Papagena Robbins

Can the Gender Abjected Transform the Gender Subjected?: Performance, Performativity, and Gender Identity Subversion in Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The purpose of my paper, "Can the Gender Abjected Transform the Gender Subjected?: Performance, Performativity, and Gender Identity
Subversion in Hedwig and the Angry Inch," is to analyze the way in which a particular performance from a sex/gender "outlaw" can
illuminate the performative powers of compulsory sex/gender for an audience subjected to these norms, destabilizing the system that
supports the distinction between the "outlaw" and subject. Judith Butler's theories of gender construction and performativity, which
allow us to consider how gendered subjects are formed through the discursive power of regulatory norms, comprise the majority part of
the foundation for my analysis of the film. I do, however, employ other theoretical sources in the service of my argument, such as,
performativity in literary theory, Adorno and Horkheimer's use of determinate negation and dialectics, and Laura Mulvey's work on male
spectatorship. Through the analysis of several musical performances in the film, I demonstrate how a dialectical tension arises between the
specific gender performance of the "outlaw" and the gender subjected spectators, making conspicuous the conditions of existence for both parties. This conspicuousness problematizes their relation, calling it into question. As the performance is reproduced through the cinematic
medium, it becomes a source of iterability and citation that makes the performance potent on a larger scale.