Subvert/Reinscribe

Abstract

This paper reexamines existing critical approaches for analyzing and assessing ironic appropriations of stereotypes in performance. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, especially in her early books Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993), has greatly impacted our understanding of performances that strategically employ stereotypes of minorities in order to subvert naturalized biases of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and countless ‘Others’. However, a dilemma frequently emerges in criticism: is the performance subverting or reinscribing the negative image it cites? Many scholars in recent decades have concluded that appropriation inevitably does both at the same time. Resisting this deterministic view, I highlight the dialectical tension between performativity and performance (in other words, the discursive stereotype and the material body) that undergirds this predicament. The performing body is often foregrounded as the arbiter of successful subversion, fundamentally distinguishing, for example, a white performer in blackface from a black performer in blackface. However, emphasizing the body in performance conflicts with one of Butler’s most radical arguments: the body does not precede the performance of identity, but is instead culturally constructed by it. I consider the relationship between the stereotype and the body through a reading of Mabou Mines’ successful yet controversial production DollHouse (2003), which cast little persons in all of the male roles. By comparing the stylized performances of gender and disability stereotypes in this production, I demonstrate that the appropriation of stereotypes does not have to end up in a political impasse between subversion and reinscription. Instead, it can stimulate us to question some of our assumptions about performance and the performing body.

Notes

1 Theatre held a more central place in Butler’s early theorizations of performativity. In the essay ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ (1988), in which she laid the groundwork for Gender Trouble, Butler took interest in theatre’s potential to ‘contest or, indeed, break down those conventions that demarcate the imaginary from the real’, exposing ideas of natural gender as performed acts (Butler 1988: 527).

2 There is debate among Ibsen scholars as to whether A Doll’s House or A Doll House is the more accurate translation for the original Norwegian title Et dukkehjem. The former situates the doll metaphor in Nora, while the latter extends it to the Helmer household. I use A Doll House based on Rolf Fjelde’s translation and its proximity to Mabou Mines’ adapted title DollHouse.

3 Brecht’s techniques for the Epic Theatre are remarkably similar to Butler’s strategies of subversion. Like Butler, Brecht’s techniques emphasize denaturalization, historicity, contradiction, reappropriation of familiar codes and even the stylized repetition of acts (or gestus). Brecht is also a dialectical thinker, not only in terms of actor and character, reason and emotion, but also in terms of art’s relationship to politics