EXT. CONCRETE SLAB AMIDST CONSTRUCTION/DECONSTRUCTION SITE
TOPOS- DUSK
Towering stadium lights burn down on a damp concrete platform, forcing the wet surface to reflect the aggressive fluorescent beams of light straight back into the surrounding rubble. The site was just throbbing with icky wet chaos; the type that screams its liminality and echoes a quiet panic at the process of becoming. A small body walks the perimeter of the nonsensical space between destruction/decomposition and construction/proliferation. Standing at the edge of the concrete plateau, one body asked another a question...
JUDITH
(smiling)
Are you afraid to die Diotima?
DIOTIMA
(smirking)
Ah my dear Judith, death is a bodily phenomenon, a metamorphosis of matter. It would be foolish for me to fear this transformation, for I have given birth in beauty, and nurtured immortal virtue!
BUTLER
(with a chuckle)
If it is true that one can only transcend mortality through birth, then surely through this logic, only those whose bodies include a womb are capable of attaining “immortal virtue,” as you say.
DIOTIMA
(exasperated)
Listen carefully, As I told Socrates reproduction goes on forever; it is what mortals have in place of immortality. Every being is pregnant with the desire to give birth, whether it be in body or in soul, and beauty is the means of release from the pains of labor. Every being desires to overcome its illusory finitude through the divine mediator of love.
BUTLER
(pulling at her collar)
It seems as if you mean birth as catharsis, or epiphany, as though we come to knowsome “transcendent truth” through the process-- does this absolutist view of of love not dissolve our own certainty of it? Love feels inextricable from doubt.
DIOTIMA
(wagging her finger)
I would be weary of this doubt Judith, for one who doubts one’s own love must doubt one’s self and every lesser thing, and what is greater than love? You are sure to doubt everything!
BUTLER
(scoffs)
Do you not doubt your own love Diotima? How can one not doubt that which continually returns to exactly that which a self cannot know? How can one not question that which dissolves its own meaning as one approaches? Love is an exchange, and beinga self is a state of constant becoming; a process which implies the potential of difference through iteration.
DIOTIMA
(offended at the suggestion of doubting herself aloud)
Watch your tongue! Do you suggest that I should have doubt in my own love? And would you say that imitation or reproduction is an act of love in its desperate pursuit of immortality, despite the potential for difference? And therefore could a self find solace in resigning to the certainty of difference within the process of perpetual becoming?
BUTLER
Imitation differs from reproduction in its motive, not to copy that which claims to be natural and original, but to invert the terms of priority and derivativeness (Butler 313.) It seems as though critical imitation of oppressive structures functions much like what you may identify as a pregnancy and subsequent birth of soul.
But certainty is suspect...
(DIOTIMA watches her abstracted reflection on the grains of immobilized sand that make up the concrete platform, exploring the limits of certainty within her own self)
BUTLER
(breaking the brief silence)
During the process of writing my essay on Doubting Love, I came to the realization that one knows love somehow only when all one’s ideas are destroyed, and this becoming unhinged from what one knows is the paradigmatic sign of love (Butler, Doubting Love.)
DIOTIMA
(intrigued, it’s clear that Butler struck a cord)
And what of loving one’s self? Is there ever a state of rest for the becoming self and its tired body?
BUTLER
(looking out into the rubble)
The ability to love one’s self may be dependent on the acceptance of doubt, and the love of this doubt. Absolute certainty of self begets hysteria as inevitably one will identify a difference, which becomes intolerable to the self that strains to reproduce its own ideal image in order to establish the illusion of originality.
DIOTIMA
(throwing her head back in laughter)
Of course you must be referring to heterosexuality! And what happens when this illusory claim to truth is threatened by a difference?
BUTLER
(rolling her eyes)
You know as well as I that if the difference is positioned as opposite, surely it will be used by a panicked self to reestablish its “naturalness” in reference to the other.
DIOTIMA
(clearly exasperated)
Ha of course! This logic drove Plato and Socrates to use my words to support their fragile arguments. So what of differences that are not opposite? What if one does not care to imitate the “natural” dynamics defined by heterosexual panic?
BUTLER
These differences are what threaten bodies who perform their gender compulsively. A self who has identified the performative root of gender presentation is offered the choice of reclaiming autonomy over the nature of one’s own performance.
DIOTIMA
(genuinely hopeful)
Do you mean to say that there is such a thing as a performance of one’s self that is not compulsory? For if those selves who claim to be the original, define their originality in relation to the other, or the imitation, how can the other regain autonomy over their own becoming in the hysterical presence of that which claims to be “natural”?
BUTLER
Only through recognizing the panicked practice of self-conscious imitation that precariously suspends heteronormativity above allothers, and coming to terms with the impossibility of absolute self-identification, can one escape the trauma of compulsory gender performance. This realization, a moment I would consider a birth of soul in the sense you described earlier, presents the self with the option to claim autonomy over its gender presentation.
DIOTIMA
(excited)
So, according to you, once one can see the underlying imitation that makes up social performance of gender, one may feel a relief from the aforementioned panic inherent to this self conscious imitation? Might this relief of panic open up the possibility of play with the “rules” of heteronormativity?
BUTLER
Indeed, this realization may be followed by a state of joyful questioning of one’s own perceived restrictions, and subsequently the freedom to playwith one’s gender identity.
DIOTIMA
(musing)
If, through this transcendent birth of soul or self, we may begin playing with and questioning gender performance, why not also play with societal performance of identity in general?
BUTLER
(a spark in her eye)
Absolutely! This is only the next logical step in the process of becoming. Once the “other” installed in the selfis accepted, one may find comfort in this newfound autonomy over the relationship between self and other. One may then proceed to find joy in the process of exchange between the self and the other that make up one’s identity.
DIOTIMA
(thinking aloud)
I would imagine that the newfound autonomy of presentation would open up an arena of creative possibility for performance of identity roles.
BUTLER
(replaying scenes from past drag balls in her head)
Your statement is not false. However, this contextually-dependent freedom of expression triggers panic as it dissolves the heteronormative insistence on originality. Performances of identity that destabilize classic heteronormative white American identity categories by suggesting the legitimacy of the “other.”
DIOTIMA
Do performances of gender become more critical of performativity itself after one’s transcendence of panicked compulsory heterosexuality?
BUTLER
Let us consider those spaces in which the goal of one’s performance is to prove that one has acknowledged the compulsory panic that pervades heteronormative society. Spaces like drag balls. Within these spaces, where transcendence is required of all participants, performances of identity expose their performativity explicitly. Imitation becomes very real, and differences within the body of others is nuanced.
DIOTIMA
(concerned)
Is it possible for one to be without performing? I am surely not familiar with performances as explicit in their exposure if imitation as those you refer to, but all performance of identity feels constructed after surpassing this boundary of self-identical perspective.
BUTLER
(chuckling softly)
Ah, we’re born naked and we die naked! It seems like you may be asking if the relentless performance of identity between those two raw moments of originality is just drag.
DIOTIMA
I suppose this must be what I am wondering...
However, I see that it is too subjective a question to be answered. I have no choice but to be endlessly amused by its echo.
(BUTLER smiles in DIOTIMA’s general direction and walks off into the fluorescent-lit deconstruction site)
My hope for the reader of this situation is to encourage the destabilization of certainty surrounding anything other than difference and death (emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding gender and self-identification), while suggesting that love’s underlying motive of mortal panic is shared by that of heteronormative aggression and refusal. Judith Butler and Diotima both reject absolutism in their definitions of key concepts like love, identity and originality, which tend toward simplified binaries in western logic. I also aimed to address the proliferation of difference within bodies of difference as an important product of critical performativity. Most of all, I wanted to leave the reader with a desire to find comfort in difference and uncertainty.