Contemporary Poetry

performance and the poem 117

of socially accepted categories of behaviour. In ‘Performative Acts
and Gender Construction’ ( 1988 ), Butler emphasises that:

Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply,

that it is real only to the extent that it is performed. It seems

fair to say that certain kinds of acts are usually interpreted as

expressive of gender core or identity and that these acts either

conform to an expected gender identity or contest that expec-

tation in some way.^38

Butler’s focus here on ideas of the ‘performative’ as opposed to
performance indicates an action that is aware that it has no basis
in origin, whereas performance assumes an object of imitation.
‘Performance’ in Butler’s schema is linked to acts and gestures
which are ‘expressive of gender’ and indicate that ‘gender itself is
something prior to the various acts, postures and gestures by which
it is dramatized and known’ (pp. 128 – 9 ). In this light, gender is
perceived as something that is constructed through ‘sustained
social performances’ that emphasise the conception of ‘an essential
sex, a true or abiding masculinity or femininity’ (p. 129 ). Moreover,
Butler views the construction of gender in terms of social power,
dominance and hierarchies: ‘As performance which is performa-
tive, gender is an “act”; broadly construed, which constructs the
social fi ction of its own psychological interiority’ (p. 129 ).
Butler’s work in the late 1980 s and early 1990 s opened the terms
of debate regarding how a text may perform gendered position-
ing. Prevalent in elements of American experimental praxis at this
time was the interrogation of the relationship between linguistic
constructs and gender, or ideological positions. Lyn Hejinian’s
My Life ( 1987 ) interrogates the genre of autobiography by refuting
any expectations for a linear or chronological narrative.^39 While
My Life as a prose poem issues a challenge to any neat formal
categorisation, as a procedural text the volume is premised on a
strict numerical pattern. Originally composed when Hejinian was
thirty-seven, the volume initially contained thirty-seven chapters
each comprised of thirty-seven lines. When she was forty-fi ve
Hejinian republished My Life with an additional eight sections of
forty-fi ve lines and supplemented the original sections with eight