Gender Perfomativity and Gender

Interpellation: A feminist Critique

on the selected novels of Anna
Burns, Anne Tyler and Gillian
Flynn
SUBMITTED BY SEEMA RANI, REGISTRATION NO: 12021112
UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF DR. SUSHIMITA
BHATTACHARYA ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, LOVELY
PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
Objectives :
 To understand how gender framing and social conditioning contribute to silencing and marginalization of women.

 To interpret the select texts as a subversive narrative where hegemonic gender norms oppress women

 To highlight how gender is configured as a form of performativity and analyze the social implications of gender
performativity and gender interpellation.

 To explore the social implications of gender performativity and gender interpellation by examining the select
novels.

 To explicate how female vulnerability is mystified, naturalized and perpetuated by manipulative patriarchal
normative
 Feminism
• A political stance

• Focuses on gender as a subject of analysis while reading cultural

practices

• Calls for distinguishing between sex and gender.

• Sex is biological, and include anatomy and physiology

• Gender is a social category

• 1830-1920: First wave suffragette movement, civil rights movement.

• 1960s: Second wave-networking of women's groups, deeper

engagement with political debates.

• 1980s: Post-feminism-cyberfeminism, ecofeminism and the

emergence of a postcolonial slant to feminist theory.

• Rejection of fixed and normative ideas of gender by third wave

feminist Judith Butler.

• Gender is a performance regarded by third wave feminism.

Judith Butler
● An American philosopher.
● Most brilliant theorist of sexuality.
● Her works has provided new insights in feminist theory.
● Changes perception of gender
● Reveals the Performativity aspects of gender
● Gender Performativity theories are most sustainable
expression
● Four of her works are to be taken into consideration Gender
Trouble Feminism and Subversive of Identity (1990), Bodies
That Matters:On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"(1993),The
Psychic Life Of Power (1997)and Undoing Gender(2004).
Gender Performativity :
 Performativity refers to the ability to carry out something according to prescribed rituals.
 Performativity assumes that gender and gender roles are elaborate social performances that underlie popular
conceptions of "man"/"masculine" and "woman"/"feminine".
 According to Butler, performativity in gender development receives its power from iterability and citationality.
 Gender performance shapes gender identification.
 In interpellation, we codify the dividing line of gender not from an "essence" of "woman-ness" or "man-ness" but
through stylized acts.
 Objectification can be reframed as a systemic phenomenon that is gendered and vital to constituting gendered
categories.
 Gender is the result of cultural processes. It intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of
discursively constituted identities.
 Performative power is discursive in the context of discourse.
 In Butler's view, sex and gender are not intrinsically linked; males and females may display feminine traits and
masculine traits respectively and there might be proliferation of genders rather than two.
 Gender Interpellation:
 Butler uses Louis Althusser's interpellation and critiques its tautological framing of
constitutive paradoxes.
 Butler theorizes a guilt and compulsion acting on an "individual" that compels his
or her turn to answer the hail.
 Althusser's explanation of the hail's response does not rely so heavily on coercion
and guilt.
 Butler's schema comes with a price for subjectivity: the punishment of the
interpellative law.
 According to Althusser, we already enact power ideology; for Michel Foucault, we
are already the principle of our own "subjection."Consequently, we are always-
already the embodiment of a society-power-ideology regardless of any external
force.
 Gender Interpellation:
 As subjects, individuals acknowledge and respond to ideologies through interpellation.
 By obscuring traditional forms of repression and integrating individuals into power structures,
Althusser defines ideology as a mediator between systems of power and individuals.
 Althusser complicates the relationship between dominance and subjugation by introducing the
interpellation process, where individuals recognize themselves as subjects through ideology.
 Individuals can be interpellated through various media, such as cinema and media studies.
Althusser insists that the process of interpellation is not governed by cause and effect, but
happens simultaneously.
 Ideology and interpellation of individuals as subjects are same. This study employs Althusser’s
theory of interpellation, to describe the process of gendering in social intelligibility
Anna Tyler
● An American novelist and literary critic.

● Won Pulitzer prize for Fiction for Breathing lesson.

● Famous for her rigorous and artful style.

● And her astute and open language.

Selected works:
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

● Story about Pearl

● Abandoned by her husband

● And left to bring up three children alone

The Amateur Marriage

● About a mismatched marriage.

● Its consequences spanning three generations.

Gillian Flynn
An American author.
Formerly a television critic.
Selected works:
Gone Girl
● Amy goes missing

● And her husband becomes the prime suspect.

Dark Places
● Plot revolves around a serial killer

● And about the reporter who comes to cover the event

Anna Burns
● An author from Northern Ireland.
● Won booker prize for Milkman.
● Also Won the Orwell prize .
● And international Dublin Award.

Selected Work :
Little Construction
● Darkly comic and Ironic take
● About a woman from the family of criminals.

Milkman
● Set during The Troubles in northern
● 18 years old girl harassed by Milkman.
Research Gap:
● By broadening the twin concepts of Gender Performativity and Gender Interpellation and
forming a unification of the two which has not been done before.

● The texts of these three authors will be compared and contrasted in light of these theories
which have not been done.
Research Methodology:

● The concepts of Gender Performativity and Gender Interpellation will be broadened by bringing
under their ambit the selected texts of the three authors.

● The texts will be critically analysed using qualitative research to explore the extremes of both
patriarchy and feminism through Butlerian critique of gendered discourses in selected novels.

● The study will seek to bring out the Performativity aspects of gender and Interpellation of ideology
as depicted in selected novels
Literature Review:
• Work: Performativity,Parody,Politics

• Author: Moya Lloyd

• Findings/Abstract: This article examines both the work of Judith

Butler on gender performativity
Work: Performativity, Precarity And Sexual Politics.

Author: Judith Butler

Findings/Abstract: In this paper Butler re-examine this term and completes it

with the idea of Precarity, by making a reference to those who are exposed to
injury, violence and displacement, those who are at risk of not being qualified as
a subject of recognition.
Work: Performativity Identified

Author: Alecia Youngblood Jackson

Findings/Abstract: This paper analysis the post structural feminist notion of subjectivity
point to a notion of the self that is fluid, contradictory, and produced in relationship
with others and everyday practices
Work: Judith Butler on Performativity And Precarity: Exploratory thoughts on
gender and violence in India .
Author: Russell Belk And Rishi Bhardwaj
Abstract/Findings: This article discusses the theories of Judith Butler for insight
into how gender Performativity affects and thus individual agency.

Work: The Limits of Performativity: A Critique of hegemony in Gender Theory

Author: Denis Schep
Abstract/Findings: This article examines to the extent Butler's theory of
performativity has become a hegemonic framework within the field of gender
studies.
Work: All Made Up: Performance Theory And the new Anthropology of sex
and gender
Author: Rosalind C.Morris
Abstract/findings: This article considers the impact of recent performance
theory , especially the theory of gender Perfomativity, on anthropological
efforts to theorize sex and gender. `

Work: Masculinities , Performativity and subversion:A Sociological Reappraisal

Author: Chris Brickell
Abstract/findings: This article argues for reformulating Performativity and subversion
in a more explicitly sociological frame to render the concepts more useful for
examining agency and subjectivity in the study of masculinities.
Work: The Construction of Gender: Judith Butler And Gender Performativity

Author: Li He

Abstract/Findings: This paper attempts to trace the development of Judith Butler's

theory of gender in order to fully grasp the dynamic process of her thoughts.

Work: The Interpellation of Misogyny By Female Character

Author: Larassati Alya and Delvi Wahyuni

Abstract/Findings: This analysis is related to the concept of Interpellation and

Misogyny .This can be seen in two methods: form of Misogynist women and
the way misogyny can get interpellated.
Work: The unbecoming of subject of sex: Performativity, Interpellation, and the politics of
queer theory

Author: Mary Bunch

Abstract/Findings: This paper examines the Interpellation scenario forwarded by Louis

Althusser And Judith Butler's theory of performativity to argue that being unbecoming
potentially not only alter reality but also alter the very law that hails the subject into
being.

Work: 'Boying'the boy and 'girling 'the girl: From affective Interpellation to trans –emotionality

Author:Igi Moon

Abstract/Findings: This paper discusses about the Interpellation of emotions for feeling is
thus a major part of the socialization process used to construct cis-gendered bodies.
Work: Culture, ideology, Interpellation

Author: John Fisk

Abstract/Findings: This book discusses how we are given a sense of being individual
subjects by being addressed in certain ways by our culture.

Work :"The trouble Goes Back to Your Grandfather's time": Masculinity and Domestic Spaces
In Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread

Author: Shreya Rastogi

Abstract/Findings: This paper interprets the texts as a subversive narrative where hegemonic
gender norms oppress women and children.
Work: Antagonist Performance as a Contest of Gender Identity in Anna Burns 'Milkman and Little
Constructions

Author:kevihetou Agnes

Abstract/Findings: In Milkman and Little Constructions, Burns presents the tense atmosphere
built up on account of Troubles in Northern Ireland which has intensified the identity crisis
experienced by the individuals.

Work: Patriarchy or Feminism: A Butlerian Critique Of Anna Burns 'Milkman

Author:Javed Khan and Dr.Samina Ashfag

Abstract/Findings: This paper explores the gendered power relations by applying Butler's theory of
gender Performativity to analyse the gendered discourse Burns 'Milkman .
Work: Gender and Performativity in Contemporary American Novels:A Butlerian Reading Of Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn

Author:Sadesh Ahmadi Asi , Hussein Aliakbari Harehdasht ,Ehsan Karaminejad

Abstract/Findings: This paper investigates Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl in the terms of Butlerian concepts of
gender and Performativity.

Work: Subjected Subject? On Judith Butler's Paradox of Interpellation

Author:Noela Davis

Abstract/Findings: This article discusses about Butler utilizing Louis Althusser's

notion of Interpellation.
Bibliography :
Primary Sources:
Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Crown Publishing House, 2012.
…,Dark Places.Shaye Areheart Books,2009.

Tyler,Anne.Dinner At The Homesick

Restaurant .Knoof,1982.
…,The Amateur Marriage.Knoof,2004.

Burns,Anna.Milkman.Fabar and Fabar,2018.

…, Little Constructions. Graywolf Press,2007.
 • Secondary resources:
• Butler, Judith Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, 1903

• …,"Critically Queer". Gender, edited by Anna Tripp. Palgrave, 2000, pp. 154-167.

• …,Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. Routledge, 1997.

• …,Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.

• …,"Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael
Ryan. Blackwell Publishers, 1998, pp. 695-723.

• …,"Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. “The Feminism
and Visual Culture, edited by Amelia Jones. Routledge, 2003, pp. 392- 402.

• Aston, Elaine and Geraldine Harris, eds. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre. London: Routledge,
1995.
• Aston, Elaine and Geraldine Hariis. Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook. London: Routledge, 1995.
• Adkins, Lisa. Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family, and the Labour Market. Bristol, Penn.: Open University Press,
1995.
• Archer, Margaret S. Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988.

• Beauvoir, Simon de. The Second Sex. Trans., Ed. Parshley, H.M. London: Vintage,1953.

• Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall Ed. Film Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

• Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford UP, 1997.

• Butler, Judith. "Sex and Gender in Simon de Beauvoir's Second Sex". Yale French Studies, No. 72, Simon de Beauvoir:
Witness to a Century. (1986), 35-49.
• Chakravarty Spivak, Gayatri. "Can the Subaltern Speak?." Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader,
edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Columbia UP, 1994.

• Bacchii, Carol Lee. Same Difference: Feminism and Sexual Difference. Sydney: Allen and Unwin,1990.
• Bhasin, Kamla. What is Patriarchy? New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993.

• Bhatia, Nandi, ed. Performing Women/ Performing Womenhood: Theatre, Politics and the Dissent in North India.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010

• Bannister, Robert. Jessie Bernard: The Making of a Feminist. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1991.

• Colebrook, Claire. Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

• Connors, Clare. Literary Theory, A Beginner's Guide. One word Publications, 2010.

• Currah, Paisley, and Tara Macqueen. "Securitizing Gender: Identity, Biometrics, and Transgender Bodies at the
Airport. "Social Research: An International Quarterly, vol. 78, no.2, Project Muse, Summer 2011, pp. 1-52.

• Althusser, Louis. For Marx, London: Verso,2005. …, , Sur la Reproduction, Paris: Presses Universities de France,
2010. …, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, London: Verso,2014.
Thank You!