This ‘being a man’ and this ‘being a woman’ are internally unstable affairs. They are always beset by ambivalence precisely because there is a cost in every identification, the loss of some other set of identifications, the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the extent that the norm fails to determine us completely” (Butler 126).
In this passage from “Gender is Burning” Butler writes about how the idea of gender is overly simplified. By distilling a person to either “being a man” or “being a woman” there will always be parts of the person left out. Butler does not believe that gender is as black and white as man vs. woman. She believes that people are forced into categories of gender, and that in doing so, pieces of identity are lost. In this way, being a man or being a woman are “internally unstable affairs,” because no one is able to perfectly fit into one of these boxes. In essence, I understood Butler to be saying that identifying people according to gender has a “cost” which is simplifying people down and inherently losing other parts of their identity.
My “key” for this passage is the idea that there is a cost in every identification. I understand the concept that labels are a way to simplify things, so in every identification, there is an inherent simplification. When applied to people, this serves to make people lose their uniqueness and possibly create a feeling of being misunderstood.
My “lock” for this passage is when Butler says “a norm that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the extent that the norm fails to determine us completely.” I struggle to understand what Butler means by this phrase. If Butler is claiming that people have the ability to “resignify” gender then how can it fail to determine us completely? If the only options were to either “occupy” a specific gender or “reverse” it, which I read to mean assume the gender one was not born with, then I would understand how these simplified categories could fail to determine us completely. But if Butler believes that the norm of gender can be resignified, why can’t it be resignified in a way that properly defines you?
Hi Laura,
I really liked your analysis of this paragraph and agree with the idea that labels can be restrictive because when a person identifies with one label, there’s a possibility that that label does not completely represent their entire identity. As for your lock, this is the way I understood it: Butler is not saying people can “resignify” gender; rather I think she’s saying people can resignify or redefine the gender *norms* that have been imposed upon people who identify with that gender. When a person makes a choice and identifies with a gender, they are also subjected to harmful norms they didn’t choose that surround that gender as well. But Butler is saying that people can resignify those norms so that they don’t end up completely defining or “determining” that person’s identity.