Event Title

Unity and difference: A critical appraisal of polarizing gender identities

Presenter Information

Stephanie Adair

Start Date

27-6-2010 10:45 AM

End Date

27-6-2010 11:45 AM

Description

This presentation is part of the Unity and Difference track.

In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel draws out the inter-dependency of unity and difference. In order to have a unity there must be differences which compose it, as a unity unifies different elements. If in unifying these elements they cease to be different from each other, however, then the whole would no longer be a unity, as it would no longer unify anything. It would be reduced instead to a simple singularity. At the same time, in order to have difference the different elements cannot be wholly indifferent to each other. It is only insofar as they relate to each other that they are able to differentiate themselves from each other.

In this paper I take up the issue of the inter-dependency of unity and difference, applying it to gender identities. We typically think of one’s gender identity as aligning itself with one side of an exclusionary binary. Considering each identity as shot through with the others puts this binary into question. How can one identify as a man, if he is also meant to affirm how his identity as a man is shot through by and caught up in being a woman?

I follow the psychoanalytically oriented exchange between Butler and Phillips, in which they agree that gender identities are superimposed on un-gendered humans, however they disagree as to whether this means that strict gender identities should be dismantled. If gender identities are artificially superimposed on us, then we must investigate how they are injurious or useful. Should they be cast off, revised or does it make sense to keep them as they are? Whereas Butler argues that there is no reason for identity to oppose desire, Phillips highlights how the polarization created by gender identities is at play in all identities.

I then turn to the positive and negative effects of binaries such as the male/female dichotomy. The hyperbolizing of gender has painful consequences. A hyper-masculine man may find himself unable to cry, as crying would threaten his fragile masculinity too much. But, life is sad and crying is an important way of expressing and coping with this sadness. A hyper-feminine woman may find herself unable to take the lead and be assertive. But, if she doesn’t take the lead in her own life, whose life is she leading? In this manner, the foreclosure of the opposite gender identity and same-sex love-object creates “unbearable choices” and “impossible lives”.

And yet, certain sacrifice and loss is always necessary in order to become a subject decisive enough to act. Rather than persist as an infantile, undifferentiated mass of drives and desires, one must inevitably cast-off certain aspects of the self so as to solidify into an individual. Likewise, all articulation and action requires that something be left out or that one aspect be selected for articulation in lieu of another. Consequently, having too strong of a commitment to the inarticulable truth can result in paralysis. Martin Luther King Jr. remarked on how unending analysis can lead to such paralysis, observing that “just getting on with it may be the most radical action one can make” . Lacanian psychoanalysts Nobus and Quinn reach a similar understanding, “[t]he logical conclusion here is that logic must be concluded and that deliberation must stop if one cares at all about one’s freedom”. Without allowing ourselves the little-white-lie of belief, the farce of an identity, or the flagrant untruth of organizing our understanding of life through categories, how are we ever going to be empowered agents? The re-imagining of gender identities called for should be taken up in a manner informed by how our voices are shot through with all the others, the psychoanalytic acknowledgement that all identities are a farce and all categories superimposed on the world, as well as the analysis of how clinging too faithfully to the idea that truth is inarticulable will only lead to dissolution of the subject.

I conclude my paper with a comparison between two forms of hate. The first highlights the horrible repercussions a system of binary logic and rigidly superimposed gender identities can generate. If the creation of the exclusionary categories which organize our world is done through the disavowal of every part of ourselves not fitting into this category, then encountering others who have not forced themselves through the same process of polarization and repudiation, finding the presence of qualities in them which we deny ourselves could quite naturally provoke the feeling that they acquired these qualities by robbing us of them. This gives way to delusional hate, in which one hates the transgendered other who refuses to be marred by gender categories. The hate stems from the feeling that the other’s unencumbered state could have only been achieved through stealing that which the strictly gendered subject refuses to recognize in her or him-self. On the other hand, if our identities are really so thoroughly caught-up in and shot through by everyone else’s, then one will require a vehicle through which one may separate oneself off from others, this vehicle being productive hate. Precisely because my voice is so caught up with every other voice, I must have the ability to hate other voices, this hatred being my only way to negate them—the only attempt that I can make to delete their voices from my own.

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Jun 27th, 10:45 AM Jun 27th, 11:45 AM

Unity and difference: A critical appraisal of polarizing gender identities

This presentation is part of the Unity and Difference track.

In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel draws out the inter-dependency of unity and difference. In order to have a unity there must be differences which compose it, as a unity unifies different elements. If in unifying these elements they cease to be different from each other, however, then the whole would no longer be a unity, as it would no longer unify anything. It would be reduced instead to a simple singularity. At the same time, in order to have difference the different elements cannot be wholly indifferent to each other. It is only insofar as they relate to each other that they are able to differentiate themselves from each other.

In this paper I take up the issue of the inter-dependency of unity and difference, applying it to gender identities. We typically think of one’s gender identity as aligning itself with one side of an exclusionary binary. Considering each identity as shot through with the others puts this binary into question. How can one identify as a man, if he is also meant to affirm how his identity as a man is shot through by and caught up in being a woman?

I follow the psychoanalytically oriented exchange between Butler and Phillips, in which they agree that gender identities are superimposed on un-gendered humans, however they disagree as to whether this means that strict gender identities should be dismantled. If gender identities are artificially superimposed on us, then we must investigate how they are injurious or useful. Should they be cast off, revised or does it make sense to keep them as they are? Whereas Butler argues that there is no reason for identity to oppose desire, Phillips highlights how the polarization created by gender identities is at play in all identities.

I then turn to the positive and negative effects of binaries such as the male/female dichotomy. The hyperbolizing of gender has painful consequences. A hyper-masculine man may find himself unable to cry, as crying would threaten his fragile masculinity too much. But, life is sad and crying is an important way of expressing and coping with this sadness. A hyper-feminine woman may find herself unable to take the lead and be assertive. But, if she doesn’t take the lead in her own life, whose life is she leading? In this manner, the foreclosure of the opposite gender identity and same-sex love-object creates “unbearable choices” and “impossible lives”.

And yet, certain sacrifice and loss is always necessary in order to become a subject decisive enough to act. Rather than persist as an infantile, undifferentiated mass of drives and desires, one must inevitably cast-off certain aspects of the self so as to solidify into an individual. Likewise, all articulation and action requires that something be left out or that one aspect be selected for articulation in lieu of another. Consequently, having too strong of a commitment to the inarticulable truth can result in paralysis. Martin Luther King Jr. remarked on how unending analysis can lead to such paralysis, observing that “just getting on with it may be the most radical action one can make” . Lacanian psychoanalysts Nobus and Quinn reach a similar understanding, “[t]he logical conclusion here is that logic must be concluded and that deliberation must stop if one cares at all about one’s freedom”. Without allowing ourselves the little-white-lie of belief, the farce of an identity, or the flagrant untruth of organizing our understanding of life through categories, how are we ever going to be empowered agents? The re-imagining of gender identities called for should be taken up in a manner informed by how our voices are shot through with all the others, the psychoanalytic acknowledgement that all identities are a farce and all categories superimposed on the world, as well as the analysis of how clinging too faithfully to the idea that truth is inarticulable will only lead to dissolution of the subject.

I conclude my paper with a comparison between two forms of hate. The first highlights the horrible repercussions a system of binary logic and rigidly superimposed gender identities can generate. If the creation of the exclusionary categories which organize our world is done through the disavowal of every part of ourselves not fitting into this category, then encountering others who have not forced themselves through the same process of polarization and repudiation, finding the presence of qualities in them which we deny ourselves could quite naturally provoke the feeling that they acquired these qualities by robbing us of them. This gives way to delusional hate, in which one hates the transgendered other who refuses to be marred by gender categories. The hate stems from the feeling that the other’s unencumbered state could have only been achieved through stealing that which the strictly gendered subject refuses to recognize in her or him-self. On the other hand, if our identities are really so thoroughly caught-up in and shot through by everyone else’s, then one will require a vehicle through which one may separate oneself off from others, this vehicle being productive hate. Precisely because my voice is so caught up with every other voice, I must have the ability to hate other voices, this hatred being my only way to negate them—the only attempt that I can make to delete their voices from my own.