1.1 Introduction
Subjectivityâthe process of identity formation and of how one emerges as a subjectâis a central concept in philosophy, social sciences and contemporary political discourse. Judith Butlerâs work on gender and identity in the late 1980s put forward a critique of the essentialist theories of identity that assumed a universal category of women as the foundation of feminism.1 Her workâdrawing inspiration from critical theories and philosophical traditions as diverse as French poststructuralism, constructivism, psychoanalysis and feminist theoryâtook an oppositional relation to certain strands of feminist literary theory. The feminist views that she took to task, as Butler explains in her 1999 preface to Gender Trouble, were committed to confine the meaning of gender to conventional notions of masculinity and femininity and thus idealized or dictated certain possibilities for gender at the expense of excluding others (viiâviii). Butlerâs critique of essentialist notions of the subject, then, proposed a theory of subjectivity accounting for how performative acts (or the linguistic and bodily reiteration of social norms that constitute the subject) destabilize identity categories. This book expands on Butlerâs critique of the subject, looking into the construction of human subjectivity as a performative and ethical process, with a focus on the possibility of transgression in a context of social relations and power structures that affect and condition our formation as human subjects.
To illustrate this position further, I also place into dialogue Butlerâs conception of performative and ethical subjectivity with two plays by British playwright Howard Barker. These literary analyses will demonstrate that the interaction of desire with a transgression of dominant ideologies can open up a space for interrogating the ambivalent character of subjectivity as social production and a locus of social change. The playsâThe Castle (1985) and The Fence in Its Thousandth Year (2005)âwere, respectively, produced in the context of 1980s British feminism and the post-9/11 global politics, being philosophically and historically aligned with the context of Butlerâs early critique of feminist theory (culminating in a theory of gender performativity in 1990) and her later work on ethics of subjectivity in the 2000s. Barkerâs particular focus on the irrational and the catastrophic2 comes to force choices on his characters so that they have to subvert3 familiar codes to reinvent themselves. In order to survive, these characters have to construct a certain subjectivity under personal, societal and political pressure. Barker, thus, places his characters in an environment that is both restrictive and enabling. This environment drives Barkerâs characters to take risks at the prospect of constructing themselves outside the bounds of normative morality by which they are constrained. The narratives of self-invention in Barkerâs dramatic world can hence give us vivid examples to explore and illustrate Butlerâs theory of subjectivityâa theory that focuses on the paradoxical interplay of constraint and agency in the construction of identity.
Butlerâs critique of identity politics emerged in the context of the 1980s and early 1990s feminist debates on the categories of sex, gender and identity and on âwomenâ as the subject of feminism. In her seminal work Gender Trouble (first published in 1990), Butler proposed a performative view of subjectivity, which is a theory of subject formation that takes account of how we are formed through a citational process involving the reiterationâthrough linguistic and bodily actsâof the hegemonic norms by which we are constituted. Subjectivity in this sense is a cultural construction but at the same time also becomes a domain of agency. Performativity enables the subject to undermine the stability of moral, socio-political, and cultural frameworks that condition its formation and thus holds possibilities for political change, social transformation and resistance to oppressive structures. In the 2000s, Butler complemented this political dimension of her theory of subjectivity by bringing to the fore an ethics of relationality guided by how the subject is formed in dependency and how it gains an understanding of the self in relation to the other.4 In this account of subjectivityâwhich was influenced by Levinasian ethics in a post-9/11 political contextâidentity is constituted not only by norms that come prior to the formation of the subject but also through a fundamental dependency with human others.5 My case studies in Chapters 4 and 5 place this account of performative and ethical subjectivityâwhich addresses the formation of a subject as taking place in relation to external forces and conditionsâin conversation with dramatic explorations of the construction of human subjectivity in Barkerâs plays. This critical scrutiny into subjectivity presents an analytical framework that merges Butlerâs feminist philosophy with Barkerâs drama to pose enquiries into the formation of identity in the context of limitations (such as social, moral and political forces) that themselves open up possibilities for transgression.
In this introductory chapter, I will situate theatre criticism within the 1980s feminist debates that instigated Butlerâs key intervention into feminist theory. With this historical sketch, I provide an introduction into the ways in which feminist theories of identityâin generalâhave contributed to the study of subjectivity in theatre and how Butlerâs theoretical intervention into feminist understandings of identityâin particularâfinds a place in relation to theatre studies. As this historical account outlines the relation of feminist critical theory (and its consideration of subjectivity) to theatre studies, it also lays the ground for mobilizing Butlerâs theory of the subject in case studies from Barkerâs theatre in Chapter 4.
Chapter 2 carries this historical account forward by locating Butlerâs theoretical trajectory within a broader framework of feminist debates on subjectivity. In preparing the ground for unravelling the ambiguities around the constructionist view of subjectivity and the potential for subjective agency, the chapter provides a review of the critiques levelled against Butlerâs interrogations of identity politics. This critical review will lead to a comprehensive examination of Butlerâs theory of subjectivity (as performatively constructed in discourse6 and formed in an ethical relation to otherness) in Chapter 3. I begin the discussions in Chapter 3 with a critical examination of the politics and ethics of subjectivity, moving on to a consideration of the notions of desire and boundary crossing. The chapter explores the limits of agency imaginable for a subject constructed in fundamental relationality to what comes prior to its existenceâthat is, normative structures7 as well as the human other.
Chapter 4 fleshes out this theory of subjectivity in two critical case studies from drama. These case studies put Butlerâs ideas into context through tangible examples from two plays dealing with transgression to show that subjectivity is marked by an ontological corporeal vulnerability to what is beyond the self and thus outside oneâs control, but nevertheless it paradoxically also remains a locus of agency and a site of social and political resistance. The first case study explores the performative construction of subjectivity in Barkerâs The Castle (1985) through a focus on transgressive acts that dramatize a potentiality for undermining the stability of normative social, moral and political structures. The analysis aligns Butlerâs insights into the workings of identity and agency with Barkerâs explorations of transgressive sexuality. The alignment works to expand on the constraining and enabling aspects of performativity by focusing on the interplay of structure and agency in the human struggle to reinscribe social reality. Where Barker presents erotic desire as the enabling force through which his protagonists overthrow normative frameworks and dominant social ideologies, I introduce Butlerâs reflections on performativity and resistance to show how sexuality (as well as gender) ambivalently works as both a normative construction and a domain of agency.
Normative structures, however, are not the only external forces at stake in the formation of subjectivity. As social beings, we are also formed in dependency with human others. The second case study in Chapter 4 expands on this view through engagement with an ethics of alterity (otherness) that grounds subjectivity in corporeal vulnerability to other humans.8 The mapping of Butlerâs ethical reframing of subjectivityâas essentially fractured and incoherentâonto Barkerâs enigmatic play The Fence (2005) brings out the unknowability of the self as a fundamental human vulnerability that stems from bodily encounters with others.
Chapter 5 brings this studyâs conclusions on human agency and subjectivity together, reiterating that this bookâs alignment of transgression and subjectivity in the light of a politics of performativity and an ethics of relationality enhances an understanding of the human subject as dependent on relations and material conditions that have formative impact on subjectivity. Drama that stages the continual struggle to cross these formative boundaries and constitutive limits underpins the performative and relational nature of subjectivity. It reveals how we, the human subjects, are formed in fundamental relationality to the human and non-human other. In an effor...