# data[].attributes.body
José Esteban Muñoz wrote Chapter 13, which are sections from his book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Muñoz begins his argument by stating "Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality...We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future" (Rivkin and Ryan 1244). Muñoz believes in striving for utopia when it comes to queerness. He scorns Evan Wolfson's test that the "social recognition and financial advantages offered by traditional marriage pacts as the key to 'freedom.'" (1246). Muñoz asserts that this should not be considered "freedom" as this goal from the LGBT movement is flawed because marriage as an institution is "flawed." A queer utopia would not fit in straight time and should not strive to (1247). Therefore, “the present is not enough. It is impoverished and toxic for queers and other people who do not feel the privilege of majoritarian belonging” (1251).

To strive for utopia, it is important to understand “that the past has a performative nature” because “the past does things” and “not settling for the present, of looking beyond the here and now” (1252). The rules of the world “are not fixed” (1253). Muñoz declares, “It is important to understand that a critique of our homosexual present is not an attack on what many people routinely name as lesbian or gay but, instead, an appraisal of how queerness is still forming, or in many crucial ways formless. Queerness’s form is utopia” (1253). In order to reach utopia is to reach for ecstatic time instead of straight time: “Ecstatic time is signaled at the moment on feels ecstasy, announced perhaps in a scream or grunt of pleasure, and more importantly during moments of contemplation when one looks back at a scene from one’s past, present, or future” (1255). Muñoz writes that by opening oneself up to this ecstasy, that is where freedom lies.

# data[].attributes.headline
Queer Leer: A Gender Reading of King Lear” Summary Part 1

# data[].attributes.subject
Queer Leer: A Gender Reading of King Lear” Summary Part 1

# data[].attributes.body
Michael Ryan’s essay “Queer Leer: A Gender Reading of King Lear” “explores the possibility that the initial presentation of King Lear on St. Stephen’s Night, 1606, at the court of King James, means that the play was intended to flatter the queer king” (Rivkin and Ryan 1258). Ryan provides background on British society at this time by explaining that the “London theatre was, like Jame’s court, a locus of the queer subculture of early seventeenth-century England. Parents were afraid to see their sons become involved with the institution for fear they might be ‘corrupted.’ Given that King Lear was performed by a queer acting troupe at a queer court, it is possible that the play inscribes within itself a link between these two queer subculture sites” (1258). James was openly queer as he often left his wife and son and gave gifts to “his young male lovers” (1258).

Ryan supports his argument with examples of the play “endorsing Jame’s political worldview” by having Lear “portrayed as a representative of the feudal order” which is what James very much believed even though the trend in society was that “the king should not have absolute power” (1259). Ryan also discusses Jame’s ill-manners in the countryside, taking over the people’s homes and food, which can be compared to Lear (1259). Another example that Ryan asserts is Jame’s belief that Christian “plainness is a necessary virtue of a good monarch” in both dress and speech, which are qualities that can also be compared to Lear (1260). Ryan also explains how “in Demonologie, James is particularly critical of women who are prone to become witches and succumb to the ‘greedy desire’ for power…Shakespeare, in his depiction of Goneril and Regan, would seem to agree” (1261). This argument makes sense to me when looking at Shakespeare's history. It was thought that he tried to flatter King James with Macbeth as well, which was written in 1606. This could be supported by Shakespeare's inclusion of witches in the play when James famously supported  the practice of witch hunting. Ryan continues to provide examples of comparisons, going into further detail on James’s strong desire of monarchical power and obedience (1263).

# data[].attributes.headline
Queer Leer: A Gender Reading of King Lear”  Part 2

# data[].attributes.subject
Queer Leer: A Gender Reading of King Lear”  Part 2

# data[].attributes.body
Ryan then focuses his essay on Shakespeare flattering King James by alluding to queer themes in the play: “Shakespeare in the characters of Lear and Kent clearly wanted to create…a flattering gender portrait of the queer monarch (1265). Ryan claims how “the play depicts a crisis in heteronormativity, an institution centered on an ideal of male masculinity finds an enabling and confirming other in female femininity” (1266). Therefore “the play portrays heterosexuality as a weakness that has harmful effects on men” because it encourages incest, which Ryan supports with with Lear’s affection for Cordelia” (1266). Ryan argues that in the play, “heterosexuality is dangerous for men because it is founded on instability; while it would seem to assure a man’s identity as a masculine male, it leaves the man dependent on feminine women for certification” (1266). A man cannot have an identity without the “otherness” of a feminine female. However, “men can be feminized by masculine women” (1266) and “a dangerous and destructive feminization of men occurs when women assume traditionally masculine powers” (1267). In the play, this feminization is seen as madness: “Lear’s loss of temper and rash actions based on momentary emotions are coded as female” (1267). Ryan explains how “In Edgar and Kent, Shakespeare offers figures of queer masculinity that counteract the harmful effects of women on heterosexual men in the play” (1268). This is because “Edgar is the character who is most representative of a queer masculinity that heals Lear and the state (much as James imagined himself healing an England harmed by his female predecessor, the Goneril-like man-woman Elizabeth Ⅰ” (1269). Ryan provides evidence of this healing relationship when Edgar and Lear are naked in the rain and that water is “a metaphor for the dissolving of masculine heterosexual identity by women” which is fitting for Lear “who has lost his masculine heterosexual identity and been feminized by masculine women. But water also suggests the progressive instability and fluidity of gender, as does the metaphor of theatricality and role-playing” (1269). With this, a new identity can be formed for Lear, “a queer one” (1269). Ryan also asserts how Shakespeare is purposeful in including queer subtext in his play, with the character of Cordelia being played by a boy actor and has a “homosocial male companion” with the Fool (1270). Ryan states that the play is “about the benefits of homosexuality in a queer-repressive heteronormative culture and must necessarily try to have it both ways—displaying yet hiding—while having it neither way in the pure form” (1270). After reading this chapter, Shakespeare could also have a history of exploring messages on gender in his other plays. I argued in an essay for a graduate Shakespeare course that the play Taming of the Shrew was satire to hyperbolize the roles of gender in British society. Ryan’s analysis on King Lear could support Shakespeare’s true beliefs when it comes to gender within his society.

# data[].attributes.headline
Leaflet by Queer Nation, distributed at NY Pride March in 1990

# data[].attributes.subject
Leaflet by Queer Nation, distributed at NY Pride March in 1990

# data[].attributes.body
The general sentiment, specifically among the younger queer activists, was that the gay and lesbian movement by the late 1980's was becoming too moderate and too focused on wanting to be assimilated to mainstream straight culture. As such, texts like these functioned as ways in which queer people wanted to make their voice heard that they were not interested in being "welcomed" into the straight world as deviants. Instead, the movement would now adopt the previously pejorative term of "queer" as a sign of their wanting to embrace their difference. As such, the queer community wanted to dismantle the assumptions of the heterosexual world and how it wished to impose the idea that there was one "right" way to live one's sexuality and gender identity.

# data[].attributes.body
"Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means every day fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves)"

"Let's make every space a Lesbian and Gay space"

"Queers are being attack on all fronts and I am afraid it's ok with us"

"I hate straight people who think they have anything intelligent to say about 'outing.' I hate straight people who think stories about themselves are 'universal' but stories about us are only about homosexuality"

# data[].attributes.body
Berlant and Warner seek to explain the heteronormative ideology that dictates many important aspects of the society in the United States. Particularly, they argue that although public discourse about sexuality wants to make it seem like this is more of a "private" issue, sex (heterosexual one, at that) is actually publicly discussed and regulated while at the same time conservatives argue that queer people's feelings responding to the system around them are private issues.
These writers also mention how notions of sex that deviate from the heteronormative expectation are often associated with the queer community (they give an example of a straight couple feeling like they would be judged as "perverted" or deviant by their other straight friends if they knew they bought sex toys). As such, with the implication that society has been designed to favor heteronormativity, then one can infer that this structure can be altered in favor of a more visible expression of sexuality.

# data[].attributes.body
"The aim of this paper is to describe what we want to promote as the radical aspirations of queer culture building: not just a safe zone for queer sex but the changed possibilities of identity, intelligibility, publics, culture, and sex that appear when the heterosexual couple is no longer the referent or the privileged example of sexual culture" (p. 1220)

"National heterosexuality is the mechanism by which a core national culture can be imaged as a sanitized space of sentimental feeling and immaculate behavior, a space of pure citizenship. A familial model of society displaces the recognition of structural racism and other systemic inequalities" (p. 1221)

"When we say that the contemporary United States is saturated by the project of constructing national heterosexuality, we do not mean that national heterosexuality. is anything like a simple monoculture. Hegemonies are nothing if not elastic alliances, involving dispersed and contradictory strategies for self-maintenance and reproduction" (p. 1223)

"We want to argue here that although the intimate relations of private personhood appear to be the realm of sexuality itself, allowing 'sex in public' to appear like matter out of place, intimacy is itself publicly mediated, in several senses" (p. 1223)

"Modern heterosexuality is supposed to refer to relations of intimacy and identification with other persons, and sex acts are supposed to be the most intimate communication of them all. The sex act shielded by the zone of privacy is the affectional nimbus that heterosexual culture protects and from which it abstracts its model of ethics, but this utopia of social belonging is also supported and extended by acts less commonly recognized as part of sexual culture: paying taxes, being disgusted, philandering, bequeathing, celebrating a holiday, investing for the future, teaching, disposing of a corpse,  carrying wallet photos, buying economy size, being nepotistic, running for president, divorcing, or owning anything 'His' and 'Hers'" (p. 1224)

"People feel that the price they must pay for social membership and a relation to the future is identification with the heterosexual life narrative; that they are individually responsible for the rages, instabilities, ambivalences and failures they experience in their intimate lives, while the fractures of the contemporary United States shame and sabotage them everywhere. Heterosexuality involves so many practices that are not sex that a world in which this hegemonic cluster would not be dominant is, at this point, unimaginable. We are trying to bring that world into being " (p. 1226)

"The queer project we imagine is not just to destigmatize those average intimacies, not just to give access to the sentimentality of the couple for persons of the same sex, and definitely not to certify as properly private the personal lives of gays and lesbians. Rather, it is to support forms of affective, erotic, and personal living that are public in the sense of accessible, available to memory, and sustained through collective activity" (p. 1229)

# data[].attributes.body
In her essay, Hird discusses the "new materialism" movement in social sciences that discusses how the the boundaries between what is associated with the human and the biological are not set in stone. Hird argues that even within our own bodies, there are organisms that do not fit into the binary categories with which we have sought to define the reality around us, particularly when it comes to the male/female dichotomy.
She further invites the reader to think of how we as humans are in the minority when it comes to thinking about reproduction (since ours is often deemed as heterosexual) and as such, society's understanding of what is "natural" is also challenged.

# data[].attributes.body
"Human bodies, like those of other living organisms, are only 'sexed' from a particularly narrow perspective"

"Non-linear biology stands to make a significant contribution to queer discussions of the constitution, boundaries and technologies of 'sex,' 'gender,' and 'sexuality'"

# data[].attributes.headline
Elizabeth Bishop's "Queer Birds": Vassar, Con Spirito, and the Romance of Female Community 

# data[].attributes.subject
Elizabeth Bishop's "Queer Birds": Vassar, Con Spirito, and the Romance of Female Community 

# data[].attributes.body
Bethany Hicok explains how the anonymous “rebel literary magazine” Con Spirito started by Elizabeth Bishop and others at Vassar in 1933 was created “to provide an alternative to the college’s established literary magazine, The Vassar Review,” but turned into an “example of a successful collaboration among women who are positioned in competition with other women” and “aligns these women in collaboration against male-dominated literary tradition and particularly challenges the stereotypes if college-educated women put forward by the literary press” (Rivkin and Ryan 1272). One such stereotype forward by The Spector was that college-educated, independent women wanted to be ‘carbon copies of men’ even though “many college women graduated, married, and had children, the pervasive discourse labeled independent women ‘unnatural,’ because it was thought that their education would interfere with their becoming wives and mothers, roles assumed to be ‘natural’ to their sex” (1273). Therefore, the “Manish Lesbian” became a stereotype and symbol for rejecting these ‘traditional feminine roles’ and desire for ‘male privileges and power’” (1273). The Con Spirito writes challenged this “myth that aligned womanhood with motherhood by claiming the magazine as their child, a child they would need to keep nourished with ‘forward-looking’ writing or it would die; they thus demonstrated that they could produce children through the male channels of productivity and thereby distance themselves from reproduction” (1274). The Con Spirito writers also “challenged these fixed categories by appropriating certain aspects of performing masculine style” like adding a smoking room and telling bawdy rhymes (1274). The anonymous aspect of the magazine also fed into the fear of women colleges because “‘the invert’ could lure other women into a life of perversion” (1275).

# data[].attributes.headline
Elizabeth Bishop's "Queer Birds": Vassar, Con Spirito, and the Romance of Female Community 

# data[].attributes.subject
Elizabeth Bishop's "Queer Birds": Vassar, Con Spirito, and the Romance of Female Community 

# data[].attributes.body
Hicok also argues that “Con Spirito allowed Bishop to ‘come out’ as both a writer and, perhaps much more provisionally, a lesbian. Moreover, the Con Spirito writers seemed to share a fantasy of a productive female community” (1273). Women in college were under a lot of scrutiny, and Bishop references “lesbian sexuality” in her work and crossed “gender boundaries” (1277-1278). When discussing Bishop’s poetry, she frequently wrote about “a community of grotesques” that “not only suggests the discourse that labeled lesbians as outside and therefore perverse in relation to ‘normal,’ heterosexual womanhood also echoes the theme of difference and outsiderhood shared by the women of Con Spirito” (1280). Throughout her work, Hicok proves “Bishop’s fantasy of female community” (1283).

# data[].attributes.body
Muñoz explains how queer utopia is "about the work of not settling for the present, of looking and asking beyond the here and now" (Rivkin and Ryan 1252). My question is: can utopia ever be reached? If not, is there purpose in striving towards it?

This reminded me of a whole other theme and concept as I prepare to teach The Great Gatsby. A major theme in this novel is the American dream (another form of utopia?) and if it's attainable. Once we achieve this dream, will this lead to happiness? Can you ever be satisfied, or will happiness never be achieved because you will always want more?  I couldn't help but connect this to Muñoz and his article. Maybe it's more about having a goal to work towards instead of perfection; the hope and desire for more leads to individual and societal betterment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Connection: "Differences" and Queer Lear: A Gender Reading of King Lear

# data[].attributes.subject
Connection: "Differences" and Queer Lear: A Gender Reading of King Lear

# data[].attributes.body
Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Giroux explain in the chapter “Differences, “Meaning is beholden to context, and ‘differences’ give us a wider array of contexts in which to explore culture in its myriad manifestations. Indeed, these categories of subjectivity are important for studying culture precisely because of their slippery quality and their relations to personal investments, which shape not only our perception of texts but also personal relationships, social norms, public policy, and the rule of law. Art teaches you about these ‘inner’ states; it teaches us how to feel about who we are, and how we’re supposed to feel about who others are” (201). Through gender and queer criticism, people can challenge those that have historically had a powerful voice in society and in deciding what is deemed as “universal” themes. If these canon texts are what are predominantly taught in schools, we can explore why these themes may not be “universal” as well as challenge some of the initial understandings of these texts. In Queer Lear: A Gender Reading of King Lear by Michael Ryan, he proves that Shakespeare may have “alluded to queer themes” (Rivkin and Ryan 1258) with historical facts and an analysis of the text and how the play was performed. Ryan argues that there may have been more nuance in understanding Shakespeare’s intentions with his play. For example, “That Cordelia is a part played by a boy actor and that her character forms a continuum with a healing homosocial male companion—the Fool— suggests how cannily Shakespeare inserts a queer subtext into this play, one that would have allowed the court audience to see a literal story of queer love while nevertheless respecting the rules of heteronormativity by endorsing the theatrical conventions and mimetic illusion that a boy is a woman” (1270). It could be argued that Shakespeare was more intentional with his messages on gender and was using performance as a way to spread these ideals, but did so smartly by staying within societal convention.  By using queer theory to analyze King Lear, Ryan is challenging the initial heteronormative, male understanding of Shakespeare’s plays, and discovering how his work could truly be “universal” by using historical and cultural practices to support his analysis. This analysis helps readers better understand culture and its nuances throughout history to then better understand humanity as a whole and thus who we are as individuals. .

# data[].attributes.body
Nealon and Giroux's key question in the chapter "Differences" asks of the importance of the author's identities (or the reader's identities) on interpretation of texts. They also call into question how much emphasis in an interpretation should be placed on the "subject positions" of the author, reader, or even characters in a story (171).

The initial answer would seem to point to an easy "yes" as the authors point out that readers affectionately relate to characters and situations that reflect their own "subject positions" (172). But Nealon and Giroux complicate the discussion by taking a social constructionist point of view, rather than essentialist's take in the representation of a given work. In identifying the different subject positions in a story, they argue that the differences alone do not create or "inherently" have a meaning or interpretation of said differences (174).

The chapter then turns to meaning making as a means of identifying differences and "negotiat[ing] among contexts to produce meaning" (175). In other words, a work does not have an essential meaning; it is constructed through "care and attention to its differences...within and among subject positions" (175). They ultimately define interpretation as an "attention to difference" not an "attempt to erase difference (to come to a final meaning)" (176-177).

After their overall definition and understanding of interpretation, Nealon and Giroux address the following schools of theory: gender, queer, race, and class. In their discussion of gender theory, they explore the historical notion of the universal subject as an able-bodied, heterosexual, white, wealthy male. And they dive deeper into the realm of social construction, the stance that "things don't already contain meanings; rather, such meanings are constructed in the very configuration of the seeming 'fact' of difference" (183). As I previously stated, they object the idea of essentialism, that natural differences have inherent meaning assigned to them.

In their exploration of queer theory, the authors discuss the performative, the idea that an identity comes through acts, not by a particular state of being. They distinguish between "performative utterances" and "constative utterances" where the former is about "acts" and the latter about "facts" (189). They argue that identity is performative, "constructed in response to specific contexts" (189).

The discussion of race focuses on the historical appearance of the racial distinction, arguing that it is not "natural" but also "socially constructed" citing a change in the US definition of race in by the federal government in 1978. The fact that race can be redefined means that it is not inherent but created. Yet, Nealon and Giroux contend that these "created" categories of identity do have consequence because they exist within a social and historical space.

The last category the authors explore is that of class, the least distinguishable category of the four. Ultimately, they argue that class distinction is predicated on control and "cultural capital" to actually keep people within a given class, while claiming that there's a fluid mobility among class ranks, particularly in the United States.

In the concluding section, Nealon and Giroux argue that while identities are "socially constructed" they still have meaning due to the fact that they "represent sites where we don't get to choose" (201). But they do give a glimmer of hope through what may appear to be an exercise in nihilism, saying "we are not wholly determined by these categories" (201).

My extension to this discussion is the addition that language and communication are also performative acts. Speaking and writing are forms of action, and therefore they are also "social construction." I do think that language is a particularly unique example in that we can see how the construction is ever-evolving. A present evolution we see now is the introduction of AI like chat GPT. A friend of mine said that he was looking into using it to help him come up with metaphors for his sermons.

I argued against that idea by asking him if it gives a metaphor he  doesn't understand. The point of rhetorical figures is that they are the thoughts we express to help make sense for us and the readers. Are you going to have to say "no chat GPT a different metaphor" or is it going to give everyone the same metaphor for x? Then where is the writer's unique voice? Even using it periodically can limit the nuance in understanding something if there's no unique, personal connections being made for concept x. It's a slippery slope. Writing "rules" only matter to the writer and the reader. That is to say, they are agreed upon within any given discourse (which is socially constructed), but each discourse may have different "rules."

# data[].attributes.headline
Re-presentation of Women Workers from a Marxist Feminist Approach

# data[].attributes.subject
Re-presentation of Women Workers from a Marxist Feminist Approach

# data[].attributes.body
In "Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts," Chandra Talpade Mohanty presents a number of situational case studies to illustrate a representation of Third World women workers amid a global capitalist "order," highlighting the historical "exploitation and domination" on women workers (977). Her efforts of representation are not only to record the different struggles of women workers (both housewives and factory workers) but also to re-present women workers as a collective amid their separate struggles. In re-framing women workers from a Marxist Feminist approach, Mohanty seeks to "generate ways to think about mobilization, organizing, and conscientization transnationally" (977).

Mohanty identifies the parameters of what can be considered "women's work" through "notions of appropriate felinity, domesticity, (hetero)sexuality, and racial and cultural stereotypes." On a global scale, the intersection of all one's identities "has everything to do with our definitions and identities as workers" (978-979). She seeks to challenge the  patriarchal and capitalistic exploitation and division of the global community of women workers by "recognizing...'common interests' and the potential bases of cross-national solidarity - a common context of struggle" (979). By breaking down the divides imposed upon women workers, whether geographically or culturally, Mohanty can then move forward to "envision and enact transnational feminist solidarity" (980). The identification and re-presentation of the larger community is a necessary preface to Mohanty's push towards progress.

Mohanty then identifies a number of unions and organizations that are working to create and expand this collective of transnational women workers, such as trade unions, women's unions, and even church involvement. Specifically, she notes the progress being made by collectives like the Working Women's Forum and Self Employed Women's Association in India and the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group in Britain. In conclusion, she quotes Irma, a Filipina worker in the Silicon Valley, "'the only way to get a little measure of power over your own life is to do it collectively, with the support of other people who share your needs'" (906).

-----

This article's focus on the collective among a range of intersections of identity is greatly expounded upon in Chapter 8 from Jasper Puar's article "'I Would Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess': Becoming Intersectional in Assemblage Theory." I want to expound on this, but I think it would be better understood after my summary of Chapter 8. Mohanty's explanation of the division of women workers created by global capitalism is important to keep in mind when going into Puar's article. I will continue my thoughts after my summary of that chapter.

# data[].attributes.headline
Since When Was Complexity Synonymous With Progress?

# data[].attributes.subject
Since When Was Complexity Synonymous With Progress?

# data[].attributes.body
Have you ever tried to detangle a necklace chain? How about a clump of multiple necklace chains? Obviously, the additional chains complicate the process. Additionally, identifying the hidden nuances in a seemingly obvious generalization can complicate a discussion. When you hear the guy in the back of the room chime in with "actually, it's a bit more complicated than that," just because he's acknowledged that truth does not mean he's creating any new value to the conversation. Or, as Nealon and Giroux put it in the chapter "Differences" from The Theory Toolbox, "the materiality of difference...doesn't determine what the difference means" (183). Coincidentally to my initial metaphor, Nealon and Giroux continue by saying that meaning comes from "a process of disentanglement" (183).

This is process that Nealon and Giroux speak on is akin to the idea of Assemblage Theory as described by Jasper Puar in "'I Would Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess': Becoming Intersectional in Assemblage Theory." Puar shows how intersectionality has been put into opposition with Assemblage Theory. Yet, through the article, Puar argues for "what might be gained by thinking them through and with each other" (1001).

First, Puar explains intersectionality and its critiques, defining it as a theory that "argues that all identities are lived and experienced as intersectional...and that all subjects are intersectional whether or not they recognize themselves as such" (1002). In other words, from Arun Saldana, "the theory of intersectionality holds that there is no actual body that is a member of only one set" (1002). In the context of feminism, intersectionality has become the primary "tool to diagnose specifically racial difference" (1003). The criticism of intersectionality includes an argument that such "identities are the byproducts of attempts to still and quell the perpetual motion of assemblages, to capture and reduce them, to harness their threatening mobility" (1001).  Puar identifies the main problem of intersectionality on its own being "the complexity of process is continually mistaken for a resultant product" (1001). In other words, the identification of the divisions of identity does not in and of itself create meaning or find patterns that can then be collected and turned into progress.

Assemblage, as Puar explains it, derives from a French concept known as "agencement" which focuses on "relations of patterns" because "specific connections with other concepts is precisely what gives them their meaning" (1006). As a result, assemblages are less about what they are (the static) and more about what they do (the dynamic). The action, the performance, is what creates the meaning. This aligns more with social constructionism in opposition to essentialism. Puar identifies a specific type of essentialism known as "linguistic essentialism" citing Karen Barad as writing that "language has been granted too much power" (1007).  The language of the categories of identity, or the language of differences in identities, is believed by some to constitute action and therefore meaning-making. Yet, Puar aligns with Nealon and Giroux in arguing that the classification of something is not enough to make meaning. The process of, or in Puar's words, the "study of 'the pattern of recurring links, as well as the properties of those links'" is what makes meaning and is also the focus of assemblages.

Ultimately, Puar seeks not to abandon intersectionality for assemblages, but rather use the two in tandem to "produce more roadmaps [or patterns] of precisely these not quite fully understood relations" between the identities and divisions within identities that relate to "discipline and control" by those whose identities give them power over others (1011).

-----

In continuation of my thoughts on Chapter 7, I think that these two articles work well together in providing a more complete picture of the importance and also the problematics of division through intersectionality. In addition, Chapter 8 adds to the discussion by identifying how to overcome those problems, namely, through assemblage, noticing the patterns (the similarities and the differences) among the intersections, creating a larger "collective" that can produce real change and improvement for those underrepresented and discriminated identities. As Nealon and Giroux surmised, it's one thing to just identify a difference, but it's a whole other thing to make meaning. Who is making that meaning? Historically, it's been able-bodied, straight, white wealthy men who seek to divide the "Other" to keep them subservient. Mohanty and Puar are pushing for those who don't fit into that mold to recognize their sameness as an "Other" and how that has led to the actions against them and how they can become a larger collective that can challenge the hegemonic meanings of the past.

# data[].attributes.body
Chapter 9 shifts from a focus on gender studies to queer theory, specifically the problematic binary of the "homo/heterosexual definition." Sedgwick argues that this false dichotomy ignores the shared subordination of each term. Quoting Harold Beaver, Sedgwick notes that "the qualities predicated of 'homosexuality'...are in face a condition of 'heterosexuality'" and as a result "'heterosexuality'...must itself be treated as a dependent term" (1015).

Sedgwick moves to distinguish terms that have become muddled in the conversation of sexuality: sex and gender. In terms of biology, Sedgwick considers sex as "chromosomal sex" (1017). Gender, Sedgwick identifies, is a "social construction...of male and female identities and behaviors" (1017).  Then Sedgwick introduces the complication that comes with the term "sexuality" which refers to an "array of acts" (1018).

As a result, Sedgwick combines gender and sexuality as a sort of binary as "each can be expressed only in the terms of the other" and "represent two analytic axes that may productively be imaged as being as distinct from one another as, say, gender and class, or class and race" (1019).

Sedgwick identifies a further division of sexuality which she refers to as a "narrowing" to the previously mentioned binary of homo/heterosexuality, and thus is another social construct. This narrowing or "condensation" of a larger category of "sexual theory" into the homo/hetero binary, Sedgwick concludes, is "at the very least damagingly skewed by the specificity of its historical placement" (1022).

--

This reminds me of the subsection of "Differences" by Nealon and Giroux that focused on race. The construction of race by the United States was not static either. The goalposts moved, so to speak, to keep with what those in power wanted, so they could remain in power. By narrowing sexual theory, the goalposts of sexuality also moved. But what is interesting, compared to Chapters 7 and 8, which focused on expanding the divisions in identity to keep the status quo for those in power, this narrowing seems antithetical to their goal. So, does that help the "Other" in terms of identity of sexuality in putting together its collective?

# data[].attributes.body
Group Members are:
Ronnie Guerra Romo,
Josh Eddy,
Allison Roberts,
Hannah Tiffany, &
Rhiannon Farr

# data[].attributes.headline
"Introduction: Feminist Paradigms/Gender Effects" by Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan

# data[].attributes.subject
"Introduction: Feminist Paradigms/Gender Effects" by Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan

# data[].attributes.body
Modern/contemporary feminist literary criticism begins in the women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s as it does in the academy.

Though there are earlier texts that show feminist discourse was occurring: Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and a text written 2000 years before the Bible, Inanna (cited by Maggie Humm) where a goddess questions sexual discourse.

Feminist criticism has had many self-transformations over the past decades as it engages with several other theories (some from within similar criticism itself and some without): psychoanalysis, Marxism, Post-Structuralism, ethnic studies, post-colonial theory, Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Queer Theory all have allowed a production of work that cannot be written by a single description (1059).

The main theme of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s was the experience of women under a patriarchal society, which “silenced women’s voices, distorted their lives, and treated their concerns as peripheral” (1059). It’s as if being a woman “under such conditions” was to “not exist at all” (1059).

Adrienne Rich’s “When We Dead Awaken” was the titled address given to the women who attended the 1970 MLA conference. She had inspired other notable feminists of this time, such as Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) and Kate Millett (Sexual Politics).

Feminist scholars noted that canonical stories, books and novels taught in school were overwhelmingly written by men.

Elaine Showalter reconstructed a history of women writers in A Literature of Their Own, Judith Fetterly questioned how women were/are represented in “great” American literature in The Resisting Reader and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar both examined the problem of what it meant for women to become writers, seeking entrance in a tradition that were “dominated by images that did such violence to women” in The Madwoman in the Attic (1060).

The women’s movement, at its strongest, included African-American scholars like Mary Helen Washington, Barbara Smith, and bell hooks to depict the history of African-American women’s experience in a racist, sexist world. It would also include lesbian feminist critics like Bonnie Zimmerman and Susan Griffin to explore the “experience of radical alterity within a heterosexist world” (1060). Feminist literary scholarship in the 70s and early 80s was a rich, vexed, convivial world where women were linked by sisterhood.

Two stages of this early period:

First is concerned with misogyny and its stereotypes in literature written by men

Second is devoted mainly to the recovery of a “lost tradition” and “to the long labor of historical reconstruction” (1060).

Mid-1980s is where great change in feminist criticism occurs as “French feminism” (the work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous) have an impact on how scholars think about their work as well as the assumptions that inspired it.

Gender became a construct of culture instead of a way to banish women from a society and culture focused upon men.

Liberal and radical feminists had been in disagreement since the 1970s in regards to which direction the movement should take:

Deeper identification with female “essence”?

Toward departure from the way women had been made to be by the patriarchy?

The major difference gained a heightened sense of emotion within critical feminist theory discussion, two perspectives formed:

Constructionist: accepting the idea that gender is made by culture in history.

Essentialist: gender reflects a natural difference between men and women (psychologically, linguistically, biologically).

Essentialists theory are founded in feminist psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow’s The Reproduction of Mothering, ethical philosopher Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice and French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One.

They argued that women’s physical differences alone (birthing, menstruation, lactation, etc.) make them more connected with the physical world (or matter) than men.

“Women are innately capable of offering different ethics from men, one more attuned to preserving the earth from destruction by weapons devised by men” (1061).

They also argue that men think in terms of rights during arguments of ethical issues while women think in terms of responsibilities to others.

“Women are more caring because their psychological and physical ties to physical being remain unbroken” (1061).

Constructivist theory takes their inspiration from Marxism, the idea of social construction of individual subjectivity, and from the Post-Structuralist concept that “language writes rather than reflects identities” (1062).

Gender, to constructivists, is a construction of patriarchal culture that men are superior to women (though both are born at the same time).

The “maternal” instinct to be caring and relational (feminist essentialist ideology) had been conditioned into women, making them seem more ethical.

Constructivists argue that the way gender is fabricated must change.

Marxist feminists argue that what the essentialists believe to be a “good female” were attributes that were assigned to women in a capitalist culture in order to make them better domestic laborers.

Judith Butler, feminist critic in the mid-80s, argues that all gender is performative and it refers to “no natural substance” (1062).

Susan Jeffords’ The Remasculinization of American Culture addresses masculinity in men after the Vietnam War, specifically the removal of “feminine” emotional traits.

How can women take up space/language when it is embedded in patriarchal concepts?

How can we use it to make a better world for women?

Is language neutral, indifferent?

How do we “speak” for those unable to speak up for themselves?

Is that feminism?

To take up their cause and stand up for them what men have done to women?

“If silence is complicity, what form should speech take in such a situation?” (1063).

Revolution occurred in 1969– emergence of Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement– intersection with the work of feminists who were concerned with both sexuality and gender identity.

Both groups were oppressed by heterosexual men, so they shared common ground.

In the 1980s, feminism changed directions. Theorists had been in discussion about the idea that there may be a difference within feminism “proper” between biological sexual identity and gender identity.

Gayle Rubin (anthropologist), Alan Bray (historian) and Michael Foucault (theorist) all point out that gender is variable within history and societies.

Gay sex was popular during fifth-century Greek society, it was only deemed “perverse” during the 19th century potentially due to Christianity and stigmas of “non-reproductive sexual practices” (1064-1065).

Gay and lesbian scholars during the 70s and 80s began to look at the prejudice that made it nearly impossible to study the history of gay and lesbian writing (or to analyze how life and experience were distorted in cultural history).

Early works include:

Guy Hocquenghem’s examination of the psychology of homophobia

Jeffrey Week’s history of “coming out”

Richard Dyer’s pursuit of representation of gays and lesbians in film

Terry Castle’s study of “things not to be mentioned” in 18th century literature

Lillian Faderman’s work on love between women during the Renaissance

Combahee River Collective’s manifesto for African-American lesbians

Andrew Britton’s rebuttal of normative homophobia on the intellectual Left

Adrienne Rich’s statement against “compulsory heterosexuality”

Sharon O’Brien’s exploration of Willa Cather’s controversial attitude toward her own lesbianism

John D’Emilio’s history of homosexual minority in US culture

Jeffrey Escoffier’s analysis on the need for a gay revolution equivalent to the socialist movement against capitalism (1065).

Foucault’s publication (History of Sexuality (1978)) was more attention-getting and argued that homosexuality is a “social, medical and ontological category invented in the late nineteenth century” that prior had enjoyed a lack of “‘scientific’ scrutiny” imposed on such relationships (1065).

In the late 70s and early 80s, a new field of Gender Studies conjoined with Gay and Lesbian Studies and turned its attention to all gender “formations” – heterosexual and homosexual.

Lesbian Studies has shown lesbian suffer double oppression.

If factoring in racial or ethnic prejudice (as Gloria Anzaldua does in Borderlands/La Frontera) this pain grows exponentially.

Separatism in Lesbian Studies was formed by Monique Wittig and Luce Irigaray as “Lesbian women can only exist as such in a world of their own apart from patricentric culture” (Irigaray 1065).

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) killed many in the gay community during the mid to late 1980s, a time in which Queer Theory had emerged.

The term “queer” during this era was derogatory, so the community adopted it and turned it against the perpetrator “by transforming it into a token of pride” (1066).

Shift in name also indicated a shift in analysis– gay and lesbian theorists (for now) began to explore “queerness” in a “normal” sexual culture.

Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies, and Queer Theory have been able to exactly describe three broad areas of work in literary and cultural theory all within a culture and society dominated by heterosexual and patriarchal concepts.

# data[].attributes.body
Published in 1975, this essay was a key text of feminist theory in the 1970s. Rubin is an anthropologist and her essay notes the points of “helpful contact for feminists with these schools [Freudian psychoanalysis, Structural anthropology, Marxism] as well as moments of dissonance (1068).

What would have to be changed in order to achieve a society without gender hierarchy?

Innate male aggression? → extermination or eugenics to modify this characteristic.

Sexism is a by-product of capitalism’s “relentless appetite for profit” (1068)? → then it’d go away after a successful socialist revolution.

Defeat of women was because of armed patriarchal revolt → time for Amazon guerrillas to begin training in the “Adirondacks” (1068).

Works of Claude Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud utilize women as a product, view them as such, and “neither turns a critical glance upon the processes he describes” (1069). They do not seem to understand the implications of what they are saying, especially when subjected to the feminist eye.

“Sex/gender system” is a “set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity… in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (1069).

Main purpose of the essay is to come to a fully developed definition of that system through “idiosyncratic and exegetical” readings and analysis of Levi-Strauss and Freud.

Rubin does this kind of reading through a psychoanalytic lens provided by Jacques Lacan, which has been influenced by Levi-Strauss.

Marxism

Scholars have attempted to link women’s domestic labor and housework, showing the oppression of women by placing them in the definition of capitalism.

Difference between reproduction of labor power and products depends on the determination of what it takes to reproduce that labor power (1071).

Marx makes this determination on the basis of the quantity of commodities (food, clothing, etc.) which is necessary to maintain the health of the worker, but must be consumed before they can be sustenance and are not immediately in consumable form when they are purchased (1071).

Additional labor must be performed (food→ cooked, clothes→ cleaned, beds→ made). Housework is crucial in capitalist society, the process of reproduction.

Women are the ones usually doing the housework and since no wage is being paid for such labor, “the labor of women in the home contributes to the ultimate quantity of surplus value realized” (1071).

Societies don’t have to run on capitalism to oppress women, Rubin argues.

Looks into Amazon valley and New Guinea Highlands and how they use fear tactics such as “masculine intimidation” and “gang rape” (1071).

Feudal Europe was engulfed with sexism as well, capitalism just rewired the notions of what it is to be “male” and “female.”

“No analysis of the reproduction of labor power under capitalism can explain foot-binding, chastity belts, or any of the incredible array of Byzantine, fetishized indignities, let alone the more ordinary ones, which have been inflicted upon women in various times and places” (1071). It doesn’t even explain why women usually do domestic work at home rather than men.

The “‘historical and moral element’” of capitalism determines that a wife is considered a necessity among a worker, that women do the housework rather than men, and “capitalism is heir to a long tradition in which women do not inherit…do not lead…do not talk to god” (1072).

Engels

Sees sex oppression as part of capitalism’s heritage from prior social norms within The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.

Humans must do more than apply its activity to changing/reshaping the natural world. Humans must also reproduce from generation to generation.

The need to procreate must be satisfied as much as the need to sleep, eat, etc.

Rubin states that hunger and sex are both culturally determined & obtained. That societies have their own sex gender systems: “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention and satisfied in a conventional manner” (1073).

Sex is a social product (gender identity, sexual desire & fantasy, “concepts of childhood”) (1073).

Terms that have been proposed for the sex/gender system:

Mode of reproduction: links economy to production and sexual system to reproduction, reduces richness of either system since production and reproduction occur in both. Cannot limit the sex/gender system to reproduction in either a biological or social sense. It is not simply the “reproductive moment” of a “‘mode of production’” and the formation of gender identity is an example of this. (1073).

Patriarchy: was introduced to distinguish forces that were maintaining sexism from other social forces (aka, capitalism). This term obscures other distinctions, though, as it is analogous to using capitalism to refer to all modes of production, where capitalism lies precisely in that it clearly distinguishes between different systems. The power of the term lies in its implication (1073-74).

There are gender-stratified systems which aren’t described as patriarchal. New Guinea societies are oppressive towards women, but this power is not founded on their roles as fathers or patriarchs–  just on their “collective adult maleness, embodied in secret cults, men’s houses, warfare…” (1074).

Patriarchy is a specific kind of male dominance: one old man whose absolute power over people was an aspect of the institution of fatherhood, as defined in the social group in which they live (1074). Rubin uses Abraham from the Old Testament as an example.

Kinship

The Kinship system is not a list of biological relatives, to Rubin especially.

Socially defined kinship statuses take precedence over biology in the Nuer custom of “woman marriage,” where the Nuer define fatherhood as “belonging to the person in whose name cattle bridewealth is given for the mother” (1074-75).

Kinship is an organizational structure, specifically during pre-state societies, where there were exchanges of goods & services, production & distribution, hostility & solidarity, and ritual & ceremony.

These systems vary from one culture to the next and contain an abundance of rules of who can marry who.

In the 19th century, many tried to write “comprehensive accounts” of these systems. One was titled Ancient Society by Lewis Henry Morgan, which inspired Engels to write Origin. His theory is also based upon Morgan’s account of kinship & marriage (1075).

20th century rolls around, Levi-Strauss published The Elementary Structures of Kinship, which is “the boldest …version of the nineteenth-century project to understand human marriage” (1075).

This book says kinship is “explicitly conceived of as an imposition of cultural organization upon the facts of biological procreation” (1075). Rubin states that Levi-Strauss wrote the book with a constructed implicit oppression of women.

This book is a treatise on kinship systems and is an attempt to discern the structural principles of kinship.

Two of his main points are specifically relevant to women: the “gift” and the incest taboo– which addresses his concept of the exchange of women.

Elementary Structures enhances the argument already made by Mauss in Essay on the Gift which talks about the significance of giving, receiving, and reciprocating gifts in primitive societies and how that dominates social intercourse.

“Gift giving confers upon its participants a special relationship of trust, solidarity, and mutual aid” (1076). There is another side of gift giving, which “one person humiliates another by giving more than can be reciprocated” (1076).

Big Man systems of Highlands New Guinea are based on this social interaction. His return is political prestige.

Levi-Strauss adds to this argument of gift exchange that women are the most precious gifts.

“The prohibition on the sexual use of a daughter or a sister compels them to be given in marriage to another man, and at the same time it establishes a right to the daughter or sister of this other man” and it “is less a rule prohibiting marriage with the mother, sister, or daughter, than a rule obliging the mother, sister, or daughter to be given to others” (1077).

This is because the relationship is now bound by kinship, by blood.

Kinship is organization, organization gives power → men are giving and taking, they are linked. Women are a conduit of this transaction, not a partner.

Rubin argues that they aren’t being objectified (in the modern sense) as “objects in the primitive world are imbued with highly personal qualities” (1077). There is a clear distinction, though, between gift and giver.

Women are in no position to give themselves away, they cannot alter the nature of it, or have the same rights as men and do not own themselves.

“Exchange of women” places oppression on women within social systems rather than in biology.

There are plenty of historical and ethnographic examples of trafficking of women.

Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought, sold (1078).

Incest taboo and results of its application constitute the origin of culture? → World historical defeat of women occurred with the origin of culture.

Feminist programs must attempt to get rid of culture and substitute some entirely new phenomena on the face of the earth (instead of exterminating men).

Marriage is a form of “exchangement” and kinship. Kinship systems don’t just exchange women, they exchange sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names, ancestors, rights, and people in systems such as social relationships.

“Exchange of women” is shorthand for expressing the social relations of a kinship system that specifically give men certain rights toward their kin that women don’t have, especially men over their female kin.

Women don’t have full rights to themselves.

Deeper into the Labyrinth

Division of labor by sex can be seen as taboo against the sameness of men and women, dividing the sexes into two “mutually exclusive categories” which exacerbates the biological differences between them and creates gender (1080).

Gender is a division of the sexes, socially imposed, and a product of the social relations of sexuality.

Kinship systems depend upon marriage and transform males and females into “men” and “women,” which are “incomplete…[and] can only find wholeness when united with the other” (1080).

Men and women are different, but not as drastic as night and day, life and death, etc.

The division of the sexes has the effect of repressing some of the personality characteristics of everyone (man and woman).

The same social systems that oppress women in its relation to exchange, oppress everyone in its “insistence upon a rigid division of personality” (1081).

Kinship systems dictate sculpting of sexuality of both sexes, but more constraint is applied to females when they are pressed into kinship than to males.

Concrete kinship systems have their own varied conventions.

Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents

Psychoanalysis has become more than a theory of mechanisms.

Levi-Strauss sees women like words: misused when not communicated and exchanged.

Women are placed within a double standard: passiveness is tragic in men while encouraged in women, masochism is essential to women while bad for men, and narcissism is necessary for men but impossible for women (1085).

The writings of Levi-Strauss and Freud suggest a vision of feminist politics and the “feminist utopia”-- we should not eliminate men, but the social system which created sexism and gender.

Not only oppressed as women, oppressed by having to be women. Rubin argues that the feminist movement must dream of destroying the idea of sex roles and obligatory sexualities– a genderless and androgynous (not sexless) society, where the anatomy of someone is irrelevant “to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (1086).

The Political Economy of Sex

Next step: Marxian analysis of sex/gender systems.

These systems are not “ahistorical emanations of the human mind;” they are historical products of human activity (1086).

In some societies, women can be converted to bridewealth and vice versa. This system makes divorce difficult or impossible.

Some societies, like the Nuer, bridewealth can only be converted into brides, whereas in others, they can be converted into other things like political prestige.

There are questions to ask of these marriage systems and whether or not it exchanges women.

Some data show that marriage systems implicate the evolution of social status and the development of early states.

A full-bodied analysis of women in a single-society (or throughout history) must take everything into account:

The evolution of commodity forms in women

Systems of land tenure

Political arrangements

Subsistence technology, etc.

The conclusion of this essay is a push to encourage someone to write a modern adaptation of Origins by Engels, “recognizing the mutual interdependence of sexuality, economics, and politics without underestimating the full significance of each in human society” (1090).

# data[].attributes.headline
TW/CW: Rape, sexual assault, sexual slavery. 

# data[].attributes.subject
TW/CW: Rape, sexual assault, sexual slavery. 

# data[].attributes.body
Though this text is an important read, it does cover a lot of traumatic topics regarding the sexual violence done onto women. It is important, yes, to understand the histories of oppression both heterosexual and lesbian women face, but you should also be taking care of your mental health.

If these topics are too hard for you to read, this piece may be triggering for you.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience" by Adrienne Rich

# data[].attributes.subject
"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience" by Adrienne Rich

# data[].attributes.body
Rich examines the power that the patriarchy held over women and promotes their resistance to it. She also assists in the separation of the lesbian movement from the feminist movement.

Within this essay from 1980, Rich discusses the lesbian experience and “the separateness” that is felt. She also critiques the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s for ignoring and marginalizing lesbians.

The title points out that heterosexuality is not “normal” and, rather, a compulsory form of behavior that’s been imposed on those who don’t identify with it.

PART I

Compulsory heterosexuality bias, which means that the lesbian experience is perceived on a scale that ranges from deviant, to abhorrent, or rendered invisible.

Much feminist theory and criticism is stranded on the neglect of the lesbian existence (a wide range of writings, including feminist scholarship).

Rich’s goal is to analyze feminist texts and clearly states that they would have been “more accurate, more powerful, more truly a force for change had the author dealt with lesbian existence as a reality and as a source of knowledge and power available to women” (1097).

She states that none of these books is compulsory heterosexuality examined as an institution “powerfully affecting all these” or the “idea of ‘preference’ or ‘innate orientation’” questioned (1097).

The texts:

For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English

Thesis is that advice from male health professionals had echoed the dictates of the economic marketplace and capitalism that has needed women to play in parts of production and reproduction. None of this advice is scientific or women-oriented, reflecting the male needs, fantasies, and interest in controlling women.

Gay American History by Jonathan Katz

You could be sentenced to death for being lesbian in 1656 in New Haven Colony. Katz also tells readers informative documents on the torture that lesbians went through in the 19th and 20th century by medical professionals.

For Her Own Good by Nancy Sahli

Marxist-feminist overview of male prescriptions of female sanity and health, economics of prescriptive heterosexuality go unexamined.

Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean Baker Miller

Written as if lesbians didn’t exist, even as marginal beings.

The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise by Dorothy Dinnerstein

Male/female “gender arrangements” are leading the species further into violence and self-extinction. Rich claims that Dinnerstein’s view on the relationships between men and women as a “‘collaboration to keep history mad’ utterly ahistorical” (1098). Dinnerstein sees men and women as equal partners and is seemingly unaware of the struggles of women to resist oppression.

Nancy Chodorow comes the closest to acknowledging lesbian existence by stating that men are not as emotionally important to women as women are to men.

She states that women learned to deny masculine lovers for practical and psychological reasons. Rich states the practical reasons being:

Witch burnings

Male control of law

Theology

Science

Economic nonviability within the sexual division of labor

Chodorow barely looks into the constraints that have been enforced historically to ensure men and women are coupled together. She fully dismissed lesbianism by stating that most women are heterosexual and that “‘lesbian relationships do tend to recreate mother-daughter emotions and connections’” (1099).

Rich states that Chodorow and Dinnerstein are trying to reform a man-made institution, despite profound emotional impulses. This is compulsory heterosexuality.

Heterosexuality needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution.

PART 2

Kathleen Gough’s “The Origin of Family” has eight characteristics of male power in “archaic and contemporary societies” that Rich uses as a framework for her theory. Gough’s words are in bold.

To deny women [their own] sexuality– [by means of chastity belts; punishment, including death, for female adultery, punishment, including death, for lesbian sexuality, strictures against masturbation, et.]

Or to force it [male sexuality] upon them– [by means of rape (including marital rape) and wife beating; the socialization of women to feel that male sexual “drive” amounts to a right; idealization of heterosexual romance in art, literature, media, etc.; child marriage, etc.]

To command or exploit their labor to control their produce– [by the means of the institutions of marriage and motherhood as unpaid production; the horizontal segregation of women in paid employment; male control of abortion, contraception, sterilization, and child-birth, etc]

To control or rob them of their children–[by means of father right and “legal kidnapping”; enforced sterilization; seizure of children from lesbian mothers by the courts; the malpractice of male obstetrics, etc]

To confine them physically and prevent their movement– [by means of rape as terrorism; foot binding; high heels and “feminine” dress codes in fashion, sexual harassment on the streets, etc.]

To use them as objects in male transactions– [use women as “gifts”; bride price; pimping; arranged marriage; use of women as entertainers to facilitate male deals]

To cramp their creativeness– [witch persecutions as campaigns against midwives and healers; restrictions of female self-fulfillment to marriage and motherhood; sexual exploitation of women by male artists and teachers; etc.]

To withhold from them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments– [by means of non-education of females; the “Great Silence” regarding women and particularly lesbian existence in history and culture; discrimination against women in the professions, etc.] (1101-02).

Not confronting a simple “maintenance of inequality and property possession” but a “cluster of forces, ranging from physical brutality to control of consciousness” (1102).

Major public issue of our time is the use of pornography as an influence on consciousness. This industry has the power to “disseminate increasingly sadistic, women-degrading visual images” (1102-03).

Women are objects of sexual appetite, devoid of emotion, individuality or personality. They are a sexual commodity to be consumed.

Pornography creates a climate where sex and violence are interchangeable, but also considers more behavior acceptable from men in heterosexual intercourse.

This behavior strips women of their dignity, autonomy, and sexual potential– potential to be loved and loving by women in “mutuality and integrity” (1023).

Horizontal gender segregation is explored in Catharine A. MacKinnon’s Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination. Women often occupy a structurally inferior position within the workplace.

MacKinnon finds that men often hire women to partake in low paying jobs, such as secretaries, nurses, typists, etc.) and that the “sexualization of the woman” is a part of said job.

No matter the position, server or professor, women endure sexual harassment to keep their jobs and learn to behave in a complacent manner.

Women have learned to accept male violations of their physical and mental boundaries at the price of survival within the workplace, and other social institutions.

Kathleen Barry has been documenting and gathering evidence on large scale, international female sexual slavery.

She states that female sexual slavery is present in all situations where women or girls cannot change the conditions of their existence; where regardless of how they got into those conditions, they cannot get out and here they are subject to sexual violence and exploitation.

The ideology of cultural sadism being represented by the pornography industry and the identification of women being seen as sexual beings whose sole responsibility is sexual service of men (1105).

She asks her readers to delineate from denial, ignorance, and refusal of belief.

“‘Until we name the practice, give conceptual definition and form to it, illustrate its life over time and in space, those who are its most obvious victims will also not be able to name it or define their experience’” (1105).

Compulsory heterosexuality allows the abuse to occur, the woman to “accept” the abuse to happen and stay with the man.

“Early female indoctrination in ‘love’ as an emotion may be largely a Western concept; but a more universal ideology concerns the primacy and uncontrollability of the male sexual drive” (1106).

Women learn to accept their “drive” an inevitably natural behavior because they receive it as dogma (hence, marital rape, psychological and economic imbalance of power between husband and wife, male employer and female worker, father and daughter, male professor and female student) (1106).

Rich states that feminist theorists which contribute to the erasure of the lesbian experience are working against the liberation and empowerment of women as a group.

The lesbian experience has been written out of history or cataloged under disease. It has been treated as an exception.

The failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is “like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness” (1108).

Those who do the questioning, emotional and intellectual work will find the rewards to be great: an exploration of new paths, shattering of great silence, and a clarity in personal relationships

# data[].attributes.body
Racial, sexual, economic differences make a difference in the ways we act, think and interpret.

Once we know certain things though– what difference does it make?

Do we look for biases?

Read through a specific lens?

Are texts set to be in a specific framework?

Does the reader’s experience need to be factored into how we identify readings?

There is no natural, simply authentic or authorial reading “self”

No “African-American” self

No “lesbian” self

No “working-class” self

All subject positions, social categories or recognition that define us within a certain context.

Though these don’t necessarily matter in a sense, they definitely matter to us!

“We can’t simply reduce the difference of the text to our opinions: Texts don’t simply mean what we want them to mean” (175).

If we don’t know a lot about the context of the text, we may just have to engage with care and attention to the difference.

Not everyone thinks the same way, even if we fit the same “subject position”

Attention to difference is what interpretation is all about!

Gender

A lot of the “great” classics are very masculine and that the idea of universality within them is just not true.

“The universal subject is the male subject” (180-181).

Only two genders? Yeah, right.

Gender is constructed.

Queer

Disentanglement of sex acts from gender identity.

No natural relation between anatomical equipment and what that equipment is supposed to mean or do in a given context.

Only two sexualities? Yeah, right.

For some, people just like having sex! For others, people need to have an emotional connection.

Scripted, spontaneous, however you want it– as long as it’s consensual!

Sedgwick & Butler argue that gender and sexuality are performative discourses, that they are about acts first and secondarily about states of being.

You become a man or woman or gay or lesbian only in the context of performing (or not performing) certain acts (188).

Race

Racial difference and hierarchy were grounded in religious doctrine and then, in the discourse of science, then biology, and later genetics.

Race remained elusive and incoherent.

Biology and religion sought answers for the measurements of a skull or intelligence quotients.

This was mainly for legal questions during the Jim Crow era.

Answers were not provided, but questions and contradictions opened up.

What’s the difference between race and nationality?

How does religion cut across race and ethnicity?

Race is a structuring principle in America.

It is a fixed, eternal, unchanging, unchangeable fact of human nature.

History of race shows that because it is adaptive, the concept of it remains powerful and ongoing in social life.

Class

What classifies class? What is the difference between classes?

Income?

Occupation?

Education?

Function of lifestyle, behavior, aesthetics or tastes?

How people define class reveals where they stand. Those in lower class often believe class if defined by the amount of money you have. If you are in the middle-class it’s agreed that money has something to do with it, but also education and the kind of work you do. Those in the upper-class perceive that taste, values, ideas and style as well as behavior are more important criteria of class.

Mentioning class often makes people anxious, especially when thinking about politics.

US society is “fundamentally” “egalitarian” and “fair,” under the presumption of “equal opportunity.”

Class seems more malleable than gender or race. Though the US doesn’t have a caste system, where you are ascribed to a fixed social position. It is difficult to ascend the social ladder and you are unlikely to fall off the top rungs.

“The rich have gotten much richer and the poor have gotten poorer– and the vaunted middle-class society seems to be disappearing altogether” (197). The top 1% own the combined wealth of the bottom 95%.

Class is lived culturally and determines the kind of social relationships that people form as well as the worlds they navigate.

Wealthier people enjoy benefits of excess economic capital, but also reap rewards of “cultural capital:” “access to certain ways of speaking, certain cultural codes of behavior, taste, and discrimination” (199).

Concluding Differences

We learn a lot about who we are and who we want to be from cultural products.

Categories of subjectivity are important for studying culture because of their “slippery quality” and relationships to personal investments, which shape our perception of texts and personal relationships, social norms, public policy and rules of law (201).

The analysis of “differences” isn’t to prove anything, it’s to show that you are not locked into any subject– that you aren’t “wholly determined by these categories” (201).

QUESTION:
Nealon and Giroux acknowledge that there are not only two genders or sexualities, but also believe you cannot just wake up and choose to be one or the other. We know gender and sexuality is much more complicated than that.

What I mean is, there are people who are nonbinary and present more masculine some days and feminine the other. Or just prefer an androgynous look altogether. Is that being considered different since they're changing their look and not gender?

I mean, I didn't wake up one day and choose to be bisexual, but I connected the dots of how I was feeling towards certain things in my life and how I was perceiving both men and women in the media. Did I have a crush on Selena Gomez and Gregg Sulkin when they were both in Wizards of Waverly Place? Uh, yeah, I did. But it was hard to sort through those feelings when nobody around me (seemingly) felt the same.

# data[].attributes.body
What are your thoughts about this particular insight from the Theory Toolbox text? If this is true, does it mean that someone who feels attracted to the same sex but doesn’t act on it can’t be described as “gay”? Does this matter?

# data[].attributes.body
Toolbox Connections

We read Chapter Ten “Differences”.

Nealon and Searls Giroux in this chapter go into a discussion on gender, queer, race, and class within this chapter. Within these categories was the discussion of socially constructed ideas; “That things are ‘socially constructed’ tends to suggest that we simply get to choose how something is constructed or that it’s easy to reconstruct it in any way we want it to be; but the theoretical importance of differences…is that they represent sites where we don’t get to choose. At the same time, however, we are not wholly determined by these categories” (Nealon and Searls Giroux 201). This quote is incredibly important because it acknowledges that the beliefs about gender, race, class, and queer are all social constructs, but people also don’t get to choose how and where they fall into these categories. This ties nicely into the excerpts I read for my section because the idea of what society has constructed for people defines how gender and queer theory comes about. People do not fit into the “perfect” socially constructed mold of gender and sexuality, so by discussing how gender and sexuality fit into literature, readers and writers can start working their way outside of the socially constructed box. This is especially clear in “Chapter 4: The Laugh of the Medusa” in my section; “It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem” (Cixous 944). In this quote, Cixous is urging women to break their silence and break out of the imposed idea of male-controlled speech. The thing is, this is a social construct. Society and culture have constructed this idea that women should not speak, and now women must fight to break out of that construction. Tying this back into Nealon and Searls Giroux, women don’t get to choose whether or not this is their reality, but they get to choose if this social construct defines them. As Cixous says, women are not, they need to break their silence, break out of the construct. Nealon and Searls Giroux spend much of the chapter talking about social constructs, but they also explain how difficult it is to change them or break away from them because they are seen as universal truths. The excerpts I read heavily emphasize how multi-faceted the fight to break away from societal constructs is, and that everyone has a different idea of how to do it. “Chapter 6: Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality” readily shows the different ideas of how to deal with socially constructed ideas and ideals.

This ties directly into the poems/texts of this section because it allows the reader to think over what society viewed as a universal truth when the texts were written, but also how those social constructs have changed over the years. King Lear was written in the early 1600s, societal constructs differed vastly from what they are now. King Lear can be read from a historical standpoint, but it can and should be viewed from a modern standpoint as well. This is true for any literature, especially Bishop, who herself was a queer woman. That is one viewpoint that can be discussed when reading her works. The idea of gender as well has vastly changed over the years and it is another aspect that needs to be viewed from the historical standpoint but also the modern standpoint to get the most out of the text. Nealon and Searls Giroux talk about many things within this chapter, but I found the discussions of social constructs and how they fit into race, class, gender, and queer to be some of the most important. Especially when thinking about intersectionality and how these identities can come together and commingle in different ways for different people.

# data[].attributes.body
Summary: “The Laugh of the Medusa” is written by Hélène Cixous who is a French literary scholar, feminist philosopher, and fiction writer. She has a very experimental writing style and created the first women’s studies program in Europe at the University of Paris VIII.

In this chapter, Cixous makes an argument for women’s writing using vivid language and tying it all back together with women’s sexuality, desire, and pleasure. The crux of her argument falls to “Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies…Woman must put herself into the text…by her own movement” (Cixous 940). In this opening quote, Cixous makes her argument clear about what she believes women should do, which is writing, specifically writing themselves. As the paper goes on, the readers come to realize that this includes a woman’s sexual desire and pleasure as well.

As Cixous’s argument continues, she discusses in more detail why women need to write, and what men’s interpretation of women has done to women; “Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs” (Cixous 942). In this quote, Cixous reiterates what the narrative men have pushed forward has done to women, and how this narrative has drastically affected women. Throughout the essay, Cixous is insistent on female self-love. She pushes for it just as strongly as she pushes for women to write, tying the two together. For women to be liberated, Cixous believes women need to write, speak and come to terms with themselves as physical and sexual beings.

Cixous ends her essay again with a call to write, but specifically what it means when she writes. She again pushes for women to rewrite their history and be the change. The essay continuously goes back to writing and the importance of writing for women.

# data[].attributes.body
Key Quotes:

“…there is, at this time, no general woman, no one typical woman. What they have in common I will say. But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their individual constitutions: you can’t talk about a female sexuality, uniform, homogeneous, classifiable into codes-any more than you can talk about one unconscious resembling another. Women’s imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting, writing: their stream of phantasms is incredible” (Cixous 940-941).

“She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history, first two levels that cannot be separated” (Cixous 943).

“To write. An act which will not only ‘realize’ the decensored relation of women to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal; it will tear her away from the superegoized structure in which she has always occupied the place reserved for the guilty…” (Cixous 943).

“It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or in the harem” (Cixous 944).

These four quotes help exemplify the literary theory, gender studies in particular with a focus on feminism because it shows what writing can represent for women and the oppression they face. These quotes also point out the failings of society and what needs to change for society to change. The quotes also specifically show how multifaceted women are, but also what can be done with writing to help all women.

Cixous seems very much to be a woman’s woman from these quotes, and they show the importance of writing on society. To help change society, literature, and writing must change. The discussion of how women are viewed in literature and the lack of female authors are prevalent by how much emphasis Cixous puts on women's writing and it's being a foundation for female liberation.

# data[].attributes.body
Key Words:

Bisexuality: Being romantically and sexually attracted to more than one gender.

“Bisexuality: that is, each one’s location is self…of the presence—variously manifest and insistent according to each person, male or female—of both sexes, nonexclusion either of the difference or of one sex, and, from this ‘self-permission’, multiplication of the effects of the inscription of desire, over all parts of my body and the other body” (Cixous 946).

Historico-cultural: Cultural history.

“Now it happens that at present, for historico-cultural reasons, it is women who are opening up to and benefiting from this vatic bisexuality which doesn’t annul differences but stirs them up, pursues them, increases their number” (Cixous 946).

Signifier and Signified: Terms used to describe the components of a sign: the signifier, to put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or idea it represents.

“Beware, my friend, of the signifier that would take you back to the authority of a signified!” (Cixous 952).

Phallologocentric Sublation: The privilege of the masculine in the construction of meaning.

“For the phallologocentric sublation is with us, and it’s militant, regenerating the old patterns, anchored in the dogma of castration” (Cixous 947).

# data[].attributes.body
Questions/Confusions

1.     My first is the fact that this chapter focuses so much on men. Why must feminism and femininity need to be so closely tied to men when it seems that Cixous wants to entirely break away from that tie? I understand that men have defined femineity for years, but she could have just discussed what women believe femininity is without discussing men.

2.     My second confusion is the emphasis on phallic symbols and penises. How is this necessary when discussing women writers and female authorship? Again, it felt like an unnecessary amount of emphasis on men that could have been spent raising women up.

3.     My third point of confusion is that Cixous at one point mentions the “right” type of female writing and how women “should” be writing. That made me uncomfortable because if a woman is writing then that is great. I don’t think that other women should be falling into the habit of saying that one type of female writing is “right” over another. Female authorship of any kind is important and necessary. This especially felt weird coming from Cixous after she emphasized how each woman was vastly different from every other woman. Why can’t writing be the same way? Why is there a “right” kind of writing?

# data[].attributes.body
Summary: “Chapter Five: Imitation and Gender Insubordination” is written by Judith Butler. Judith Butler helped start the new field of Gender Studies. A major argument of theirs was that gender identity is fabricated through identification with cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity. They focused strongly on how culture affects the perceptions of gender identity. This ties closely in with The Theory Toolbox chapter by Nealon and Searls Giroux. Butler works closely with several academic journals and has been a part of several Universities.

In this chapter, Butler focuses strongly on the idea of imitation and how that relates to heterosexuality, but also homosexuality. Butler then ties this into the idea of “right” and “wrong” performances of masculinity and femineity: “There is no ‘proper’ gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another, which is in some sense the sex’s cultural property. Where that notion of the ‘proper’ operates, it is always and only improperly installed as the effect of a compulsory system” (Butler 955). What Butler is focusing on in this quote is that gender only exists in how a culture portrays it. This idea permeates this essay throughout, with Butler using drag as a powerful example of how gender can be performed, imitated, and portrayed.

Butler goes on to discuss how gender is performative based on how society views gender should be performed; “In this sense, gender is not a performance that a prior subject elects to do, but gender is performative in the sense that it constitutes as an effect the very subject it appears to express” (Butler 957). As can be seen in this quote Butler emphasizes that gender itself is not a performance, no one is faking their gender, which is something that comes up in transphobic arguments, what is performative is society’s idea of how a specific gender should be represented. This distinction holds society, and not the individual, accountable for the “proper” idea of gender expression.

Butler ends the essay with a section on Psychic Mimesis. This section discusses a person’s own personal identity and how that identity is formed. This is specifically tying into gender identity. When the discussion of compulsory heterosexuality comes up, the essay comes to a close. Butler brings the difference between sex and gender into this discussion, along with the need for repetition for some of these ideas to remain. The essay closes by going back to drag, which was brought up in the essay's opening in order to tie the argument together that society is the cause for the performance of gender.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Inderpal Gewal (One Of The Two Authors) 

# data[].attributes.body
Summary: “Chapter Six: Global Identities: Theorizing Transnational Studies of Sexuality” is written by Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. Grewal focuses on gender and sexuality studies, whereas Kaplan is more focused on American studies, but has worked in women and gender studies. They have written works on their own and together.

This chapter argues specifically for intersectionality but has a major focus on what the different meanings of Transnational are in the different disciplines that the term inhabits. This discussion helps to strongly support Grewal and Kaplan’s discussion on intersectionality and the effects of globalization; “These power relationships are connected to inequalities that result from earlier forms of globalization, but they have also generated new asymmetries. Our task is to examine both the specifications and the continuities within the globalization of sexual identities at the present juncture” (Grewal and Kaplan 963). This quote shows how globalization is affecting the discussion of sexual identities. Grewal and Kaplan point out specifically that most research and discussion focus on Europe and America while viewing other countries as “behind” or “uncivilized. This discussion is important when it comes to intersectionality between disciplines.

The discussion of the term transnational is a defining point of this essay; “Rather, we need to examine the circulation of this term and its regulation through institutional sites, such as academic, publishing, conference panels and papers, and academic personnel matters. By doing so, we can begin to understand how the study of sexuality remains bound by disciplinary constraints” (Grewal and Kaplan 964). This quote discusses that when someone thinks more critically of the term transnational, they can understand the study of sexuality needs to be looked at from an interdisciplinary approach, instead of just one specific discipline. Transnational is brought back in the conclusion of the essay in order to tie everything together properly.

The other half of the essay is the portion that focuses on “The second instance of separated spheres that we wish to examine concerns the demarcation in the United States of international area studies from American studies” (Grewal and Kaplan 967). This quote is a good introduction to the portion of the essay that discusses how various studies have been viewed through a mostly Western lens, but also that there is a specific field for American studies, and yet every other culture and country is lumped into international or ethnic studies, with the argument being that they need to have their own specific fields as America does. This discussion helps put into context that, when looking at gender and sexuality, it is important to make sure that it is not being viewed just through a Western, European, and American lens. This section also discusses post-colonialism and ethnic studies, which reiterate the importance of intersectionality, as much of literary theory overlaps between the different schools.

# data[].attributes.body
“Hence, if it were not for the notion of the homosexual as copy, there would be no construct of heterosexuality as origin. Heterosexuality her presupposes homosexuality. And if the homosexual as copy proceeds the heterosexual as origin, then it seems only fair to concede that the copy comes before the origin, and that homosexuality is thus the origin, and heterosexuality the copy” (Butler 956).

“First, it is necessary to consider that sexuality always exceeds  any given performance, presentation, or narrative which is why it is not possible to derive or read off a sexuality from any given gender presentation. And sexuality may be said to exceed any definitive narrativization. Sexuality is never fully ‘expressed’ in a performance or practice; there will be passive and butchy femmes, femmy and aggressive butches, and both of those, and more, will turn out to describe more or less anatomically stable ‘males’ and ‘females’” (Butler 958).

“If gender is drag, and if it is an imitation that regularly produces the ideal it attempts to approximate, then gender is a performance that produces through the gesture, the move, the gait…the illusion of an inner depth” (Butler 960).

“It may be that the very categories of sex of sexual identity of gender are produced or maintained in the effects of the compulsory performance, effects which are disingenuously renamed as causes, origins, disingenuously lined up within a casual or expressive sequence that the heterosexual norm produces to legitimate itself as the origin of all sex” (Butler 961).

These four quotes help exemplify my understanding of the theory because, when discussing gender theory, a person needs to redefine and hone their definition of gender. All four quotes help to do this. These quotes show what it means to discuss gender in a more complex way. I found that these quotes, and this chapter as a whole, opened up my mind more fully to what gender is and how society and culture play a role in it. The discussion about gender performance is very powerful because everyone has an idea in their head about how they are supposed to perform the gender they identify with.

I found myself understanding gender and queer theory more deeply with these quotes because this isn’t a surface-level discussion. This is a discussion that is meant to redefine a reader’s definition. I think this is incredibly important when interacting with and analyzing through this lens. The reader and writer should be open to having their ideas shifted and challenged, but also they should be ready to shift and challenge ideas. I felt these quotes exemplified this when I read them.

# data[].attributes.body
“A more interdisciplinary and transnational approach that addresses inequalities as well as new formations can begin more adequately to explore the nature of sexual identities in the current phase of globalization” (Grewal and Kaplan 964).

“Since ignoring transnational formations has left studies of sexualities without the tools to address questions of globalization, race, political economy, immigration, migration, and geopolitics, it is important to bring questions of transnationalism into conversation with the feminist study of sexuality” (Grewal and Kaplan 965).

“The first divide is the separation of sexuality from the study of race, class, nation, religion, and so on. If Western, Judeo-Christian culture has viewed sexuality as the other within each individual, the study of sexuality in the U.S. academy has been limited by the inability of the human sciences to address this feared aspect of human life…And the Western body stand as the normative body in scholarly discourse and in public society” (Grewal and Kaplan 966).

“...nationalist biases and geopolitics contribute to this binary formulation, in which the United States and Europe are figured as modern and thus as the sites of progressive social movements, while other parts of the world are presumed to be traditional, especially in regard to sexuality” (Grewal and Kaplan 968).

These four quotes exemplify my understanding of gender and queer theory by forcing me to acknowledge that much of that theory is looked at through a Western lens, European and American focused, as well as mostly focused on the white middle class. This allows me to understand that more diverse voices need to be uplifted within the discipline and given precedence. The discussions of transnational and how this ties into the study of sexuality is something useful in literature because books are not just written by American and Europeans, it is important to take into consideration what other cultures and countries have to say on these issues, and also to not make assumptions about someone else’s beliefs.

Literature builds empathy and understanding. Well, literary theory, especially literary theory that focuses on marginalized and oppressed groups, needs to make sure it is uplifting the voices that speak for all aspects of those groups. These quotes helped me see this and understand this. It is important to check our biases.

# data[].attributes.body
Psychic Mimesis: The preservation of memory and a construction of new identity after loss.

“…a kind of psychic miming—is a response to, and refusal of loss. Gender as the site of such psychic mimes is thus constituted by the variously gendered Others who have been loved and lost, where the loss is suspended through a melancholic and imaginary incorporation (and preservation) of those Others into the psyche” (Butler 959).

Compulsory Heterosexuality: Heterosexuality is assumed and enforced upon people by society.

“Although compulsory heterosexuality often presumes that there is first a sex that is expressed through gender and then through sexuality, it may now be necessary fully to invert and displace that operation of thought” (Butler 961).

Mimetic Practice: Usually dealing with the self, but there are a wide range of meanings.

“Consider that identifications are always made in response to loss of some kind, and that they involve a certain mimetic practice that seeks to incorporate the lost love within the very ‘identity’ of the one who remains” (Butler 959).

Imitation: Someone copies someone else’s behavior.

Inverts: The opposite of what it was before.

“On the contrary, imitation does not copy that which is prior, but produces and inverts that very terms of priority and derivativeness” (Butler 956).

# data[].attributes.body
Transnational: Reaching across national boundaries.

“…the term transnational can address the asymmetries of the globalization process. Yet it has become so ubiquitous in cultural, literary, and critical studies that much of its political valence seems to have become evacuated” (Grewal and Kaplan 964).

Globalization: the process organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.

“In many works on globalization, the ‘global’ is seen either as a homogenizing influence or as a neocolonial movement of ideas and capital from West to non-West” (Grewal and Kaplan 963).

Interdisciplinary: Relating to more than one field of academia.

“Thus the disciplinary divides that emerge out of other political arenas are played out on campus and off, that is, in academic as well as in ‘community-based’ or activist locations” (Grewal and Kaplan 967).

Intersectionality: Understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. It identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage

Articulation Theory: Account for consequences of the ideas, principles, and beliefs that make up ideologies.

“In recent years, both ‘articulation’ theory and ‘intersectionality’ approaches have attempted to resolve this problem by arguing for complex or hybrid subjects” (Grewal and Kaplan 967-968).

# data[].attributes.body
1.     My first confusion is; how does psychic mimesis tie into gender performance and identity? I found myself confused as to how the two halves of the essays truly connected to each other.

2.     If gender is performative based off of society then how does an individual know that the expression of their gender truly represents themselves? Where does an individual begin and the societal expectations end?

3.     What about society would need to change in order to break out of these rigid performative gender expectations that society has implemented?

# data[].attributes.body
1.     My first questions is; what is the best course of action to uplift voices that are not just European and American centric? How is it possible to shift away from the Western lens?

2.     A confusion I have is about transnationalism. If there are so many definitions and ideas about it; then how should it best be used and described? How is it viable to use when there are so many definitions that go with it?

3.     This article felt very much in conversation with racial, ethnic, and post-colonial theory. Is there ever truly a literary theory essay that does not dive into multiple schools and lenses? I feel that everything ties so closely together that it almost doesn’t make sense to try to separate them.