Judith Butler said \u201cgender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts\u201d (140). Alison\u2019s well-furnished Victorian house seems like it is another manifestation of such \u201can exterior space\u201d with \u201crepetition of acts\u201d. Alison describes her home as \u201can artist\u2019s colony\u201d, where all the family members were \u201cabsorbed in our separate pursuits\u201d which consisted of \u201ccompulsion\u201d (134).
\nAlison\u2019s compulsion shows how people willingly start to police themselves. First, it seems like they became a dictator of autonomy. Tedious rules are all set by themselves. As her father was \u2018autodidact\u2019, \u2018autocrat\u2019, and \u2018autocide\u2019 caught up in compulsive furnishing, Alison learns the fantasy of autonomy from \u2018autobiography\u2019 his father gave her in which she writes \u201cI think\u201d obsessively (140-141). As what the phrase says, Alison delves into herself just like what his father and other family members did.
\nHowever, the phrase \u201cI think\u201d was a deception. By attaching the phrase on every sentences, it scales down all the perceptions and ideas into mere murmuring that has no chance of empathy and approval. The autobiography which was first expected to be a space ruled by herself, now became a display of pretense that ruled out her real feelings and thoughts. But the compulsion cannot be stopped and the repetition of practice consolidates such fa\u00e7ade.
\nThe counterparts of fa\u00e7ade that conceals what is real are Alison\u2019s autobiography, the father\u2019s Victorian style house, the mother\u2019s play and also the gender identity according to Judith Butler. Therefore, various compulsions of Alison\u2019s and her father\u2019s are not just symptoms of anxiety of disapproval, but actually symbolizes the identification of their gender. Doubts about her father\u2019s house thus well corresponds to the question of authenticity of her self-identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judith Butler said \u201cgender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts\u201d (140). Alison\u2019s well-furnished Victorian house seems like it is another manifestation of such \u201can exterior space\u201d with \u201crepetition of acts\u201d. Alison describes her home as \u201can artist\u2019s colony\u201d, where all the family members … Continue reading Compulsion and Identity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2977,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2977"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}