1. Citizenship as Performativity: is citizenship democratic or disciplined?
- Author
-
Pool, Heather
- Subjects
- *
PERFORMATIVE (Philosophy) , *CITIZENSHIP , *GENDER , *IDENTITY (Philosophical concept) - Abstract
Three of Judith Butler’s works—Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter, and Undoing Gender—develop a concept of gender as performativity. For Butler, gender (and “sex”) are constructed categories that attempt to make the world a simpler place by dividing persons into women and men. These categories then handily inform how each of us understands the world and our place within it. As such, these ideas act as unifying concepts that consolidate identity. Gender operates as a norm that allows a person to be intelligible or recognizable as humans to others within society. This paper will argue that citizenship is a similar, fundamental basis of identity that shares many of the characteristics of performativity that Butler discusses in reference to gender. First, I describe what I see as the hallmarks of gender performativity in Butler’s three works. Then, I compare citizenship to gender, using Otto Santa Ana and Rogers Smith’s discussions of the varied meanings of citizenship in the United States. Next, I examine examples of discourse about citizenship provided by law and society scholars and scholars of race in the United States to argue that citizenship shares many of the characteristics of gender as performativity, specifically in its power of regulation and production. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006