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Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender

  • Caterina Marino
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Mind the Gap: Borders, Limits and Frontiers
This chapter is in the book Mind the Gap: Borders, Limits and Frontiers

Abstract

When discussing Gender (first the ‘theory,’ today the ‘ideology’), we are always faced with a paradox: on the one hand, Gender is understood as a danger that requires the mobilisation of public opinion; on the other hand, as the fad of a minority. Scholars agree that a pivotal moment occurred during the ‘Peking World Conference on Women’ (1995) when the Catholic Church criticised Gender category as undermining the inherent sexual differences between male and female genders, which the Church believes to be ‘natural’. Judith Butler, who is renowned for challenging the assumed alignment between biological sex, gender identity and heterosexual orientation, consistently interrogates ‘Gender ideology’. This notion is a phantasm conjured by right-wing factions and conservative Catholic circles and Butler’s analysis emphasises the need to deconstruct this concept. The combined efforts of philosophy and psychoanalysis are crucial to recognising the dangerousness of boundaries, which marginalise individuals who challenge conformity, placing them outside the realm of what is considered human.

Abstract

When discussing Gender (first the ‘theory,’ today the ‘ideology’), we are always faced with a paradox: on the one hand, Gender is understood as a danger that requires the mobilisation of public opinion; on the other hand, as the fad of a minority. Scholars agree that a pivotal moment occurred during the ‘Peking World Conference on Women’ (1995) when the Catholic Church criticised Gender category as undermining the inherent sexual differences between male and female genders, which the Church believes to be ‘natural’. Judith Butler, who is renowned for challenging the assumed alignment between biological sex, gender identity and heterosexual orientation, consistently interrogates ‘Gender ideology’. This notion is a phantasm conjured by right-wing factions and conservative Catholic circles and Butler’s analysis emphasises the need to deconstruct this concept. The combined efforts of philosophy and psychoanalysis are crucial to recognising the dangerousness of boundaries, which marginalise individuals who challenge conformity, placing them outside the realm of what is considered human.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Part I
  5. Borders as Translation Spaces 1
  6. Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
  7. Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
  8. Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
  9. We Fight for this Land 51
  10. Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
  11. Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
  12. Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
  13. Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
  14. Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
  15. Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
  16. ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
  17. Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
  18. Part II
  19. Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
  20. A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
  21. Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
  22. Contributors and Editors 307
  23. Index 311
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111448473-010

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Contents VII
  4. Part I
  5. Borders as Translation Spaces 1
  6. Border Narratives: Crossing Lines and Telling Tales 9
  7. Geophilosophy of the Border: Beyond Immunitarian Politics 21
  8. Borders and Neo-Nationalism: A Geophilosophical Approach 37
  9. We Fight for this Land 51
  10. Converting the Limit: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Infinite in the Act of Difference 63
  11. Liminal Places and Non-Places 77
  12. Border Brushstrokes: The Ulster Arts Club and the Post-Partition Nation 91
  13. Bordering as the Breaking Force of Border Subjects 101
  14. Frontiers of Sexual Difference: The Phantasm of Gender 115
  15. Borders and Language: Hermeneutic-Philosophical Issues 129
  16. ‘Thou wenest Ich be a beggere’: Borders and the Habitus in Middle English Romance 145
  17. Funes the Arboreous: Borderless Ecologies in Borges’s Ficciones 157
  18. Part II
  19. Borders and Barbed Wire: Cahir Healy’s Memoirs from the Argenta Prison Ship 171
  20. A Residue of Boundary Correspondence 183
  21. Two Years on an Ulster Prison Ship 189
  22. Contributors and Editors 307
  23. Index 311
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