not a being. It follows that if to be a woman is to become a woman, then this process is not fixed and it is possible to become a being whom neither man nor woman describes (1999:173). This leads Butler to a discussion of how we might destabilize the categories of gender and open up new possibilities, in other words, how we might foster political resistance. Her first suggestion is drag: drag reveals the imitative structure of gender as well as its contingency. Her second is pastiche which goes one step further by mocking the very notion of an original (1999:187-8). Identifying drag and pastiche as the basis for a feminist politics of resistance was, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory to many of Butler’s critics. It seemed a frivolous departure from what might be termed the real world of politics. Critics were equally dissatisfied with her approach to a closely related issue: agency. For many of Butler’s critics it was hard to imagine the discursively constituted subject possessing agency because they assumed that agency can only be established through recourse to a prediscursive To answer this critique Butler refers again to the failure” of the production “I.” “necessary of gender identity. These failures produce the possibility of a reconfiguration of “complex redeployment” of gender. There is not a transcendental subject that enables action in this deployment, but, rather, is only taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very up’ is enabled by “There ‘taking the tool lying there” (1999:199). And, even more forcefully: Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible. (1999:201) Where, then, does this leave the possibility of resistance? If there is no possibility of agency outside of discursive practices, then our task is to engage in a radical proliferation of gender in order to displace the gender norms that enable repetition (1999:202-3). The deconstruction of identity is thus not on Butler’s view the deconstruction of politics, but the establishment as political the terms through which identity is established and the proliferation of new configurations of gender. What this comes to
not a being. It follows that if to be a woman is to become a woman, then this process is not fixed and it is possible to become a being whom neither man nor woman describes (1999:173). This leads Butler to a discussion of how we might destabilize the categories of gender and open up new possibilities, in other words, how we might foster political resistance. Her first suggestion is drag: drag reveals the imitative structure of gender as well as its contingency. Her second is pastiche which goes one step further by mocking the very notion of an original (1999:187-8). Identifying drag and pastiche as the basis for a feminist politics of resistance was, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory to many of Butler’s critics. It seemed a frivolous departure from what might be termed the real world of politics. Critics were equally dissatisfied with her approach to a closely related issue: agency. For many of Butler’s critics it was hard to imagine the discursively constituted subject possessing agency because they assumed that agency can only be established through recourse to a prediscursive “I.” To answer this critique Butler refers again to the “necessary failure” of the production of gender identity. These failures produce the possibility of a “complex reconfiguration of redeployment” of gender. There is not a transcendental subject that enables action in this deployment, but, rather, “There is only taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ‘taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there” (1999:199). And, even more forcefully: Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible. (1999:201) Where, then, does this leave the possibility of resistance? If there is no possibility of agency outside of discursive practices, then our task is to engage in a radical proliferation of gender in order to displace the gender norms that enable repetition (1999:202-3). The deconstruction of identity is thus not on Butler’s view the deconstruction of politics, but the establishment as political the terms through which identity is established and the proliferation of new configurations of gender. What this comes to
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