Feminist Psychoanalysis & Queer Theory: Butler's "Gender Trouble" and Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa"

Gender Trouble and The Laugh of the Medusa

During the last decades, there is a certain distinction between the concepts of sex and gender. The concept of sex is considered to be a biological category, while gender is social sex - the expectations we have about this or that person in relation to his or her biological sex. However, in the queer theory studies, this relationship has also been questioned. Very often, the word "queer" is used as a synonym for representatives of the LGBT community. These concepts always go together. Each representative of the gay, lesbian, queer, feminist of other communities tries to express him or herself to the public and be treated equally to the heterosexual community. All these groups express their concerns in the literature of various magazines or newspapers posts. It is crucial for them to be heard and understood. Thus, the feminist psychoanalysis argues about the existing of women literature, which is completely different from those written by men, and queer theory states on the possibility for the person to determine his or her gender according to the social environment not taking into account the biological sex.

All the representatives of queer communities and feminism representatives demand the equality in the society, which must not be determined by sexual belonging. Sometimes they argue about their superiority as it was done by Hélène Cixous in her famous work “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1976). The main thesis of this work is the existence of the women writing which is completely different from men. The author is the representative of French feminism which is mainly psychoanalytic and is focused on curbing. All the feminists throughout the world are trying to find terminology that would save femininity from its stereotyped links with inferiority (Butler 9). In her work, the methods of female subjectivity expressions are combined with corporeality. The philosopher believes that a woman thinks through the body because of the peculiarities of her physiology.Such a peculiarity is needed to be used for the woman’s creativity. According to Cixous, Freud's and Nietzsche's masculinist doctrines made her believe in her inferiority (Cixous 877-79). The author identifies the writing with a breakthrough and a revelation of her own sexuality because when returning to the original female nature, a woman can become free. She calls all women for writing to find harmony and faith in themselves. From a philosophical point of view “The Laugh of the Medusa”  is a feminist manifesto for the liberation of women. The author argues that the future must not be determined by the past (Cixous 881). In the past, women did not have enough rights. That is why they have to live according to the current perspectives and create their future themselves.

The feminist movements were the starting point of the sexual minorities movements. The Queer Theory claims that the surroundings and person’s will and feelings determine his or her gender. Tyson (2006) and Parker (2015) have paid much attention in their works to the queer criticisms and theory development. They wrote about the manifestations of gay, lesbian, and queer ideas in the society. According to Judith Butler (1990), from the very beginning, there is a built-in hierarchy in the society which is divided into two separate genders. Thus, the equality of two genders cannot be achieved, because they are artificially constructed in a system that does not provide equality (Butler 4-6). However, even if the destruction of the framework of gender may sound like a utopia, the Queer theory has already managed to "shake" the framework of this construct. In particular, this concerns ideas about the romantic and sexual drives towards other people, as well as gender identity and gender expression (Parker). However, queer theory is much more complex than gut or lesbian criticism. The category of sexuality is much broader here than the simple opposition of homosexual/heterosexual. It is a kind of mixture, a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible sexualities (Tyson 336). The appearance of such a phenomenon became possible due to the processes of socialization and globalization in the society.

In such a way, every person wants to be equal to the majority in the society. The historical conditions of women treatment caused the appearance of feminist movement and feminist literature. The literature became one of the means of expression where they spoke about their identity. Following this movement, the representatives of LGBT communities began to show themselves and search for their rights and equality. Thus, the feminism and queer criticism became the inherent part of the life in the society where there are a lot of the supporters and opponents of these movements.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Rout‑ ledge, 1990.

Cixous, Hélène, et al. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 4, 1976, pp. 875–893. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3173239.

Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Vol. 2, Routledge, 2006.