Gender and Society

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the notions of agency, narration and voice as they link to the theories of Judith Butler in her conception of the place of gender. It also examines the notions of Gayatri Spivak and her emphasis on representation as a burden which suppresses minorities, Sherry Ortner in her distinction between gender and sex from a cultural perspective and De Lauretis in her distinction between women as representation and women in real life.

From the Paper:

"Butler's understanding of political engagement, as requiring a constituted subject, will serve to lay the premise for the notion of agency as I wish to analyze it within the text. Foucault's theorization of the subject's relation to forces of dominance identifies the body as a site for their intersection. This configuration challenges myths of the unified subject that is in control of "his" own life because the subject, according to Foucault, is constituted. Butler utilizes this concept to discuss how political engagement has to begin with this belief in the constituted, fragmented subject that appropriates the structures of his/her own subjugation, in order to turn these structures against themselves-a process she terms the "infinite process of resignification.""

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