The Proximity of the Masquerade Articles

In the past couple of meetings we have discussed groups of articles that represent varying distances from the objects of study as well as a range of theoretical positions. Although these readings are taken from different historical moments, these articles are all explicitly in dialogue with each other and deeply entangled (and conveniently all take up issues of proximity). All of these articles build off of Joan Riviere’s 1929 “Womanliness as Masquerade,” which posits the revolutionary idea that there is no distinction between masquerade and genuine womanliness (p.38). In “Masquerade Reconsidered,” Mary Ann Doane points out that this eliminates the concept of a “feminine essence,” but still assumes a masculine logic. Doane talks about this as subordinating femininity, but another way to describe this is that we are still thinking of femininity in terms of lack. Doane reveals the contridiction inherent in Riviere’s logic, but what interests me in the Riviere article (p.38) is that both heterosexual and homosexual woman have the same capacity for womanliness. This statement highlights an implicit difference in gender between different sexual orientations - a point that seems to assign value to gender expression right after declaring that femininity is empty. As Doane points out in “Masquerade Reconsidered” that the masks of gender further reveal the “truth” of sexuality in Lacanian psychoanalysis - “the mask is all there is – it conceals only an absence of “pure” or “real” femininity. Indeed, the assumption of a mask conveys more of the “truth” of sexuality…” (p.37). My point is not to address sexuality as comedy or game, but relates more to how gender and sexuality are being linked. Furthermore, if femininity is empty, do men have the same capacity for masquerade? It doesn’t seem like there is room here for the effeminate male.
As mentioned earlier, one of the key elements within all of these articles is the concept of distance. Writing post-Visual Pleasure, Doane points out in “Film and Masquerade,” “[t]he supportive binary opposition at work here is not only that utilized by Laura Mulvey – an opposition between passivity and activity, but perhaps more importantly, an opposition between proximity and distance in relation to the image.” (p.21). It seems that Doane’s movement away from a strict binary of active/passive can incorporate the work of the French poststructuralist feminists, but the conclusions between Mulvey and Doane do not seem to be radically different. Doane’s conception of spectatorship seems to rely on a certain level of slippage between the gaze and passive-active spectators AND the physical distance between spectator and screen. Thus there is an attempt to incorporate a certain level of physicality into the psychoanalytic model of the spectator. What seems to be particularly effective in Doane’s argument is the affirmation that masquerade is not merely a game, but that there are real socio-political results for masquerade (p.38). It seems like there should be a greater sense of playfulness within Doane’s theory of masquerade (and probably within this post...). Part of the issue within the squabble that Doane has with Tania Modleski is that the critical act is not a valid response to the joke. According to Doane, “you may understand the mechanisms but you will never get it.” While the point is well-taken in relation to timing and the temporality of reading, I’m not sure that I want to obliterate the value of my resistant readings (even in the concluding lines, we are left with one mode of spectatorial engagement and the need for structurally different jokes). It is not clear how Riviere’s patient is throwing male sexuality back as a joke – particularly if nobody is considering this as a joke. In her article “The Economy of Desire,” Doane points out that women are actively encouraged to participate in their own oppression through their positions as consumers, I think that there is a similar sentiment in these earlier masquerade articles in the sense that we are conducting a structural and systematic analysis at the expense of the text (Studlar’s article restores some form of textual resistence via Marlene Dietrich).

Lastly, would it be possible to get footnotes on future articles?