Beyond Identity.pdf

289

Beyond identity

Feminism, identity and identity politics

Feminist Theory

SAGE Publications

(London,

Thousand Oaks, CA

and New Delhi)

vol. 1(3): 289-308.

[1464-7001

(200012)1:3;

289-308; 015099]

Susan Hekman University of Texas at Arlington

Abstract This article is a critique, ﬁrst, of the theory of identity

advanced by Judith Butler and many of the feminist critics of identity

politics, and, second, of identity politics itself. I argue that Butler’s

rejection of the modernist subject for its opposite, the ﬁctional,

substanceless subject, is untenable. Looking to object relations theory, I

argue instead for a concept of the subject as an ungrounded ground,

occupying a middle ground between the postmodern and the modern

subject. With regard to identity politics I argue that instead of

populating the political realm with multiple identities, we should

instead remove identity entirely from the political realm.

keywords gender, subject

Introduction

Why has the issue of identity become so problematic in feminist theory and

practice? Why has identity politics been so widely criticized, even viliﬁed

by feminists of many different persuasions? Why do the issues raised by

identity and identity politics seem to be so intractable, failing to yield to

any of the many solutions that have been proposed to resolve them? Despite

more than a decade of discussion, the problems raised by identity and iden-

tity politics have, far from disappearing, become something of an obsession

among feminists. 1

Why this is the case is not immediately apparent. Both the approach to

identity dominant in contemporary feminism and the presuppositions of

identity politics seem, on the face of it, to be uniquely appropriate to the

problems facing contemporary feminism. Particularly in the USA, the

theory of identity that has been at the center of feminist debates in the past

decade is a version of that articulated most dramatically by Judith Butler in

Gender Trouble (1990) and subsequent works. Although Butler’s approach

is often criticized, it has had a profound effect on feminist discussions of

identity, deﬁning the terms of many of those discussions. At the center of

Butler’s work is the replacement of the notion of a ﬁxed, essential identity

with that of an identity constituted by ﬂuctuating and ﬂuid discursive

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Feminist Theory 1(3)

forces. Butler’s theory replaces the essential subject of modernist discourse

and psychoanalytic theory with ‘inessential woman’, a being constructed by

the discourses constituting her world. The identity that Butler proposes

seems to sweep away all the problems created by the modernist identity of

‘woman’, problems that had plagued both ﬁrst-wave and second-wave

feminist theory. In its place Butler offers a socially constituted ‘woman’ who

resists this identity by revealing it to be a ﬁction.

Identity politics, similarly, seems to be the necessary antidote to the prob-

lems that have faced women in the political realm. First-wave feminism,

emphasizing the equality of men and women, addressed the problem of

women’s political identity by attempting to ﬁt women into the universal

category of ‘citizen’. Second-wave feminism’s discovery that this category

was inherently rather than incidentally masculine effectively canceled that

strategy. But the solution offered by second-wave feminism, emphasizing

the differences between men and women and deﬁning feminist politics in

terms of the universal category ‘woman’, turned out to be equally ﬂawed.

The category of ‘woman’ enshrined the hegemony of the white, middle-

class, heterosexual woman, relegating other women to the margins of

feminist politics.

From this perspective the advent of identity politics seemed to be the

perfect solution for feminist politics. Identity politics offers a plethora of

identities from which women can choose. Instead of being limited to one

general and necessarily hierarchical category of ‘woman’, women can

choose an identity that ﬁts them, one that resonates with their particular

situation. Identity politics has overcome the homogenizing tendencies of

second-wave feminism by acknowledging the differences among women

and, most signiﬁcantly, attacking the hierarchy concealed in the concept

‘woman’.

The promise implicit in the new feminist theory of identity and femin-

ist identity politics, however, has not materialized. Many feminists have

argued that Butler’s theory of identity goes too far in destabilizing identity.

But exactly what is wrong with Butler’s theory and what we might replace

it with remains unclear. Identity politics as a strategy for the political

empowerment of women has also been widely criticized. Despite these

criticisms, however, many feminists are reluctant to abandon this strategy

entirely, because it seems to be a necessary vehicle for the diverse array of

women in the political realm. 2

It is my contention that this stalemate is the result of two fundamental

problems. First, the theory of identity advanced by Butler that forms the

basis of many feminist critiques of identity politics rests on an underlying

misunderstanding: that there is no middle ground between the metaphys-

ical modernist subject on one hand and the total deconstruction of identity

on the other. In her zeal to deconstruct the modernist subject, Butler

embraces its polar opposite: the subject as ﬁction, fantasy, play. I argue that

this is a false antithesis and that a middle ground on identity is both poss-

ible and necessary. My thesis is that identity can and must be deﬁned as

having a stable ground, what I call an ungrounded ground, but that this

deﬁnition need not assume the metaphysical baggage of the modernist

Hekman: Feminism, identity and identity politics

291

subject. The second problem in the debate over identity and identity poli-

tics is also related to the modernist subject. The modernist subject that

Butler rejects is rational, autonomous and, most importantly, disembodied.

In the political realm this subject translates into the ‘universal citizen’ who

has no race, class, gender or culture. In reality, however, this universal

citizen has a very distinct identity – the white, male, property owner of the

Lockean tradition – and this particular identity is a prerequisite for politi-

cal participation. It is this identity that has created the problem that iden-

tity politics seeks to address. My thesis is that the antidote to this politics

is not a proliferation of multiple identities in politics but, rather, removing

identity entirely from the sphere of politics.

Unless we understand the roots of the problems that have created the

present feminist stalemate on identity and identity politics, we will be

unable to move beyond those problems. My aim in the following critique

of Butler’s theory of identity and the critiques of identity politics is both to

reveal those roots and to suggest alternatives. My argument for, ﬁrst, a

middle ground on the concept of identity and, second, a politics beyond

identity is informed by the conviction that feminists must transcend rather

than replicate the errors of identity.

Doers and deeds: Butler’s theory of identity

To say that Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble changed the theoretical land-

scape of feminist theories of identity and identity politics is an under-

statement; it is more accurate to say that, since Gender Trouble , any

feminist analysis of identity has to take Butler’s theory into account. It is

obvious, furthermore, that profoundly altering feminist theories of identity

and the feminist practice of identity politics was precisely Butler’s inten-

tion. The ﬁrst pages of Gender Trouble make it clear that the objects of

Butler’s critique are the identity of ‘woman’ and the kind of politics

informed by this identity. Speciﬁcally, her intention is to reveal the liabil-

ity of the ﬁrst, and, consequently, the futility of the second. In my critique

of Butler, my intention is to show that the concept of gender identity that

she proposes as an alternative to ‘woman’ is just as ﬂawed as the original

concept and, consequently, that the concept of resistance that she advo-

cates as a counter to identity politics is similarly ﬂawed.

The object of Butler’s critique of identity is the modernist subject, a subject

deﬁned as constituted by an abiding substance, a core identity. Her central

thesis is that the keys to this abiding substance are the stabilizing concepts

of sex, gender and sexuality. Against this conception of the identity of the

subject Butler offers an array of arguments. First, she asserts that the modern-

ist subject rests on an ontological mistake. There is, she asserts, no ‘abiding

substance’ called ‘man’ or ‘woman’ but, rather, these identities are produced

through the compulsory ordering of attributes into coherent gender

sequences (1990: 24). The ontological assumption of the modernist subject,

thus, is false: there is no ‘there’ there: ‘There is no gender identity behind the

expressions of gender’ (1990: 25); the gendered body ‘has no ontological

status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality’ (1990: 136).

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Feminist Theory 1(3)

Butler’s second argument is that this ontological ﬁction, the identity

‘woman’, conceals the acts through which it is constituted. Assuming that

‘woman’ is a stable entity, in other words, blinds us to the constitution of

that entity; instead we see it as ‘natural’. Against this, Butler argues that

her goal is to produce a ‘genealogy of gender’ that reveals the contingent

acts that constitute the appearance of natural necessity (1990: 35). If the

‘abiding substance’ ‘man’ or ‘woman’ is produced through the compulsory

ordering of attributes into coherent gender sequences, then Butler wants to

reveal the source of the compulsion behind this process.

In order to establish these two arguments, Butler elaborates her alterna-

tive theory of gender: performativity. If there is no substance behind gender

identity, then ‘that identity is performatively constituted by the very

“expressions” that are said to be its results’ (1990: 25). Gender identity is

‘tenuously constituted in time, instituted through an exterior space through

a stylized repetition of acts ’ (1990: 140; emphasis in original). This thesis,

originally advanced in Gender Trouble , is clariﬁed in Butler’s subsequent

book, Bodies that Matter (1993). Here Butler argues that in Gender Trouble

she did not deﬁne sex as a ‘performance’ in the sense that a pre-existing

subject performs a role. Rather, she asserts that her intention was to deﬁne

sex as performativity in the sense that it entails the forced reiteration of

norms that constitute the subject. It is not free play but is, rather, con-

strained by the hegemony of speciﬁc gender norms (1993: 94–5).

It should be clear from these arguments why Butler rejects identity poli-

tics. Not only does the politics of ‘woman’ rest on an ontological confusion,

but it is actually detrimental to the cause of feminism because it conceals

the mechanisms that constitute women’s subordination. At the beginning

of Gender Trouble Butler states that, ‘Feminist critique ought also to under-

stand how the category of “woman,” the subject of feminism, is produced

and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation

is sought’ (1990: 2). Identity politics conceals the political, discursive

origins of the fabricated core of gender identity. By deconstructing identity

politics, however, we can establish as political the very terms through

which identity is articulated (1990: 148).

If identity politics is detrimental to the cause of feminism, then what

form of resistance is appropriate for feminists? Or, in the terms of her book’s

title, how do we create gender trouble? On the face of it, Butler’s answer to

this question is straightforward: gender trouble is created by not ‘doing’

gender as it is supposed to be done. The ﬁrst formulation of this strategy is

Butler’s statement that if gender is established in multiple ways, then it can

be disrupted in multiple ways as well. Such disruptions, she hopes, will

reveal the contingency of gendered identity and hence its vulnerability

(1990: 32–4). This vague formulation is deﬁned at the end of Gender

Trouble in the strategy of pastiche. Butler carefully distinguishes pastiche,

the mocking of the notion of an original, from parody, the mocking of an

original (1990: 138). Pastiche, she concludes, will create gender trouble that

will undermine the constructions of gender (1990: 147).

In what might be an implicit recognition of the inadequacy of these vague

formulations, Butler returns to the issue of resistance in Bodies that Matter .

Hekman: Feminism, identity and identity politics

293

Here she introduces a reﬁnement of her theory that places signiﬁcant

restrictions on the possibilities of resistance. Resistance, she argues, cannot

enter into the dynamic by which the symbolic reiterates its power if it is to

be successful in displacing that power. What this means is that the radical

refusal of the law of sex, and, particularly, embracing its opposite, will

serve to reinforce rather than displace that law (1993: 106–13).

Butler acknowledges that the strategy she rejects – the absolute opposi-

tion of the law of sex – is an attractive one. The demand to radically over-

come the constitutive constraint of the law, she notes, is its own form of

violence. But she nevertheless insists that this strategy is doomed. She

argues, for example, that a lesbian who opposes heterosexuality absolutely

may be more in its power than a straight woman (1993: 116–17). Butler’s

alternative is what she calls ‘positions of resistance’, speciﬁcally ‘queer

politics’. Certain disavowals are fundamentally enabling; others are not. We

can conclude from this that queer politics is one of these; ‘straight’ lesbian

politics is not. But we are never given speciﬁc guidelines by which we can

distinguish one from the other. It is signiﬁcant that at the very end of the

book Butler herself raises this question by asking: ‘How will we know the

difference between the power we promote and the power we oppose?’

(1993: 241). Instead of answering this question, she instead asks another:

‘Is it, one might rejoin, a matter of “knowing?”’ Our error, she implies, is

to assume that this distinction is something that can be fully and ﬁnally

known.

The two conclusions I want to draw from this analysis of Butler’s work

are closely related. First, Butler’s theory of gender identity as perfomativ-

ity is inadequate for a reason that she herself explicitly condemns: it adopts

the polar opposite of the position she rejects and, thus, is constituted and

constrained by that concept. As Butler herself repeatedly tells us, opposites

inhabit each other. She rejects the opposite of the law of sex as a possible

site of resistance. Yet the theory of gender as performativity that she

embraces is itself an opposite. Butler rejects the ontology of the modernist

subject, an ontology of the abiding substance of sex. But she then embraces

the opposite of this concept, a substanceless gender identity. By her own

theory, this is a ﬂawed strategy.

There are indications that, on some level, Butler realizes the liability of

her position. In the book that follows Bodies that Matter , The Psychic Life

of Power (1997), Butler turns away from the relatively practical problems

of identity and identity politics to the realm of abstract theory. She con-

tinues to argue that we must reject any internal core of subjectivity. But she

also concedes, although only in passing, that some version of such a core

is necessary to psychic health. She argues that if children are to ‘persist in

a psychic and social sense there must be dependency and the foundation

of attachment: there is no possibility of not loving, where love is bound up

with the requirements for life’ (1997: 8). Further, in a discussion of the

possibility of an ethical subject, Butler remarks that:

. . . we might reread ‘being’ as precisely the potentiality that remains unexhausted

by any particular interpellation. Such a failure of interpellation may well under-

mine the capacity of the subject to ‘be’ in a self-identical sense, but it may also

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