HANDOUT ON QUEER THEORY: JONATHAN DOLLIMORE AND JUDITH BUTLER

What's here

• Reading assignments for this session
  
• Study questions for the reading from Dollimore
  
• Study questions for the reading from Butler
  
• What next?--where to go from here
  

Assignment for next time

• Jonathan Dollimore, "Different Desires," The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader: 626-41. (on reserve)
  
• "The Body You Want: Liz Kotz Interviews Judith Butler," Artforum, November 1992: 82-9. (handout)
  
• Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader: 307-20. (on reserve)

Study questions for Dollimore

1. In this essay, Dollimore focuses on two famous writers, Andre Gide and Oscar Wilde. Since you may not know much about them, I'd better supply some basic facts.

Gide is a French writer, born in 1869, whose most famous works are novels: The Immoralist (1902), and The Counterfeiters (1926). Gide also wrote a book called Corydon (1924), in which he argued that homosexuality is neither harmful nor unnatural. When Corydon was attacked, he responded in another book, called If It Die . . . He received the Nobel Prize in 1947 and died in 1951.

Wilde is an Irish playwright and wit, born in 1854. His most famous works are The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In 1895, he was tried for and found guilty of "posing as a sodomite," a crime which earned him a sentence of two years' hard labor. He was released from prison in 1897 and died in 1900.

Now for the questions: Why does Dollimore contend that Gide holds a modern conception of identity, and Wilde a postmodern conception of it? Which conception does Dollimore seem to prefer? Does he ever seem to reject either conception out of hand, or do you think that he works to find some virtues in both of them?

2. Throughout his essay, Dollimore introduces some terms that you may find rather unfamiliar: antiessentialism; antihumanism; anti-idealism. Given what you already know about postmodern and poststructuralist theory, what do you think he means by these terms?

(HINT: Think about essentialism as something tied up with: 1. the "depth model," which we've previously described as a kind of "appearance/reality" structure; and 2. the notion that human nature is fixed and unchanging.)

Study questions for Judith Butler

1. Let me start with the interview, since that's where I want you to start. First, why does Butler describe the term "queer" as an "umbrella term" (see 83)? Why does Butler think that in fact, "queer" hasn't functioned as an "umbrella term"? What does she mean when she says that she is "tired of being queer" (85)?

2. In the essay, Butler borrows heavily from Derrida, and just as he deconstructed the distinction between speech and writing, so does she deconstruct a whole host of distinctions associated with issues of sexuality and gender. Try to make your own list of those distinctions that Butler has in mind, and be ready to generate some kind of "master list" in class.

3. On page 308, Butler asserts that theory is always political. Do you think that she succeeds in finding a political use for deconstruction? How does she deal with the charge (which we've recently seen in Habermas) that deconstructors are really just "young conservatives"?

4. Butler is perhaps most famous for her discussions of "drag." Why is she so interested in drag, and what does she mean when she says that gender is "performative" (314)? How is her interest in drag related to her interest in Derrida? (During the interview, Butler insists that her analysis of drag has often been misread. Do you see how her analyses could lead to misreadings, especially misreadings of the sort that she describes in the interview?)

5. What do you make of Butler's analysis of identification, desire, and mimesis? As you work over this part of her argument, keep these things in mind:

a. Psychoanalytic theory has often construed identification (wanting to be someone else) and desire (wanting to have someone else) as totally separate processes. This division expresses and reinforces the logic of "compulsory heterosexuality," Butler argues, by insisting that we do not and cannot desire those we might wish to imitate or identify with.

b. Freud believes that identification (for now, we'll leave desire out of it) is the result of a loss. When a relationship ends, for whatever reason, he says, we often compensate for our losses by incorporating some of the lost person's traits into our own personalities. Thus, for Freud, we seem to begin with a solidly-established personality or identity, experience a loss, and then modify our identities by imitating our lost friends or lovers or parents.

c. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Ruth Leys, two more recent psychoanlytic theorists, see the issues differently. They say that identity can't come before identification, because identity is always itself a product of identification and imitation. It's the very same way with desire. Like identity, desire is produced by processes of identification and imitation. For Borch-Jacobsen and Leys, then, imitation actually comes first--before identification or desire--which is why theirs is a theory of "primary mimetism." (One last note: "Mimesis" is a Greek term that means "imitation.")

What next?

• Homepage for English 60A
  
• Syllabus for week eight (Queer Theory)
  
• Students' responses to readings from Dollimore and Butler
  
• Links to internet resources on Queer Theory