Struggle

In both 'Keywords for Radicals' and Butler's 'Imitation and Gender Insubordination' struggle comes back as a way to relate to what is being studied. What is being studied is language, or the use of definitions or categories. And the 'struggle' in both is the rejection of the idea that such definitions or categories are supposed to set anything in stone, or refusing to accept that definitions could be fixed or pre-given.

For Butler, this started with their discomfort with the category of 'lesbian'. Not because they are not one, or don't want to be one, but because there is a contradiction in the category that they want to expose. The one of both being one and acting like one at the same time. They reject that the category as such preceded them and they happen to be an 'instance' of that category, so to say. And point out instead, that the category only derives it's meaning from being done/embodied/performed/repeated. As they say, there is nothing lesbians could be said to have in common. And if the category was fixed somehow, that should be the case.

In Keywords for Radicals, they start the question of struggle with the implication that the radical effort is not completed with assigning 'true names' as in calling power out on it's bs. Using 'the fable of the emperer's new clothes' to make the point, even after the king is called out, the fact he's not wearing any clothes exposed, he will carry on as if nothing ever happened because he is already too invested. The stakes are too high.

There is actually a line to be drawn here with Butler as well. As they show, the straight 'norm' somehow needs or uses the visibility of queerness as the 'other' to constantly re-establish itself as that normative position. And at the same time, the visibility of queerness poses a thread, as it exposes the possibility of that seemingly fixed reality-of straightness as norm and as true-to be inherently unstable.

So for Butler, the site of struggle is to move beyond the fixity of names, categories, realities, and finding new meaning in them, not to discredit them, but to have a new stance towards them. One that can actually challenge the very oppressive systems that uses them, and needs them, in order to keep up it's semblance of naturality.

In Keywords, this reads as 'words do not merely describe a given reality but also play a key role in helping to produce it. Though the focus is more on how language, how definitions change over time, and their struggle interpreted from seeing their historical context, seeing the pattern, the repetition is still the new way to approach reality-formation. Through repetition (in language) reality is actively being produced.