ABSTRACT
Judith Butler's theory of the performativity of gender has caused quite a stir in feminist circles. Butler has been both idolized and vilified for her claim that sex, no less than gender, is not biologically or naturally based but is discursively constructed and performatively produced and reproduced. But though the implications of the theory of performativity for the feminist analysis of sex/gender have been explored in some detail, its implications for a feminist analysis of power have not. Perhaps this is because it is assumed that Butler simply adopts without modification a Foucaultian analysis of power; thus, it is assumed that feminist discussions of Foucault's account of power apply, mutatis mutandis, to Butler as well. Indeed, there is some plausibility to this view, especially if one focuses one's attention on Butler's groundbreaking early work, Gender Trouble. 1 In that book, Butler more or less straightforwardly adopts a Foucaultian analysis of power and, along with it, all of the insights and obfuscations such an analysis invites. However, in her more recent reformulations of the theory of performativity, Butler moves beyond Foucault's analysis of power by providing one of the crucial ingredients that his analysis lacked: an account of what it is that mediates between the two poles of subjection, between individual subjects and the oppressive sex/gender norms to which they are subjected. I shall argue that, by providing this missing ingredient, Butler has been able to move beyond the Foucaultian paradox of agency and to provide an account of power that succeeds to some extent in theorizing simultaneously both the features of cultural domination in contemporary societies and the possibilities of resistance to and subversion of such domination. Thus, despite some significant limitations to the account of power that is implicit in the theory 66of performativity, this account proves to be quite fruitful for the development of a feminist conception of power.
