{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "I want to make a joke like \u201c\u2013 Gender Trouble, 1990\u201d but I hung out with a bunch of English majors when Cornell was one of the...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/180305551108/", "html": "

I want to make a joke like

\u201c\u2013 Gender Trouble, 1990\u201d

but I hung out with a bunch of English majors when Cornell was one of the last bastions of Theory so I\u2018ve actually read Judith Butler and that\u2019s not a fair representation at all

it is striking how I never saw Judith Butler refs on tumblr given how pioneering she was to basic tumblr concepts like \u201cgender as an unstable construct socially constituted through discourse\u201d

then that was the \u201890s though, when you were supposed to actually make coherent arguments for your position and be judged on them rather than form into tribes, fight, and then retroactively try to backform (completely nonbinding) principles out of your ad-hoc strategic discursive maneuvers

but on the other hand you got to! I mean I see common expressions now all \u201c\u2018debate\u2019 and the idea of improvement through purely ideological conflict is a sham\u201d, takes looking back at the 90s as stagnant and reactionary, sometimes I make those takes, but Judith Butler really made a good enough argument that professional Culture judges were like \u201cokay fair, 3 points to gender contingency\u201d and university and university-adjacent parts of the culture followed and dedicated effort to forming a coherent worldview and praxis incorporating that insight

Now the easy comeback is \u201ckontextmaschine, this only took place at the level of Ivy League campuses and magazines and while that might be important to your youthful formation it doesn\u2019t represent real power over the lived experience of The People\u201d

To which my medium response is that if you don\u2019t realize how that phase - only words! - softened things up for the current assault, and all the years of rediscovering from the memory hold how queer pre-Code Hollywood and pre-50s America was, well ho ho

(The bonus expert-level insight is that holy shit, did I really just articulate a cultural conservatism in defense of Judith Butler\u2019s _Gender Trouble_?)

\n", "thumbnail_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/media/tumblr_pieurcLPUi1rby04wo1_1280_772f0c78e12e.gif", "thumbnail_width": 868, "thumbnail_height": 93}