Queering TheoryGWSS 440320 Feb 2008Required Blog EntryQueering Grammar and Language: Butler, Troublemaking and Being DifficultYou are required to write a blog entry in response to the readings for this week (2/20). Please choose one of the following topics and post your entry by Friday, 2/22. Topic #1:“I believe it is important that intellectuals with a sense of social responsibility be able to shift registers and to work at various levels, to communicate what they’re communicating in various ways” (“Changing the Subject,” 328).For your readings today, I chose three very different texts (with different audiences and in different mediums) by Judith Butler that all address the issue of difficult writing: an editorial for the wider public from The New YorkTimes, an interview for a wide range of academics, and an academic article for a scholarly book. Does Butler effectively shift registers and work at various levels in these different texts? Which writing is most compelling? Which writing style works best for provoking or inspiring its readers to thinkcritically?Topic #2:“If the text is to effect ‘something painful and difficult, an estrangement from what is most familiar’, Butler suggests that it is important for the reader to come into contact with performative, ‘difficult’ prose—to read, read again and read better…” (Salih, 47). Is difficult reading a luxury that only those with time (and money) can afford? What are the consequences of not learning to read closely? How might the skills of critical thinking/critical reading enable all individuals to not easily consume oppressive and unjust discourses? Topic #3:“If common sense sometimes preserves the social status quo, and that statusquo sometimes treats unjust social hierarchies as natural, it makes good sense on such occasions to find ways of challenging common sense. Language that takes up this challenge can help point the way to a more socially just world” (“A Bad Writer Bites Back”). Is using difficult language an effective way in which to do queer theory? Does using clear and accessible language undermine our queeringpractices? Should troubling language/grammar and using difficult language be a necessary part of queering gender or identity or