Judith Butler, one of the most influential gender theorists of the modern era, has radically changed the landscape of feminist philosophy with her theory of gender performativity. His work, subversive in itself, effectively disproved the idea of ​​gender and sex as naturally given concepts. However, she also argues that gender is not only “culturally formed,” but acts as “a realm of action and freedom.” I argue that gender is interpreted to serve two distinct and often diametrically opposed ends: one, political liberation for the subversive subject, and second, oppressive complicity for the agencyless self. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To begin our analysis, we need to define performativity and discern what it means for gender to be performative. Butler adopts the idea of ​​the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir according to which “one is not born, but becomes a woman”, underlining that gender is constructed through repetition; it is made up entirely of acts, past and present, that constitute its reality. Performative acts can be divided into two parts: a done thing and a done thing. However, Butler's writings encourage us to think about the way in which the “doing” of gender is not simply a performance over which one has control, as when taking on a role, but also a performance that takes place in accordance with performances already socially registered. I argue that this is both the source of performativity's liberating power and its greater responsibility for effecting progressive cultural change. Because gender is constructed differently across time and space, gender representation does not focus on complete forms. As Elin Diamond states in Performance and Cultural Politics, “each performance delimits a unique temporal space… containing traces of other performances now absent, of other scenes now disappeared”. Therefore, gender always exists as a fluid and contested space in which meanings and desires are generated, occluded, and multiplied interpreted depending on culture and historical context. This will prove important in the following analysis of drag, a performance that does well to destabilize the gender binary and unmask the fictitious construction of gender. For Butler, drag consists of two functions: first, to reveal the possibility of not judging pluralism in terms of gender expression and identity. Second, “in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – as well as its contingency.” If gender is a fluid process of repetition, then it will be possible to repeat one's gender differently, as drag artists do. For the most subversive performances of drag, there are no true or false, real or distorted gender acts, and the postulation of a true gender identity turns out to be a normative fiction just as Butler claims. However, while drag performers have some control over how their gender identity is perceived and interpreted by audiences, it is ultimately audience members who imprint their notions of gender on the performers. As a result, not all drag performance works as previously stated. As in Robin Williams' cross-dressing performance as a nanny in Mrs. Doubtfire, or Dustin Hoffman's "high entertainment" in Tootsie, drag can sometimes perpetuate harmful notions of gender identity by amplifying sexual role stereotypes and solidifying those stereotypes for audiences. public. Drag performances are liberating only to the extent that they subvert stereotypes, creating adissonance between the original meanings attributed to the genre and its reformulation. Furthermore, drag is not the only form of theater that offers possible opportunities for queer liberation. Queer history is enriched by Queer Nation's “traditions of cross-dressing, drag dancing, street walking, butch-femme performances… kissing,” [and] drag performance benefits for AIDS. All of these performances can work to disrupt heteronormative and dichotomous conceptions of gender by exposing associated gender norms as fiction. In the case of AIDS activism, gender interpretation plays a critical role in political change. I also argue that the liberatory power of theater and performance comes in part from the agency of striking a gendered pose. As Dick Hebdige states, “to pose is to pose a threat… [transforming] the fact of surveillance into the pleasure of being observed.” The pose stops the line of sight and paralyzes the viewer. The posing individual accepts the awareness of being observed and develops that awareness into a determined pose or attitude that holds the viewer in his or her power. For LGBTQ+ groups who often experience oppression in the form of erasure and invisibility, exercising self-agency to gain attention and recognition is a subversive act in itself. What Butler fails to fully address are the fundamental questions that black feminism has raised since then. its beginning. That is, the ways in which black women are, according to Kimberlé Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality, "subjected to multiple forms of exclusion" that intersect to make the representation of black female sexuality particularly complex. To analyze an example in which the representation of gender serves a non-liberatory and even oppressive goal, we can turn to the case of Saartjie Baartman, an African woman who was sexually exploited and trafficked in Europe during the 19th century. After signing a false contract to exhibit her body in a circus show in Britain, Baartman was taken to France and sold to S. Reaux, an animal exhibitor. Reaux put Baartman on public display in and around Paris and was also complicit in her sexual abuse by clients willing to pay for her defilement. Even after his death, his body parts remained on display in a museum in Paris until 1974. On the one hand, as in the case of subversive drag performances, the stage representation recovers and refigures the body as a sign of opposition to institutionalized oppression and to dehumanization. On the other hand, as in the case of Saartjie Baartman's exploitation, the stage performance represents and reinscribes those same systems of oppression and degradation by putting it on display before the public gaze. The audience is responsible for inscribing cultural meaning onto Baartman's body and, in doing so, treats her as both an object and an animal: not human and not woman. Baartman's body and its parts are a site of contestation and ambivalence, complicity and shame. In her situation, it is important to ask herself who has the right to her body: to represent it, to see it and to possess it. In fact, whose body is it anyway? Self-agency cannot be exercised by those who do not consider themselves subjects. Baartman herself testified in court on behalf of her "employers"; such a fact reveals the lack of free will she possessed over her body and herself. Baartman was not playing into his own perception of the "African woman"; rather, she was forced to represent a European image of the African woman, a character that was both profoundly false and utterly depraving. Indeed, the genre can.