While reading Judith Butler’s piece I kept wanting to know what the answer was. It is so depressing sometimes when you realize that almost (or according to Butler; all!) of our ideas and perceptions of ourselves are constructed by society. I mean she even goes as far as to say that this metaphysical self that we all are so attached to, does not exist. So what on earth is the “soul”.
Butler really gets into this idea of the body being the prisoner of the soul, which is the reverse of what most gnostic faiths would say. Religion teaches us that man is haunted by desire and the animalistic instincts of the body taints the purity of the soul. Butler on the other hand is saying the total opposite. To me, she is saying that this construct of the pure soul is a figment of our imaginations constructed by culture and society. This soul is meant to fight against our desires our innate behaviors. She does not refute that the body moves and reacts in specific ways, such as gender differences. However, what I think that Butler is saying that the habitual movements of the body have been nurtured by society, that innately we our physical body does not think in gender relations but conditioning based on “nessesity or survival”. Therefore, a woman’s distinct femaleness is not natural but nurtured by society. Other than the biological tendencies of the female body, it could behave like a male body on the surface if conditioned to.
Thus I think that Butler is saying that our identities as we know them are not our own but are conditioned behaviors and thought patterns that our soul implements onto us. So I kept wanting to know how one would get out of such gender roles. And I thought well one would have to eradicate gender from language and behavior would have to be seen as asexual. However, Butler doesn’t really support this either. The only solution that she seems to give to this role of identity is if people consciously step out of their specific roles, and into another. She gives the example of Drag shows, in which one is taking a social identity and performing it, disturbing one conditioned mannerisms. However, I feel that this would just be perpetuating these socially constructed identities, that the soul is just imprisoning the body in another prison.
The one place that I do find hope in Butler’s argument is when she talks about “action” and the liberation in not thinking about what it means to be something or fitting into a category all the time but to do what you are doing regardless. Because a hermaphrodite is both gay and straight at the same time. Now the soul would limit the body to then only experience the world through one gender, where as I feel Butler would say that the person should not worry about there gender category and be whatever gender suffices them at the time. Maybe this is why if everyone where to experience being in a Drag show it would take them out of feeling as though they have to be one thing at all times.
So if the body is at a constant battle with the soul, who does Butler think could win? Does the body have a chance or has the soul already entrenched it in its web with no where to go but to another web?
