I find it pretty disconcerting to meet the author behind a text. Usually when we interrogate the text in a 1,500-word essay, not in person, but I think I prefer the second option. I won't go off on a tangent about Barthes' "The Death of the Author" -- actually I did, but then I deleted it once I realised this post was already 700 words, and I apologise for that, I really do, no one has to read this. The ideas got out of hand! Next time, I'll try to corral them. (And stay on topic. Sorry for ignoring you this week, Edmonton.)
Anyway. The Edmonton Queen seems to contain two conflicting ideas: drag as an essentialist expression of one's "inner woman" and drag in a Judith Butler sense, exposing and deconstructing the social fiction of gender. When I asked Darrin about it, his answer was that he only learned gender theory after doing drag, and that the tension between those ideas probably comes from his attempt to reconcile the two.
Which eventually got me thinking about the question (which threw me waaay off-topic): why didn't the book reconcile the two? I'm not pointing my finger at Darrin specifically -- it's a problem I have with critical theory as a whole. Theory isn't always written from experience, but when it contradicts it, is that a problem? Which should we defer to? Does one have more validity than the other? Is there such a thing as a test of validity here, and should there be?
It's hard to come down on one side or the other, and I've been on both. For instance: as someone with an invisible chronic illness, I understand very well the complexities of what it's like to "pass" as an able-bodied person, but I have no experience of passing in terms of gender -- I experienced disability, pain, and illness before reading any theory on it, but most of what I have figured out about gender and sexuality came to me first through reading. I don't know if this invalidates the latter in some way. What I have noticed is that I tend to judge disability theory in a more affective way -- if it speaks to my experience of disability, I accept it, and if it doesn't, I have more of a knee-jerk "THAT'S NOT HOW IT IS AT ALL!" reaction. I think it's an oversimplification to map lived experience to affective response, though.
I'd also guess that many feminists have not personally experienced all of the things that they write about (for example: racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, etc.), but that doesn't mean that they can't make meaningful contributions to discussions about them, or act as allies to those who do experience them.
Sometimes, theory lines right up with experience. The social model of disability makes total sense to me. I live it. And I would have taken weeks, maybe months, to work out all of those ideas on my own, versus the couple of hours it took to read articles and nod a lot. But sometimes, it doesn't, and we can't exactly get Judith Butler and Darrin Hagen together to hash it out. I obviously can't speak from experience here, but I think it's possible that some drag queens do drag because it feels right to them, as feminine expression, and would rather not interrogate what that means about the (in)stability of the category of gender, even after the fact (as Darrin did). What does it mean, then, when a feminist co-opts this social phenomenon*, which may have a certain meaning (or several different, individual meanings) to its participants ... and gives it a different one? Does/should one trump the other? Is that question the wrong way of looking at things entirely?
*I can only assume that Butler has no personal experience with drag. I Googled "has Judith Butler ever done drag" -- yes, I really did -- but the internet can't turn up any answers for once.
I guess what I'm asking is, what is theory's relevance, especially to lived experience? And what happens when it seems to be irrelevant?
The closest I can come to an answer is something one of my other profs told me about how to work with Foucault: that his writings aren't meant to be some sort of unified, self-coherent Theory of Everything, but rather a toolbox, from which you can pick out whatever is useful for what you're attempting to think through.
I'm sure that Edmonton understands, even if feeling the slightest bit ignored. An interesting discussion, and one that we should all bear in mind as we go forward in our theoretical studies. One of the reasons that I decided to take this course is because I hoped it would match up the theoretical with the experiential, by applying theories and literature in an context (Edmonton) that I already have experienced. Interesting to hear that someone else is coming to similar conclusions!
ReplyDeleteMy theory on theory goes like this: a theory describes a perspective, which can then be applied to information, supporting the perspective to some degree. Add all these alternate perspectives (theories) to your own subjective ideas about the information and you can become more objective. Personally, I think we should all be as subjective as possible individually, and then share ideas with people to try and find the perspective that best fits the information.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post Rita as I am often fighting to apply theories to emotions and situations.
ReplyDeleteI think it is pretty obvious that deconstructing gender was not the sole reason (or perhaps any reason at all) for deciding to dress in drag as Darren suggested in our last class. However I think this deconstruction or unveiling of the performative aspect of gender can be seen as an occurrence that takes place because of dressing in drag.
In my mind, the theoretical and the practical form a kind of mobius strip of influence, wherein the theoretical helps to make sense of the practical, and the practical helps confirm what is posited my the theoretical. This is actually a point of contention in my department right now, so I've had plenty of time to dwell on it.
ReplyDeleteWhen theory becomes irrelevant, that - to me, anyway - is synonymous with it being insufficient. If we lack a language to analyse lived experience, how can we understand them?
Rita, I don't know whether you'll find this comforting or not, but it's a question I haven't managed to answer in approximately 23 years of thinking about it. :-)
ReplyDeleteI guess I think most like BevinD here, though I wouldn't use the mobius strip analogy per se, because it's too neat and tidy for what I often find a ragged relationship between theory and practice. (See Garret, on multiple perspectives.)
I move back and forth between theory and practice. The question for theory isn't so much how can it be "applied" as "how can I think with this?" And I guess I take the practical as an opportunity to think too - either with theorists who've been good to think with in the past, or with imaginative writers/artists who provide lateral ways to think about stuff.
I don't love the toolbox analogy because it's a bit too instrumental for my taste. Foucault, after all, was also trying to think through the social phenomena he was experiencing.