The role of language in constructing gendered identity:

Overall, I appreciated Joan Scott's call for a new method of historical analysis to be applied to the study (or impact) of gender in history, and I thought the Ditz article was a nice demonstration of  the historiographical progress that took place between Scott's Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis and Ditz's Shipwrecked.  I like that Scott is focused on the how, and seeks to move beyond a simplified definition of a term or concept.  She seeks (still) to create and refine an analytic category - this call for "how" is what makes the things we do a history workers great... new ways of interpretation, hopefully applied to important, current, and relevant problems or questions.  Gender is part of interconnected systems of thought and action and can not be dismissed as essential to the human experience, and historical analysis needs to reflect the relation of gender to critical examinations of historical events.  Accordingly, I was particularly interested (invigorated) when Scott posited that theories of patriarchy don't show how gender inequality structures all other inequalities, or how gender affects areas of life seemingly not connected to it.

This call for a new way analysis goes beyond the "language of gender," although I think language is at the foundation - an essential key.  I agree that gender can't be simply defined ("codified") in dictionaries, "nor can it's meanings be easily assumed or translated"  but gender's linguistic definition, importance, or impact isn't (or shouldn't be) easily reduced.  To this end, I was fascinated by the review of psychoanalytic theory and I thought there was a wonderful look at the role of language as it pertains to questions and problems involving gender.  The look back to early child development and the connection to the structuralist and post-structuralist theories of psychoanalysis (e.g. Lacan) was illuminating.  I enjoyed the description of object relations theorists (environmental - the child sees, hears, etc.) and the comparison to the structuralist / post structuralists - the importance of the centrality of language and it's assigned meanings back to preverbal child development.  In early child development words initially don't make sense to the person, rather systems of assigned meaning  / symbolic order imprint meaning and shape a person's identity.  Indeed, language at the center of Lacanian theory ("Through language, gendered identity is constructed.")  I'm not certain Scott subscribes 100% to Lacan's post-structuralist thinking, but she gives him his due.  In my opinion, the structuralist ideal holds water:  The order of social structure - the roles, kinship, and culture - into which each of us is born, and with which we all have to come to terms, is all mediated by the acquisition of language.