it's the final countdown
31 Aralık 2009 Perşembe
Sartlar neyi gerektiriyorsa...
2009'un son gunu
2009 benim icin olabilecegi kadar kotu gecti, sınırları ve sinirleri zorladı. almadigim red kalmadi, neye elimi atsam elime degen seyin bir tarafi ufalandı...fenaydı kısacası ve ben de esref-i mahlukat'a donusemedim onca fenalıga ragmen. Neyse, cirkin gecen senemi yukarıdaki sekilde sıkıstırıp zapturapt altına aldım. Haydi hayırlara vesile ola, belki 2010 daha kıvamında gecer.
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30 Aralık 2009 Çarşamba
Sevgili A.E.Bulbul, tesekkur ederim
I am starting this diary on a sunny day
I feel things inside, overwhelming things.
I feel my pulse beating.
I'm confused, nervous.
Like something missing, a desire...
I can't yet control
On the edge of an abyss,
I feel this crazy urge to jump
28 Aralık 2009 Pazartesi
A Path to Self Realization or Victimization: Female Body
This study examines the social construction of female bodies through analyzing anorexia and body building as two crucial bodily performances that challenges the discursively defined, idealized female body and her identity. Fleshy materiality; linguistically and culturally marked surfaces of female bodies that has served for production and continuity of particular culture is replaced by subject’s own corporeality. Butler’s notion of “performativity” is the starting point to discuss the unnatural status of gender; and corporeality of bodies is highlighted through analyzing Todd Haynes’ short film “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” and Ms. Olympia(s); and then in the last part, focus shifts to the Foucault’s definition of “individuality”, which is explained in negative terms, to underline the difference between victimization and / or resistance of female bodies during their performances.
In her book Volatile Bodies, Grosz states that “body is represented and used in specific ways in particular cultures” and therefore human body and its embodiments should be work through discursive performances (Grosz, p.18). In contemporary world, or in terms of Giddens late modernity, without addressing the necessity of the deconstruction of dualistic Western metaphysical perceptions of body, it is no longer possible to take a step to thoroughly conceptualize the contemporary representations of body and identity.
Body and mind do not represent the two distinct categories, and indeed they are mutually theorized the subject’s unity and self realization or emancipation. Since body is a “political field where power relations can be observed”, self control over body is the main tool to reach self realization; and if the body is the field of power and implementation of discourses then resistance is inevitable against the political regulations that take place on the surface of discursively normalized individuals (Foucault, p.173). Female body is a useful site of repression and production since “it is both a laboring, sexual and reproducing body“(Bakare-Yusuf, p.318).
Sacredness or Handicap of Corporeality
Munson points out “the physical traits of sex are culturally elaborated and given meaning within a culture through construction of gender that means people take some cues from their physical characteristics of the bodies with which they are born but they learn to use a variety of signals to demonstrate their similarity to other people in specific gender category.” (Munson, p.127-143) The biological differences that are used to legitimize the women’s limited access to power in society and that are attributing women the passive sexual and / or political role, represents their secondary status to the men. Hence, marginalization of women has been seen as natural and regarded as the fact of their biology. The concept ‘gender’ explains how an individual’s biology is culturally valued and interpreted into locally accepted ideas of what it is to be a woman or a man. That means gender and the hierarchical power relations between men and women are constructed meaning that the associated roles and expectations of gender identities can change from culture to culture. In the first chapter of her book Second Sex de Beauvoir argues that women are biologically disadvantaged compare to men; and it is the reproductive handicap of female body (de Beauvoir, p.35-67). Thus some feminists like de Beauvoir, emphasize the importance of the rejection of the reproductive disadvantage of females’ bodies to gain the similar capacity of power in the context of public life.
In response to this negative attitude towards body and women, Moira Gatens in Power, Bodies and Difference states that, there are also “some feminists advocate the affirmation and celebration of women’s bodies and their capacity to recreate and nurture” (Gatens, p.120-137). Gatens claims that these theories are important responses to the female body and also identity politics however both of them interpret body as something given, innate and territorially defined. While the former response focuses on the sexual equality principle, later one emphasizes an essential sexual difference of the female bodies; thus these responses to corporeality of female preserve the binary oppositions, indeed. Butler gives somehow different explanation to gendered, sexed bodies and identities. “Gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pre- given sex; gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established. As a result gender is not to culture as sex is to nature, gender is also the discursive/ cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “natural sex” is produced and established as “pre discursive”, “prior to culture”” (Butler, p.346)
‘Performativity’ is an important concept for Butler as “the repetition and the ritual of gender performances have an ongoing outcome. They contribute to the naturalising of the bodies, making the cultural fiction of gender appear credible and real.” The gendered body is performative, thus it has no ontological status apart from the acts that constitute its reality. Performativity could be interpreted as a paradigm shift in the study of gender and corporeality, because Butler’s claim about the inscription on the surface of bodies led us to read gender as something “only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity.”(Butler, p.173) The examples of anorexia and body building confirm “the play of absence and presence on the body’s surface”, and as a result of minimal or excessive use of body we faced with multiple ways of deconstructing individuality and reconstructing the subjectivity. (Butler, p.172)
An Androgynous Utopia: Gender destruction of Karen Carpenter
“Anorexia … is an obsession evolving out of a complex internal apparatus of resistance and control; it is an addiction and abuse of self control, a fascism over the body in which the sufferer plays the part of both the dictator ad the emancipated victim who she often resembles.” (Film, 23′)
My first example is a short film about an anorexic body and her identity crisis; and I interpret this process as a resistance and protagonist’s death as a way to self realization. The film, Superstar (directed by Todd Haynes ), focuses on Karen Carpenter, who found dead in her parents’ home from anorexia in the 1970s and connections between her illness, family dynamics – controlling mother, celebrity, consumerism, and U.S. politics.
Superstar portrays the reasons to the crisis of the idealized female body in the image of Barbie and conceptions of normalcy trough the examination of Karen, who is sick of consumption and starves herself even as her image is consumed. Karen’s family tries to domesticate her with an organized marriage to reimpose her stable female role both in biological and sexual terms that means her family locates her into an institutional setting to maintain the control over her body. Although, Karen does not internalize the normativity and she resists proscribed ideals of femininity, she could not reject them at all. Hence, the process that what Karen experiences is all about a crisis of identity. She does not know what she should do; she just knows that it is not possible for her to live with her image.
Karen’s anorexic body and her identity crisis are fed by domestic crisis of the Carpenter family and also by political crises that are represented on T.V; they are the images of the Holocaust, the bombing of Cambodia, the Vietnam War, and the White House. As Landy underlines that domestic crisis that disrupt Karen’s integrity, are mother-daughter arguments and mainly about Karen’s career, her clothes, her weight, and her desire for independence, and these scenes of domestic crisis are connected to the public space conflicts. (Landy, p.123-140) After each image, Karen’s bodily performances and her identity become more fragmented and abnormal; and therefore her story shows that bodily boundaries, definitions, gender codes are never sacred since body always exceeds control. Her bodily presence is often relegated to the status of non-existence. Her illness makes her a subject instead of putting her into the place of victim, who suffers because of the physical and psychological pain. She is able to express her bodily absence and the presence of her pain, of what makes her as an agent instead of a normalized individual.
“The imitation that mocks the notion of an original ”: Ms. Olympia
Does femaleness produce femininity? What about the people, who do not fit the strictly defined boundaries of male and female that create a third space within binary oppositions? In what terms those identifications related with gender- a set of signifiers, and its structural units (female- femininity and male- masculinity)? Is it possible to equate high heels, breasts, make up, varnished nails or long hair to vagina? If the answer is yes then we should question about the Ms. Olympia, the idealized female body builders of each year; and try to understand the difference between Lenda Murray, Iris Kyle and their performances as a part of femininity or masculinity since their bodies do not seem that much lack of feminine signifiers. These girls wear high heels during their performances, they have varnished nails, and generally long blond hair; actually they have a dramatic or maybe an absurd charm (Coles, p.68). Being female has its own signifiers however, the female body builders challenge all traditional ideas and signifiers about femininity, and demonstrating that how sex, gender, sexuality served as a natural package, the femininity, the female bodies and even the most and the strongest signifier of maleness – masculinity are constructs.
Ms. Olympia competitions are the publicly constituted spaces where the bodies of female body builders are highly controlled; actually these competitions aims to normalize the “grotesque bodies” of body builders. Castrated feminine markers of body builders are controlled, they are dressing up with feminine signifiers and through their dress code (which are sexy bikinis) and make up, female body builders are allowed to enter in male gaze of heterosexual culture (Schulze, p. 261). Muscularity and power are linked to masculinity and thereby these are the feminizing strategies to make female body builders normal (Ian 1990, p.72). Fetishized feminine curves are eliminated by muscles, since these curves are the signifiers of female sexuality, cancellation of them marks female body builder’s sexuality as indifferent to men. Their bodies are grotesque, perverse and do not look like normalized, discursively individualized feminine bodies; these performers outgrow its own self, transgressing its own body (Bakhtin, p.317). Their performances can be interpreted as a performance of drag since we could argue that she is performing the space of masculinity, and resists traditional reading of her body. Artificial nature of femininity is grotesquely demonstrated through make up, hair, fetishistic dress code and breasts. Thus we could read female body builders image as an example of MTF transsexuals.
To conclude that female body builders’ dragish or MFT styles, mimicries highlights that what we socially, culturally learned and internalized as natural is no longer possible since there is no proper fe/male body that is taken for granted. There is nothing inherently natural to about gender, and gender is a kind of mimicry and when female body builders imitate these roles through their bodies than we meet something highly artificial and grotesque. Their female body is a copy, or imitation and their muscled bodies are the imitations of their imitations. However, through their performances fixed boundaries are blurred, they dismantle the slashes.
There is no power without resistance, and female body is not merely a victim
In Discipline and Punish Foucault explains how disciplinary power creates individuals form a mass of bodies through three elements; hierarchical observations, normalizing judgments and examination. Power relations construct the social reality through the implementation of these three elements as surveillance mechanisms, and people are the objects of the “regime of truth” that is controlled via these processes; and then they are transformed into individuals by experiencing, internalizing the knowledge and/or microphysics of power in everyday life; and since women are their bodies, particularly female bodies are subjected, used, transformed and improved (Foucault, p.136) Bodies are inscribed with power; they are the fields of power relations. Regulation and representation of bodies in social sphere show us the construction processes of useful, normalized bodies within the society (Bird, p.91). Body is rationalized and has become an object of expert mechanisms. Anorexia and body building are responses to overdetermined female bodies appearances as decorative presentations.
Anorexics and female body builders use their bodies in unconventional ways that challenging gender stereotypes. From traditional points of view the body has generally been associated with the innate, immutable, the god given; but these female performers reject the notion of a preexisting body since people are able to intervene their bodies and treat them merely as costumes. On the one hand anorexics’ and female body builders’ projects explore the problem of territorially defined bodies, and on the other hand they rewrite their identities, which are stuck within their bodily boundaries. Therefore, these performers prove how the identity is a fragmented and multiple process of becoming rather than fixed categories indeed. Anorexia or body building could be read as a project that is a path toward self determination for women to gain control over their own bodies.
Minimal or excessive use of bodily performances constitute women as subjects who use their feminine body as a site for action and protest rather than as an object of discipline and normalization. To sum up, woman is the creator not just the creation; not the passive object of another’s decision, and they are not the scopic objects of the “collective male gaze” between private and public spaces, contrarily they are the directors of the voyeuristic terminology over their bodies (Mulvey, 1975).
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24 Aralık 2009 Perşembe
sevgili noel baba sana sesleniyorum
ben ebit, onumuzdeki ay 25 olacagim ama senin kocaman bir kalbin oldugunu bildigim icin boyle samimi bir dilekle sana kosarak sarilmak istedim. evet, senden bahsediyorum noel baba. senden bir ricam olacak, yeni yılda asagida gordugun birbirinden guzel bes saat arasindan birisini bana getirebilir misin? anadolu yakasina duserse yolun lutfen ugra, odamdaki kucuk balkondan iceri girebilirsin. yatagimin uzerinde fıstık isimli bir arkadas olacak, hediyemi ona emanet edersen en kisa surede elime gececektir bu guzel saat.
isteyenin bir, vermeyenin iki yuzu kara noel baba. seni bekliyor olacagim.
XoXo
Hamis: pembe tercihimdir, hic olmadi beyaz olup kenarlari pembe olani getirirver.
21 Aralık 2009 Pazartesi
‘‘What happened? Why, at the age of thirty-two, was this smooth-voiced girl from Downey, California, who led a raucous nation smoothly into the seventies, found dead in her parents’ home?’’
Teori dersinin odevi Karen, kadin bedeni ve yarattigi resistance uzerine olacak, umuyorum, baslamak uzereyim... "there is nothing that she is in control. so, losing weight signifies not just weight control but total control.... ve boyle ilerleyecek bakalim neye benzeyecek, bitince koyacagim. Todd Haynes'in filmi uzerinden gidecegim, barbie dolls = ideal female body falan fiti...Hamis: Annesi cok fena, yuzune tuz ruhu dokulmus sanki?
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20 Aralık 2009 Pazar
Ozkorkmaz Gunlukleri da dam dam da dam paah
Sıkıcılıktan okunamayacak boyuta erisen bu alanı birazcık renklendirmem gerekiyor, nasıl olacak bu iş pek bir fikrim yok. Eski bloggerlarla arayı bir an önce kapatabilmek için blog yazmaya yeni başlayanların vazgeçilmez tekniğidir hevesle gunde bir kac defa giriş yapmak. Bende boyle islemiyor durum, su uc cumleyi yazana kadar icim daraldi, ruhum bunaldi, mideme agrilar girdi. ama yok bu defa azimliyim sıkıcı da olsa, sadece kendimin gorecegi bu blogu bir sekilde doldurmaya karalamaya baslayacagim. yandaki fotografi kendime armagan ediyorum ebit, oldu mu?hadi kalasin saglicakla
sii yuuu tomorrooov
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Response Paper #6: Jacques Derrida
Western way of thought is basically repressive, search for a universal system of thought that shows the absolute truth and beauty through the use of binary oppositions. However, Derrida argues that we can never arrive at an absolute, final meaning. Neither at the beginning nor at the end is there a point at which the definitive meaning can be found, since there is neither a beginning nor an end.
According to Derrida, meaning is encoded between binary oppositions, but the first term is not always the valuable. Instead of accepting the slashes, rigid boundaries around the meanings Derrida wants to show how the truth can be so relative and how these binary oppositions are not opposite and can be exist together. Therefore he is interested in deconstructing, neglecting the boundaries between oppositions. Since meaning is not stable and always postponed; so it can never be finally fixed; that means different context give words different meanings, the centered language system can not have a constraining power over people. Actually, he radically deconstructs the traditional theatre, decentered the power of the text writer and gives each one a chance to write his/her role. In my response paper I am going to give two examples to reveal the role of the individual and how their inscribed bodies serve as a marker of (multiple) identities.
First case is going to be about one of the impressive and also unbearable performance of Orlan, French multimedia artist, which deconstructs the usual, taken for granted status of body and its unity in Derridean terms. Her performances are criticizing the essentialist views about body, especially female body and the concept of beauty, which are regarded as innate, immutable and God given in the context of Western metaphysical thinking. In the second case I am going to give a more radical example of Australian artist, Stelarc’s performance “Suspension”, which is an identity lack performance and challenges the sacredness of body since the artist hangs his nude body in flesh-hooks suspension.
“My body is my art” (Orlan)
Orlan is inspired by Duchamp, so considers her own body a "readymade" that means she describes her body as a combination of manufactured objects rather than a territorially defined pure unity. She cancels the function of aesthetic surgery and presents its an unusual meaning(s) through her performance.
Orlan’s performance could be read as a self determination of a woman, who is the creator, not the created and gains control over her body. Instead of having her body beautified, she uses surgery as a medium for a deviant project, to make her face ugly. What we have internalized as the nature or the territoriality of the body is an outcome of social and cultural norms and continuities. But Orlan’s performance underlines that there are possible constructions and multiple differences that challange imposed perceptions or “truth” about what we have learned. To deconstruct binary difference disrupts both ontological and corporeal security. If we interpret her body as a text, it is going to be obvious that her decision to change her bodily fixity also alters her textual stability. She disrupts the place of the words within the text and claims an alternative reading to the preexisting readings of body, and indeed enables a risky dream of control over life, deformation, paralysis and death.
The surgical operation is controlled by herself; the performance takes place under local anesthesia. At the end of the each surgery her look is constantly shifting, her face transforms something more ambiguous and looks different. As she changes her face, her body becomes more alien and more fragmented. Since Orlan writes her own destiny during her performance, she is not the victim or the passive patient, she is the subject and the object of the transformation.
“The body is obsolete” (Stelarc)
Stelarc subjects his body to hanging by flesh-hooks, attached to a number of rocks to be counterbalanced, in his Suspension performances. These performances determine the limits of the body in relation to forces of nature, particularly of gravity. The whole performance becomes a very physical extension of the body, where the skin begins to lose its shape and artist reaches the physical and psychological limitations of the body
Stelarc's artistic performance discovers the idea of "enhancing the body" both in a physical -technical- and psychological manner. Through Stelarc's work, we reach a third stage of corporeal existence since the body becomes both the subject and the object in order to discover its limitations and also its future. In his interview with Ctheory.net, Stelarc explains the meaning of the “obsolete body”, he states that: “The body lacks of modular design, technology is what defines the meaning of being human, it’s part of being human. Especially living in the information age, the body is biologically inadequate.”
As he argues that the suspension itself is an end, it is the mimicry of overcoming gravity. Suspending the body with hooks helps the body support itself, thus the body becomes it's own support structure. So, performance of hanging the body imitates the passivity of the flesh and emphasizes the inevitability of death in order to create new capacities for the living corporeality.
Postponed meaning: What counts as a body?
I tried to explain the how the binary opposition between mind and body or any dichotomies is no longer possible. Cartesian dualism put a hierarchy between the mind and the body. The mind constitutes the ultimate meaning, essence of men, whereas the body is excluded and acts just as a medium; and hence reality is only accessible through the mind that means body is just an object. Both Orlan and Stelarc erase the slashes between the dichotomy of mind and body, especially put the body at the centre of their performances, they have their bodies and they are their bodies indeed. Thus these two artists challenge the political, ethical and physical norms of the Western society; and their definition of body and absolute meaning.
Orlan and Stelarc use technology to inscribe their bodies. They use their bodies to inscribe their art. Body is not conceived as inferior to the mind. Each performance of the artists change the shape of their skins, they look different at the end of the each performance, so they gain different inscribed identities, which are constructed by its performers. Additionally, Orlan and Stelarc perform their corporeal transformations by putting their skins and also identities in a process of becoming rather then being since there is a postponement and transgression of the meaning in both performances. Their bodies or identities are both objects and subjects of the performances, therefore we could say that their performances’ should read through Derrida, and beyond the Cartesian duality of mind and body since it is both mind and body.
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8 Aralık 2009 Salı
Response Paper #5: Karl Marx
In today’s world, classical theories of Marxism are not effective tools to analyze the historical and social changes. Contemporary world is the world of transformations and emphasize much more on the mixture and unpredictability in society; and everyday life becomes a more dynamic, pluralistic, contested sphere; and expresses a range of highly differentiated meanings. It is no more possible to describe it as homogenous whole that resist for a communal identity or ideology; individuals increasingly shape their own identities through reflexively social practices. Hence in order to understand the society and its transformation, we should study on the routines, everyday practices, ways of doings and operating and power relations within these practices rather than economic base, and relations of production at the institutional level. I am going to explain Agnes Heller’s notion of Objectivation in everyday life and then the importance of New Social Movements as a more fashionable – desired way of resistance rather than proletariat resistance in itself.
“Objectivation” in and for itself
As I understand from my readings, Orthodox Marxism is located at the centre, has the dominant power of the sacred reference; and interprets Marxism as the science of the society. Then manipulates historical materialism to discover the laws of history and societies; hence in a narrow sense, classical Marxist theories explain the modern capitalism in the world that we live in. So, the analysis of capitalism works like an historical analysis; but the problem is this analysis of capitalism has become an analysis of whole humanity, -pure theory and illogical practice-. Revolutionary shift from capitalism to communism is not an outcome of an ethical or philosophical choice but rather an inevitable step, works like a destiny for humanity. This is a vital point for me to criticize classical view by giving references to Heller.
Agnes Heller, Marxist critical theorist (lets over stigmatize her, she was Hungarian and Jewish) and Hegelian philosopher, argues that rather than existing area of exploitation and oppression, everyday life is an area of contestation and struggle, through which individuals reflexively define themselves, their relationships to others. Individuals have power to reproduce or reshape their place as an outcome of their active participation and differentiated lifestyles in EDL, thus when we question about EDL this will allow to question about the whole society and power relations.
Heller tried to problematize the link between alienation, social reproduction, and humanization & democratization of EDL. As a Marxist theorist, for Heller, capitalist division of labor, the hegemony of bourgeois ideology were regarded as barriers to the development of critical thought, the rationality of intellect, that leads individuals to challenge dominant norms and rules, individuals turn increasingly inwards focusing only upon themselves, their own EDLs and final products instead of the complexity of the processes. In my opinion what makes Heller more crucial and different than Orthodox Marxists is her emphasize on morality; and she argued that social fragmentation, particularizm eroded the collective morality, thus prevented collective action. Heller examined the alienated human potential by working on objectivation and argued that the solution can only be found by criticizing the practices of everyday life, which is colonized by the institutions. Objectivation in itself is the backbone of EDL, works as a guide, an index; and individuals internalize this framework by using everyday language, tools, norms & rules. Objectivation for itself underlines the fragmented and heterogeneous structure of the EDL. While the former legitimizes the EDL, second one makes us to think critically on EDL and open the path for freedom. I exemplified Heller work because bottom up theory is the lack of traditional Marxism which regarded individuals as invisible actors and values, beliefs and customs as irrelevant.
“Men make their own history” (Touraine, 1981)
In contrast to the proletariat’s movement, NSM do not seek to control the state; and instead display new forms of democratic organization; also they have raised awareness of the common problems facing humanity by rejecting authoritarianism.
Newly emerged global actors -such as anti-racist groups, LGBT organizations and environmental groups- are active participants of NSMs. I think that their goals are different and more moral form traditional socialist movements. First of all they are not rooted in the working class; and their interests can not be reduced to their class interest; indeed they have radically redefined class. Secondly, each individual has power to write his-her own history and social movements represent the organized collective behavior of actors to control their own historicity. The movement of 19th century can not be regarded as a social movement since the strategy, direction of every move and result was deployed, and was known by Orthodox Marxist theorists. Since Orthodoxy constructs itself on the historical engineering to control the predictability of history; underlying mentality is to know today, to predict the future through the interpretation of similar mediums. Like a fortunetelling to learn about the curse of the history; and this is the teleological assumption of Orthodoxy.
What is ideology? Is it purely false consciousness of the proletariat, who are not aware of their own historical role? What about the importance individual desires, or the determinant role of particular ideas? If the revolutionary process from capitalism to communism is historically over determined, then how could we talk about the role of individual? Is there any “good” ideology? Was the ideology of bourgeoisie good enough when it resisted to the feudalism? Class conflict or any social conflict can not be reduced to the struggle between owners of the means of production and exploited workers, as in the Marxist analysis. The concept of class is challenged by culture and identities; and economic determinism is no longer effective to understand the nature of the struggles of diverged identities’ interests. New struggles do not merely focus on issues of income, or political representation and therefore these struggles are defined as social or cultural. Resistance is now visible in the streets; it is not the proletariat’s collective action but the small battles that will transform society by destabilizing coercive state and delegitimizing its dominant discourses of power. To understand the nature of resistance we should look at the micro level resistances, and tactics that create alternative sites of equality.
Looking for a better life
With the demise of communism in Eastern Europe and then the collapse of Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Marxism has experienced a shift toward newer forms of multicultural approaches basically on identity politics. If the aim of Marxism is to reach a better life, then Marxism should continue to be theoretically productive, providing critical insights on the multiple problems and crises with globalization. EDL is a crucial field for Marxist theory to deal with the unintended problems of globalization such as ecology, terrorism, and the proliferation of new forms of identities. EDL is not just an area of production, and reproduction. It rather includes the ways of governing the society, and the repetitive character of EDL embodies power relations and therefore when we understand the nature of the repetitions and the micro level naturalized power relations, we will be able to solve the complexity of society and historical transformations.
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24 Kasım 2009 Salı
Response Paper #4: Judith Butler
“In the theatre, one can say, 'this is just an act,' and de-realize the act, make acting into something quite distinct from what is real.” (Butler, 527)
If performances are received by audiences as distinct from one another and form what is real, could we argue about the influence of transgression of gender roles on the stage to define what is proper outside of a performance space?
Roles on stage - Roles in everyday life
Song manipulates Rene into disclosing secret diplomatic information and spies him for the Chinese government. Gallimard is unaware or willfully ignorant of the fact that in traditional Chinese opera, all roles are performed by men, so their affair lasts for many years. Since, Gallimard betrays his country; he is tried for treason, which led him to learn the truth about that Song is actually a man employed to pose as a woman in order to extract state secrets from him. At the end, Gallimard dresses like a woman and commits suicide by stabbing his heart with a dagger. This kind of a suicide performance is generally associated with woman, so we could say that the European, white masculinity's fantasy of the Oriental woman intervenes a homosexual desire. M Butterfly constitutes a distance between the gender and the body; the play deconstructs the binary oppositions, which structure the meaning. Hence we could say that the play challenges the perceptions about social, political, cultural and especially gendered identities of the Western audience.
Does crossgender performance keep the existence of the dominant masculinist hegemony, just by defining the genders as different and unequal? Or does the use the transgressive energy on theatrical presence destabilize accepted categories? Hwang's play as a transformation from Madame Butterfly into M Butterfly could be read as a play of repressed homoeroticism that elaborates the construction of a marginalized sexuality. And, in my opinion this deconstructivist example is crucial to understand the work of Butler, who states that appearance contradicts the reality of the gender.
Hwang’s play is a contemporary example of transgression of gender roles on theatre; however the situation is as much as complicated in the works of Shakespeare and also in the Ancient Greek Theatre. Boys were the central female figures in Shakespeare's day; their high voices and smooth skins without hair differentiated them from the mature male actors and gave them the advantage on the stage. Additionally, in Ancient Greek the hypocrites were always men. Female roles were played by males before puberty and before their voices changed. Since the hypocrites were all male, the mask was necessary to let them to play female roles (the mask hides the identity or puts the ambiguity of M.) it was necessary to make them look female for female roles.
We are all M. Butterflies – (are we?)
In the previous part I try exemplify Butler’s ideas on performance and gender construction on the stage, to prove the impossibility of strict definitions or failure of guesses about the gender categories, gender preferences and sexuality. Butler states that gender is not a fixed category but one continually constructed in social interactions. Actually RuPaul was right, “We are born naked. Everything else is drag.” or the rest is performativily defined from a Butlerian perspective. In this part I am going to ask my questions without referring any artistic performance.
Butler claims that there is no essential category for gender. Gender is not something that is internally built but something that is achieved and is always reproduced by the body. The body creates an illusion of these true social scripts and identities through repetition. Her attempt to refigure the body moves from the periphery to the center of analysis, so that it can be understood as the very point of subjectivity. Also, Butler argues that, this illusion is the dichotomic relationship between fe/male, and it is constructed through a performative fulfillment by social sanction and taboo; and there is social punishment for not conforming. But what about those people with non-conforming gender identities, practices? If there is punishment and there is nothing internal provocating his/her gender identity how would someone be socialized into the wrong gender or decide to express the wrong gender?
On the other hand, in my opinion there is something lack about those who challenges these gender roles, in her article. Would I have to be a part of a sexual or racial or any kind of minority community, to criticize the corrupted mentality of heteronormativity? What about those who are heterosexual, are not they able to challenge their given gender identities?
The body is constantly doing new acts, and gender is in a constant flux. So, Butler’s idea of performativity has then constituted the idea that gender is always moving and shifting. Based on her theory, gender is not a stable and an innate fact. And I am definitely agreed on the importance of Butler’s theory and concepts since they deconstruct discussions of body’s and gender’s essential sameness or difference. Overtime, we believe that gender is something that we rely on, and must have a concrete definition; however Butler’s ideas on body and gender, open a room to shift and move freely; additionally her framework explains gender beyond heterosexual ideals. But I still have questions about those who are aware of the vitality of body as a political site for representation and socially-culturally construction of gendered categories through reiteration in everyday practices, but those who reject to be M. and instead prefer their gendered bodies, their Madame or Monsieur.
17 Kasım 2009 Salı
Response Paper #3: Umberto Eco
During the late '60s the rigid categories of works of art has started to change; and beyond the fixity of works, we have faced with newly emerged hybrid forms that emphasized the openness, the contingency and the continuity. New paradigm has mainly focused on the “open work of art”, the dynamic processes rather than the completed works or the static objects. Umberto Eco is an important actor for us to highlight the notion of open work. Eco examines the idea of open work, which reflects the relativity and discontinuity of the modern world, to explain the obvious difference between modern and traditional art.
According to Eco, most extreme form of the idea of the open work is formed by “works in motion”. What such works have in common is the participant or interpreter is required to complete the work of art, to cooperate with the author in making the composition, that means author leaves some of the components to the interpreter or to chance, thus giving them a multiplicity of possible orders. Indeed, the construction process of an open art work could similarly be read to the construction process of Self, and I am going to explain this analogy through Bakhtin dialogism as a starter, then I am going to emphasize Cortazar's novel Seksek to analyse the open work in terms of hypertextuality and literature.
Dialogical Work, Dialogical Self
Traditional monological and dichotomic form of subject was challenged by Bakhtin’s According to Bakhtin, individuals complete their Selfhood by interaction & communication, when they are in a relationship with other, who has a surplus of seeing and is able to see what we cannot see. We have the same surplus of seeing too with the other, a kind of intersubjective cooperation for social totality. So the construction of every Self is dialogical, there is a mutual necessity in the relation of “I & the Other” to complete a view about the Self. Similarly, by referring Eco's texts, we could talk about the mutual necessity between the author and the interpretor to gain a complete perspective about the work of art; and therefore we could suggest the analogy between “Self and Work of art” in terms of reciprocity.
On the other hand, Bakhtin considered language and its system as hybrid as society to explain heteroglossia that means language is something multiple, include various kinds of voices, words from different people with different social and cultural backgrounds. And additionally individuals use different words in different contexts, so individuals are not the passive, obedient actors under the text, or social structures. Maybe the terms of heteroglossia lead us thoroughly to think about the active role of interpretor.
Although subjects -or interpretors- are ideologically marked by particular cultural and discursive formations that are determined within asymmetrical power relations, as Bakhtin mentioned that, subordinate social groups-or interpretors- can diagolize and rewrite monological discourses with new meanings. To sum up, open work as a kind of dialogue, is not simply an exchange; indeed, it stresses the continual interaction, interconnectedness, and an intersubjective communication. Hence, the construction process of the open work provides us with the most important medium that is dialogue, through which selfhood is expressed and realized. So, Umberto Eco's open work could be seen an example of dialogism.
Cortazar's Seksek, an example of Hypertexuality
The idea of openness of the work of art can be seen in the multiplicity of interpretations and the continually interactive play between reader and text or author in literary theory. However, while the literary text itself remains the same, different readers have different highlighters to the text as a matter of form rather than its content. This is somehow distinctive then to say that different readers will interpret the text in various ways. What happens is that readers' ideas about the form of text are different beyond its content. And in my opinion Eco's definition of open work could be challenged by the relations between content, form and the reader or interpretor.
This becomes apparent in works of hypertexts or Cortazar’s Seksek. Cortazar's work is a game with multiple endings and with this game the reader reaches an interesting spatial metaphor; hypertextual structure offers a single drawing with a multitude of combinations. Seksek is divided into three parts and 155 chapters as two different but interrelated stories. The work can be read either in direct sequence or by jumping through the chapters. The later alternative reading offers an alternative narrative within the text. The work does not end with the word “the end”, instead there are three stars at the end of the first book. Seksek has a hypertextual, experimental structure where the reader can access the information in different contexts. Reader's involvement is important in this hypertextual work because the reader makes the link between two different moments of two different stories.
In Seksek, same textual elements of information are used to reestablish different stories through hypertextuality; and what makes this work unique is the meaning that is produced by the interplays of the inner texts which reactivate readers of the work to experience the text in different ways and construct different forms between inner texts. Hence, it is the form -not the content- , the new strategy of the open work that make the meanings reachable and interpretable.
Questioning the text, questioning the world
Text is a social construct and hypertext is a paradigm for the social construction of meaning. Hypertext is a structural strategy with its new field of possibilities, where the reader or interpretor finds a space for freedom. And as a multicentered medium, hypertext or postmodern textuality destabilize the traditional textual practices and cultural discourses that we experience through the texts; and thereby it liberates text - and us- from the limitations of strictly defined linearity and hierarchy.
Within the blurred boundaries of postmodern textuality, we become able to subvert our habit of reading and thinking as a result of interaction and multiplicity in a decentred work without any given interpretative privilege. This challenge of postmodern textuality allows us as reader of texts but also informs our readings of the world from a multi perspective and anti hierarchical function, and I think, this is the point where Bakhtin and Cortazar meet beyond the work of Eco.
In conclusion, the idea of openness suggests a wide range of information that admits for numbers of possible readings, and it is the very condition of every work of art, specifically in literary works. Texts encourage the readers, interpretors to provide what is not there, so that the whole communicative process of reading itself becomes interplay between the clear and the ambigious, the expressed and the unexpressed. The readers can be successfully engaged with the experience of the interaction and in turn produce and create themselves as well as the production of meaning. Read more...
15 Kasım 2009 Pazar
6 Kasım 2009 Cuma
4 Kasım 2009 Çarşamba
Response paper #2: Claude Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss adapted Saussure's linguistic model into the social sciences through anthropology and studied cultures as texts to determine the universal and deep grammars of cultural mythologies. His structuralism is able to construct a model for the underlying structure of all the possible structures which not be directly analyzed by empirical observation. His version of structuralism seeks to define the common structural principles that include the logical and universal characteristics of the human mind. This idea of structure is unobservable, which means human beings are participants of this structure but they are unaware or unconscious of its influences.
In the structural study of myth he argues that if we could determine the underlying structure of the narrative, its constituent elements and the way that they are organized, then we are able to see that these myths are not meaningless sequences of events. Through his structural analysis we could see that myths are concerned with deep problems and they are logical in their underlying structures. They are sophisticated attempts to resolve the logical problems. Myths are highly and complexly structured, they confront contradictions and draw out patterns of relationships. The myths are various, but the basic structures are similar as a result of the universal characteristics of human mind that preserve the basic intellectual unity.
His structural theory is quite logical for the sake of a universalistic deep element, however I am going to question his theory by emphasizing the importance of social and geographical environment -as the constituent elements of culture- that the myth is created, and the role of the storyteller in an unconscious process of mind.
Reductionism(?)
Myths can only be defined and understood as part of a myth system. Thus, Levi Strauss analyses the myth system by searching for the underlying structure of relationships between the elements of the stories rather than looking at their contextuality to demonstrate the similarities between basic kinship structures in different cultures.
His interest with the mental structure which lies behind the myths he studied does not lead him to engage in empirical research. Myths' variety and complexity studied through the mental structure of the human mind so, could we interpret his structuralism of being reductionist? Does he reduce culture merely to a mental structure and negate the complexity and historical and social specificity? Then, what about the geographical and also historical determinants of culture, is it possible to draw such a rigid boundary between them?
He offers a detailed analysis of oedipal myth by examining those relationships from a structural point of view. His sample case works successfully, but this achievement works through the opposites, through binary oppositions. Therefore we could ask even if it is possible for us to reconstruct the myth by referring different and unsuitable features of the stories, without negating the contradictory elements or ideas of a universal mental structure. His analyze aims to make visible the hidden and unconscious mental structure that lead to occur myths observable to us. Although it impossible to understand the structures of myth beyond their social and historical contexts, Levi Strauss structuralism is somehow blind to the uncontrollable elements of the culture due to disregarding the importance of geography and history for the analysis of culture.
Role of the storyteller in an unconscious structure. Is this something possible(?)
Levi Strauss looks for a pattern which is present in all myths, regardless of who created them under which circumstances. Myths are the products of unconscious operators of the mind, ones of the teller is not aware. The individual teller does not create the basic pattern for producing the telling of the particular myth. we can only understand this basic pattern properly by seeing the way it is marked out across the whole range of myths.
The author of the myths are unaware operators of the structure of thought underlying the individual myths, but this might be problematic. The individual actors tell the myths as they do because of the nature of that structure, and then the meaning of the myth is something created by the system, where the teller's behaviors are shaped. The author of the myth is not someone who provides the principle of unity amongst them; and also s/he is not a center, so the meaning is originates from the system not from the individual.
In Levi Strauss view of structuralism the major element of cultural myth is the logical structure of the human mind. On the one hand this main determinant implements it power regardless of any social or historical context. On the other hand human agency is ignored easily as a result of the implemention of power regardless of the impacts of human agency to practice their meanings on the social world, and to desire to change the social world in different ways.
Both phonemic and kinship systems are the products of the structures of human mind. They are the products of the unconscious structure of the mind and operate on the basis of general laws. The mental structure imposes its power to the subjects who are unaware of what is happening, but who can still use them correctly. If the mental structure remains unconscious human agency is in fact left unaware of it, and thereby it will not be meaningful for her/him to talk about myths in empirical sense. But as Levi Strauss states that if we are able to analyze and then demonstrate the structural existence of relationships between cultural myths, then how can something observable be unconscious?
31 Ekim 2009 Cumartesi
Militarism, Nationalism and Masculinity in "Ittifak"
Erinc Seymen's work "Ittifak" transforms hegemonic categories of sex, gender and sexuality that limit identities with heteronormativity and maintain the patriarchal system of society through the expression of bodies on a flag as a possibility for resistance and subversion in the matrix of nationalism and militarism.
Nationalism legitimizes itself by transforming everyday life, and the nationalist strategy is normalized and reproduced through the consumption of the transformed space by its participants. Reproduction of strategy can obviously be seen on the bodily performances of the daily discourse consumers, those who experience institutional power even in micro relations. Seymen's works provide us with a skeptical approach to analyze the normalized abnormal everyday power relations. Body is a surface on which values and social norms are written. Power operated through and on bodies, behaviors and pleasures to control the social norms that are determined by hegemonic masculinity; thence our bodies are normalized within a regime of disciplinary control against any kind of grammatical mistakes. According to Foucault, discourses create regulatory spaces in which identities and bodies are formed, reinforced and reproduced. Discourses are used as a mean to maintain and secure social control over conceptions and practices in gender and sexual identification to guarantee that identities are appropriated to heteronormativity.
Nationalism and its vital tool militarism, as an outcome of a straight mind. Both nationalism and militarism realize themselves in everyday activities of performers, who have proper bodies to keep the hegemony of heteronormativity. Military is one of the mini theaters of punishment within the territories of sacred nation state. Development of discipline is the main formulation of domination in those two spheres. Discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the form of military organization. Military discipline created docile bodies that are ideal for warfare. The artist's video “Performance for a Poem” shows us the absurdity of a docile body that is directly and indirectly controlled and manipulated by the institutions. Properly speaking, it is a declaration of a male hysteria that escapes from the unconscious mind after a dictated combination of the pathetic rites of passages from adolescence to adulthood either of a man or a nation.
All the discomfort, distress and in Seymen's works is a consequence of intolerance against and provocation of the other, who rejects the submission to the ultimate power owner; therefore the artist's three works is an internal confrontation and a confession for the viewers. To understand his work Ittifak I am going to give some references about the strategies of nationalism and militarism in Turkish society.
Modern structures construct their own patriarchies; nationalism's proper citizens are the overacted masculine bodies of the national army, indeed. Although it is fictitious, the citizen army is an important myth that creates a sense of equality between heterosexual men. In this mythical homosocial place men are invited to identify themselves with the state and are given to authority to exercise control over the other bodies. Altinay argues that the foundation myth of Turkish nationalism is the idea of “military nation”. In Turkish history military has regarded as a school that teaches the codes of masculinity and nationalism. You learn how to use your body and the main military posture, “esas duruş”, to complete your task, to kill, to fight or to fight as a docile body. On the one hand you experience discipline through your body by internalizing the surveillance ; on the other hand you experience it on your body by the legitimate use of violence as an everyday activity, as a part of system that is normalized. In military, ordinary people turn into nationalist citizens that are ready to fight for the enemy.
Militarism and nationalism need conformity that cannot allow for any deviance or difference and a gender ideology that needs men who internalize their roles as warriors so much that they are willing to obey the rules. As any kind of occupier and aggressive mentality, militarism and nationalism are organized within a socially constructed masculinity that is defined by discrimination and humiliation of others, and the most marginalized others are non-heteronormative actors. As Sedgwick states that, any society that is governed by patriarchy could impose a kind of ideological terror on its male members. This ideological or psychological force is open ended and there is no theoretical limit on how much force will be used, similar to physical force of military. Thus, nationalism and militarism feed each other in Turkish society, and they are mutually interdependent on the base of ideological terror. Nationalism as a form of governmentality, realizes and maintains itself through the mythical threat of being invaded either by the foreign enemy or the enemy within. Borders of a nation is strictly defined and the meaning of nationalism is coded within those borders. The fear of invasion leads to exaggerated set of activities, offensive efforts of brave, aggressive and strong bodies to prevent being passively invaded or emasculated. When a nation is insecure about its unity, or homogeneity then the strategy chooses to be preemptively over militarized to protect itself.
Mythified theory of nationalism and militarism controls the practices of actors, but there is not a complete subordination to the myth, to the strategy in de Certeau's terms. The relations between power, domination and subordination are not quite clear cut. Disciplinary mechanisms of the strategy are not internalized as a whole. Bodies are invaded by the strategy but they are still able to act through anti-disciplinary tactics (alternative performative acts). Individuals seek alternative creative ways to resist strategies imposed on them and create personal spaces within the strategized. Actually, this black flag, as a tactic, empowers an interactive queer community.
A flag represents identification and in generally this is an identification with independent nations. If national narratives or values determine the color(s) of the flag then it becomes easier for us to make a crucial statement about the black flag and the bodies on it. In contrast to the red and white, or flesh and blood, this black flag could be interpreted as the determination of the unfits, who are ignored and stigmatized with psycho-sexual problems. It is the alliance of the non-heteronormative identities and lifestyles, and this alliance negates the oppressively taught structures and institutions that are taken for granted. Thereby, the flag and alliance could be read as a desire of and maybe an attempt for another homeland, where there is no hierarchy.
Seymen's work denaturalize the heteronormative categories and change the internalized social conceptions and performances, which are historiacally and socially constructed. According to Sedgwick, intense male homosocial desire as at the once the most compulsory and most prohibited of social bonds but this queer work deconstructs and transforms experiences, repetitive acts and understandings of sexuality and subjectivity through the manipulation of performances to eliminate the prohibiton. In Seymen's work two people perform beyond the definition of normal, and they are not imitating the certain roles that are imposed on them by society. In that light, they are unmasking the institutional power and reinvent their bodies through anal eroticism and discover their secret femininity without reenacting the main military posture.
Seymen challenges the phallic imago of the nation of militant masculinity, and enables us for a reconfiguration of the incoherent plurality of bodies. Also coexistence as a single body in the work, redraws the unstable boundaries of heteronormativity.
Bibliography
Case Studies – Erinç Seymen : “Portrait of a Pasha”, “Performance for a Poem”, “Ittifak”
ALTINAY, Aysegul. “Myth of the Military Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey” . Palgrave, 2004
CERTEAU, Michel de. “The Practice of Everyday Life”. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1984
FOUCAULT, Michel. “Discipline and Punish: The Birt of the Prison” London : Penguin Books, 1991
SEDGWICK, Eve Kosofsky. “Epistemology of the Closet.”. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990
SULLIVAN, Nikki. “A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory”, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003
20 Ekim 2009 Salı
Response paper #1: Ferdinand de Saussure
Linguistic construction creates our perception of reality in general through the speech that we reiterate in everyday life. Since language shapes the ideas and makes them ready to be expressed, thought is ordered by language, and thus Saussure argues that thought can not exist without language. Social reality is not something given but is constructed through the structure of language then analyzing any referent to the sociality could let to understand the ordered unity in the complexity.
One of the principal contributions of Saussure to our understanding of language is his observation on the constructive character of language. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure stands out in the development of structural linguistics and structuralism in various fields. In the heterogeneous mass of linguistic phenomena Saussure defines an observable homogeneous subject matter, to constitute a systematic unity. He analysis the structure of the language with a differentiation between two elements namely, parole, actual usage of language and langue, underlying system of language. Since he is interested in language as a system, key unit of the system is the basic element the sign itself; and the meaning of any linguistic sign is found in the arbitrary association of two parts: Signifier - psychological imprint of sound, Signified – concept. Hence, the meaning of a sign is only arbitrarily linked to the sign itself, and the meaning does not derive from the sign itself, nor from the thing it stands for. The important feature of a sign is that it should differ from other signs that it should contrast with them. This idea of difference is the relation that creates the value of the sign, which is determined by the whole system of signs used within community. Additionally, Saussure examines language as a mean for thought to be expressed as sound, as a link, thus he states that the spoken form of language alone constitute the object. He asserts that our spoken words are immediately tied to our presence, whereas with writing we may not be present to accompany our words, and so writing is simply a means of representing speech.
To sum up, my theoretical critique is going to be about the relations of difference between signifier and signified the lack of individual influence on the construction of the structural differences, and inferiority of writing. The language of the community makes us to think, interpret in a certain way; indeed language is seen as a solution to meaning in a dynamic and chaotic world because language is based on negations (binary oppositions?) that provide a sense of order where order may not actually exist. Although the totalization of differences and abstractness of signifier and signified produces the positivity- the concrete meaning in its dialectical nature, this process eliminates the importance of individual actors to search for meaning. Hence our perceptions of reality are determined by structures of language, sources of meaning are the sets of oppositions, not the individuals’ experience of meaning. Isn't it a kind of submission to the authority of the structure of the language? On the other hand if the speaker, the individual can not construct the value of the word, if s/he is not the center or the source of meaning; then how can we accept that the presence of the speaker guarantees the value of the sign without the act of writing.
My opinion is that, in the Saussurean theory, the complexity of the world or the meaning can only be solved by the creation of slashes; these slashes promotes fixed, final meaning and draw rigid boundaries between definitions of the oppositions. So within the boundaries language makes possible certain ways of looking at the world and lead people to reach an absolute, final meaning that is encoded between binary oppositions. I am going to try to explain my second critique about Saussure's theory practically that is experienced in everyday life, by emphasizing the ambiguity of “Gender and/or Sexual differentiations, stigmatizations” that we face with.
“Dividing up all sexual acts under the opposite categories is not a natural given
but a social-historical process.” (Sedgwick, p.xvi)
How could we understand the deeper meaning behind human sexuality? Binary oppositions limit freedom and understanding, especially as related to sex, sexuality and in general to gender; and those oppositions sustain themselves in normatively heterogeneous structure. Heteronormativity legitimizes and maintains itself through the continual enactments of gendered roles within a given social, familial or legal rules. In the act of performing the conventions of reality by embodying those fictions to our actions, we make those artificial conventions appear to be natural and necessary for the order.
Saussurean linguistic theory does not provide a sufficient answer to the complexity of the dominant forms of sexualities and gender. As a simple example, femaleness does not produce femininity and maleness does not produce masculinity. What about the gender ambiguous people - female&lesbian masculinities (Tomboys&Butches), female to male transsexuals, or male transvestites- who do not fit the strictly defined boundaries of male and female that create a third space within binary oppositions? In what terms those identifications related with Gender- a set of signifiers, and its structural units (female- femininity and male- masculinity)? Could we equate high heels to vagina or mustache to penis?
“Why do not we have multiple gender categories and real life non male and non female
options for embodiment and identification?” (Halberstam, p.20)
When we look at the “sign” Maleness, what could be regarded as signifiers - psychological imprint of that socially – historically- culturally fixed sign? One of the most and the strongest signifier of maleness is “Masculinity”. How does masculinity promote itself, is there only one and single form of masculinity or could we talk about multiplicities? Masculinity can not be reduced down to male body and its effects. Masculinity in society inevitably evokes notions of power and privilege, and as a result, internalized relation between maleness and power emerges as the dominant form of masculinity. Masculinity is interpreted as the outfit of males within the culture, however masculinity is multiple and that far from being about men, the idea of masculinity engages, inflects, and shapes everyone. Therefore, we could say that masculinity is not the property of male bodies. Actually, in order to reflect that male masculinity as the real thing female masculinities are the rejected parts of dominant masculinity.
Saussure saw order and stability in the language systems; however language is something disordered and unstable. Since different context give words different meanings, the centered language system can not have a constraining power over people that Saussure think it does. Thereby as Derrida suggests we should extend Saussure’s understanding of language as a system of differences, arguing that meaning is not stable and always postponed; so it can never be finally fixed. To conclude, if a sign can only be altered by a change in the relationship between signifier and signified then Butler's analyze on performing signs / gender roles in different or complex ways by marking in-between situations is going to be an alternative reading-writing of the language on the gender theory. The truth can be so relative and these binary oppositions can exist together; and masculine females and/or feminine males are the important examples of this unification.