Performativity

Question 1

Judith Butler

Answer 1

‘Persons’ only become intelligible through becoming gendered

• Certain kinds of ‘identities’ cannot ‘exist’
• Gender as performative - always in doing
• Act of referring to bodies creates them

Question 2

Jane Atkinson

Answer 2

• Wana of Sulawesi

- Men menstruate, get pregnant, give birth - accent on similarity

Question 3

Marilyn Strathern

Answer 3

• 1998, Melanesia
• Gender differences internal to both male and female bodies (ascribed to different parts and substances of the body)
• Gender elicited in relation to others

Question 4

Janet Carsten

Answer 4

• Malay gender - Langkawi
• Do not stress gender difference
• Ideas about gender do not refer to static and fixed categories
• Difference made significant around certain moments: rituals of the life cycle

Question 5

New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs)

Answer 5

• Legal and moral issues
• Challenge to ideas and values concerning kinship
• Implications for gender