On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Doug wrote:
> > By the way, does Butler
> > provide any empirical evidence for her claims except a vague mention of
> > transexualism as indicative of teh performative nature of subjectivity?
and Asher replied:
>
> Yes. Take a look in Gender trouble, she provides quite a few examples of
> transsexualism and such, also of drag. A lot of it based on Foucault's work
> w/Heraclitus.
YES INDEED..... do take a good look! Butler berates the gay rights
movement for its lack of understanding of the radical potential of
cross dressing. Perhaps Butler has very little to do with the gay
rights movement and the temporary coalition known as the gay
community in Australia for if she had she would not make this demand.
Butler is telling us to put on a dress and quietly die of AIDS. Here
her text is verging on, if not actually homophobic.
Drag has long been used in gay rights struggles, as a tactic, even
donning a bussiness suit is drag. But perhaps, in antidote
to Butler's conservativism, I can suggest that the most radical thing
I have seen during the gay rights riots in Sydney in 1978 were drag
queens, in the front lines, carrying a bag of rotten tomatoes which
they accurately lobbed into the faces of the homophobic thugs which
at that time constituted the New South Wales Police Force.
Leo Bersani had this to say of Butlers reactionary demands that all
the gay rights struggle need do it cross dress:
In response to claims to "subversion" and "insubordination,"
Bersani affirms, and I agree with him completely on this one, he
affirms that "the historical and ideological critique of identity
surely deserves to inspire more than a taste for crossdressing" (H
50).
[From Homosexualism
by Fadi Abou-Rihan at
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~abouriha/]
best wishes
Chris Jones