Page 111 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

MIRJA LIIKKANEN

as a performative role-playing game in which the roles can be constantly re-
elected. Dress appears as an important marker of gender. Moya Lloyd (1999),
for instance, argues (quoting Bell et al. 1994: 34–5) that the ‘skinhead look’
became ‘fashionable in gay London’ in the 1990s and evolved into ‘one form
of gay “uniform”’. It was not only a style of dress, but represented a politically
affirmative way of life: ‘the gay skinhead can be seen as a progressive identity’
(Lloyd 1999: 199). Gender identities that challenge the heterosexual presump-
tion seem to appear often as progressive and changeable fashion. In this use of
gender, performativity and style are associated with identity politics and are
connected to political action. Lloyd sees shortcomings in the concept of per-
formativity, however, in that ‘it is comprehensible primarily as an account of
individuation: the historicity of a particular subject’s construction as a gendered
being . . . What is occluded, as a consequence, is the space within which per-
formance occurs, the others involved in or implicated by the production, and
how they receive and interpret what they see’ (Lloyd 1999: 210).
Although the individual subject and the construction of individual identities
is an important and interesting angle, even in the sense of identity politics it is
also possible to take a broader view. I am speci fically interested, therefore, in
what may be described as cultural gender, a distinctive ‘mode of being’ (Veijola
1996). One can begin by asking a simple question: why is it that female- and
male-appearing human beings tend to behave the way they do? This would
be the most simple of sociological questions, perhaps, if gender were not
embedded in a profoundly hierarchical relationship. ‘Cultural womanhood’,
therefore, also comprises the cultural signs of womanhood, the repetition of
these signs, and their consequences. Given the hegemonic and cultural
coercion that inheres in these signs of womanhood, they can exercise a very
cruel form of power over individuals and groups. But of course, that is not all
they are.
Performativity and style are associated with much more than gendered iden-
tities. Many social scientists regard performativity and style as central features of
postmodern, mediatized societies, and as parts of the current movement away
from steady ways of life to more flexible and individualized lifestyles. Aber-
crombie and Longhurst (1998), for example, connect style and performativity
with the ‘diffuse audience’ of contemporary media and society. Ronkainen
(1999) uses the concept of style as an analytical tool to describe and explore
‘cultural, contextual womanhood’. In this application, style coalesces the con-
scious identity – the subjectivity accumulated during the individual’s lifetime
in the shared culture. Sociologically, this seems to be a very interesting
approach. Style as an analytical concept is extremely useful for uncovering
contextual differences related to gender and culture (e.g. Hebdige 1979;
McRobbie 1991, 1994; Lull 2000). It might be helpful for deconstructing the
historical and contemporary contextuality of gender construction, for instance,
or for highlighting the ‘modes’ of gender construction and reproduction in
different cultures and social contexts. For many women, cultural images of

100