The Professor of Parody

The main idea put forward by Judith Butler’ and one which is shared by many feminists’ is that gender is a social artifice. However, Butler stands apart from the earlier constructivist feminists, who based their approach on such notions as equality, dignity, autonomy, the rejection of hierarchy and the treatment of the person as an end guiding concrete political action. She is even less inclined to develop a positive normative notion; like Michel Foucault, she is categorically opposed to normative concepts such as those of human dignity and of the treatment of humanity as an end, which she views as intrinsically despotic. Since we eroticise the power structures which oppress us, and can, therefore, find sexual pleasure only within their bounds, we must abandon any hope of durable material or institutional change and turn to our only remaining option’ subversive parody.