Abstract
The theories of gender intersections constitute the first theoretical step towards the postmodern fragmentation of the concept. The gender category undergoes a further profound transformation of meaning in the context of the postmodern deconstructionist perspective. This line of thought radicalises the premises of social constructionism: it interprets the outcome of social construction as a structure produced and organised by power, which should therefore be de-constructed and de-structured (‘un-do’, according to J. Butler). Gender is considered a fictional construction, without any basis or foundation. According to this perspective, it is therefore necessary to dismantle structures, expose power, cancel each organisation and hierarchy, in order to allow free expression to the multiple, fragmented, contingent individual’s will or desire. It is in this context that the category of gender gives way to the queer theory. There are two elements that connote in an innovative way ‘queerness’ or ‘queering’: polymorphism and pansexualism, that deny sexual binarism and heterosexism.
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- 1.
Cf. C. Beasley, Gender and Sexuality. Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers, Sage, London 2005, p. 62.
- 2.
On the postmodern concept of gender L. Nicholson, Interpreting Gender, “Sign”, 1994, 20 (1), pp. 79–105.
- 3.
The philosophers who have shaped the contours of the postmodern horizon are: M. Foucault, G. Deleuze, F. Lyotard, J. Baudrillard, J. Derrida.
- 4.
J. Lorber, Using Gender to Undo Gender. A Feminist Degendering Movement, “Feminist Theory”, 2000, 1, 1, pp. 79–95.
- 5.
Cf. T. Chanter, Gender. Key Concept in Philosophy, Continuum, London 2006.
- 6.
Albeit with often disputed terminology (some prefer not to use this term believing that a race in a biological sense does not exist, but only a sociological use of the term), ‘race’ in this context of analysis refers to black or coloured women living in Western countries, therefore, in the intra-national context; ‘ethnicity’ refers to women belonging to ethnic minorities, including women that have migrated to Western countries; ‘imperialism’ indicates women in developing countries who live in Western societies.
- 7.
B. Ashcroft (ed.),Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies, Routledge, London-New York 1998; C. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonializing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press, Durham NC-London 2003. This is a movement of thought that goes beyond the question of sex/gender, connecting to the theoretical and political movements for civil rights.
- 8.
It is the birth of ‘black or ethnic feminism’, in which black women of the Third World are becoming aware of the specificity of their condition of subordination and oppression, not comparable to that of white women in Western societies, criticising racism/ethnocentrism in addition to implicit classism in certain feminisms. Cf. P. Collins, Black Feminist Thought, Unwin Hyman, Boston MA 1990; I. M. Young, J ustice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990.
- 9.
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, South End Press, Boston (MA) 1990; Id.,Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, South End Press, Boston MA 1984.
- 10.
The author is accused of false unification of categories of class and race and of having introduced in the place of gender essentialism a ‘race essentialism’, presupposing an approved sisterhood of black women, racial unity, giving no room for other forms of racism, apart from black/white racism.
- 11.
G. Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. S. Harasym, Routledge, London 1990.
- 12.
C. Sandoval, US Third World Feminism: the Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World, “Genders”, 1991, 10, pp. 1–24.
- 13.
A. Milner, J. Browitt, Contemporary Cultural Theory, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2002.
- 14.
K. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, Routledge, New York–London 1994, pp. 114–115.
- 15.
M. Foucault wrote Historie de la sexualité in three volumes: La volonté de savoir (Gallimard, Paris 1976), L’usage des plaisirs (Gallimard, Paris 1984); Le souci de soi (Gallimard, Paris 1984). English translation, The History ofSexuality, Vintage Books, New York; vol. I, An Introduction (1990); vol. II, The Use of Pleasure (1990), vol. III, The Care of the Self (1988).
- 16.
Bio-power has developed, according to Foucault, four strategies (techniques and devices of sexuality developed by discourse) of power-knowledge: the hysterisation of the woman's body, the education of the child's body, the socialisation of procreative behaviour, the psychiatrisation of perverse pleasure.
- 17.
S. Ahmed, Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice, “Hypatia”, 1996, 11, 2, pp. 71–93; S. Best, D. Kellner, The Postmodern Turn, Guilford Press and Routledge, New York–London 1997.
- 18.
S. Seideman, Queer Theory/Sociology, Blackwell, Oxford 1996; A. Jagose, Queer Theory: an Introduction, New York University Press, New York 1996; N. Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, New York University Press, New York 2003.
- 19.
‘Queer studies’ is becoming an academic field of interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical study, similar to ‘gender studies’. Queer studies also have a narrative and literary value; that differing from the queer theory developed in a philosophical context; many that claim queer is a mere practice. The expression ‘queer’ was coined by T. De Lauretis at a conference held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in February 1990 (T. De Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities. An Introduction, “Differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies”, 1991, 3, 2, pp. iii–xviii).
- 20.
R. Carey Kelly, Queer Studies, in J. O’Brien (ed.), “Encyclopaedia of Gender and Society”, Sage, London 2008, pp. 690-695, esp. p. 693; R.J. Corber, S. Valocchi, Queer Studies: an Interdisciplinary Reader, Blackwell, Malden (MA) 2003.
- 21.
S. Monro, Transmuting Binaries: the Theoretical Challenge, “Sociological Research Online”, 2006, 12, 1.
- 22.
The ‘sexuality studies’ indicate the critical analysis of the social meanings of sexuality, in reference to the object choice and sexual desire. D. Richardson, Sexuality and Gender, cit.; P. Schwartz, V. Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks (CA) 1998. The ‘sexuality studies’ place at the centre of the analysis the issue of homosexuality and lesbianism as opposed to heterosexuality, as well as the ‘trans’ issue that includes transsexuals, transvestites, transgender, and intersex.
- 23.
Here reference is made to the issue of homosexuality only in relation to the gender debate. Cf. D. Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1971), New York University Press, New York 1996.
- 24.
For the reconstruction of the theoretical paths of ‘sexuality studies’, see S. Jackson, Heterosexuality in Question, Sage, London 1999, pp. 10-28.
- 25.
Feminists are, in general, critical of the queer theory, because these theories do not centre on women's issues or even lesbianism.
- 26.
A. Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, Basic, New York 2000; Id., The Five Sexes: why Male and Female are not Enough, “The Sciences”, 2000, 33, 2, July, pp. 20–25. The author believes that the male/female distinction is a social decision and that the distinction between the sexes is a “cultural need”. In this perspective, hermaphrodites that incorporate both sexes challenge traditional beliefs. Cf. also Id., The Problem with Sex/Gender and Nature/Nurture in S.J. Williams, L. Birke, G. Bendelow,Debating Biology: Sociological Reflections on Health, Medicine and Society, Routledge, London 2003, pp. 123–144. Cf. also I. Morland, Why Five Sexes are not Enough, in N. Giffney, M.O’ Rourke (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, Ashgate, Farnham 2009, pp. 33–47; J. Epstein, Either/or—neither/nor: Sexual Ambiguity and the Ideology of Gender, “Genders”, 1990, 7, pp. 99–142.
- 27.
A. Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men, BasicBooks, New York 1992.
- 28.
The author affirms that parents of intersex children are ‘brave pioneers’ with the difficult task of changing the social perception of the problem, to encourage social acceptance in future generations.
- 29.
P. Califia, Sex Changes: the Politics of Transgenderism, Cleis Press, San Francisco 1997. The term was coined by V. Price. S. Hines, TransForming Gender. Transgender Practices of Identity Intimacy and Care, The Policy Press, Bristol 2007.
- 30.
G. Salamon, Assuming a Body. Transgender and the Rhetoric of Materiality, Columbia University Press, New York 2010.
- 31.
C. Beasley, Gender and Sexuality, cit., p. 118.
- 32.
Is a transgender from female to male who relates to a woman heterosexual or homosexual? The answer depends on whether sexuality is considered from the point of view of anatomical sex or social/individual gender. S. Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians and Dilemmas of Citizenship, Temple University Press, Philadelphia 2001.
- 33.
G. Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, cit.
- 34.
T. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 1990.
- 35.
M.J. Hird, Biologically Queer, in N. Giffney, M.O’ Rourke (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, cit., pp. 347–362; Id., Sex, Gender and Science, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke 2004; N. Giffney, M.J. Hird, Queering the non Human, Ashgate, Aldershot 2008.
- 36.
See especially J. Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge, New York–London 1990 and Id., Undoing Gender, Routledge, New York 2004.
- 37.
French materialist feminism has examined the sex/gender contrast in this line of thinking, intervening also in the Anglo-Saxon debate. The usual distinction is reversed: it is not gender constructed on sexual biological difference, but sex has become a perceived category, as gender exists. This is the position adopted by C. Delphy, M. Wittig, C. Guillaum, N.C. Mathieu. Cf. C. Delphy, Rethinking Sex and Gender, “Women’s Studies International Forum”, 1993, 16 (1), pp. 1–9; L. Adkins, D. Leonard (eds.), Sex in Question: French Materialist Feminism, Taylor and Francis, London 1996.
- 38.
J. Butler, Gender Trouble, cit.
- 39.
‘To make’ means to produce, aimed at completion of a final (practical) result; ‘to do’ indicates an activity or a process without a final outcome.
- 40.
This is also a thesis of M. Wittig, The Straight Mind and other Essays, Billing and Sons, Worcester 1992. Wittig speaks of nature as an imaginary formation, an idea that “was founded for us”.
- 41.
J. Butler,Bodies that Matter, Routledge, New York–London 1993.
- 42.
This theory emerges as original Foucauldian rethinking. Foucault in his ‘genealogy’ traces the origins of the construction of identity and the subject, but he considers the body a natural given. Butler also believes the (material) body to be socially constructed by performative acts.
- 43.
A. Hughes, A. Witz, Feminism and the Matter of Bodies: from De Beauvoir to Butler, “Body and Society”, 1997, 3 (1), pp. 47–60.
- 44.
J. Butler, Gender Trouble, cit. According to the author, there is no gender identity behind the “expressions of gender”.
- 45.
M. Lloyd, Judith Butler. From Norms to Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge 2007.
- 46.
Nomadism (taken up by Deleuze) is a category thematized by R. Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Columbia University Press, New York 1994. Nomad indicates the continual mutability of subjectivity; nomadism indicates acentric dislocation, moving ‘regardless of the destination’. C.f. also Id., Patterns of Dissonance, Blackwell, Oxford 1991.
- 47.
G. Jagger, Judith Butler. Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative, Routledge, London–New York 2008.
- 48.
G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, L’anti-Oedipe, Les Éditions de Munuit, Paris 1972.
- 49.
C. Lév-Strauss believes that the incest taboo (not as a biological phenomenon but as a cultural one) is the immutable and eternal universal law. In his view, the prohibition of incest constitutes the primary rule of kinship (the prohibition of endogamy and the prescription of exogamy) that defines and codifies family roles in which sexuality is structured, sexed identity and sexual difference (mother/father is someone with whom a son and daughter do not have sexual relations; a mother is someone who only has sexual relations with the father). C. Lévi-Strauss, Les structures elementaires de la parenté, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1947.
- 50.
K. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, cit.
- 51.
T. Carver, S.A. Chambers, Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics. Critical Encounters, Routledge, New York–London 2008; S.A. Chambers, T. Carver, Judith Butler and Political Theory. Troubling Politics, Routledge, New York–London 2008; E. Loizidou, Judith Butler: Ethics, Law, Politics, Routledge, London 2007; S. Salin, The Judith Butler Reader, Blackwell, Oxford 2004.
- 52.
J. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, Stanford U.P., Stanford 1997; Id.,Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Verso, London 2004; Id.,Giving an Account of Oneself, Routledge, New York–London 2004; Id., Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France, New York, Columbia 1987; Id.,The End of Sexual Difference, in E. Bronfen, M. Kavka (eds.), Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century. Gender and Culture, Columbia University Press, New York 2001.
- 53.
Ibid, p. 130.
- 54.
Cf. M. Lloyd, Judith Butler. From Norms to Politics, cit.
- 55.
M. Sönser Breen, W.J. Blumenfeld (eds.), Butler Matters. Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies, Ashgate, Aldershot 2005.
- 56.
The author is Italian, but has lived in the United States for a long time (she has written both in English and Italian). Sui generis has only an Italian edition (Feltrinelli, Milano 1996). T. De Lauretis, Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation, “Theatre Journal”, 1988, 40, 2, pp. 155–177; Id., The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1994; Id., The Essence of the Triangle; or, Taking the Risk of the Essentialism Seriously, “Differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies”, 1988, I, 2, pp. 3–37; Id., Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: an Introduction, “Differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies”, 1991, 3, 2, pp. iii–xviii.
- 57.
T. De Lauretis, Sui generis, cit., p. 139.
- 58.
Ibid, p. 139. De Lauretis resumes the reference to sui generis parodies, emphasising the concept of ‘parody’ in ever-changing roles. Each identity is not fixed: it is a parody of another, a simulacrum of something that is not there (nothing is given in its natural fixity).
- 59.
Ibid, p. 136.
- 60.
T. De Lauretis, Technologies of Gender, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1986.
- 61.
T. De Lauretis, Sui generis, cit., p. 141.
- 62.
The author gives a concrete example. When we bar, filling out a form, the box M (male) or F (female) we ‘engender’: not only do others consider us M or F, but we also represent ourselves as M or F (ibid, pp. 144–145).
- 63.
Ibid, p. 145.
- 64.
It is proposed not as post-queer that refers to a time after queer, not even as post/queer configuring a going beyond or (post)queer that could favor both ‘post’ as well as ‘queer’. Cf. D.V. Ruffolo, Post-Queer Considerations, in N. Giffney, M.O’ Rourke (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, cit., pp. 379–393; D.V. Ruffolo, Post-Queer Politics, Ashgate, Farnham 2009.
- 65.
D. Haraway,Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York 1991; Id., Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience, Routledge, London 1997.
- 66.
The expression is taken up again by A. Artaud. See E. Grosz, Experiental Desire: Rethinking Queer Subjectivity, in J. Copjec (ed.), Supposing the Subject, Verso, London 1994, pp. 133–157.
- 67.
A. Balsamo, Technologies for the Gendered Body. Reading Cyborg Woman, Duke University Press, Durham London 1996.
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Palazzani, L. (2012). From Gender to Queer. In: Gender in Philosophy and Law. SpringerBriefs in Law. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4991-7_2
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