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Chapter 1, Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire, Section VI, Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement Summary and Analysis
Feminist theory often looks for a bad person who is wreaking havoc behind the scenes. It cannot explain how oppression occurs without a hidden agent. Oppression is institutionalized by those who had an interest in maintaining it and language is constructed by those intending to obliterate conceptual categories that hurt their positions. However, matters are more complex than this.
Butler discusses various thinkers like Wittig, Freud, Lacan, and Irigary on these matters, arguing that sexual differences themselves are not mere constructions rooted in the metaphysics of substance proffered by a masculinist society. Feminists can appropriate the idea of sexual difference for themselves. Butler then covers the debate between materialist and Lacanian positions on sexual difference, whether the idea of sexuality exists 'before' or 'after' the laws of social construction. Butler worries about the quarrel because it relies on the idea that sexuality only flourishes prior to oppression or following its...
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This section contains 288 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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