Lykke, Nina. 2010. “Undoing Proper Research Objects.” In Feminist Studies,
31–45. London: Routledge.
To define objects of research is never an innocent activity!
Judith Butler critiqued the act of defining gender/sex as a 'proper' object within a postructuralist and queer-feminist framework. "Butler argues against the fixations and mechanisms of exclusion that are interwoven in the definition of scholarly objects of study." p.32
"Butler shows how reductionism is generated if one strictly delimits these fields of study in relation to one another." p.32
"Via the delimitation of the two fields in opposition to each other, sociocultural gender and sex/sexuality are constructed as a binary pair." p.32
"According to Butler, it is not adequate for ‘Gender Studies’ to ignore either biological sex or sexuality. If it does this, it will become reductionist. Sexual practices and identities are gendered, and, therefore, interesting for ‘Gender Studies,’ Butler argues; biological sex, sexuality and sociocultural gender are discursively constructed in interplay with each other." p.32
On the problem of feminists representing and speaking for 'women': "Does this not mean that feminists end up legitimizing and normatively fix- ing a universalizing category and an illusionary idea about a shared identity and a common oppression that transgress differences produced by time, spatial location, class, racialization, nationality, sexuality and so on? Does it not imply that feminists contribute to the maintenance of a category that is part of the problem rather than its solution?" p.33
"Butler wants to abolish the unproblematic and retrospectively naive way of talking about shared political ground linking all women together in a universal sisterhood. She wants to break down the normativity that a heterosexual, white, middle-class feminism constructed as a ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ interpretation of the meaning of ‘women’s liberation.’" p.33
We cannot position ourselves outside of the world we live in, so current meanings of 'women' must be taken into account. p.33
Critical resignifications of gender/sex
"Those who are excluded, dominated or stigmatized by hegemonic discourses participate intensely in the negotiations of meanings. These ‘inappropriate/d others’...establish discursive sites of resistance against hegemonic discourses and resignify the categories used for classifying, defining, stigmatizing and excluding them." p.34
Resignification, introduced by Butler, is a theoretical conceptualisation of resistance with respect to turning 'queer' from a negative to a positive identity.
"When Feminist Studies becomes established as an academic field of knowledge production, it claims the authority to delegitimize such gender-conservative discourses." p.34 - such as woman/man, feminine/masculine, gender/sex
Developing new critical concepts of gender and sex only succeeds when political movements are created and supported. Through Feminist Studies becoming established as a field of scholarly knowledge production, deradicalisation may take place. "Political and scholarly processes of resignification and theorising are a continuum." p.35
Gender/sex and intersectional networks of categories
"The history of science is full of examples documenting the ways in which classifications based on gender, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, mother tongue and so on have been used to legitimize social hierarchies, power differentials and in/exclusions." p.36 This led to hierarchies being created involving sexism, racism, nationalism etc.
Sexual deviants i.e. hysterical woman, masturbating child, homosexuals, had something in common, "They 'ignored' the 'obligation' to contribute to the 'common good' of the nation through reproducing themselves within the normative framework of the heterosexual family, defined by a hierarchical two-gender model." p.36
"Against the background of interactions between categories, which both gender-conservative discourses and the counter-discourses of politi- cal movements have initiated, many feminist theorists have considered it important not to detach the categories of gender/sex from other sociocul- tural categories, but, conversely, to look at the interplay—or intersection- ality—between them." p.37
Feminist figurations
"For the theorizing move from critique and problematization to affirmation can easily, as an unintended side effect, end up in an act of essentialization and universalization. Instead of opening up to a dynamic process that can create space for the unfolding of diversity and multiplicity, a kind of god-trick (Haraway 1991c, 191–196) may be reinstated: ‘Here is a vision about gender/sex which is good and right for everyone!’" p.37
Feminist figurations: "a politically informed account of an alternative subjectivity" (Braidotti 1994, 1)
"an alternative subjectivity articulated in a figurative form that points to ways out of hegemonic, gender-conservative discourses about gender/sex in its intersections with other sociocultural categories." p.38
"a feminist figuration is defined as a vision toward which the subject is moving in an intellectual, emotional and bodily sense." p.38
Braidotti on figurations: "A figuration is a living map, a transformative account of the self - it is no metaphor... Figurations... draw a cartographic map of power-relations and thus can also help identify possible sites and strategies of resistance." (Braidotti 2002, 3)
"a figuration includes a palpable and literal moment of here-and-now positioning on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is also a figuratively formed vision encompassing the subject's process of intellectual, emotional and bodily change toward something other than the status quo." p.38
Paraphasing Haraway on figurations: "figurations can be described as phenomena balancing on the boundary between fact and fiction, between lived social reality and (science) fiction." p.38
Examples: Donna Haraway's feminist cyborg, Rosi Braidotti's nomadic subject, Judith Butler's queer, and Tinh Minh-ha's innappropriated others.
Haraway's cyborg: an example of a feminist figuration
"The cyborg refers to the proliferating fusions of bodies and technologies, between human/animal and machine, that take place today as a consequence of the development of new information and biotechnologies." p.39
"Haraway suggests the cyborg figuration as a possible ally for feminists and other radicals who want to fight the dualisms and hierarchies of modern society." p.39
"As a fusion of body and technology, the cyborg challenges the borders between nature and culture—and hence also the borders between biological sex and sociocultural gender." p.40
"The cyborg figure makes it very obvious that ‘nature,’ ‘body’ and ‘sex’ have to be understood as a ‘co-construction among humans and non-humans’" p.40
Gender/sex as travelling categories
In German and Scandinavian languages, there is no distinction between gender and biological sex and sexuality. "According to Widerberg (1998), what is lost in sty- listic elegance is made up for because it becomes easier, through traditional linguistic means, to articulate an understanding of the ways in which body, culture and society are woven together in gender/sex rather than making up compartmentalized and separate entities." p.41
"In the Swedish version, the English distinction between ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ was transformed into a distinction between ‘genus’ (relating to sociocultural dimensions) and ‘kön’ (now delimited to mean ‘biological sex’ in an English sense)." p.43
Criticism of the Swedish version: "they argue that the Swedish concept of ‘genus’ inherits the problems that have been critically addressed from many sides in relation to the English concept of ‘gender.’ Both concepts, these critiques stress, maintain a problematic dichotomy between sociocultural and bodily material aspects." p.43
"‘Gender’ is routinely used for ‘sociocultural gender’ in all kinds of EU programs. When the program texts are translated from English into French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian, ‘genre/género/genere’ is occurring more and more frequently as a translation of ‘gender’ in this sense." p.44
"It is useful to remember that the feminist Anglo-American meaning of ‘gender’ and its variations didn’t exist in dictionaries before the early eighties, it was not an evident meaning of the word either. Gender is a concept that conquered a space of its own in Anglo-American academic institutions, public spaces, the media, and, finally . . . in dictionaries. (Puig de la Bellacasa 2000, 97)"
"The distinction between sociocultural ‘gender’ and biological ‘sex,’ which became well known in the USA due to this 1960s sexological research, was, according to Haraway (1991d, 132–134), adopted and further elaborated during the early 1970s by feminists who saw the category ‘gender’ as an effective conceptual tool making it possible to push the discussion of the category ‘woman/women’ away from the traditional Man/Culture versus Woman/Nature dichotomy and instead situate the ‘woman/women question’ in a political and social context." p.44
To define objects of research is never an innocent activity!
Judith Butler critiqued the act of defining gender/sex as a 'proper' object within a postructuralist and queer-feminist framework. "Butler argues against the fixations and mechanisms of exclusion that are interwoven in the definition of scholarly objects of study." p.32
"Butler shows how reductionism is generated if one strictly delimits these fields of study in relation to one another." p.32
"Via the delimitation of the two fields in opposition to each other, sociocultural gender and sex/sexuality are constructed as a binary pair." p.32
"According to Butler, it is not adequate for ‘Gender Studies’ to ignore either biological sex or sexuality. If it does this, it will become reductionist. Sexual practices and identities are gendered, and, therefore, interesting for ‘Gender Studies,’ Butler argues; biological sex, sexuality and sociocultural gender are discursively constructed in interplay with each other." p.32
On the problem of feminists representing and speaking for 'women': "Does this not mean that feminists end up legitimizing and normatively fix- ing a universalizing category and an illusionary idea about a shared identity and a common oppression that transgress differences produced by time, spatial location, class, racialization, nationality, sexuality and so on? Does it not imply that feminists contribute to the maintenance of a category that is part of the problem rather than its solution?" p.33
"Butler wants to abolish the unproblematic and retrospectively naive way of talking about shared political ground linking all women together in a universal sisterhood. She wants to break down the normativity that a heterosexual, white, middle-class feminism constructed as a ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ interpretation of the meaning of ‘women’s liberation.’" p.33
We cannot position ourselves outside of the world we live in, so current meanings of 'women' must be taken into account. p.33
Critical resignifications of gender/sex
"Those who are excluded, dominated or stigmatized by hegemonic discourses participate intensely in the negotiations of meanings. These ‘inappropriate/d others’...establish discursive sites of resistance against hegemonic discourses and resignify the categories used for classifying, defining, stigmatizing and excluding them." p.34
Resignification, introduced by Butler, is a theoretical conceptualisation of resistance with respect to turning 'queer' from a negative to a positive identity.
"When Feminist Studies becomes established as an academic field of knowledge production, it claims the authority to delegitimize such gender-conservative discourses." p.34 - such as woman/man, feminine/masculine, gender/sex
Developing new critical concepts of gender and sex only succeeds when political movements are created and supported. Through Feminist Studies becoming established as a field of scholarly knowledge production, deradicalisation may take place. "Political and scholarly processes of resignification and theorising are a continuum." p.35
Gender/sex and intersectional networks of categories
"The history of science is full of examples documenting the ways in which classifications based on gender, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, mother tongue and so on have been used to legitimize social hierarchies, power differentials and in/exclusions." p.36 This led to hierarchies being created involving sexism, racism, nationalism etc.
Sexual deviants i.e. hysterical woman, masturbating child, homosexuals, had something in common, "They 'ignored' the 'obligation' to contribute to the 'common good' of the nation through reproducing themselves within the normative framework of the heterosexual family, defined by a hierarchical two-gender model." p.36
"Against the background of interactions between categories, which both gender-conservative discourses and the counter-discourses of politi- cal movements have initiated, many feminist theorists have considered it important not to detach the categories of gender/sex from other sociocul- tural categories, but, conversely, to look at the interplay—or intersection- ality—between them." p.37
Feminist figurations
"For the theorizing move from critique and problematization to affirmation can easily, as an unintended side effect, end up in an act of essentialization and universalization. Instead of opening up to a dynamic process that can create space for the unfolding of diversity and multiplicity, a kind of god-trick (Haraway 1991c, 191–196) may be reinstated: ‘Here is a vision about gender/sex which is good and right for everyone!’" p.37
Feminist figurations: "a politically informed account of an alternative subjectivity" (Braidotti 1994, 1)
"an alternative subjectivity articulated in a figurative form that points to ways out of hegemonic, gender-conservative discourses about gender/sex in its intersections with other sociocultural categories." p.38
"a feminist figuration is defined as a vision toward which the subject is moving in an intellectual, emotional and bodily sense." p.38
Braidotti on figurations: "A figuration is a living map, a transformative account of the self - it is no metaphor... Figurations... draw a cartographic map of power-relations and thus can also help identify possible sites and strategies of resistance." (Braidotti 2002, 3)
"a figuration includes a palpable and literal moment of here-and-now positioning on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is also a figuratively formed vision encompassing the subject's process of intellectual, emotional and bodily change toward something other than the status quo." p.38
Paraphasing Haraway on figurations: "figurations can be described as phenomena balancing on the boundary between fact and fiction, between lived social reality and (science) fiction." p.38
Examples: Donna Haraway's feminist cyborg, Rosi Braidotti's nomadic subject, Judith Butler's queer, and Tinh Minh-ha's innappropriated others.
Haraway's cyborg: an example of a feminist figuration
"The cyborg refers to the proliferating fusions of bodies and technologies, between human/animal and machine, that take place today as a consequence of the development of new information and biotechnologies." p.39
"Haraway suggests the cyborg figuration as a possible ally for feminists and other radicals who want to fight the dualisms and hierarchies of modern society." p.39
"As a fusion of body and technology, the cyborg challenges the borders between nature and culture—and hence also the borders between biological sex and sociocultural gender." p.40
"The cyborg figure makes it very obvious that ‘nature,’ ‘body’ and ‘sex’ have to be understood as a ‘co-construction among humans and non-humans’" p.40
Gender/sex as travelling categories
In German and Scandinavian languages, there is no distinction between gender and biological sex and sexuality. "According to Widerberg (1998), what is lost in sty- listic elegance is made up for because it becomes easier, through traditional linguistic means, to articulate an understanding of the ways in which body, culture and society are woven together in gender/sex rather than making up compartmentalized and separate entities." p.41
"In the Swedish version, the English distinction between ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ was transformed into a distinction between ‘genus’ (relating to sociocultural dimensions) and ‘kön’ (now delimited to mean ‘biological sex’ in an English sense)." p.43
Criticism of the Swedish version: "they argue that the Swedish concept of ‘genus’ inherits the problems that have been critically addressed from many sides in relation to the English concept of ‘gender.’ Both concepts, these critiques stress, maintain a problematic dichotomy between sociocultural and bodily material aspects." p.43
"‘Gender’ is routinely used for ‘sociocultural gender’ in all kinds of EU programs. When the program texts are translated from English into French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian, ‘genre/género/genere’ is occurring more and more frequently as a translation of ‘gender’ in this sense." p.44
"It is useful to remember that the feminist Anglo-American meaning of ‘gender’ and its variations didn’t exist in dictionaries before the early eighties, it was not an evident meaning of the word either. Gender is a concept that conquered a space of its own in Anglo-American academic institutions, public spaces, the media, and, finally . . . in dictionaries. (Puig de la Bellacasa 2000, 97)"
"The distinction between sociocultural ‘gender’ and biological ‘sex,’ which became well known in the USA due to this 1960s sexological research, was, according to Haraway (1991d, 132–134), adopted and further elaborated during the early 1970s by feminists who saw the category ‘gender’ as an effective conceptual tool making it possible to push the discussion of the category ‘woman/women’ away from the traditional Man/Culture versus Woman/Nature dichotomy and instead situate the ‘woman/women question’ in a political and social context." p.44
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