Dreams of Djinni and Djuna: Performance and Performativity in the Dance of the Seven Veils
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In 1988 Judith Butler introduced the term performativity, to argue that gender is not biologically determined, but rather enacted: ‘gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity, instituted through a stylized repetition of acts;’ gender ‘is real only to the extent that it is performed.’ In 1993 Butler emphasized that performativity should be understood as an unconscious ‘reiteration of norms’ distinct from consciously constructed theatrical performance. This assertion led to a firestorm in theatre studies, and much scholarship in the field in the last decade has sought to understand the value of consciously constructed performance to the unconscious identity-forming processes of performativity. My chapter offers two case studies of Americans who explore these theoretical concerns: the first is that of the modernist writer Djuna Barnes and her acerbic critique of Sapphic orientalist performance. Barnes’s critique of women in performance has never been fully understood; I argue that she anticipates Butler’s notions of performativity and is working—even in the early stages of her career—from metaphysics of absence derived in part from her reading of Nietzsche. Barnes is precisely concerned with the construction of gender and identity in the visual field. I will also cite an example from late twentieth century gay culture—the transsexual striptease artist called Jeannie, who styles her act on Barbara Eden’s portrayal of the 1960s television sitcom character.