Colouredcrayons’s Weblog

March 1, 2008 at 1:51 pm (Uncategorized)

An abstract of  “Revolutionary Pants: Identity, Play, and Collective Action” by Erin J. Rand  

“Walking across the Berkeley campus, Judith Butler and another woman encounter a group of students who are singing, dancing, handing out flyers, and, oddly enough, not wearing pants. Clad in an assortment of underwear ranging from grey plaid boxers to short lime green ruffled pettipants, these students are, we come to find out, celebrating No Pants Day. A female student, wearing bikini briefs and striped socks, approaches Butler with a smile, calls out, “Hey, happy No Pants Day,” and attempts to hand her a flyer. Butler immediately refuses the flyer with a curt “no thank you,” but then pauses to tell the student, “you need to leave right this minute because you’re going to be on television and you’re going to be in trouble and I’m going to tell your parents.” The student, laughing incredulously, replies, “I mean, I’m old enough to be on television without pants on!” As she walks away, Butler comments in French to her companion about the “madness of Berkeley” (folie de Berkeley), and concludes that this celebration simply “is not revolutionary” (pas révolutionnaire).1

This scene, occurring near the beginning of the documentary film Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind,2 is relatively brief and is not mentioned again for the duration of the film. Butler is, of course, quite right: No Pants Day most likely is not an event that will foment a revolution or create any substantial changes in the world. Rather, No Pants Day, an annual international holiday celebrated on the first Friday in May, is, according to the No Pants Day website, “a day where everyone, be they students, respectable businessmen, or cherished community leaders, leave their pants behind.”3 While those involved in No Pants Day encourage public playfulness by flouting the conventions of appropriate attire, and while this playfulness is understood to be potentially transformative, no particular social or political agenda is forwarded. Again, as the website explains, “when large groups of people parade around in public without their pants, amazing things are bound to happen. At the very least, you’ll take your drab, wretched life a little less seriously, at least for one day.”4

The silliness and frivolity of No Pants Day aside, the inclusion of this scene in the film provides an opportunity to think more carefully about Butler’s own theorizations of and commitments to the possibilities for social change. After all, the No Pants Day celebration is the only instance of collective action present in the film. As such, it illuminates the tension between Butler’s stated commitment to progressive political causes (she discusses issues such as gay marriage, AIDS, human rights in Palestine, and 9/11) and the film’s focus on her identity as an individual. In other words, this scene in the film prompts me to question the ways in which collective action may arise from – or give rise to – individual identities, and whether significant consequences need only develop from “serious” actions.5 In the end, must the performative production of individual identity precede collective action, or is it possible to think about collectivity itself as a condition of possibility for the production of individuals?

…..

If we are to understand that the playfulness exhibited by the No Pants Day participants is merely a form of recreation or self-indulgence with no significant value in the social realm, however, the film’s subsequent scene seems to make quite a different point. Cutting to a classroom at the Institute for the Study of Political Science in Paris, we now see Butler lecturing on gender, sexuality, and identity. Acknowledging that performances of gender and sexuality often are motivated by anxiety and the fear of loss of identity, Butler also states unequivocally that “one plays with gender.” While “it’s not always a simple question of jouissance,” she explains, “it is also a question of jouissance.” The examples she uses to illustrate this simultaneous anxiety (“I would rather die than wear a dress” and “I would rather die than wear pants”) and pleasure (“I love my pants, I love my shoes, I love my dress”) recall the images of the No Pants Day celebrants. But if the pleasure and playfulness involved in the donning of pants as a performance of one’s gender and/or sexuality has the potential to produce identity as an effect, then why could the playful doffing of pants en masse not work to similar effect? To put this question differently, if the jouissance of wearing pants might performatively constitute individual identity, might the jouissance of not wearing pants also constitute collective identity?

Credit:

“Revolutionary Pants: Identity, Play, and Collective Action”

Author: Erin J. Rand

DOI: 10.1080/14791420701644746

Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year

Published in: Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Issue 4 December 2007 , pages 430 – 434

  This article with regards to Collectivism and Individualism actually got me thinking about some issues. Well, do collectivism actually give rise to individualism? Take for instance, as stated in the article, No Pants Day is basically about throwing away the pants or rather our identity be it students, businessmen, teachers etc. Hence, it has led to a kind of individualism because those who participate in the event don on their boxers or underwear. It is definitely frown upon and people will actually take a second look in disblief because they are not “normal”(not collective). But it is because of collectivism that made this group of people want to be different. To be an individual!

  How about if it is the other way around? Individualism creating collectivism. The participants of No Pants Day all have a common goal and common belief and hence dependent on one another in promoting their cause. Isn’t that a formation of collectivism?

  hmm.. I think realistically collectivism and individualism is not a black and white matter, instead it is more like a grey area. We can be more collective but there will surely be instances that we are individualistic or vice versa. For example, the writer wrote ” Butler’s first words in the film are both a declaration and a disavowal of identity: “I’m lesbian, I’m gay,” she tells viewers, “but do I subscribe to everything the lesbian and gay movement says?” Answering her question in the negative, she insists that she is also many other things – Jewish, a woman, a philosopher – and concludes, “these are communities where one belongs and one does not belong. And it seems to me we travel. I travel.” Certainly, identity categories are neither totalizing nor a perfect fit. But when Butler distinguishes between a “movement” (to which one “subscribes”) and a “community” (to which one “belongs”), does she not depoliticize identity itself? And what assumptions about the relationship between identities and politics would lead her to assume that a lesbian or gay identity would implicate her in a “lesbian and gay movement” (if such a coherent movement could even be said to exist)? “

  So what do you think? Are you individualistic or collective? or maybe both.