James Peter Coolsen Photographic History, Theory and Criticism, #23-6730 Greg Foster-Rice February 1, 2015

Photography and the Performativity of Gender

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts

William Shakespeare

Introduction This entry is a brief analysis of the writings of two scholars; Judith Butler, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley, and Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It explores the concepts of sex, performance, instability, collectivity and the historical as it relates to the concept of gender. In addition, examples of the treatment of gender in photography, that reflect some of Butler and Blessings’ ideas about gender, will be offered.

Hypothesis #1 [1]In her introduction, Jennifer Blessing discusses the emergence of gender as a historical subject in photography and how photography, is the “perfect arena for the play of gender and sexuality” and how it constructs gender identity. The early analytic work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, with its emphasis on the phallus as a symbol of power, underscored a static, rigid and binary system of sexuality and gender, one in which there existed either masculine or feminine. Blessing suggests that in the 1990’s new theories broadened the notion of gender (particularly of femininity) and sexuality. The new theories suggested that gender is a “mythic construction that is perpetuated through the performative repetition of stereotypes”. Gender, in this sense is not fixed, but is learned and incorporated, by the individual, through what is really a ”performative” process. Blessing also offers a useful concept of “gender trouble”, which occurs when someone challenges the standard definitions of gender. In the place of earlier “heterosexist presumptions”, the new theory delineates a range of gender possibilities and challenges a “strictly binary dichotomy”. Blessing draws from the theoretical work of Judith Butler in stating that “there are no direct expressive or causal lines between sex, gender, gender presentation, sexual practice, fantasy and sexuality”.
Hypothesis #2 [2]At the heart of Judith Butler’s philosophical position concerning gender are concepts of instability, performativity, repetition and collectivity. Gender is not rigid or pre-determined, but rather is a phenomenon “tenuously constituted in time”. It is unstable, because it can change in the face of cultural forces. For example, the notion of a “diaper changing father” is a fairly new expression of masculinity in our culture, one which has changed significantly over time. It suggests that the concepts of masculine and nurturance are not mutually exclusive in contemporary society.

Judith Butler refers to Simone Beauvoir’s distinction between sex (a biological concept) and gender (a cultural concept). For Beauvoir and Butler, the concept of woman is a “historical idea”. That is, it is defined and limited by historical interpretations about what constitutes a “woman”.

Butler posits that gender identity is “constructed” and instituted through a “stylized repetition of acts”. For Butler, gender identity is, above all, a “performative accomplishment”, compelled by social sanction and taboo, in which “the mundane social audiences, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief”. In a broad sense, Butler’s theory is that gender is not pre-determined, but is learned, through culturally sanctioned repetitive behavior, and that it is changeable. The notion of “performance” is a helpful one because it emphasizes the “collective agreement” (cultural) around gender norms which are rehearsed and then internalized by the individual.

Women Photographers and the Concept of Gender Claude Cahun (1894-1953), a French surrealist, was one of the earliest women photographers to focus on the concept of female gender identity. She was a pioneer in this area, as many of her photographs, presenting herself in a sexually ambiguous light, were taken in the 1920’s and 1930’s. By showing the fluidity of her gender, she questioned the rigid views and notions of sexuality and gender. Two women photographers, Melissa Ann Piney and Cindy Sherman, both born about the time of Cahun’s death, have carried out this theme of representing or challenging female gender identity through photography. Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) is perhaps the best known of post-modernist photographers who have challenged the notion of feminine gender. By presenting stereotypes of women in society, she plays up the incongruence between old limiting stereotypes and modern notions of feminine identity. This is demonstrated in Untitled Film Still, 1978, one of her series of photographs which comment on how women are presented or misrepresented in film and popular culture. Melissa Ann Piney (b.1952) presents a striking example, through her images of young, middle class, Midwestern girls in transition towards becoming women. In her image,  Team Evanston, Desplaines, Illinois, 2006, one can see very clearly the “performative acts” which adolescent girls rehearse as they move to young adulthood.

Team Evanston 2006

The act of physical closeness, intimacy and emphasis on the group, in this particular photograph of a girls’ sports team, are clearly different from the manner in which boys, of this age, would “perform” or “act out a win” in sports. Through her touching photographs of young girls, Piney makes the viewer a witness to this performance.

Perhaps we should be so bold as to change the last line of the Bard’s poem and presentation of the world as being a stage upon which we are all performers.

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man or woman, in his or her time, plays many parts

[1] Jennifer Blessing, Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography, New York, Guggenheim Museum, (1997): 6-17.

[2] Judith Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, Theatre Journal, (December 1988), 49(1): 519-531.