"Theory Uncompromised by Practicality": Hybridity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex

Shostak, Debra

doi:10.1353/cli.0.0034

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Debora Shostak (2008) applies the foundations of Butler's (1988;2009) arguments on gender performativity to Middlesex (Eugenides, 2013) within the context of this heteronormative social panopticon in Theory Uncompromised by Practicality: Hybridity in Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex". In this article, Shostak (2008, p. 383) first looks at Eugenides' address of the intersex narrative as a means to bring the conversation of gender performance narratives of intersex individuals to the mainstream public eye.…”

Section: Critique Of Calliope's Gender Identity Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…399-400). Through Shostak's (2008) qualitative examination and textual analysis of Calliope's gender identity performances in the Middlesex (Eugenides, 2013), she makes the final argument that despite Calliope's struggle to find a stable gender identity and his/her eventual attempt to become a masculine male in gender, all he/she would need to do is "act like a boy" to find a stable gender identity as a "stealth man" earlier and to avoid abjection (Shostak, 2008, p.p. 404-405).…”

Section: Critique Of Calliope's Gender Identity Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similar to Shostak (2008), Rachel Carroll (2010 also examines Calliope's transition from Callie to Cal using his/her gender identity performances. Carroll's (2010, p.p.…”

Section: Critique Of Calliope's Gender Identity Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Fragmenting and defragmenting gender identity: An analysis of intersex gender identity performance in Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

Simpson¹

2022

MyRES

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Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel Middlesex is a hermaphrodite coming-of-age narrative often critiqued in the literary field for its depiction of unstable gender identity performance from the intersex perspective. The novel depicts its main protagonist, Cal, as having an unstable gender identity throughout the narrative, performing his gender in ways that conform to extreme heteronormative gender standards. However, little scholarly attention is given to how Cal’s gender identity is fragmented in this unstable portrayal and how his exploration of gender identity performances in the narrative allows for the defragmentation of his gender identity. This paper aims to highlight Cal’s gender metamorphosis in Eugenides’ Middlesex, working through his gender identity performances in their various states using Irvine Goffman’s presentation of the self and Judith Butler’s gender identity performance theory. Selected instances of Cal’s gender performances from childhood, adolescence and adulthood were textually analysed to examine the gender norms conformed to in each performance. Cal’s performances of gender during childhood and adolescence conformed to extreme heteronormative standards of feminine beauty, female heterosexuality, and female biology. However, in young adulthood Cal begins exploring gender identities, allowing for the onset of his metamorphosis. During adulthood, Cal’s gender is presented in ways that conform to heteronormative standards of masculine appearance, male heteronormativity, and male biology. It is this dramatic gender metamorphosis that allows Cal to stabilise his gender identity and that allows Middlesex to present the intersex condition as having a stable gender identity. It is this perspective of the novel’s depiction of gender that should be.

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Section: Critique Of Calliope's Gender Identity Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Critique Of Calliope's Gender Identity Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Fragmenting and defragmenting gender identity: An analysis of intersex gender identity performance in Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

Simpson¹

2022

MyRES

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“…Comedy, as Henderson states, is used “as a way to get at the darker aspects of life without being so unrelenting that ‘you don't want to read it’” (Henderson ). Some critics attacked the novel for its failure to find the “middle,” to bridge theory and practice (Shostak , 385–386); for its “inadequate” and “false closure” (Cohen , 371, 387); or because of the protagonist's failure “to assimilate and pass as male” and whose “‘monster feeling’ […] reasserts throughout his adult life” (Graham , 12, 14). However, they sidestepped an in‐depth analysis of its comic dimension.…”

Section: Narrating Trauma: Tragicomedy In Middlesexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering Ethnicity in Middlesex

Kostova

2015

Orbis Litterarum

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Jeffrey Eugenides's second novel, Middlesex (2002), deals with processes of coming to terms with trauma by connecting opposites in humorous and imaginative ways. The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Cal Stephanides, recovers the ethnic legacy of his Greek-American family in order to work through his trauma of intersexuality. Trauma is manifested in a number of textual and thematic strategies related to the modal use of tragicomedy. The discursive act of healing this trauma is carried out by combining suffering and laughter, seriousness and playfulness, engagement and detachment in a textual artifact, thus attaining "narrative repair" (Nelson 2001). By going against coherent and closed structures, the hybrid, tragicomic mode enhances affect and closeness, while at the same time distancing the narrator (and the reader) emotionally. The tragicomic vision also contributes to the working-through of trauma by means of an empathic acceptance of human suffering and of traumatic past.

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“…Bhabha claims that Hybridity does not mean staying in the middle between the two original things and not to be combinatory and not means to eliminate the differences, but to maintain their own feature and to be something else. Shostak also says "no matter how generous and optimistic Eugenides' novel is, it demonstrates the virtual impossibility of such a third space except as a utopian fantasy" [4]. In Middlesex, the protagonist chose to live as a man, which just like Francisco Collado-Roriguez claims that "inally demands the opening of a borderland or third space where mixed races and intersex identities can coexist ", in the process requiring as well "a new type of ethical responsibility, one that openly advocates for a hybrid space of tolerance for individuals and communities" [5].…”

Section: Culture Transcendence Of Diasporic Immigrantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradox and Transcendence of Diasporic Immigrant Literature: Taking Middlesex as an Example

Mu¹

2014

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Education, Management and Social Science

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-Diasporic immigrant literature as a political thought is not equal to "multiculturalism", which is not a political antidote for coordinating minorities and majorities. Taking Jeffrey Eugendies's Middlesex as an example, diasporic immigrant culture is full of paradoxes, among them there are "identity politics" and "politics of difference", which leads to the situation that the mainstream culture can't accommodate the immigrant culture because of the differences between cultures and different recognition of identity. Therefore, the best and possible way to solve this problem is cosmopolitanism.Index Terms -diasporic immigrant literature, culture identity, Middlesex Middlesex, which is the second novel of Jeffrey Kent Eugenides, is an informative and imaginative novel, including family secrets and many sensitive social issues, such as, race riots, war, immigrants and hermaphrodite, combining the romantic Greek mythology with the reality of American life ingeniously. This novel was set in the horizon of diaspora, adopting related theories on narrative discourse and culture identity, on the other hand, it depends on the Greek family of the novel in diaspora as the object to explore the efforts the diaspora make in pursuit of compromised identities in terms of ethnicity, religion, politics and religion.

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"Theory Uncompromised by Practicality": Hybridity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex

Cited by 14 publications

References 9 publications

Fragmenting and defragmenting gender identity: An analysis of intersex gender identity performance in Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

Fragmenting and defragmenting gender identity: An analysis of intersex gender identity performance in Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex

Remembering Ethnicity in Middlesex

Paradox and Transcendence of Diasporic Immigrant Literature: Taking Middlesex as an Example

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