The Sexuality Politics, and Aesthetics, of a Mimetic Image

ECCE BUTCH THE SEXUALITY POLITICS, AND AESTHETICS, OF A MIMETIC IMAGE Alison McIlwaine B.A. Hons., La Trobe University, 1991 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Women's Studies O Alison McIlwaine 1995 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY July 1995 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: Alison McIlwaine Degree: Master of Arts Title of thesis: Ecce Butch: Sexuality Politics and Asthetics of a Mimetic Image Examining Committee: Chair: Sue Wendell ~ac~uelideLevitin Senior Supervisor Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Contemporary Arts Simon Fraser University Heather Dawkins Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Contemporary Arts Simon Fraser University - - guzYanne decastell Professor Faculty of Education Simon Fraser University PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser Universi the right to lend my thesis, pro'ect or extended essay (the title oB which is shown below) to users of' the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Thesis/Project/Extended Essay Ecce Butch: Sexuality Politics and the Aesthetics of a Mimetic Image Author: (signature) (date) ABSTRACT This thesis explores in some depth the relations between the production and promotion of certain cinematic images and the construction and regulation of sexual subjects, within a fraternal-patriarchal culture. Chapter One, Mirror Staging: Terms and Contexts, traces Jacques Lacan's formulation of the Mirror Stage from its roots in the early work of Freud, and Alexandre KojPve's reading of Hegel. Other major concepts and terms are explained and placed within a context of pertinence to the arguments of this thesis. Chapter Two, Serious Fictions: Ideology and the Sexuality Politics of Subjectivity, begins by examining the sexual politics involved in the status of the phallus in Lacanian theory. Turning to interrogate the role of ideology in the production of gendered subjects, the chapter proceeds to argue that some images might be particularly subversive of this role, nominating as an example, those of the sexually ambiguous figure of butch. The third chapter, Travesty, Camouflage, Intimidation: Butch Mimesis: Towards Phallic Nemesis, analyses the politics of aesthetics, what can and cannot be seen, focusing on cinematic images of butch, especially those of Australian powerlifter and bodybuilder Bev Francis in the semi-documentary film, Pumping Iron 11-The Women (George Butler, USA 19851, and Mercedes McCambridge in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, USA 1958). For Hilary Gibson ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my senior supervisor and friend, Jaqueline Levitin, for her uncompromising attention to both the large ideas and the smallest details, and for her unfailing faith in my work. I also thank my second supervisor, Heather Dawkins, whose incisive and challenging questions and comments have always returned my attention to the particular. In very different ways, contact with each of my other teachers, Mary Bryson, and Lynne Hissey, has sharpened the focus of my thinking. To Suzanne de Castell I want to extend a special thankyou for her witty and invaluable critique of my project. For the financial support I have received during pursuit of this degree, it is my pleasure to thank the following: the National Council of Jewish Women (Vancouver Section), for awarding me the Graduate Scholarship in Women's Studies; the department of Women's Studies, for a Graduate Fellowship, and Travel Funds; the Dean of Graduate Studies, for Travel Funds. A thesis is not written without a great deal of support, and my gratitude and warmest affection goes to my friends; Janet Dahr, Laurie Milner, Hollie Levine, Wendy Oberlander, Stephanie Pobihushchy, Deborah Pike, Suzo Hickey, Sarah Butterworth, and Patsy Kotsopoulos. I am saving my biggest acknowledgement for last. It goes to my partner, Susan Stewart, whose love, contributions, and encouragement are reflected in all that is best about this work. CONTENTS APPROVAL ......................ii ABSTRACT ...................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................v LIST OF FIGURES .................... viii INTRODUCIlON .................... 1 Loving the Enemy ................... 2 Psychoanalysis. Butch. and the Politics of Aesthetics . 7 Thesis Organization ................... 17 CHAPTER ONE MIRROR STAGING: TERMS AND CONTEXTS ..........19 Master and Slave: A Dialectic .............. 20 Narcissistic Ego and Fort-Da ...............27 Mirror Stage I .................... 33 Phantasy and the Phantasmatic ............. 38 Temporal Dialectic: The Future Anterior ..........41 Aggressivity ...................44 Spatial Dialectic: Ideal Ego and Ego-Ideal .........47 Mirror Stage 11 ................... 52 CHAF'TER TWO SERIOUS FICTIONS: IDEOLOGY AND THE SEXUALITY POLITICS OF SUBJECTIVITY ... 59 Phallic Politic I ...................65 Phallic Politic I1 ...................68 CHAPTER THREE TRAVESTY. CAMOUFLAGE. INTIMIDATION: BUTCHMIMESIS: TOWARDSPHALLICNEMESIS . 104 Mimesis and Negation ................. 107 Un-becoming Woman: Ethics. Prosthetics. and Aesthetics: Bev Francis's Male Body Drag .............118 Butchwork: From Imitation to Intimidation .......... 139 WORKS CITED ..................... 155 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Bev Francis in Pumping Iron II-The Women 153 Figure 2. Mercedes McCambridge in Touch of Evil 154 What is the trace? The trace is like this: whenever you construct any kind of a discourse, describing feminism, describing the slave experience, describing being white, describing whatever, . if you look at it you will see that at the beginning of the discourse there was something like a two-step. The two-step was necessary to say that a divided is whole. You start from an assumption which you must think is whole in order to be able to speak. There is no one who can speak if she does not presuppose that there is something at the beginning which is a unit. If you look carefully, you will see that this unit is itself divided from something it seems to repeat. This leaves something like a mark, a thumb print, a little design at the beginning of a discourse which is covered over; that is the trace. Gayatri C. spivakl l~a~atriC. Spivak, "A Response to The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory," in E. Meese and A. Parker, eds., The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theorv (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 1989), 211. This passage is the first part of a description of the deconstructive method. Spivak was the first to translate the work of Jacques Derrida from French into English, and thus introduce his philosophy to the English speaking academic world. See Demda, Of gram ma to lo^ translated with Preface by Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). Loving the Enemy We are written by a narrative which is bigger than we are; that is our subject position and there is no loss in accepting that. Gayatri C. spivak2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writes of feminists engaged in fashioning the discipline, feminism: "A discipline produces disciples, appropriate feminists, vessels for the task of producing another generation of disciples. Our discipline would produce feminists, in other words, who can teach."3 In marrying feminism to critical theory, passionate feminists "realize that we are marrying our passion to an alien, an alienating disciplinary formation," thereby coming to occupy a subject position productive of a "site of contradiction that cannot be ~poken."~ What we cannot speak, the passionate feminists, is that we are involved in a contradiction that not only can we not avoid, but we don't want to avoid. That is the difference for those of us who are passionate feminists, not just speaking o n feminism: we speak from within this contradiction that we cannot avoid. This is our subject p~sition.~ Eschewing the reduction of "subject position" to what she calls "confessional attitudinizing," (such as, "I'm white," "I'm black," "I'm male," Z~~ivak,"A Response to The Difference Within, 218. Ibid., 207-8. 41bid., 208. %id. 3 "I'm bourgeois," "I'm homosexual") Spivak turns to Michel Foucault, changing the gender of the pronouns in his text: So the subject of the statement should not be regarded as identical with the author of the formulation. [It does not matter if the author is white or male or bourgeois or black or Indian or a feminist or anything.] She is not in fact the cause, origin or starting-point of the phenomenon of the written or spoken articulation of a sentence. it is not the constant, motionless, unchanging focus of a series of operations. It is a particular, vacant place that may in fact be filled by different individuals. If a proposition, a sentence, a group of signs can be called "statement," it is not therefore because, one day, someone happened to speak them or put them into some concrete form of writing; it is because the position of the subject can be assigned. "Assigned" means "that it can and must become a sign; not for

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