https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.049
Negotiating Norms: Performative Sexuality, Precedential Influences, and Power Politics in Select Malayalam Short Stories
SHENIYA JOSE P
Assistant Professor of English
Government Arts and Science College Calicut, India
Abstract: The paper aims to make a rereading of the Performative Theory of Gender and Sexuality by Judith Butler, foregrounding the liaison among performativity, the precedents in sexual roles, and the intricate power-play inherent in them, in the light of select Malayalam short stories written by Pramod Raman. Instead of spotlighting on how individual choices about sexuality and sexual roles become more or less conditioned, influenced, colored, negotiated and reinforced with performativity, the paper underscores how such performative roles are sometimes imposed on the powerless and the vulnerable, and suggests there is power dynamics inherent in the choice/lack of choice of performative roles. Thus, every sexual relationship implicitly becomes a relationship of power. How performative roles become subordinated to the linguistic, discursively constructed nature of sexuality norms is also emphasized.
The paper also tries to throw some light on the ontological nature of gender and sexuality where they get superscribed on the very nature of being and existence. It also describes how sexuality complements the regulatory mechanism of sex in creating the bodies it controls. Thus, creation of bodies and the regulation of them become simultaneous processes which go hand in hand, where the performative process itself becomes the product. Remarkably enough, the narrative and linguistic strategies in these stories self-reflexively emphasize the role of power in constituting precedents in sexual roles; the role of precedents in deciding performativity; the role of performativity in affirming/reaffirming sexuality; and the role of sexuality in creating the bodies it controls. How this process goes on in a continuum is also highlighted in this paper. The material aspect of sexuality, and how class plays a decisive role in defining relationships and assigning sexual roles are also probed into. The paper also analyses the power play underlying sexual roles using the Foucauldian trio of power, knowledge and discourse.
Keywords: Performativity, Sexuality, Sexual Roles, Precedents, Class and Discourse
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