Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Performative Performance

Structurally, thought and action are conceived as binary. The resulting simple framework forces sides: one either thinks or one acts. In this context, a sharp distinction exists between theory and performance. The discussion arising out of sharp distinctions classifies bodies into the two categories. On the other hand, Michel Foucault would take the analysis further and express how various networks of power cause the binary to establish and in effect, classify the body; moreover, he would highlight the indistinguishable qualities between the two categories and that thought and action (theory and performance) compliment each other. In a sense, Foucault holds onto dichotomous characters, if only to analyze their power-stratifications. Due to attachment to binaries, dichotomous distinctions are normative - where one cannot imagine life outside of the structure established by the categories. Judith Butler acknowledges the normative function of binaries, particularly in the realm of sex; more importantly, she deconstructs how a body is segmented in the power relations, looking rather at how a body can move and shift the networks of power. Scott Turner Schofield expresses that body. His workshop and performance enacted Judith Butler's analysis. Moreover, Butler's writing, her thoughts, are active and complimentary, just as Schofield's actions are thoughts. In other words, both focus not on dichotomous distinctions, but on how to use, shape and change the power relations of the body.
Networks of power establish an impenetrable field about normative functions, causing one to act and think around the form, never being able to access the function itself. Butler and Schofield grapple with normative aspects of sex, that certain licit and illicit acts are established and that the distinction causes classification and segmentation of individuals. Restated, the resulting figure deriving from the normative technique establishes "zones of social life which are nevertheless densely populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject." In this sense, "the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, "inside" the subject as its own founding repudiation." A subject is one that interacts licitly with gendered norms; on the other hand, the abject at one point held the status of a subject, but through various forms of discourse has been analyzed, known and marked perpetually as illicit, abnormal, and disfigured. The abject no longer is, nor can ever be again figured as a subject. Since normative functions can never be fully deconstructed, the distinction between subject and abject is incongruous. The abject establishes the legitimacy of the subject and sets unknowable boundaries for the subject's status. A subject only attains its status subject by the establishment of the abject. Because the boundaries of the subject are indefinable, the abject are innumerable. Many bodies fill the abject status for the quality of the subject is expressed as ideal and inaccessible. Some, however, are more abject than others. For Scott, the issue exists not in exploring the confines of abjectivity, but in looking at how to interact in a space and shift conceptions of gender and its related terms. Judith, in complement, terms the practice and shifts of normative functions, which establish abject beings, as performativity.
Thought and action produce and establish each other, and it is in this sense that Butler coins the term, performativity. For her, dichotomous labels do not define who one is, but express functions in which to engage the body. In other words, gender, sex and sexuality are not identity aspects, but manners in which to engage in society with. Constant rehearsals enact the performance of gender and establish relative norms. Scott Turner Schofield performs gender constantly; in his workshop on Tuesday, October 16th, Scott discussed the perceptions of others at the airport where they identify him as either gay, European, or, when lacking coffee, a teenage boy. Moreover, he expressed his individual performance as a person within the transgender community. As a biological female growing up in the South, now living as a male, Scott uses his past as a toolkit to utilize the present. He understands that by being engendered, he performs certain normative functions, yet the normative functions do not restrain his actions. Performativity, therefore, must constantly be performed and enacted. Thus, Scott constantly must reenact his identity and produce his form. In other words, "[T]he regulatory norms of "sex" works in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body's sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative." Materiality is the effect of power relations networking through various discursive forms and normative functions are produced through materiality. Discursive traits of the theater materialize a space for bodies to engage in. During the workshop, Scott discussed his technique in performance where he utilizes the space's tool of ‘willing suspension of disbelief' and incorporates truth into that mechanism. It is in this form that his performance is peformative, where he shifts not only the perspective of the theater, but also calls into question truth. Scott is able to interact in theater and with truth due to performativity's function of reiteration.
Reiteration is the technique in which a concept acquires its normative function. It is through a constant reaction and interaction that concepts are continually redefined. In Scott's performance, Debutante Balls, he wrote the piece for his friends and relatives as information that was crucial to understand. Now, after years have passed and many performances completed, the piece, according to Scott, has taken a different turn, but that he attempts, when performing, to tap back into the frame of mind when he first established the piece. In another example, his most recent performance, Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps, acknowledges the reiterative aspect. During the question and answer section, someone asked whether he actually had 127 stepping stories; his response was negative, that through time he might acquire them and by not having 127 stories, and that the piece provides room to grow and change, altering the context of the show. Both examples reveal how reiteration has shaped or potentially shapes a performance. Moreover, this reiterative aspect reveals the constantly shifting meaning and context of Scott's performances. Thus, the discourse of theater exerts networks of power, which produces the materiality of the character, Scott, along with the interaction within the space concerning the normative functions of theater and gender. Although Scott's performance derives from a thoughtful construction, Judith Butler argues that life is performance, usually with less than thought out discourse. The norm functions without concrete definitions and must continuously be reiterated; importance lies in the fact "that [forcible] reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is never quite complete, that bodies never quite comply with the norms by which their materialization is impelled." Through each rehearsal and performance, Scott continually redefines his performance, which in turn creates a different space to explore the concept of gender. It is in each reconstruction that networks of power materialize across a body. In this sense, Judith Butler reveals the continuously shifting normative functions and reveals the flux with which concepts transform.
Because normative functions must shift continuously in order to maintain their controlling obscurity, the reiterative process also causes its downfall. It is in this instability that Scott Turner Schofield performs both on and offstage. He utilizes the perpetual gender binary by deconstructing the segmenting labels and finds an alternate discourse to explore. Thus, deriving from performativity, the discursive trait of "sex acquires its naturalized effect and yet, it is also by virtue of this reiteration that gaps and fissures are opened up as the constitutive instabilities in such constructions, as that which escapes or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by the repetitive labor of the norm." It is in the inability to access the normative function of sex that one is able to, through the smallest shifts, continually recreate and re-explore the concept for oneself, rather than recreating and re-exploring how the concept structures around oneself. Not only does performativity express how the reiterative aspect of power acts "as a kind of productive power, the power to produce, demarcate, circulate, differentiate - the bodies it controls" but performativity also reveals the spaces to shift and change the produced material body. Thus, both Butler and Schofield explore the creative aspect with which to analyze, utilize and incorporate sex as the material production of power stratifications.
No longer does analysis examine the passivity, but with Judith Butler excerpt and Scott Turner Schofield's workshop and performance, one finds the constant flux, the space for an individual to reshape and reform the body. Butler's focus on the discursive traits that cause binaries to establish derives from Michel Foucault's ‘toolkit'. It is in this manner that Butler explodes from Foucault and establishes an alternate discourse expressing the performative category. She sends an active call for a more conscious reiteration of the networks of power, which strap in and across the body. For both Judith Butler and Scott Turner Schofield, the body is at stake. It is through abiding in and not abiding with normative functions that a body becomes passive to power stratifications. Both Butler and Schofield theatrically write and theoretically perform in order to highlight the unstable qualities with which the technique of sex is structured.