ABSTRACT
Before Judith Butler published Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, many in the feminist movement embraced the idea that women, as a group, share common characteristics and interests. She goes on to assert, following Michel Foucault, that "A genealogical critique refuses to search for the origins of gender, the inner truth of female desire, a genuine or authentic sexual identity that repression has kept from view". Draw attention to the "gender codes" the text uses, how the text conveys those codes, and then discuss the function of those codes. Draw attention to methods and strategies the text uses to subvert conventional notions of gender and sexuality. In "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," Butler argues that "drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalized, worn, and done; it implies that all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation". Therefore, find a literary "drag-act," a text that draws attention to the very gender codes it is fla.
