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iationcaused by Indonesia in the novel,and holds that the focus of the novel is the gamebetween the introduction of innate generation of gender and the self-examination ofnurture theory.Rachel Carroll’s(2010)“Retrospective Sex:Rewriting Intersexualityin Jeffrey Eugenides’Middlesex”,the paper focuses on the representation oftranssexuality in fiction,arguing that although the fictional focus on ambiguousgender identity seems to be consistent with queer criticism of fixed categories of“sex”,Eugenides’narrative is still concerned with the assumption of heterogeneity.More specifically,it will explore the narrative strategy of Calliope Stephanides’transgender body,focusing on the relationship between the adult Karl of male identity,the“author”of this fictional autobiography,and his remembered adolescent self.

Chapter 2 Judith Butler’s Gender Performativity

2.1 Sources of Gender Performativity

2.1.1 Austin’s Speech Act Theory

In John Langshaw Austin’s famous pragmatic work How to Do Things withWords,he assumes that in addition to describing and narrating things,words can bealso the performativity of things.He often takes some examples.

‘I do(this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’as uttered in the course of themarriage ceremony.’

‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’as uttered when smashing the bottleagainst the stem.’

‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow’

Obviously,Austin considers that these examples are“not to describe my doingof what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it:it is todo it”.(Austin,1975)But Austin considers that performatives do not always functionin contexts.He differentiates two performatives utterances,the“serious utterance”and the“unserious utterance”.The basis of his distinction is whether performative utterances are in the proper context and obtain the authority to act,so as to furtherproduce the effect.“There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having acertain conventional effect,that procedure to include the uttering of certain words bycertain persons in certain circumstances,and further,the particular persons andcircumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particularprocedure invoked.”(Austin,1975)

2.2 Essentialism and Constructivism

Essentialism proposes that biology is destiny.They convince that women,as anatural category,own some special and proprietary features that men do not have,inthe meantime,these features are everlasting,universal and changeless on the domainof time and culture.

Constructivism considers that it is a consensus that sex is the biography conceptwhile gender is constructed by culture.Simon de Beauvoir is an outstandingrepresentative of constructivism.On the first level,they believe that human’sphysiological characteristics(chromosome and reproductive organ)determine his/hergender in his/her lifetime.On the foundation of the former,they entitle to man andwoman with the social or cultural identity.And then the two identities are endowedwith corresponding gendered temperaments:masculine and feminine.On the lastlevel,resigned the two binary law,two sexed subjects desire each other,whichconstructs a complete and coherent gender conception.She proposes that“one is notborn a woman,but,rather,becomes one”in her work The Second Sex(Beauvoir,1974)Sex is fixed while g本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。