Is she /ourguy/?

never actually read her, just what comes to mind when i hear performativity, but i have no idea what it actually means

was for

IMHO, she's brilliant, smart, and most fail to see the underlying ethical imperative beneath her oeuvre.

Not too deep though, like the new protest book she wrote is not much more than a synthesis of democratic theorists of late 20th century and Hannah Arendt.
Her gender book as well, its arguing the same stuff that have been argued by primarily synthesising previous works, and perhaps critiquing/making relevant Foucault for a more explicitly feminist audience.

can you expand what (s)he means by performativity, and what's exactly her ethical imperative? what's her view on liberation if that's even a thing in his work?

Why do neocons think anti-zionism and anti-semitism are the same thing? Oh right because you people literally died and have been replaced by pure ideology.

If you're the theatre guy, then the comparison of performativity to theatre makes a lot of sense.
There are different ways to understand what she means by performativity, one is to look at whence the term originates:
i) the concept of performative utterances are from Austin (who influenced a lot of non-radical-lefty-post-structuralist people, such as Quentin Skinner)
i) a descriptive utterance can be, or according to some, is always true or false. it is a truth-conditional statement. This shirt is blue, for example, is either true or false, assuming there is a shirt that is referred to.
iii) I know declare you husband and wife, in contrast, is a performative utterance. it does something, rather than describe something. the same goes for baptisms, the law perhaps, and so on.
iv) Butler's claim is that this is not limited to utterances, as in language, but dressing a particular way is also a form of performing in a certain manner

I can't really remember if she quotes him explicitly, but basically, what she is saying is very similar to Erving Goffman's thesis in the presentation of self in everyday life. Goffman suggests there is no "inner" "true" self, but we are constantly reproducing ourselves, presenting ourselves to others in certain manners, and thereby constructing an idea of a self. there is no distinction between how you present yourself to others and how you really are, how you present yourself is how you really are since there is no "real self".

Her ethical commitment i think is how obsessed she is with protecting "oppressed" people. She is not so strong theoretically because she will use any concept that will allow her to defend who she sees as "precarious", and so on. Listen to this, its from a longer "documentary" you can find on youtube in six parts I think:
youtube.com/watch?v=Olc0hCY4lzI
I honestly think this goes for Foucault, Derrida (don't know much about him) and others. Their main concern is ethical, their obsession with "resistance", which basically makes them anarchists, is a real ethical commitment against authority. They aren't nihilists.

another way to understand her is through simone de beauvoir's second sex.

remember sartre's suggestion that existence precedes essence, not the other way around.

beauvoir, probably follows this in her suggestion that "one is not born but rather becomes a woman" (more or less dont judge me)

according to butler this is still to cartesian, since it assumes a mind-body duality, and says you are born into a specific body, then because of the manner in which that body is treated you develop a specific mind.

for butler this isn't very accurate, since the body doesn't exist independent of historical facts/contexts, the body is already gendered before it exists, that's why blue/pink distinction exists for babies, that's the consequence/purpose of ultrasound checks in the first place and so on.

she prefers to see the body like foucault, as inscribed through and by history, as the site of writing and other pretentious things. basically she just criticises dualisms of any kind, whether man-woman, mind-body, etc. besides, perhaps, enslaving-liberating. since she's really trying to be liberating by giving theoretical room for subversive shyte.

She managed so unleash a mass neurosis on the population. I guess that's impressive.

i see her point but i don't see how any practical thing follows from it, like said the "oppressed" and subversion stuff seems bolted onto it, taken as a dogma without really following from any of the theoretical parts, specially is there's no such thing as a true self to liberate

>she
>/ourguy/
I see what you did there

by true i don't mind there's no self, just that it is not constant but in flux. its not too different from kierkegaard's primacy of becoming over being. we are always becoming, not a thing that is.
you are right about the dogma part, i think, but is that such a bad thing? to have an ethical belief which is the axiom from which you can continue to think? we can't keep being metaphysicians, at least not all of us.
but what there to liberate is the right to "become", to do things which you feel is integral to your survival without being hurt for it. she doesn't suggest trannies are "born that way" or "men/women in women's/men's bodies" have the right to do as they please etc. and i don't think that would make any sense for her anyway. what concerns her is how these systems (heteronormativity, cis-genderness and so on) are so entrenched that we will use violence against a person just because they aren't following some rule.
it seems to have a practical side like this guy says and she herself says she is surprised how her vocabulary has become popular in the activities of human rights groups and so on.

>you are right about the dogma part, i think, but is that such a bad thing? to have an ethical belief which is the axiom from which you can continue to think? we can't keep being metaphysicians, at least not all of us.
i don't think it's a bad thing in isolation. But the theory part getting mixed with the political stuff means that there's never an untainted discussion about the theory part outside of the politically aligned echo-chambers without it devolving immediately into a political fight instead of taking the arguments on their own merit

yeah you're probably right. it's important to not talk over each others heads at all times. and to be honest, there is probably a lot of things lefties and righties can agree on, if they read one another.

Does she hate me for having been born male?

>born male

I'm sorry.

It could be said that she critiques Goffmans "dramaturgical metaphor". Goffman conceives identity or "the self" as a reflexive product of individual actors into collective social situations. To certain extent the actor puts out a "performance" to convince the audience that he "really is" what he pretends to be. So the actor here is fully conscius ands purposefully tries to proyect certain impression of himself. So the actor just "chooses" between a variety of "roles" in the same way i would choose the kind of dressing i'll carry to my next job interview.
Butler on the contrary says that identity or the self (gender in particular) as a performative setting, comes from "outside", from regulating discursive practices that assign univocal patterns and impose univocal sanctions. As performative she means "a stilyzed set of actions, gestures, conducts regulated by discourse, that make the self on the extensive repetition" (not exactly a quote).

Nice. Someone on this board is actually reading.

I don't think she added anything important to Althusser, and lost a lot of the marxism along the way

both these people should be executed for defining the self in such a way

butlerism is basically the state religion of the west, everything is fluid and oppression is a consumer product just like everything else. woah bill nye so subversive and edgy. doritos now with cultural marxism. Soon, being straight will be in itself politically incorrect and subversive.
youtube.com/watch?v=VtJFb_P2j48

Who dat?

shut up

woah so diverse and progressive

they could replace you with a spam bot and no-one would notice or care

I think most people can acknowledge that gender is performative to some extent. To what degree is it performative is the question, and to what extent does biology influence the performative aspects of gender? In the tradition that Butler finds herself in, are these even questions she can ask?

it is the same thing but light anti-Semitism is ok and expected, Zion should be imploded and the people scattered to the four corners of the earth as was intended. Right now things are only going to get worse for Jews as long as they pontificate as progressives, thieve as finance rats and terrorize as Neo-Cons and Zionist militarists. But, it absolutely is anti-Jewish, an in the biological and religious not just cultural, sense to dislike or want to dismantle Israel lets not pretend otherwise user

I don't know if it's practiced consciously enough to be some sort of religion, but it is an ideology whose adoption is conducive to he success of neoliberalism, and it h as been fully embraced by powerful institutions because of it.

capitalism and its genderwoke enablers won't stop till humanity is reduced to a single brown mass of polyamorous wheelchair bound blobs with pink hair. you will be assimilated. Everything is to be deconstructed into focus grouped inoffensive emasculated sludge. this is why, imo, fascism is necessary.

does that mean he transcended humanity?

well, memes aside, most religions can be said to have a exoteric side for the plebs, and an esoteric side for the elites that actually can understand what's going on. But yeah, that kind of ideology seems to fit perfectly the expansion of global capitalism.

It's always fun to see leftists for example call Trump the "accelerationist candidate", when he is obviously not, i'd rather they call him fascist, at least that has some potential truth even though it doesn't have that much actual truth, the "accelerationist" label is not right even in potencial

that sounds possible, but at the same time this push is just creating a hole for meaning, and there are some amorphous agents really good at filling holes, postmodern-Islam for example or good old fascism too

I love the discussion she has with Zizek the day after Trump was elected where she's about to break down and insults him while he's trying not to giggle.

It's obviously a political weapon - link any rational criticism with Duke and Nazis. Chomsky, Finkelstein and Shlomo Sand are good at breaking it down.

user was not born but rather pretends to be male.

it can still be linked to anti-semitism, i mean it's not like Israel is the only country practicing neo-colonialism but people get centered on them.

I guess the US has an excuse because you offer so much help to them you kind of have a responsibility on it. most European countries don't have excuse, and i guess that even the US the same could be said about Arabia Saudi doing shit in Yemen, for some reason that stays out of the discourse, but Israel remains

Hmmm, something that has been happening for nearly a century is more talked about than a Saudi war that has happened for like 3 years? I agree it stays out of discourse because SA is a Western ally, who probably propagates more war than Israel does. But criticising Israel is still a hushed thing where I live (Australia).

Zionism has been criticised by Marx and Marxists since its inception as well, and it's why the left have been criticising Zionism as a reactionary force ever since. I don't really listen to the right criticise Israel because it's always about "muh money" or "why can Jews be nationalists?" which are terrible arguments.

Listen! I had a copy of Gender Trouble on my bookshelf since I was a lowly undergraduate, which I never troubled myself about reading. Well, last week, I PUT IT IN THE BIN! This is what I understand by emancipatory praxis.

I'd fuck'er straight into the pussy, but I'll never again read'er.