Enough with binary logic!

I'm enjoying the readings for this week. Judith Butler in particular really got me thinking.

She brings attention to the fact that humans have a tendency toward "problematic dualisms" and we seem to have a need to order things into binary pairs. Any deviation from boundaries defined by this binary distinctions, such as homosexuality, is perceived as "untidiness" (Douglas) and "cultural unruliness and disorder "Butler, 2544). In reality, the way we order reality is not the way nature is in fact ordered:

"The construction of coherence conceals the gender discontinuities tat run rampant within heterosexual, bisexual, and gay and lesbian contexts into which gender does not necessarily follow from sex, and desire, or sexuality generally, does not seem to follow from gender - indeed, where none of these dimensions of significant corporeality express or reflect on another. When the disorganization and disaggregation of the field of the bodies disrupt the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence, it seems that the model loses its descriptive force. That the regulatory ideal is then exposed as a norm and a fiction that disguises itself as a developmental law regulating the sexual field that it purports to describe" (2548).

Brilliant. This makes me think of Deleuze & Guattari's call for the abandonment of the binary, aborescent model of knowledge. While D & G rhizomatic modell perplexes me at times, it seems obvious that the range of human sexuality (and, indeed, human experience) cannot be simplified to binary logic.

Applications to Frankenstein? Well, it got me thinking of the creature as a person existing outside of society and culture. Now, the creature identifies himself as male. We might say this is due to the fact that he is exposed to society and culture, despite not being a part of either, and his gender identity is the same repetitive performance as ours. Or we might say that the creature naturally falls into a male identity because Frankenstien is a novel that adheres to the notion that gender is connected to essence. In this case, the creature's desire for a mate may reflect the primal need to establish his existence within a binary frame.

Gonna stop there. Looking forward to reading the other posts.

Dan