Bodies: Regulation And Subversion A Closer Look At Judith Bulter’s Drag Philosophy.

Binita Kakati
S133CGS09

IVth Semester
Assignment submitted
To

Bindu K.C. for the course
Bodies
Department of Gender Studies
School of Human Studies
Ambedkar University, Delhi

25. March-2015

In this paper I wish to discuss Susan Bordo’s work to emphasise on the point of the body being a locus of societal control. The body being constructed, regulated and impressed upon by society putting to question the entire idea of ‘agency’. I discuss that in order to look at Judith Butler’s ideas on ‘drag’ and its possibility of subversion. At the time drag emerged, it was taken as a symbol of feminism …show more content…
“Although drag drew on the transparent performance of gendered imagery to challenge stereotypes of gender and sexuality, those performances were (and continue to be) defined primarily by male mastery of the depiction of highly selective feminine identities that focus on surface aesthetics (hair, clothing, make-up) rather than social narratives of family or reproduction.Consequently, feminist criticism has critiqued drag as the reproduction of a specifically sexualized rendering of feminine identity, which reflects persistent hierarchies of desire and desirability: of men dressing as the male-oriented version of …show more content…
These bodies become ‘docile bodies’ which are closely regulated by external institutions of power prevalent in the system. Bordo argues that discourse should be aimed against this system, she agrees with Foucault that there shouldn’t be systems of power which are repressive, controlled by one group leveled against another, it should only be a system which allows for power to flow through institutions. She mentions the continuum between female disorder and femininity which reveal the nature of female disorder to be imbued thoroughly with practices of femininity. In these disorders the construction of femininity in done in hyperbolic terms, what is evident is an exaggeration of the accepted, regular, ideas and practices of femininity. She finds disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia and agoraphobia reproduce power relations. In the disorders given above the woman’s body become the site on which the conventional beliefs of femininity take extreme forms. Bordo finds the bodies of women suffering from these disorders to exhibit a ‘cultural statement’. She finds that with the advent of media the rules governing construction of femininity have been circulated thoroughly through images, as a result of which femininity has become a matter of constructing, the surface presentation of