Subjectivity: Psychoanalysis, Identity Formation, Feminist Critique

Jacques Lacan: "The Mirror-Phase"
Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory"
Jonathan Weinberg, "Things are Queer"
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
Margaret Olin, "Gaze"

Jacques Lacan: "The Mirror-Phase"
Jacques Lacan's interest lies in the relation of the "realized self" within the reality that contains it. He seeks to explain stages in the development of conscious by dividing them into two, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. "The [Symbolic] concerns the subject's entry into, and formation by the world of language. The [Imaginary] involves a pre-linguistic stage of consciousness focused around the visual recognition of images." It is through the mirror-phase, or the realization of the ego through the reflection of the individual, that signifies an identification and transformation into a recognized I. Before this Mirror-Phase we can only see ourselves as fragmentations of the body and without consciousness, but once we see ourselves as an image a representation of our body, only then can we begin to fully come to consciousness and become an individual. Thus our entire concept of reality, individual, and consciousness is centered around imagery and representation; we only know ourselves through our reflection.

Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory"
"One is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman."- Simone de Beauvoir
I feel that this one statement quoted by Butler into her text clearly symbolizes the main point in dealing with her ideas of Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Butler explains that gender is not something that is innate with us, but is a construction formed within the cultural apparatus. She explains that there is a vast difference between sex and gender; that sex is specifically the genitalia, while gender is the expected performance of the idea of sex. She speaks in terms of quotations of "the body is an 'historical idea' rather than 'a natural species'" and that "...any gender, is an historical situation rather than a natural fact." So even though sex is something of the body and is physical we conform even our bodies into an historical idea/situation by the fact that we can only define our sex within the terms of the constructed gender.

Is the construction and performance of gender a form of survivalism? Did we develop these specific constructions of what it means to be "man" or "woman" through the means of continuing the lifespan of our species? And if so is this survivalist tactic outdated?

Jonathan Weinberg, "Things are Queer"
In "Things are Queer," the main concern for Jonathan Weinberg is the role that "queerness" manifests within the realm of reality and its historical relevance to the ideas of sexuality and gender. He uses the work of photographer Duane Michals, specifically his series Things Are Queer, to begin to formulate an opinion that "The queer [...] is not a matter of specific sexual identities but of the world itself. The world is queer, because it is known only through representations that are fragmentary and in themselves queer. Their meanings are always relative, a matter of relationships and constructions. [...] things themselves are not queer, but rather what is queer is the certainty by which we label things normal and abnormal, decent and obscene, gay and straight." The idea of homosexuality does not fit within the construct of gender or the cultural definition of sex, therefore it was deemed as something abnormal, amoral, obscene, wrong, queer.

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
Laura Mulvey utilizes film to begin to dissect the role that men and women play within out society. In its most simplistic terms Mulvey equates the male to the spectator and the female to the spectacle; men are voyeurs who continuously look upon the female for her abnormal and terror-inducing castration and therefore lack of a penis. The phallus has gained its power within society and across culture only in its degradation of the feminine; without the absence of it within one form of humanity its presence cannot hope to hold such importance. "The function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold: she first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic." By merely existing within this patriarchal society she a symbol of the power of the penis and the weakness its absence creates; no words have to be spoken to her offspring her mere being is a lesson more powerful than words. She goes on to explain male unconscious as "two avenues of escape from [...] castration anxiety: preoccupation with the reenactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment, or saving of the guilty object[...]; or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous..." Mulvey then directly relates this to film, as the film gives the male (the spectator) exactly the power to do this. Because the male is more often than not cast as an active protagonist that the audience, or spectators, can directly relate him to while the female is frozen within her role as mere icon, or something to be viewed (the spectacle). These two avenues of consciousness are then transferred onto her easily through the methods of voyeurism and fetishistic scopophilia.

How are we then to change this? If the phallus holds so much power and that power is based solely on the woman as the manifestation of absence of the penis (or power) then isn't the power really within the woman? For without her the power of the male (or phallus) would cease to exist. But, how do we break this power without destroying ourselves?

Film Still of Mia Sara (as Lily) in the movie Legend where she brings about "darkness" by disobeying Jack's (Tom Cruise) command not to touch the unicorn. Thus her disobedience brings about the apocolypse which is then only righted by Jack as the "knighted savior" who rescues both Lily (who is captured because of her beauty) and the world.

Drawing of the confrontation between Eowyn and the Witch King in Lord of the Rings where before she delivers the final blow the Witch King says, "No man shall kill me" and Eowyn states, "I am no man, I am a woman." Thus the man-made prophecy is fulfilled that only by not being a man may she posses the power to do anything of worth. Her action of striking down the Witch King is only defined by her lack of a penis.