Judith Butler Undoing Gender

For all that, feminist theorists are more interested in theorizing than in tensions evoked by the body. Gender is done or constructed by the person and others in his society. Contrary to this established idea, Judith Butler, in her book Undoing Gender, sees that gender can be done by resisting and escaping from the clutches of the social norm through which gender is recognized. She argues: “I may feel that without some recognizability I cannot live. But I may also feel that the terms by which I am recognized make life unlivable”(4). Butler strikes many examples of gender resistance to social recognition such as intersex, transsexuality and queers. She poses a critical question: “how might the world be recognized so that this …show more content…
Many critics stressed the importance of the auditor's presence which activates the interplay between the speaker and the auditor; thus enriching the ideas. However, ideas are well presented in many monologues-like Webster's 'A Castaway' without the auditor taking any part (Byron 20). Indeed the auditor provides other perspectives than the speaker offers the reader; but this does not mean that the auditor should be a living one. This is clear in Browning's "To My Last Duchess" where the dead duchess who, framed in a picture on the wall, yet provides a threatening perspective to the duke (Byron 21). It should be noted that the reader plays so important a role in the dramatic monologue that critics like Dorothy Mermin, in her book The Audience in the Poem, lets the reader interfere into the role of the auditor who, silent and passive as he is often presented, pulls the reader into action so much so he contextualizes himself as the product of social and cultural conditions (Byron 22-3). The reader should be well aware that the speaker reveals certain aspects of his character to realize his