Week 8 DMCT

Judith Butler's work on performativity and embodiment during the 1990's (as well as Foucault) was part of the discursive turn in philosophy and social theory. Butler (1991) argued that homosexuality and heterosexuality were social constructions established ideologically. Homosexuality is not simply a mimicry, parody, or copy of the heterosexual norm. Rather, it is established on its own terms and people identify with the concept naturally. Butler insists that heterosexuality is not the original. I was confused for a while because I kept thinking "wait, before there can be any homosexuality there must be heterosexuality. Before there can be anything there must be heterosexuality because without heterosexuality there can be no humanity." However, I think I was going to far back. Butler is not talking about the beginning of humanity, but the beginning of society. Her vision of a non-mimeographic homosexuality relies not on the start of humanity (which does indeed start with heterosexuality) but with the start of society. But that time heterosexuality and homosexuality are indeed equal. There is no inherent privileging of one version of sexuality over the other.

Many have taken up Butler's queering of spaces, language, ideologies, histories, and normativities through the examination of queer theory. Randal Woodland's discussion of online queer communities focuses on four different versions and examples of online queerness. Woodland determines that defining identity online is strengthened through these communities and queer communities are similar to straight ones. However, virtual communities involve initiation rites and often crystalize around crises. The act of coming out acts as currency within the communities that serve as spatio-temporal metaphors for determining sexuality.

These themes are also taken up by Foster in his discussion of transgendered performance in cyberpunk. His discussion of recent cyberpunk literature indicates the relationship between queer theory and spatial analysis. Online discussion and traditional novels offer potential sites of identification for homosexuals who are "still in the closet." It also offers a potential "new closet" through which a homosexual can communicate with his peers and construct a gay identity, but it might also allow escapism and a failure to come out in real life and construct identity in real life.