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The obscurity on Herculine Barbin’s gender might be better analyzed in the context of her memoirs, which would contribute this discussion by the anecdotes Herculine proposes. I will be mentioning of Herculine as a “she”, thus I suggest that Herculine feels herself as a woman. Though I don’t think I’m in a position to define Herculine’s gender. None of us are. Her gender exists at some place which is outside of any kind of intelligibility. Nevertheless I would argue that if one were to clarify Herculine’s gender, the conclusion would be for her to be a homosexual female. I will try to look for traces which would strengthen this argument of mine.
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First of all, let me begin with a question; what does one might mean by intelligibility which this essay brings forward in its so called thesis statement? I believe in this phenomenon to be the center of the discussion going around Herculine’s gender: Intelligibility, on the issue of gender, refers to something that is inside a text. It is granted through a process during which a particular text explains something to someone. This process works on a particular language, which contains signifiers. These signifiers do not refer to any meaning at all unless they are accompanied by particular discourses. By these particular discourses, the process of signification is fulfilled together with the meaning production. Eventually, a sign gets formed. Nonetheless, there is still the possibility concerning a sign which might not be intelligible despite the process of signification. Let me say that, a word, which is defined in all of the dictionaries of every existing language, yet might still be ambiguous to us. This ambiguity may be the result of either what one may call a second level of signification, or the intervention of power out of ideology, politics or several discursive agents. My argument will not be interested in exploring this latter ambiguity which involves politics, etc., but the ways in which the very notion of hermaphroditism is related to the obscurity of that latter stage of signification. Hermaphroditism, though meaningful and not intelligible, is positioned in the lacuna of the dichotomous distinction between the intelligible and the unintelligible, the one that is true and the one that is false, and hence encourages Michel Foucault to ask the question; “do we truly need a true sex?” In this respect, Herculine Barbin stands in a zone of anomie in which her gender is not defined by modern institutions and yet, she somehow exists in society. Herculine’s body is meaningful and unintelligible.
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If one feels obliged to define Herculine’s gender in her lacunal position, what might be the suggestions? In response to Foucault, one might draw attention to the possible threats of defining Herculine’s gender within this frame of intelligibility as I mentioned, and point out that, defining Herculine, inclusion of her to the existing symbolic order would not be revolutionary; instead, one would let her stay out of the symbolic so that the whole case of Herculine would not be taken granted as usual and ordinary. Another approach would suggest that we should remain silent about Herculine’s gender, because any utterance will perform itself as the oppression of hermaphroditism. Furthermore, one might declare that we shall not remain silent and ought to talk about this, so that we can find out some possibilities for counter performances. On the other hand, interestingly, what all these different approaches share in common is the element of mourning. Either one chooses to stay silent or speaks, he or she mourns: Herculine is dead. Now I will focus on two critical events of Herculine’s life in the course of a more concrete gender discussion; her birth and her death.
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Birth – Herculine states that she was born in a civilian and military hospital a part of which was “reserved for the treatment of sick people of both sexes.” Herculine doesn’t say a word about it since that information is not available to her, but we can assume that it was decided for her to go on living as a woman. She begins to study in a religious school among girls. She is a gifted student and she generally enjoys her time at school. The moment when she falls in love and the way she narrates this moment is the first clue granted to the reader about her sexual orientation: “I loved her at first sight, and though her outward appearance had nothing about it that was dazzling, it was irresistibly attractive because of the modest grace that was shed over her entire person.” In a social environment full of women, she is joyful, desiring and loving. It was supposed that she is a woman. And at first she supposed herself to be woman. On one hand, her presumed femaleness grants Herculine a space where she can enjoy the pleasures of her sexuality. On the other hand, one might interpret this situation by referring to the notion of weapons of the weak. In a system which feels obliged to assign certain gender roles to its subjects, the misinterpretation of the same system about Herculine’s gender provides her a space full of pleasures. Her gender is assigned from birth, but this assignment consists of a misperception which indeed is never a true perception, because there is no ultimate true perception available for her within the system’s intelligence. There is no way to define Herculine properly and subject her to a certain gender role, and let her exist in society. Nonetheless, Herculine is subject to an institutional power on the basis of gender since birth. Eventually, the paradoxical conception of misperception that the institutional power is engaged in enables Herculine to coexist with the lacuna of the system itself.
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However, one might object to this particular argument by claiming that the conditions which determine her sexual orientation and the ways in which her sexual pleasures are aroused are never matters of misperception of the institutional subjection or weapons of the weak, but are due to her very biological existence. To be more concrete, Herculine’s body begins to transform into something of which she is unaware, and this fact changes the ways she behaves in social sphere. When she recognizes that her body is covered with hair, she avoids exposing her arms, and instead of acting like a woman, she begins to act like a man and her transformation begins. For me, it is evident that her body is transforming, but therein doesn’t lie manhood at the core of transformation. She is clearly uncomfortable with the ways her body is turning into, she feels alienated by this alteration. However, she reacts to this situation with a deeper resistance, declaring that “she was born to love.” While declaring this, Herculine feels that this physical alteration is a counter act to love. According to her, turning into a man is the elimination of all possibilities of loving. All in all, it is not true that she begins to act like a man, even though it seems she did; she only manifests her femininity by pursuing nothing but love.
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What I will deliberately neglect to do in this paper is to quote references from the text as so called evidences of masculinity or femininity. Besides, I already suggested that if I were to define Herculine in some way or another on the basis of gender, I would say that she is a woman. I consider this worthy of attention because my decision to portray Herculine as a woman has nothing to do with the ways she says something, behaves in a such and such fashion, performs a gesture, so on and so forth. For me, there is no stereotypical formation of masculinity and femininity. This is my personal and subjective interpretation. I suggest that Herculine is a woman because of her desire to exist as a woman in the social sphere. Besides, as I suggested earlier, her desire announces itself through resistance against her physical transformation, basically in the form of shame. Her not willing to expose her some body parts is the manifestation of the way she identifies her sexuality with femininity. However, one might pose a counter argument, and imply that the source of manifestation is not Herculine’s own will but the way she was raised to become. In other words, she was assumed to be a woman since birth, the society presented her that role, consequently now she tends to stay as a woman. A clarification of this kind would surely support the view which suggests that all identities are constructed and there is no much space for free will or choice. Whenever we assume that, Herculine wants to stay as a woman because the system obliged her to become so in the first place, it seems as if we proclaim that the system is victorious. However, it is not the system’s victory or the failure on which one should operate in this discussion. Yes, the system is victorious by making Herculine wish to stay as a woman through shame, but it is this very victory at the point which religious and medical institutions intervene. Herculine is allowed to exist as a woman, but at some point she cannot. Let me now investigate the impact of death to Herculine’s life in relation to her disallowance regarding her womanhood.
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Death – Here, I will not be speaking of death in its actual meaning. There are two distinct but related events which actualizes her death. First of all, a priest tells Herculine after listening to her ambiguous physical condition that, “what you know as well as I do, that is to say, you are here and now entitled to call yourself a man in society.” Secondly, a doctor visits Herculine in order to conduct medical examination. The doctor is extraordinarily excited for the things he sees on her body. Herculine begs him to leave her alone: “You are killing me!” Later the doctor, who is “in a state of terrible shock”, attracts Herculine’s attention. I think it is very significant that Herculine declares her own death in this medical examination. At this scene, both the doctor and Herculine are experiencing separate traumas. Doctor’s trauma might be defined as a state of psychic disorder which is triggered by the unintelligibility of Herculine’s body. In the meantime, Herculine’s trauma occurs in the form of a resistant act against death. However, explaining Herculine’s trauma as a resistance against death is not sufficient; we should take one step further and point at the threshold between the human and the non-human, life and death. At this point, Herculine is not dead but she is not really alive either. Power that exposes itself through a medical examination threatens her very sexual identity. Her sexuality is the most precious element in her life; as I quoted earlier, she thinks that she was born to love. Power diffuses through the very core of her life. Thus, she experiences a trauma which she can and will never master. This time, she conveys her essential being not through an utterance based on love, but death. From now on, she is obliged to live as a man, and she is always uneasy with it. She can never get used to the fact that she is a man.
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As a matter of fact, I suggest that the system, which has once misperceived Herculine, aims to correct its mistake by perceiving her in the other direction, which is masculinity and is again a misperception. At first, Herculine enjoys the act of misperception, but the latter introduces a pain to her that she cannot bear. The system which performs its power through mainly the medical institutions in this case, fails to comprehend Herculine’s body within its essential intelligibility. Thus, Herculine, who exists in the zone of anomie between unintelligibility and meaningfulness, finds herself at the threshold between life and death at last, at the moment when the power responds to her not through the intelligibility of her body. Furthermore, it is not surprising that she commits suicide in the end. By determining her own death, she gets rid of the abyss in which she exists. Therefore she knew very well that physical death would be the salvation: “Oh, death! Death will truly be the hour of deliverance for me!”
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If one claims that Herculine is a man, a question should be posed against: Why didn’t she survive as a man in the society after her transformation? No one accepted her. She wasn’t satisfied with anything either. According to societal stereotypes, she didn’t seem like a man. But from that time on, there was no way that they could see her as a woman either. And the zone where she stood remained yet unintelligible. She wasn’t happy to be a man, even though her manhood would enable her to build up close relationships with other woman in terms of heterosexual normativity. However, she was a homosexual. She wasn’t interested in this at all. She was sexually aroused by woman but not when she was obliged to behave like a man.
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In this essay I divided Herculine Barbin’s memoirs in two, and analyzed both accordingly. Her birth and death are the two crucial events which deeply affects her sexual orientation. Moreover, the arguments posited through this perspective points at the zone of anomie where she continues her existence. In respect to this anomie, this paper focused on the misperception of the system (= imposing power) and the ways in which those constitutes Herculine’s gender and life in general. Herculine is supposed to be a woman until it is realized that she is actually a man. In this regard, the system (= imposing power) fails at the point where it achieves its ultimate victory. Between meaningfulness and unintelligibility, Herculine lives an unsteady life, which actually ends long before her physical death, at the moment when she takes one step not only beyond the threshold between life and death but also the limits of her meaningfulness between intelligibility. Through the end of her life, she has to transform herself and by leave her own essential identity behind. She tries to get adjusted to a different identity in which she is not interested whatsoever. After all, Herculine Barbin, as a lesbian woman, cannot hold on to life in the latter stages of it and eventually commits suicide in order to run off the threshold between life and death. Thus, she lands on a ground which ultimately is intelligible to her existence.
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