GENDER TROUBLE
Chapter 1 - VI - LANGUAGE, POWER AND THE STRATEGIES OF DISPLACEMENT
- Feminist theory and literature assumes that there is a doer behind a deed
- Without an agent, there can be no agency and hence no potential to initiate a
transformation of relations
Wittig
- Wittig retains the human subject as a metaphysical locus of agency
- Referes to sex as a mark that is applied by heterosexuality that can be erased
- Language is a tool that is not misogynist in structure, only application
- Asserts there is no feminine writing
- Attuned to the power of language to subordinate and exclude women
- As a materialist, considers language to be another order of materiality
- Sex is produced and circulated by the system of heterosexuality
Irigaray
- Another language or signifying economy can escape mark of agender
- Seeks to expose the ostensible binary relation between sexes
- Masculine subject is a fictive construction by law while feminine is the significance of
lack signified by the symbolic
- Theorize the feminine as the unrepresentable absence affected by denial
Polymorphous Perversity
- Views of alternative sexuality
Paternal Law
- Mark of a monotheistic singularity
Power
- Encompasses both the juridical and the productive functions of different relations
Postgenital Sexuality
- Object of significant criticism from feminist theories
