ABSTRACT
All the extracts chosen for Part three are arguably materialist in outlook, not least because its focus is the signification of gender and sexual identity via the emphatically material practice of performance. The pieces by Irigaray and Cixous exemplify two key tendencies in feminist theories of gender, the first dealing with the commodification of women by men, the second with the symbolic positioning of women within the hierarchical binaries of patriarchal thought. Judith Butler’s (b.1956) work is central to the study of performance because of her conceptualization of gender and sexual identity as inherently performative. Elin Diamond (b. 1948) proposes a mode of resistance to hegemonic constructions of gender. Moe Meyer (b. 1951) analyses a performative regime which subverts given notions of sexual identity.
