M Butterfly I appreciate the way certain scripts are utilized differently by manipulating the context in which they are said, ie in the court scene Song points out the West's use of fetish and fantasy to justify colonization, as Asian women are imagined as reserved, but reluctant subjects of conquest: "her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. the West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated--because a woman can't think for herself" (83) Later, Song weaponizes a script meant to bind her as a means of seizing power from Gallimard: "You know something, Rene? Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes"(87)
Butler also explores the impact of ccontext on discourse in "Critically Queer" when she considers the reclamation of the term queer. In asking whether modern uses of "queer" are "a reversal that retains and reiterates the objected history of the term?" Butler poses a question that might be applied to other reconfigured discourses that are marked by historical oppression-- ie Shimizu's reclamation of hyper sexuality and Song's exercise in reclamation in M Butterfly
BUTLER
acting..
is power in its persistence and instability. This is less an "act," singular and deliberate, than a nexus of power and discourse that repeats or mimes the discursive gestures of power"
This might be applied to Song's performance in M Butterfly we can read it as a mimicry of Orientalism that seizes the power amassed by the Western forces which designed the discourse initially
BUTLER If speech acts derive power from "citational legacy," how do repurposed discourses (ie. Song in M Butterfly or Shimizu's take on hyper sexuality) separate themselves from the destructive frameworks they come from?
Butler seems troubled by the ties which repurposed uses of "queer" share with the repudiating discourse that birthed the term. If it were possible to sever such ties, should they be? The term "queer" emerged out of an oppressive power structure and the need for reconfiguration was initiated by injustice itself. Perhaps you cannot separate "queer" from its disursive legacy, just as you cannot erase the history which formed this discourse.
We should keep in mind that the reframing of "queer" is an exercise of harm reduction...should our emphasis be on the imperfection/limitation of repurposing? Is harm inescapable if the powers that be still exist?
In some ways, Butler's concerns seem a bit reductive, futile---yes, "queer" emerged from a damaging discourse, yes, the harmful powers that were still are...but you could argue that "queer"'s situation in existing discourse makes it a more useful term. Queer people do not live in a Utopia, and as long as heteronormative powers exist and threaten queer liberty, it might be fair to say that queer individuals will have to contend with this normatively. The impossibility of escaping history is unfortunate, but possibly unhelpful to lament over
-
-
Foucault Actions made into identities/ways of being via discourse
With this premise, Butler's investigation of the efficacy of "queer" is justified, as normativity defined this concept and therefore self-identification with the concept still builds off of a phenomenon produced by oppressive forces of power.
I think the impact of the use of discourse comes from the intent behind it. "Queer" was once used to connate pathology, today, the term is expressed freely and self-referentially in order to normalize queer acts. Although the term is bound to its history, I think the power of the word's contemporary usage IS defined by its present iteration mores than its historical legacy
Butler argues that the word "queer" has linguistic limitations because of its history in discourse and asks whether other terms may do "political work more effectively"
However, Foucault has shown us that queer is a historical concept in itself--that a non-heterosexual form of identity was produced in a historical context. Therefore I think the problem lies not in the term "queer" itself, for this history is inescapable for those asserting autonomy in self-identification with queerness because 'queer' is a concept produced by history
BUTLER suggests we "take time to consider the exclusionary force of one of activism's most treasured contemporary premises"
The existence of the "exclusionary" force of repurposed discourse speaks to the inherent violence of labeling to begin with...it seems categories/labels/etc come with a concept of "inside" and "outside" insofar as distinction implies division
So then the question becomes, how do we optimize self-identification, prescribed labels to make them inclusionary for those who identify with a given term
-
BUTLER In prioritizing the power of citation above that of the speaker's intention, I think Butler may overlook the importance of intention in changing the very meaning of a citation. ie, Song reiterates phrases that are produced by the discourse of Orientalism, but the purpose/power of these reiterations comes from the context in which they are uttered. Song's "I" holds just as much weight as the history of colonization which he seeks to fight against
BUTLER, M Butterfly the notion of inescapability from the historical precedents that define discourse might be observed at the end of M Butterfly when Song asks Gallimard "What am I going to do without you?"
It is as if the project of reconfiguring power structures defined by Orientalism has bound Song to the frameworks he has sought to work against....a consumptive effect of engaging with the discourse that has caused harm, even when the intention has been to reduce harm
Butler: "Performativity describes this relation of being implicated in that which one opposes, this turning of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power, to establish a kind of political contestation that is not a "pure" opposition, a "transcendence" of contemporary relations of power, but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure."
-
Butler "Does this mean that one puts on a mask or persona, that there is a "one" who precedes that "putting on," who is something other than its gender from the start? Or does this miming, this impersonating precede and form the "one," operating as its formative precondition rather than its dispensable artifice?"
These questions might help qualify our understanding of Song's gender identity in M Butterfly Is he/she separate from the mask she wears? If performance defines the "I" performing, this might explain the question "What am I going to do without you?" to Gallimard, and the arguably remorseful cries of "Butterfly! Butterfly!" in the play's final moments....it is as if this performance has consumed Song and defined his place in the world, so that he has become bound to a narrative that he sought to deconstruct
Butler argues that performativity consists of "a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the performer's "will" or "choice"
However, is there room for the performer's will in the manner in which they utilize these existing norms? When Song reworks the Occident's hypersexualizaton of Asian women, does her decision to participate, to put on the mask, complicate the meaning of the norm itself and thus reconstitute it as something that is hers and based in her will?
-