Page "Gender Trouble" Paragraph 10

Here Butler dismantles part of Foucault's critical introduction to the journals he published of the hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, who lived in France during the 19th century and eventually committed suicide when s / he was forced to live as a man by the authorities.

In his introduction to the journals Foucault writes of Herculine's early days, when she was able to live her gender or " sex " as she saw fit as a " happy limbo of nonidentity " ( 94 ).

Butler reads such a statement as romanticism on Foucault's part, claiming that Foucault's proclamation of a blissful identity " prior " to cultural inscription contradicts his work in The History of Sexuality, in which he posits that the idea of a " real " or " true " or " originary " sexual identity is an illusion, in other words that " sex " is not the solution to the repressive system of power but part of that system itself.

Butler instead places Barbin's early day not in a " happy limbo " but along a larger trajectory, always part of a larger network of social control.

She suggests finally that Foucault's surprising deviation from his ideas on repression in the introduction might be a sort of " confessional moment ," or vindication of Foucault's own homosexuality of which he rarely spoke and on which he permitted himself only once to be interviewed.