Drag! How Queer? a Reconsideration of Queer Theoretical Paradigms of Drag
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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/90883 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications Reframing Drag Performance: Beyond Theorisations of Drag as Subverting or Upholding the Status Quo Katharine Anne Louise (‘Kayte’) Stokoe Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French Studies School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick October, 2016 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 5 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 7 Research contexts ................................................................................................................ 7 Research questions ............................................................................................................ 14 Corpus and methodology ................................................................................................... 16 Chapter One: Drag! How Queer? A Reconsideration of Queer Theoretical Paradigms of Drag ............................................................................................................................................... 23 Drag and Butlerian performativity ..................................................................................... 23 Greco’s Concept of the Plural Self ..................................................................................... 38 Sam Bourcier – Questioning the Applicability of the Term “Femmes travesties” ............. 42 Judith Jack Halberstam: Drag Kings and Alternative Masculinities ................................... 56 Concluding Remarks: Just how ‘Queer’ are Queer Theories of Drag? ............................... 80 Chapter Two - Performing Feminism, Negotiating Drag: Feminist Responses to Drag Performance .......................................................................................................................... 84 Negotiating Drag Queen Performance and Misogyny: Rereading Marilyn Frye, bell hooks and Janice Raymond .......................................................................................................... 86 ‘Is Paris Burning?’ bell hooks and Ball Culture ................................................................... 90 Janice Raymond’s ‘The Politics of Transgenderism’ .......................................................... 95 Esther Newton, ‘Role Models’ and Mother Camp ........................................................... 101 Carole-Anne Tyler’s Female Impersonation .................................................................... 113 Julia Serano’s ‘Reclaiming Femininity’, and ‘And Then You Cut Your Hair: Genderfucking on the Femme Side of the Spectrum’, a conversation between Amy André and Sandy Chang ............................................................................................................................... 122 Amy André and Sandy Chang: ‘And Then You Cut Your Hair: Genderfucking on the Femme Side of the Spectrum’.......................................................................................... 127 Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘La lesbienne’, and Laure Murat’s La loi du genre ....................... 133 Laure Murat – La Loi du genre ......................................................................................... 149 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 155 Chapter Three: Exploring Queer Embodiment and Proto-Queer Parodic Strategies in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, Woolf’s Orlando, and Wittig’s Le Corps lesbien ..................... 161 Elucidating Monsieur Vénus, Orlando, and Le Corps lesbien through the frame of ‘textual drag’ ................................................................................................................................. 179 3 Conclusion – Towards a Particularizing, Transfeminist Theory of Drag .............................. 223 Challenging Reductive Dichotomies ................................................................................ 223 Trends and Challenges in Contemporary Drag Scenes .................................................... 227 Towards a Particularizing, Transfeminist Theory of Drag ................................................ 246 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 254 4 Acknowledgements First, I’d like to thank Dr Oliver Davis for being a kind and generous supervisor throughout my registration period. Your help and support has been invaluable. To my parents, and to my partner, Gary, thank you all for believing in me, inspiring me, and helping me manage the stressful times. I’m very grateful to all the performers that I’ve encountered while undertaking this thesis. I really appreciate your insights into contemporary drag practice in London and elsewhere. In particular, I want to thank Elly Burke, Jen Powell, and Lenna Cumberbatch, who have all generously granted me interviews and shed light on the workings and development of London’s drag king scene. I’d also like to thank Jen and Elly on a personal level for their hospitality, kindness, and friendship. Finally, I’d like to thank all the other friends and scholars who have supported my academic and personal growth. Especial thanks go to Professor Lisa Downing and Dr Lara Cox, who invited me to participate in their panel at Lesbian Lives 2015, to Dr Simon Avery and Dr Kate Graham, the editors of Sex, Time and Place, Queer Histories of London, which features my chapter ‘Are Drag Kings Still Too Queer for London’ (2016), and to the members of the French department at the University of Warwick, who’ve helped me develop my French language skills. Declaration This thesis is submitted to the University of Warwick in support of my application for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It has been composed by myself and has not been submitted in any previous application for any degree. The work presented here was carried out by the author. Although no parts of the thesis have been published, I have published an independent, but related, book chapter. This chapter ‘Are Drag Kings Still Too Queer for London: From the Nineteenth-Century Impersonator to the Drag King of Today’ was published on 6 October 2016 in Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, eds. Simon Avery and Katherine M. Graham. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 97- 114. 5 Abstract Since the publication of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America in 1972, drag performance has been an object of fascination for many French and Anglo- American queer and feminist theorists. Employing an intersectional, transfeminist approach, I explore central preoccupations traversing diverse theories of drag, focusing particularly on three issues: the relationship between drag and performativity, the assumption that a drag performer’s gender differs from the gender they perform on stage, and the positioning of drag as necessarily either subversive or reactionary. Analysing the flaws and benefits of these conceptual trends as they appear in a representative selection of French and Anglo-American queer and feminist theoretical texts, I challenge the perception of drag as subverting or upholding the status quo, suggesting that this understanding creates reductive generalisations and cannot account for the diversity and complexity of many current drag scenes. Further, I contest the definitional focus on a presumed opposition between the gender of the performer and the gender they perform on stage. Although a performer’s gender can shape their experience and understanding of drag performance, the focus on this presumed opposition erases certain performers’ identities and distracts from what is actually happening on stage. While my first two chapters concentrate on selected queer and feminist theorizations of drag performance, my final chapter considers the relationship between Butlerian gender parody, intramural parody, and extramural satire in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Monique Wittig’s Le Corps lesbien. Here, I develop the frame of ‘textual drag’ to describe the interactions of these forms of parody and satire in these texts, while highlighting their authors’ interrogations of norms of gender performance, gender identity, and embodiment. I then conclude by demonstrating how existing insights into drag performance can be combined with my own findings to create a particularizing, transfeminist approach to drag. 6 Introduction Research contexts I begin this chapter by outlining a representative selection of the diverse academic theorisations of drag, starting by introducing implicit assumptions and explicitly stated beliefs which traverse studies of drag performance. I then zoom in on queer and feminist French and Anglo-American theories