Undoing gender: what is there to say?

Le Journal des psychologues, No. 272, Paris: November 2009, p. 60-64.

Although questions relating to sexuality tend to become commonplace in social and political discourse, there are nevertheless few writings on gender as such, and even fewer on “transgender.” Vincent Bourseul has taken an interest in this singular issue by trying to highlight what undoing one’s gender allows to show through about the identity of celles and those who claim these new sexual figures.

Since the early 1990s, new sexual figures have been emerging in the contemporary landscape. Queer and transgender sexualities, as they have named themselves, are part of a broader movement questioning sexual identity through an interrogation of gender. In 1990, Judith Butler published her most famous work, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. This first opus in a long series energized the thinking of the homosexual community, particularly feminist lesbian women, about relationships of norms and power between the sexes. The conditions for the emergence and existence of sexual identities have since been reconsidered through the category of gender, a normative category that the queer movement proposes to deconstruct in order to move beyond gender.

Within a certain community, with Judith Butler’s theoretical elaborations, the queer movement denotes self-affirmation and self-declaration as vital necessities for the existence of certain sexual minorities: its aim is to create new modes of identity expression, new labels, to ensure the survival of certain sexual identities made invisible by the effect of normativity. Gender-crossers, engaged in crossings of gender or attempts to deconstruct gender, then present themselves as new identity categories, new genders hitherto uncertain or unknown: transboys, fem, butch, middle-half, transgirls, etc.

At the sociopolitical level, these initiatives appear to attest to the need to question and challenge certain relations of force and power that seem to operate as constraints upon certain communities. But at the individual level, what are the psychic stakes of a crossing of gender? For what projects, conscious and unconscious, does a subject commit to an attempt to deconstruct their gender, drawing on the theoretical elements of a movement of thought on which they rely? Among all the possible variants within queer sexualities, we shall focus more particularly on transgender situations (in gender transition, but not necessarily sex transition). The guiding question is to know for what production, for what psychic and subjective creation, these attempts to deconstruct gender are undertaken and what they are for.

What can we explore in what stands out from the manifest processes in order to bring out the underlying psychic stakes? For while the theoretical ambitions of gender deconstructions, though arduous, may have seemed clear to us, singular trajectories present divergences inherent to the simple fact that between undoing gender and undoing one’s gender there reside two intruders: the subject and their desire. This passage between theoretical aims and clinical reality allows us to dwell on what is said on the occasion of attempts to deconstruct gender, on the modalities of the discourse of self-declarations and self-affirmation.

The study of this discursive dispositif can then be pursued by shedding light on it through what Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage teaches us about the foundation of the I. The analogy between these two imaginary and symbolic dispositifs will allow us to focus on the subject’s relation to the image. This will enable us to develop some elements of an answer to the initial question: “Undoing gender: what is it for?” and to hear more about the essential question that emerges from it: “Undoing gender: what is there to say?”

Who says what?

There are a thousand and one ways of defining oneself and inhabiting the categories to which we belong: man, woman, heterosexual, homosexual. Yet queer-crossers identify themselves using some twenty to thirty different terminologies: butch, fem, hyperfemale, genderqueer, transgender, transsexuals, middle-half, drag-kings, performers, etc.

Between the theory of gender deconstruction and the clinical realities we can observe, there is a gap, a transformation. Let us say, in a certain manner, that between Judith Butler’s Hegelian perspectives and the street appear details and singularities that often tell something other than what we might expect if it were a simple application of gender theories—something that, at times, certain people seem to want to make them carry as theorico-practical effects, precisely where different authors define their limit. We cannot ignore the shift in motivation and realization that occurs between undoing gender and undoing one’s gender. Deconstructing gender as a norm is not deconstructing gender as such, as the subject’s psychic production.

When queer theories and gender theory deconstruct gender, the intellectual and conceptual enterprise involves activist social, philosophical, and political demands. When a person undertakes a crossing of gender—what gender-crossing literally denotes—it is more a matter of their personal demands, which may be designated as their individual psychic stakes. Even if the discourse of gender-crossers is strongly tinged with the theories from which it is produced in an activist posture, we do not overlook the value of going beyond the manifest stakes as they are stated. Although gender-crossers motivate their trajectories in apparent perfect alignment with general theoretical ambitions, we maintain that a more personal motivation, and in part a more unconscious one, differs in many respects from the apparent literary ambitions.

If the queer umbrella can encompass all the identities mentioned above, they are not all comparable. Some rely on temporary transformations, others on more permanent transformations, notably through hormones and surgery. It would therefore be necessary to distinguish scrupulously between the different cases among the diversity of queer identities. However, having chosen to study more particularly the modalities of the discourse of self-declarations and the subject’s relation to the image, using the mirror stage and the clinic of the formless, I have chosen to support my argument solely on the basis of so-called “transgender” trajectories.

 

Performative discourse: a discursive dispositif

If we follow Judith Butler’s reflections on what constitutes the process of identity affirmation, we understand that the creation of the queer space, with its mythologies and beliefs, is not a matter of science fiction, but rather a condition of survival. The conditions of the subject’s existence and survival lie in the possibility of their affirmation and enunciation, as she demonstrates throughout her early works.

Gender is acquired only through the sharing and acceptance of it by the other in fantasy. It is on this conception that Judith Butler’s work has largely developed up to the present regarding subjectivation, notably in one of her latest works, Giving an Account of Oneself (2007).

In this exchange between discourse and fantasy, a direct action is produced that, from one to the other and reciprocally, determines the very conditions of existence of the subjects in place. The power of discourse to act, insofar as it brings about, determines, defines, and subjects the individual—whether through speech itself or its return in the other’s fantasy—performs the individual. This illustrates the performativity of discourse to which Judith Butler devotes herself, notably in Excitable Speech, drawing on the work of John Langshaw Austin. Discourse, as speech, is endowed with a power to act that brings about something in the subject as an act might do. Thus, the power of words is understood as being able to bring the subject into being, to construct or to destroy it. Hence the importance accorded in queer movements to self-affirmation.

When a person commits and affirms themselves by declaring themselves “transgender,” for example, the conditions for the success of that declaration must be studied. The conditions of its success in its performative attempt are linked to the characteristics of the space in which it takes place. For it is not enough for me to declare myself as such in order to make myself as such.

To declare oneself “transgender” in the eyes of others and to perform oneself as such is an illocutionary speech act. It is subject to a certain rituality and conditioned by its “conventional” or “ceremonial” dimension. If, at the place where the discourse is addressed, there is not already what is needed to hear and understand what is being declared, the power of discourse to act is compromised. Even by resorting to the performativity of the discursive act, nothing occurs solely by virtue of the author of the declaration; otherwise, they abandon the idea of realizing the thing they enunciate. One must not forget that, as utterances, these self-declarations are effective only if their effectiveness extends beyond the moment of their enunciation. Take the example of marriage: outside the usual legal conditions, no declaration by would-be spouses has any value in the eyes of the State unless it is carried out before one of its duly appointed representatives and according to certain rules. It is not enough to state oneself as a woman or a drag-king in order to be or become one; the environment must also be brought into play under certain conditions of intelligibility and respond to the utterance through recognition by the other.

The proliferation of possible terminologies attests to the multiplicity of identities and singularities. It also illustrates and underscores the indispensable accommodation between identities that seek recognition and the environment that is solicited. There would then be the possibility of producing, ad infinitum, as many categories as identities, which would guarantee recognition of each one’s singularity. But could one really guarantee recognition by the universal other, within a landscape intelligible to all?

We thus understand that self-declaration, as transgender for example, only has a chance of success and effective realization under the conditions set out by John Langshaw Austin, namely that it must occur according to the rituality imposed upon it, and that it must be addressed to an environment capable of receiving it, reacting, and thus making the effects of the realization its own. We then arrive at Judith Butler’s idea that gender is acquired only in the other’s fantasy when the other is willing to grant us such-and-such a gender status or such-and-such an identity.

If identity affirmation and self-declaration are necessary to ensure the survival of people harmed by excessive normativity, we also perceive the limit inherent in resorting to the performativity of discourse: recognition by the other. There may be thousands of identities and as many words to say them. But if no one understands anything, how are they validated?

At the same time, the performative initiatives of affirming an identity likely have the effect of encouraging the environment to move: to tend toward a greater capacity to recognize and validate varied identities. This is the stake that follows the moment of recourse to the performativity of discourse: to prolong the movement it initiates in order to make identities count and be recognized, by giving them a chance to develop the content and substance proper to fill the identity territories thus obtained, and to develop an ethics of themselves.

In the opposite case, where self-declaration alone would seek to suffice to guarantee the conditions of existence, we must question what appears to be an impasse and the effects of a fantasy of self-engenderment.

Affirmation or self-declaration in the I that speaks appears to be a vital necessity. However, the right to self-determination—that is, the personal privilege of recognizing oneself as this or that—must not obscure the inevitable recognition of oneself by the other. In the clinical situations that concern us, subjects question their default determinations: being a man when one is a genetic boy; being a woman when one is a genetic girl; occupying such-and-such a position in the sexual landscape; and, by default again, having a predefined choice of object (a man when one is a woman, a woman when one is a man—if we take into account a principle of default heterosexuality). On the basis of this contestation, gender-crossers must, in opposition to their default statuses, have the identity they feel they have and wish to claim accepted. That said, this particular and marginal situation tells us of a process at work for everyone. Even if such a subject were defined by default according to such an identity and such a social status, and even if that suited them, they would not escape the necessity of having to take and hold their place as an I in the world. For these extraordinary situations bring to light stages and trajectories that are quite common to all subjects who have to speak themselves and exist in the world of the living, with words to say themselves and be recognized.

If we consider that most of these self-affirmations are likely carried out preferably where they have a chance of succeeding—that is, in a defined context (sensitized to the issue) capable of meeting the previously set out conditions for the success of the performative act—then the question is indeed one of transforming the dispositif of narration into a quasi-experimental context in order to achieve precise objectives.

In this vein, a certain reading of the dispositif of self-affirmation, in light of Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage, informs us about what is done, undone, and played out in the utterance, but also about the subject of enunciation. We shall return here to a situation of self-declaration. The mirror stage is then useful for perceiving what is being elaborated as the framework and scenario of the scene of self-affirmation.

 

The mirror stage: imaginary and symbolic dispositif

The moment of self-declaration simultaneously engages the subject, their image, and the Other.

When the transgender subject declares themselves as such, the announced identity calls upon their image and their raw reality, with the gaze of the Other—which is no longer the one who designates, as we can understand it in the mirror stage. We witness a recomposition of this sequence of filiation between self-image, self, and the Other. In the mirror stage, it is the Other who designates and reinforces the link between the self and the self-image as reflection. When the parent points to the child’s image held in their arms and says, “Yes, that is indeed you,” what the child sees at that moment is not themselves in a raw sense, but their image of themselves. In our situation, the subject initiates a replaying of this triptych by proposing a new definition of the terms that compose it.

Jacques Lacan writes: “It is enough to understand the mirror stage as an identifica-tion in the full sense that analysis gives to this term: namely, the transformation pro-duced in the subject when it assumes an image […]. The I precipitates itself into a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other and language restores to it, in the univer-sal, its function as subject.”

We then understand that what is designated as the mirror stage inaugurates—after the image, or rather the imago, has been affiliated to the subject (or is in the process of becoming so)—the foundations and the dialectic that will bind the I to its environment in all kinds of social interaction.

This practical and theoretical rapprochement enables us to formulate the following question. What is the point of embarking on a recomposition, a replaying of the conditions for the emergence of the I from the self and the self-image, in interdependence with the Other, if not to obtain a gain? But which one?

If we adhere to what the cross-genders themselves propose, it is a “conquest,” or “reconquest,” of the self, sometimes described as an attempt to “take” and/or “hold” one’s place in the world. In any case, these are the terms—non-equivalent—in which the people I met expressed themselves. Note the dual perspective of “conquest or reconquest” and of “taking or holding” one’s place. This ambiguity may reflect hesitation or uncertainty as to whether one must create something entirely new or rather transform what already exists. It may indicate these people’s questioning of the reliability of their identity as an I—the possibility of a defect—or, alternatively, the subject’s accurate recognition of the movement and questioning of their identity in which they find themselves—the possibility of renewal and a certain ambivalence.

We argue here that recourse to the performativity of discourse serves as an attempt at self-conquest and self-maintenance within discourse, in order to have a place in it and to take one’s place there.

And if we recall the cultural and environmental conditions set out in the first part, notably regarding unlivable lives, maintaining oneself in discourse answers the imperative of self-affirmation in order to ensure the subject’s survival.

The mirror stage brings into play the unity of the body as the subject imagines it from the image they have of it. This operation of imaginary identification implies the intervention of another instance, a third party between the subject and their image, which confirms:

“Yes, that is indeed you”… From this results a foundational alienation of the subject’s relation to the imaginary, to the body, and to the similar. The clinical situations to which we refer evoke for us a kind of replaying of the dispositif, in a perhaps corrective perspective.

Whether the environment is brought into play to occupy the place of the Other in a kind of revisited mirror stage remains to be examined. That the subject in the making seizes their audience to establish the legitimacy of the link they point to between the self and the self-image is a primordial thing, inherent to the use of performative discourse and inseparable from its success.

At the same time, it is not the Other who designates here the link between the subject and their image, but the subject themselves who offers themselves up for validation by their environment. The latter functions as a third party and eventually, in the end, satisfies or does not satisfy the demand, validates or does not validate the identity presented to it and, ultimately, ensures a function close to that of the Other instance in Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage. The environment-audience shifts from the status of spectator to that of actor, capable of exercising a third-party function.

 

Conclusion

We see how recourse to the performative dimension of discourse can be understood as support for the structuring of sexual identity as fantasy. We see here how these discursive attempts and self-declarations draw on certain narrative and symbolic dispositions to achieve their objectives. We may think of a general movement of redefinition, reappropriation of the self, in which subjects seem to attempt the expression of themselves in synergy with their desires—a replaying in order to bring out a more favorable balance.

This description and this analogical comparison between performative discourse and the mirror stage leave us with many questions. However, we do not know what larger project these specific modalities of self-declaration serve. Here we can perceive the underlying stake of these identity affirmations: having words to say oneself and be recognized, having one’s place in the surrounding discourse, maintaining oneself in or gaining access to the world of the living, holding oneself within the terms of language.

Self-declaration, as we have seen it, may indicate a snag point in the mesh of the net of language. If the subject must be caught in the terms of language to guarantee their function, recourse to the performative dimension as observed may testify to an attempt to negotiate the place occupied by the subject in this net. Is it then a matter of taking one’s place within it or of moving within it? It is difficult to say for the moment, and we may suppose that both options exist. The stake would thus be to be able to rise or to remain within a certain symbolic and linguistic capture in order to have a chance of making one’s I truly heard: not to slip through the mesh and thus find oneself abandoned to the abyss with one’s uncertainties and the risk of being rendered invisible. Deconstructing gender can then be an opportunity to take up again where the mesh has run, because saying is the most difficult thing to do. ■