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Question of Gender Gender • Cultura-l Studies Butler a- n d “a- rema-rka-ble collection enga-ging with the work of one Weed of the most rema-rka-ble thinkers of our time.” —Bonnie Smith, Rutgers University “This richly stimula-ting book . demonstra-tes in ka-leido- scopic deta-il how feminist thought ha-s come of a-ge.” The —Leonore Davidoff, University of Essex The A generation after the publication of Joan W. Scott’s influential essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” this volume explores the current uses of the term—and Question the ongoing influence of Scott’s agenda-setting work in history and other disciplines. How has the study of gender, independently or in conjunction with other axes of difference— Question of Gender such as race, class, and sexuality—inflected existing fields of study and created new ones? To what extent has this concept modified or been modified by related paradigms such as women’s and queer studies? With what discursive politics does the term engage, and with of Gender what effects? In what settings, and through what kinds of operations and transforma- tions, can gender remain a useful category in the twenty-first century? Leading scholars from history, philosophy, literature, art history, and other fields examine how gender has translated into their own disciplinary perspectives. Joa-n W. Scott’s Contributors Janis Bergman-Carton Éric Fassin Elora Shehabuddin Critica-l Feminism Wendy Brown Lynne Huffer Mary D. Sheriff Judith Butler Mary Louise Roberts Mrinalini Sinha Miguel A. Cabrera Gayle Salamon Elizabeth Weed Mary Ann Doane JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Com- parative Literature and Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity; Undoing Gender; and Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? ELIZABETH WEED is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. She is editor of Coming to Terms: Feminism/Theory/Politics and editor (with Naomi Schor) of Feminism Meets Queer Theory (IUP, 1997) and The Essential Difference (IUP, 1994). 21st Century Studies Merry Wiesner-Hanks, General Editor Edited by Cover illustration © i dream stock/www.idreamstock.com. Used by permission. Judith Butler INDIANA a-nd Eliza-beth Weed University Press INDIANA Bloomington & Indianapolis iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 Question of Gender MECH.indd 1 5/18/11 1:04 PM THE QUESTION OF GENDER The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism is Volume 4 in the series 21st Century Studies Center for 21st Century Studies University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee Merry Wiesner- Hanks, General Editor Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 Edited by Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin Museums and Diff erence Edited by Daniel J. Sherman The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations Edited by Douglas Howland and Luise White THE QUESTION OF GENDER Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism Edited by Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed indiana university press bloomington and indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404- 3797 USA iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800- 842- 6796 Fax orders 812- 855- 7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2011 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48– 1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The question of gender : Joan W. Scott’s critical feminism / edited by Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed. p. cm. — (21st century studies ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35636-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22324-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Sex role. 2. Feminist theory. 3. Feminism. 4. Women—History. 5. Scott, Joan Wallach. I. Butler, Judith, [date]- II. Weed, Elizabeth, [date]- HQ1075.Q47 2011 305.4201—dc22 2011004520 1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11 CONTENTS Introduction 1 Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed PART 1 READING JOAN WALLACH SCOTT 1 Speaking Up, Talking Back: Joan Scott’s Critical Feminism | Judith Butler 11 PART 2 THE CASE OF HISTORY 2 Language, Experience, and Identity: Joan W. Scott’s Theoretical Challenge to Historical Studies | Miguel A. Cabrera 31 3 Out of Their Orbit: Celebrities and Eccentrics in Nineteenth- Century France | Mary Louise Roberts 50 4 Historically Speaking: Gender and Citizenship in Colonial India | Mrinalini Sinha 80 5 Gender and the Figure of the “Moderate Muslim”: Feminism in the Twenty- First Century | Elora Shehabuddin 102 6 A Double- Edged Sword: Sexual Democracy, Gender Norms, and Racialized Rhetoric | Éric Fassin 143 PART 3 SEEING THE QUESTION 7 Seeing Beyond the Norm: Interpreting Gender in the Visual Arts | Mary D. Sheriff 161 8 Unlikely Couplings: The Gendering of Print Technology in the French Fin- de- Siècle | Janis Bergman- Carton 187 9 Screening the Avant- Garde Face | Mary Ann Doane 206 PART 4 BODY AND SEXUALITY IN QUESTION 10 The Sexual Schema: Transposition and Transgenderism in Phenomenology of Perception | Gayle Salamon 233 11 Foucault and Feminism’s Prodigal Children | Lynne Huff er 255 12 From the “Useful” to the “Impossible” in the Work of Joan W. Scott | Elizabeth Weed 287 Thinking in Time: An Epilogue on Ethics and Politics 312 Wendy Brown List of Contributors 319 Index 321 Introduction JUDITH BUTLER AND ELIZABETH WEED In a 2008 essay, Joan W. Scott relays a telling story about the academic dis- comfort that posing questions can produce.1 When she fi rst submitted her essay, “Is Gender a Useful Category of Historical Analysis?” to the American Historical Review (AHR), the editors asked her to remove the question mark, explaining that question marks were not allowed in the titles of articles. They could not simply drop the question mark without losing the sense of the title. If the question mark were simply missing, the question would still be there, but defl ated, deprived of the punctuation mark without which it does not make sense. Of course, the title that was accepted, “Gender: A Useful Cate- gory of Historical Analysis,” is an assertion and a declaration, however mod- est. The insertion of the colon makes us think, “Gender, what is gender? What comes after the colon will tell us what it is.” What follows is then a kind of understatement: useful. If it is useful, it is not useless, but that makes us won- der who thought it was useless to begin with? If it were to have been declara- tive and more bold, it could have read “In Praise of Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis.” “Useful” is most emphatically not “destructive” or “revolutionary” and not even “critical.” One wonders whether “useful” was meant to compensate in an academic forum for all the more raucous ways that gender could be discussed. Indeed, the essay could have been called, “In Praise of Non- Raucous Considerations of Gender in a Presumptively Hostile Academic Context.” More seriously, it turns out that the question mark as well as the reference to “usefulness” proved central to the defi nition of gender itself. The original question form that Scott wanted to preserve carried a kind of challenge. “Is gender useful or not?” implies a context that one might consult in order to track the eff ects of gender. So, to ask the question is to presume that there are pa ram eters and contexts that must fi rst be known and analyzed in order to answer the question. When the question mark is dropped, then gender ap- pears simply as “useful” in the abstract, then so too does gender become sepa- rated from its specifi c historical operations and eff ects as well as its changing contexts. If one declares in a vacuum that gender is “useful,” then is one im- plicitly declaring it always useful, or useful on all occasions? It is a nearly pugnacious claim: “Gender is always useful in all contexts, so don’t doubt it!” Scott was precisely not trying to advance that polemic—although it seems as if the AHR somehow preferred the formulation that implied that she did. If AHR did not allow questions in titles, was that because questions are not the same as knowledge— indeed, may be signs of not knowing, or of not yet knowing? How does one, then, write and publish an essay that queries how fi elds of knowledge are formed, calling into question prevailing paradigms, within such a journal? If the question form is forbidden because of its critical potential, then it seems that only certain kinds of academic inquiries are per- missible, and they do not include those that question the paradigms that estab- lish the contours of existing domains of knowledge. So what is the big deal? It is, after all, a simple punctuation mark that goes missing in favor of another that transforms an interrogative into an assertoric claim. “Gender” is introduced and it is “a” useful category, presumably one among others. We are solicited to imagine a full pantry of useful categories of analysis and to discover gender there, nestled between other such categories, such as class and power.
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