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“Female Voices in Male Bodies”: Castrati, Onnagata, and the Performance of Gender Through Ambiguous Bodies and Vocal Acts

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“Female Voices in Male Bodies”: Castrati, Onnagata, and the Performance of Gender Through Ambiguous Bodies and Vocal Acts “Female Voices in Male Bodies”: Castrati, Onnagata, and the Performance of Gender through Ambiguous Bodies and Vocal Acts Matjaž Matošec A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts Written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Karl Kügle Faculty of Humanities Utrecht University August 2008 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................. ii Note ..................................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1 1 Theory into Voice .......................................................................................................................... 8 Performative Utterance and Speech Act Theory........................................................................8 Gender Performativity..................................................................................................................12 Performativity and Theatre ..........................................................................................................25 2 Early Modern and Modern Perceptions of the Castrato .................................................. 35 Human Castration through History............................................................................................35 The Rise and Decline of the Castrato.........................................................................................40 The Castrato and His Otherness.................................................................................................44 3 The Onnagata as a Theatrical Invention and Social Construction .............................. 53 The Onnagata in Modern Japan: A Reminder of the Past or a Mirror of the Present?......53 The Social Status of Women in Pre-Modern Japan..................................................................57 Traditions of Male-Male Love and Androgynous Beauty .......................................................63 The Life and Art of the Onnagata ..............................................................................................68 Onnagata Gender and Its Construction.....................................................................................69 4 The Human Voice and Its Variances .................................................................................... 78 Physiology and the Functioning of the Human Voice.............................................................78 The Castrato Voice........................................................................................................................83 The Onnagata Voice .....................................................................................................................88 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 94 Glossary of Japanese Terms ......................................................................................................... 98 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 100 ii Acknowledgments My studies at Utrecht University, culminating with this thesis, could only have been made possible with the kind financial support of the Huygens Scholarship Programme. I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Karl Kügle for his inspiration fromthe very beginning: without his guidance, I should never have discovered the world of kabuki and onnagata; but also for his constructive criticismand encouragement. Many thanks also to Dr. Isabella van Elferen and Dr. Gert Hekma for introducing me to invaluable theories and concepts; to all my friends and colleagues who provided me with feedback and challenging questions; to Abigail for being so kind as to check and double-check; and, last but definitely not least, to Ambrož for being there through all my highs and lows, and for always having an answer to even the most bizarre questions. 30 August 2008 iii Note Japanese names in this thesis appear family name first, followed by personal name, except in citations of English-language writings, where Japanese names follow the order given in the text cited. 1 Introduction For each and every reader of these lines it is impossible to determine either my sex or gender without knowing my name or some further information that would indicate them. This is partly due to the language in which I write. Whilst a number of languages make gender distinctions through inflection, thereby almost instantly defining the writer as male or female, English, along with a selection of other languages, does not. Despite the fact that English is gender-neutral, it does use three gender-specific pronouns in the third person singular, namely he , she , and it , of which only two (he, she) are normally used to refer to people. In this way, English (again, as many other languages) not only “naturally” presumes the unity of the categories of sex and gender, but also limits their number to two and accordingly enforces the male/female dichotomy. The other reason for my sex/gender anonymity is related to the nature of the mediumthrough which I communicate my thoughts. Most languages exist in two distinct forms, writing and speech. The former can be defined as a set of signs inscribed on a medium, the latter as a set of sounds produced by the human voice. Vocal sounds are generated by the voice organ consisting of many parts of the human body. As such, voice is capable of relaying much information about the speaker, including his/her sex and gender. Indeed, many features of human beings, including sex and gender, can be wrongly identified by the listener, yet voice, correctly or incorrectly, always indicates them, while written words—unless specifically describing them—do not. Fromthis it follows that perceptions of the human voice and perceptions of gender are interconnected. This is the central premise of my thesis which aims to explore the complex interplay between vocal timbre, pitch, and various constructions of gender. Before further unfolding the topic, objectives, and methodology of this study, however, a clear distinction should be made between the concepts of sex and gender. According to the World Health Organization, “‘sex’ refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women,” while “‘gender’ refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for 2 men and women.” 1 I use this definition not only because of its presumed universal validity (193 member states), but also because it matches conventionalised distinction between sex as biology and gender as culture. 2 It also does not specify how many genders there may be, for which reason I consider it a good point of departure. As the historian Thomas Laqueur put it, “sometime in the eighteenth century, sex as we know it was invented. The reproductive organs went from being paradigmatic sites for displaying hierarchy, resonant throughout the cosmos, to being the foundation of incommensurable difference […].” 3 When men and women came to be seen as two opposite forms of the human species rather than two different forms of one human body, sex became an ontological category, a biological destiny, and a new foundation for gender serving as a means of differentiating cultural man from woman. 4 With the advancement of science and technology, the differences between two sexes came to be explained not only with reference to reproductive organs, but also to sex chromosomes, gonads, and morphology of the human body. 5 The earlier established biological and medical basis of gender therefore became even firmer, thereby further strengthening the culturally constructed unity of sex and gender. This binary model, still predominant in Western society, can be defined as two sets of socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes , one (male) being reserved for men, the other one (female) for women. Each set of gender codes has its own boundaries none of which should be transgressed. Yet such transgressions do occur and can be manifested in many differing ways. This unavoidably poses the question of how is one who does not conform to the established gender norms to be conceptualised. The process of theoretically solving this problem originated in postmodern feminist thought and was initiated by the American philosopher Judith Butler. In her influential book Gender Trouble (1990), Butler divorced sex fromgender and conceptualised gender as performative, i.e., as something produced through the human body rather than something pre-existing which people express. 6 By suggesting that “sexed bodies can be the occasion for a number of different genders, and further, that gender itself need not be restricted to the usual two,” 7 Butler challenged the binary construction of gender 1 World Health Organization, “What do We Mean by ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender,’” http://www.who.int/gender/ whatisgender/en/index.html (original italics). 2 Herdt, Gilbert, “Introduction: Third Sexes and Third Genders,” in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History , ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 50. 3 Thomas Laqueur, Making
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