Judith Butler and Representation

· Representation- (2)

- “Serves as the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and legitimacy to women as political subjects” (2)

- “Normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women” (2)

Butler recognizes that the first problem tackled by feminists was one of visibility. This makes sense, since the discourse it was attempting to destabilize was one that first saw male and female bodies as inversions of the same thing. 19^th and 20^th century feminists had to address a society that treated men as the normal, the marked category. Women, in many ways, were defined by what men were not.

An example that illustrates this would be the understanding of male and female genitalia. Scientists recognized that both sets of genitalia were composed of the same tissue, and it was concluded that women’s genitals were inverted penises and scrotums. Read fallopian tubes for testicles and vagina for penis. In this type of environment it would have been critical for feminists to establish “woman” as something distinct from men in order to construct their identities as equals.

I have a hard time putting this idea in to words, (which makes me feel better about having difficulty following Butler sometimes) but I think it is one that is paramount to current feminist struggles. Woman was first defined in terms that pinned her with or against man, and these terms--this representation--was how woman saw herself and learned to define herself as. As women became more publicly active in resisting this definition, they aimed to redefine themselves, but had to still identify themselves within a patriarchal context. I think this is the crux of identity politics, because in order to change how people see you, you must appeal to the way they see you in terms they know and understand.