fury in his later years. The article also discusses how Butler supplements Freud's unfinished research and extends his ideas beyond their original limits. Finally, the implications of these attempts for Korean society, which is currently grappling with the problem of hate speech, are examined in the last section.