Parapa
Gaby Pailer (University of British Columbia)
Gender, Cultural Diversity, and the Comic
Notes and Quotes for Discussion
At the first workshop in Bronnbach, the group decided, that Andreas Böhn and I shall provide a theoretical framework for the initial session of the second workshop in Vancouver. What follows here, is less a concise argument than a patchwork of theories from gender studies, cultural and postcolonial studies as well as theories of the comic, which I would suggest to employ. Next to a brief description of selected theories, I shall provide “lengthy” quotes as a material basis for my oral presentation at the workshop as well as for our discussion in the first section “Theory Trouble.”
Common Ground Discourses of gender, cultural diversity, and the comic have in common that they are critical or disturbing towards binary oppositions and envision a conflict between a “norm” and an “other.” I would like to take this common ground as a point of departure for a theoretical framework that could help to further investigate comic strategies and effects combined with gender and cultural diversity in literature, theatre, and film.
Gender and the Heterosexual Norm In the 1960s, feminist theories assumed a possible distinction between (biological) “sex” and (socio-cultural) “gender”. This distinction and its epistemological value underwent critical review (e.g. Gildemeister/Wetterer, Butler Gender Trouble). Since the 1990s, the biological bi-morphism of humans, formerly considered as a “natural” binarism that produces distinctive “masculine” and “feminin” ways of behaviour, thought, talent, language, is now seen as the effect of a socio-cultural practice to label us as “male” or “female” at (or even before) birth. There is no knowledge to gain about “sex” before “gender”. The categorizing/labeling socio-cultural “norm” and the
question how it can be changed has been delt with by a wide range of critics, among them Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and
Gender, Cultural Diversity, and the Comic
Notes and Quotes for Discussion
At the first workshop in Bronnbach, the group decided, that Andreas Böhn and I shall provide a theoretical framework for the initial session of the second workshop in Vancouver. What follows here, is less a concise argument than a patchwork of theories from gender studies, cultural and postcolonial studies as well as theories of the comic, which I would suggest to employ. Next to a brief description of selected theories, I shall provide “lengthy” quotes as a material basis for my oral presentation at the workshop as well as for our discussion in the first section “Theory Trouble.”
Common Ground Discourses of gender, cultural diversity, and the comic have in common that they are critical or disturbing towards binary oppositions and envision a conflict between a “norm” and an “other.” I would like to take this common ground as a point of departure for a theoretical framework that could help to further investigate comic strategies and effects combined with gender and cultural diversity in literature, theatre, and film.
Gender and the Heterosexual Norm In the 1960s, feminist theories assumed a possible distinction between (biological) “sex” and (socio-cultural) “gender”. This distinction and its epistemological value underwent critical review (e.g. Gildemeister/Wetterer, Butler Gender Trouble). Since the 1990s, the biological bi-morphism of humans, formerly considered as a “natural” binarism that produces distinctive “masculine” and “feminin” ways of behaviour, thought, talent, language, is now seen as the effect of a socio-cultural practice to label us as “male” or “female” at (or even before) birth. There is no knowledge to gain about “sex” before “gender”. The categorizing/labeling socio-cultural “norm” and the
question how it can be changed has been delt with by a wide range of critics, among them Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and
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