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Constrained in Liberation: Performative Queerness in Robert McAlmon's Berlin Stories
Author(s): Richard E. Zeikowitz

Source: College Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 27-42
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Constrained in Liberation:
Performative Queerness in
Robert McAlmon's Berlin Stories
Richard E. Zeikowitz
One of the most influential developments Richard E. Zeikowitz is
in gender theory during the 1990s was assistant professor of English at

Judith Butlers contention that
the University of South
"[g] ender ought not to be construed as a sta
ble identity or locus of agency from which Alabama, and the author of
various acts follow; rather, gender is an iden
Homoeroticism and Chivalry:
tity tenuously constituted in time, instituted
in an exterior space through a stylized repeti Discourses of Male Same-Sex
tion of acts" (1990a, 140). Butler claims that Desire in the Fourteenth
"[s]uch acts, gestures, enactments, generally
Century.
construed, are performative in the sense that
the essence or identity that they otherwise
purport to express are fabrications manufac
tured and sustained through corporeal signs
and other discursive means" (136).1 Butler,
and those who have been influenced by her,
articulate how subjects are compelled to reit
erate regulatory gender norms and how drag
or other queer actions might subvert this
process, exposing the illusion of a stable, nor
mative gender core. It is also possible, howev
er, to study how the reiteration of "queer reg
28 College Literature 31.3 [Summer 2004]
ulatory norms" constructs queer subjects; how queer identities are based on
a seemingly obligatory repetition of acts, gestures, and appearances which
heteronormative society defines as abject Other.
In Robert McAlmon's Berlin stories, set in the early years of Weimar
Berlin, three Americans attempt to construct their (homo)sexual identities;
yet their constructions are informed by?and limited to?signs of queerness
already in circulation. The city that offers all three characters the freedom to
be queer thus also "confines" them to a degenerate, self-destructive lifestyle.2
Each character s queerness hinges on not only the fact that he or she is sex
ually attracted to people of the same sex but also in varying degrees appear
ance, mannerisms, and speech style. In each case, we can observe how the
character consciously performs queerness, seemingly creating a queer iden
tity, yet at the same time drawing on established cultural codes that mark him
or her as queer in normative society's eyes.
In "Distinguished Air," Foster Graham self-consciously constructs his
appearance: "he was pleased with the new wardrobe he had bought there
[i.e., in Paris], careful this time to see that every garment had a chichi touch.
The trousers he wore were drawn in at the waist, and pleated there. The coat
was padded smoothly at the shoulders, so that the descending fine to the
waist gave his figure a too obvious hour-glass appearance" (McAlmon 1992,
23). He has also had his hair "waved" and his mustache waxed. (24) Foster
seeks to make an appearance that will capture the right attention. The narra
tor's careful observation and implied disapproval of what he observes illus
trates how Foster's deviation from a "normal" man's appearance both attracts
and repels. Foster performs his identity not only through appearance. The
narrator reports that "[w]e had not spoken fifteen sentences to each other
before Foster was camping, hands on hips, with a quick eye to notice every
man who passed by" (23).That after a brief exchange in which he apparent
ly speaks in an acceptable manner Foster begins to act queer suggests that he
needs to periodically re-establish his queerness through behavior that is rec
ognizably queer. And he particularly needs to do this with those who are not
queer. The narrator chides him for camping around those "who don't under
stand" (25). Although the narrator evidently understands that Foster's "cheap
and flippant" behavior is merely queer performance?which he assumes
Foster can turn on and off as he pleases?he feels ill at ease with Foster and
acknowledges that the only reason he speaks with him is that they are both
Americans living in a foreign city. In one sense Foster consciously creates
his sexual identity through his clothing, coiffeur, gestures, and speech?a
creative task that is repeatedly carried out; but his choices are fimited. I will
return to this point after examining the other two queer characters in
McAlmon's stories.
Richard E. Zeikowitz 29
The main character in "Miss Knight" constructs a queer identity perfor

matively through camping gestures and speech acts that connote femininity
but at the same time draws attention to his masculine form: Knight has an
antipathy for "bitches" who put on airs and threatens to "lay 'em out
stinkin'"; after claiming that he is "a real man," he shrieks (McAlmon 1992,
3). Knight habitually addresses other men?usually but not always homosex
uals?as "Mary" or adds "Miss" before their last names, yet viewing them as
neither "women" nor "men" but rather "queer bitches" (13). And Knight
considers himself one as well. There is no indication that Knight is in drag
when addressing his listeners, but the narrator reinforces his characters
queerness by consistently using the feminine pronoun when describing him.
Knight's performative endeavor, his "she-ness" as a volitional construction
performed through making all queers "Mary" or "bitches"?himself includ
ed?is underscored by the narrator's attention to Knight's masculine body.
He describes how "Miss Knight drifted into a Berlin caf? one night, looking
to strangers much like a heavy-set, be-barbered traveling salesman from
Holland or America" (6); at a queer drag ball dressed as Madame R?camier,
"Miss Knight's bulky shoulders showed like the white flesh of a newly bathed
coal heaver above all the glitter of her gown" (12).
Butler maintains that
[t]he performance of drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy
of the performer and the gender that is being performed. But we are actu
ally in the presence of three contingent dimensions of significant corpore
ality: anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance ... [and] the
performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance,
but sex and gender, and gender and performance. (Butler 1990a, 137)
Hosting Thanksgiving dinner, Knight "laid aside her men's clothing for the
evening, and arrayed herself in a glittering garment made by herself. Upon
her head she wore a bright red wig, and about her head she fastened an imi
tation but entirely gorgeous aigrette" (McAlmon 1992,10).The queerness of
Knight's performative act?one that seems creative and volitional because
Knight actually makes the costume?is not that Knight is dressed as a woman
but rather that Knight dressed as a woman is clearly not a woman. Knight's
anatomical sex (large, bulky, with a deep voice) is distinct from Knight's gen
der identity ("her instincts were all womanly and housewifely" [5]) which is
also distinct from the performed gender identity (neither masculine nor fem
inine). Knight's performance not only denaturalizes the "heterosexual coher
ence" of sex and gender, dramatizing "the cultural mechanism of their fabri
cated unity," as Butler argues (1990a, 138), but also instantiates queerness.The
drag act creates in the moments of the performance a queer identity: a man
performing "woman" and desiring other men.
Knight's performative queerness is maintained through reiteration. He

performs camp speech acts "many times a day" (McAlmon 1992, 3). Also, in
reminiscing about adventures of the past, Knight relives and re-performs
queer acts:
Did'ja ever hear of the Portland, Oregon Scandal? I wuz in it. I wuz at the
Y.M.C.A.?in drag you know?some outfit I had too, stars and spangles
and jewels all over me, Mary. .. . But, Mary, did I ever tell about the time
in Rockyford, New York. I'd been to a drag dance with earrings on. ... I
can act like a real lady when I needs to, but that night I talked like rough
trade?real manly tones [to the police]. (McAlmon 1992,14-15)
His name itself is a performative. Unlike "Miss Collins" or "Miss Jenkins,"

Knight's last name connotes masculine valor and virility?the "knight in
shining armor"?which is incongruent with the title "Miss." And each
time the narrator cites it, he both recreates and reinforces his character's
queer dissonance.
In "The Lodging House," Steve Rath attempts to construct a lesbian
identity by calling herself "Steve" instead of "Stephanie" and by adopting
aggressive, "masculine" behavior. Her performative queerness is almost
exclusively realized through the narrator's attention to the femaleness that is
not completely concealed by her outwardly masculine appearance and
actions. As in "Distinguished Air," the narrator situates himself within the
action he is narrating, interacting with and responding to his character. He
first notices Steve arguing with the landlord of a lodging house. He describes
her "swaying her tall, mannishly slender body as she groped persistently at the
door to force an entrance" (McAlmon 1992, 60). He then intervenes, moti
vated by a desire "to stand up for the rights of misused womanhood as against
Prussian militaristically trained tyranny of manner" (60). Although Steve's
hair is cut like a boy and "dressed like a man in every detail with the excep
tion of a skirt"?which the narrator recognizes at once as an "exaggerated
... specimen" of a lesbian (61)?he feels the need to defend her because she
is, after all, a woman. He refers to her as an "antagonistic spirited girl" (61; my
emphasis) and recognizes that she is "exhibitionistic with her pugilistic man
nerisms" (61). He thus draws attention to the dissonances of anatomical sex,
gender identity, and performance identity. Although not in drag precisely,
Steve is performing "man" but, like Knight, the gender identity of her per
formance is not "man" but rather a queer identity?a woman playing "man"
who is recognizably a woman desiring women. Like both Foster and Knight,
Steve consciously creates her queer identity through appearance, acts, and
speech. She curses and affects "a pugilistic swagger that seemed to say she
would stand for no rough stuff being pulled on her without there being an
immediate combat" (72). She is aware of her queerness: "I'm no girl, but it
took Berlin to teach me what the trouble with me was. I always knew some
thing was wrong" (61).
All three characters know "something is wrong." They cannot conform
to heteronormative alignments of sex-gender-sexuality and so they attempt
to construct their own identities performatively. Yet, if we accept Butler's
claim that "[t]he 'performative' dimension of construction is precisely the
forced reiteration of norms" (1993, 94), then the characters are merely sub
jecting themselves to a different gender/sexuality paradigm. Butler elabo
rates: "performativity. . .consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, con
strain, and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fab
rication of the performers 'will' or 'choice'" (234). She notes elsewhere that
"a performative 'works' to the extent that it draws on and covers over the con
stitutive conventions by which it is mobilized" and concludes that "no term
or statement can function performatively without the accumulating and dis
simulating historicity of force" (1995, 205). Each of McAlmon's queer char
acters appears to be performatively creating?or as Butler would put it,
"styling"?queerness with their acts, gestures, speech. But how volitional and
original are these acts? Butler recognizes that "styles have a history and those
histories condition and limit the possibilities." She goes on to define gender
as "a corporeal style, an 'act' as it were, which is both intentional and perfor
mative, where 'performative' suggests a dramatic and contingent construction
of meaning" (1999, 419-20). And just as authoritative, normative codes con
strain subjects into following certain guidelines of gender/sexual identities so
too are queer subjects constrained by normative definitions of queerness. The
narrator recognizes Foster's "camping manner [as being] copied from stage
fairies in America" (McAlmon 1992, 24); Knight's use of "the Mary phrase"
is not original, for other queers "in the clan" apparently are already familiar
with it (3); the narrator immediately identifies Steve as an "exaggerated . . .
specimen" (i.e., a lesbian) from her masculine attire and pugilistic manner
(61). While all three characters choose not to reiterate heteronormative
codes, establishing and maintaining their queerness is contingent on reiterat
ing acts that preexist them?acts that mark them as queer. Their acts may
indeed be performative?dramatic and non-referential?but the meaning
they generate to those who observe these acts is derived from and limited by
the history of queer performatives. Although heterosexual society did not
necessarily invent queer cultural codes, it has encoded them as nonnormative
and thus in opposition to dominant norms of gender/sexuality.
Butler points to the dark side of normative gender construction: "gen
der is a performance with clearly punitive consequences [;]... those who fail
to do their gender right are regularly punished" (1990b, 273). And in order
to be a normative gendered subject, one must engage in "a ritualized pro
duction, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through
the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even
death controlling the shape of the production" (1993, 95). McAlmon's sto
ries illustrate how queer liberation is in a sense punitive. All three characters
are drawn to Berlin because it is more tolerant of nonnormative gender/sex
uality than America. Yet they do not escape the ritualized process of sexual
subject formation; for they are constrained to perform an alternative set of
acts?acts which mark them as outlaws who are inextricably linked to the
heteronormative society they oppose.
Drawing on Foucault, Elizabeth Grosz explains that "[t]he subordinated
are implicated in power relations even if they are not complicit in them: they
are implicated because, as a mobile set of force relations, power requires
structural positions of subordination, not as the outside or limit of its effec
tivity, but as its very internal condition, the 'hinge' on which it pivots" (1994,
136-37). Likewise, Butler recognizes queer performativity as a process
whereby one is "implicated in that which one opposes" (1993, 241).
Heteronormative subjects are defined against queer subjects and thus the lat
ter are not really outside the boundaries of heteronormative society; yet their
ritualized performative acts are relegated to designated areas. In McAlmon's
stories that area is the decadent night-world of Berlin. All three characters
perform the denigrated, subordinate position in the following binaries: het
erosexuality/homosexuality; normative masculine or feminine gender/queer
gender; productive/unproductive; moderate, social drinking/excessive drink
ing; abstaining from drugs/excessive cocaine use. Queerness here is more
than nonnormative gender and sexuality; it encompasses other aspects of
lifestyle. Foster, Knight, and Steve do not necessarily choose the acts they
reiterate?acts whose queer meaning precedes them;?rather, they are con
strained to repeat them in order to be queer and thus "liberated" from het
eronormativity. These characters' nightly "ritualized" performing of dissolute
acts not only constructs their queer identities but also demarcates the bound
ary separating queer from normative subjects.Those subjects who are implic
itly observing queer performatives?the nightlife tourists and to some extent
the narrator? are in effect engaging in normative performativity by not
engaging in queer performativity. Thus, as queer subjects underscore their
queerness, normative subjects reinforce their "non-queerness."
Berlin's tolerance of queers seems confined to specific haunts within a
nighttime "under-world" that includes other marginal types. In
"Distinguished Air," the narrator accompanies tourists who wish to see the
"queer caf?s," and in one such place they are joined by Ruth, an American,
who "had not been there a minute before a German boy came to the table
and took her aside, to sell her cocaine" (McAlmon 1992, 34). Cocaine users
and sellers are an integral part of the Berlin nightlife. Later on at a

"Nachtlokal," they come across a Spanish woman who is "always coked up"
and potentially violent (40). Other cocaine addicts include a German
woman, Flora, and her companion, a man whose breath smells "of stale blood
and onions mixed" (41). The narrator dances in turn with women who
entice him into giving them money presumably for cocaine. Everyone in this
establishment appears to be high on cocaine. Although not a "queer" bar it
illustrates the same sexually-charged atmosphere of excessive drug and alco
hol consumption. The next two places the group visits demonstrate that
queers and other marginal types intermingle in the Berlin night world. In a
caf? mostly inhabited by men who are not necessarily homosexual, a cocaine
dealer gets affectionate with the narrator as do other men who target the
narrator's companion. As observers have frequently remarked, the early years
of Weimar Berlin saw many young, impoverished and/or drug-addicted
Germans (and other Europeans) prostituting themselves to wealthy
Americans. These men thus assume the American tourists are queer because
evidently many who frequent the place are. Finally, the narrator and his
friends arrive at the last stop on the tour, "an after-night place into which all
night-lifers in Berlin drifted" (44). Foster and Ruth show up as does "a wild
eyed woman ... 'coked to the eye-balls,' and completely intoxicated"; it was
also "a place where unregistered prostitutes congregated" (48-49).This place
where all the degenerate segments of Berlin gather, the "O-la-la," is a micro
cosm of the Berlin night world, and McAlmon presents that world as one that
links the performance of one's queer identity to other forms of degeneracy.
McAlmon's Berlin seems more oppressive than liberating for the queer
characters. Rather than celebrating their freedom, McAlmon's characters
seem trapped within a self-destructive lifestyle because of the limitations
normative society places on their enactment of other identities. In his initial
description of Foster, the narrator remarks "how the ever narrowing circle of
his activities was closing in upon him as he pursued excitement, continually
more recklessly indifferent, and always more jaded in his nonchalance" (1992,
23). Foster performs his queerness in a restricted environment that offers few
choices. A fellow American?an older queer who apparently does not fre
quent the Berlin nightlife?notes that "life has become just too much one
thing for him," and observes the "futility" of Foster's life in Berlin. Lumping
him together with the cocaine addict, Ruth, he observes how "[t]hey just
must five out their degenerate cycles" (26-27). Foster's "one thing"?his
degenerate cycle?is his reckless, generally nocturnal and intoxicated pursuit
of men. He is spotted in one queer night spot, "drunkenly falling over the
man he was dancing with" (36). Never finding a lover, only casual sexual
partners, Foster appears to define his queerness precisely by his ability to pick
up men in the street, at "pissoirs," or in bars. His attachment to Ruth sug

gests that he not only drinks excessively but also frequently uses cocaine.
After his tour of Berlin's night world, the narrator reflects: "It was really too
depressing to see so much of a kind of life that one had not consciously
helped to cause, and could not do much to alter" (53). He marvels at how
Foster manages to survive living such a lifestyle, drawing attention to its
repetitiveness. He admits that after experiencing just one night he himself
feels "dragged out, and near the undertaker's hands" (53).
Like Foster, Steve is most effective in performing queerness within the
Berlin night life. The narrator, Files, describes one of her haunts through het
eronormative eyes: "The room was full of mannish-looking, or at least man
nishly groomed women, except that the word 'groomed' could not be used
with people who looked as the ones in this room did. They all appeared
underfed, and their gaiety had not even a feverishness. It was apathetically
mechanical" (McAlmon 1992, 62-63). The "underfed" occupants and the
"mechanical" atmosphere is in part attributed to the pervasive use of cocaine.
Steve "reckless [ly]" sniffs large quantities of it and shrugs off the narrator's
warning about the danger of drinking cognac and whiskey along with
cocaine: "You can't kill me. Not that I care" (63). In her intoxicated state,
Steve moves from one woman to another, always looking for one who is not
with her. Unlike Foster, she admits to being bored and frustrated by the
queer nightlife, telling Files, "I've got to cut out nights like this. I've gotta get
down to work, goddam it. I must?I must" (68); but he doubts her convic
tion. Berlin offers no alternative environment for queers to be queer other than
the night world of alcohol, drugs, and casual sex.
Noting that "they sells it [i.e., cocaine] in this burg by the bowlful. . . .
They sell it for ten marks a deck here; serve it by the barrel if you give them
the sign" (McAlmon 1992, 4), Knight alludes to both the ease of procuring
cocaine and its prevalence in the Berlin nightlife. And cocaine use is an inte
gral part of Knight's performative queerness. At one point, Knight returns
from the bathroom and informs his listeners: "I'm snowbound now ... coked
to the eyeballs, you know, an' I'm lookin' for a bigger skatin' rink" (8). He
then proceeds to perform: "Seating herself, she leaned back her head with a
gesture meant to express hauteur, narrowed her eyes into a squint, and began
at once to camp" (8). Like Foster, Knight constructs a queer identity through
an endless repetition of acts performed while intoxicated and within the
confines of the night world; and Knight seems constrained to repeat them
only in this milieu. Although Knight boasts of an upcoming engagement at
a respectable venue, the Winter Garden, it never comes to pass. That Knight
is trapped in a degenerate cycle is suggested by the narrator's observations
that "She was black with gloom except at moments when she was com
pletely done up with cocaine; and she was completely without money so that
unless someone invited her to drink she had not that release" (9). Thus, in
order to perform queerness?to be Miss Knight?for himself and the tourists
who find it entertaining, Knight needs to be "coked up" or drunk and in one
of the night-life places reserved for queers and other marginal types. The
story offers no indication that Knight is queer?or has the opportunity to be
queer?when sober or in the day world. In fact, the same people who are
amused by Miss Knight in the queer establishments, do not wish to acknowl
edge him "in more respectable gathering places: the Adlon Hotel lobby, or
semi-fashionable dance rendezvous" (9). We are offered no description of
Miss Knight's demeanor on these occasions; he does not speak. The text in
effect denies him the possibility to exist here as "Miss Knight."
Knight's Thanksgiving Day dinner splendidly illustrates how queers in
Berlin are constrained to perform an alternative set of acts. Knight plans a
"magnificent dinner" and intends to re-create a normative American tradi
tion. Dressed in drag, he imitates an American hostess of a family
Thanksgiving. On one level Knight challenges regulatory norms of gen
der/sexuality. For drag is subversive, according to Butler, "to the extent that
it reflects on the imitative structure by which hegemonic gender is itself pro
duced and disputes heterosexuality's claim on naturalness and originality"
(1993, 125). By wearing a "glittering garment," wig, and jewelry, he indeed
calls attention, in an exaggerated manner, to how heteronormative society
insists that females dress up. However, I suggest that Knight's endeavor in the
context of the story is less an act of intentional subversion of heterosexist reg
ulatory norms than an attempt to create an alternative paradigm for this
quintessential American normative holiday. He attempts to stage a
"respectable" queer social event that is located outside of the Berlin nightlife.
Knight is motivated by "[njostalgia, sentimentality about a real Thanksgiving
dinner" with "real American cooking" (McAlmon 1992, 9), and thus he
desires to performatively bring Miss Knight inside the normative milieu of a
family dinner. But Knight cannot re-create an American family dinner in
Berlin because he and his guests cannot extricate themselves from the degen
erate lifestyle which informs their queer identities. All of the guests arrive
"semi- or completely intoxicated": Anne, a lesbian, "had taken six decks of
cocaine and uncounted cognacs"; "Foster Morris came in soddenly drunk,
bringing with him a new soldier lover that he had picked up on the street in
the afternoon" (10). Although Knight attempts to play the part of hostess of
the "family" dinner, and "[w]ith housewifely pride . . . brought in a great
roasted turkey to display to his besotted and gloomy guests," he spills the
gravy on his gown, Foster's carving of the turkey sends "[tjurkey flesh, legs
and wings splattered about the room," and Kate drops the "lovely mashed
potatoes, ornamentally placed upon a borrowed giltedged platter" (11).

Although the dinner plays out like a slapstick comedy, we should not over
look Knight's failure to conciliate his queer identity with mainstream
America. Knight and his guests do perform an American Thanksgiving but
it is a queer one, reinforcing normative society's?America's or Berlin's?
view of queers as the Other against which it defines itself. That Knight feels
"crushed for a time" because of the dinner's failure but after consuming a
sufficient amount of cocaine returns to his repetitive nocturnal performance
in the Berlin night world points to his helplessness in expanding the delim
ited sphere within which he successfully performs his queer identity.
Despite such triumphs as "getting first prize for costume display" at a
"grand ball" (McAlmon 1992, 12), Knight is frustrated by his inability to
realize the queer life he imagines. He is "stricken with grief, anger, and des
olation" not merely because "his policeman lover was getting amorous with
Kate Matthews" (12), but on account of the fact that "[everything was turn
ing bad. . . . No money; no luck with . . . lovers; no friends" (12). While
nightlife tourists regard his queerness as entertainment, Knight's perform
ances are not just a show?they constitute his identity. He is constrained to
repeat the acts which construct Miss Knight, but the repetition works against
him as people eventually grow tired of them. He is trapped in a vicious cycle
whereby he is most effectively Miss Knight when high on alcohol and
cocaine in the queer nightspots, financially dependent on an audience that is
destined not to endlessly repeat their nightly entertainment. And his perfor
mative success?his becoming Miss Knight?underscores his degenerate
queerness, thus restricting him to this environment.
Some scholars focus on the optimistic position Butler articulates in
Gender Trouble, that subversion of regulatory norms is possible. Moya Lloyd
draws attention to this passage: "If subversion is possible, it will be a subver
sion that emerges from within the terms of the law, through the possibilities
that emerge when the law turns against itself and spawns unexpected permuta
tions of itself The culturally constructed body will then be liberated, neither
to its 'natural' past, nor to its original pleasures, but to an open future of cultur
al possibilities" (1999, 205). Although Butler focuses on the constraints
imposed on gender by regulatory norms in Bodies That Matter, Lloyd points
out that in all of her work, "Butler contends . . . that the practices that pro
duce gendered subjects are also the sites where critical agency is possible"
(200). In "Bodily Inscriptions," Butler maintains that "[t]he possibilities of
gender transformation are to be found precisely in the arbitrary relation
between ... [repeated] acts, in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-for
mity, or a parodie repetition that exposes the phantasmatic effect of abiding
identity as a politically tenuous construction" (1999, 421). Lloyd notes that,
according to Butler, "[g]ender performativity may be inevitable but gender

identity is always open and incomplete" (Lloyd 1999, 200). Does the same
hold true for queers? Can queers perform "unexpected" acts? Can they pro
duce queer identities that are not yoked under the category of abject Other
by heteronormative ideology? Can they thus slip away from the constraints
of heteronormatively determined queerness? How much difference need
there be between repetitions in order to register a "discontinuity," a "de-for
mity"? Queerness in McAlmon's stories seems to incorporate differences in
acts, speech, and appearance. Not only are all three characters quite different,
but each one does not perform queer acts identically each time. While it is
"open and incomplete," queerness is nevertheless a de-facto identity able to
accommodate discontinuities.
Lloyd suggests that "[e]ven though there is no guarantee of efficacy, there
is a likelihood that certain parodie practices will be more efficacious in cer
tain contexts than in others" (1999, 207). Pointing to the absence of context
in Butler's later work, Lloyd maintains that we cannot know in advance how
parodie acts may affect norms in a particular environment. She notes that "[i]t
is within communities predisposed towards the dissolution of stable gender
norms that parodie performances are likely to have the greatest effect, pre
cisely because it is these communities that have least to lose from the denat
uralization of heterosexuality" (208). One might expect Weimar Berlin to be
one such place. Yet, McAlmon's Berlin, which, of course, does not necessari
ly represent the "real" Berlin, seems oddly unreceptive to denaturalizing het
eronormativity. The only possibility for queers to be queer otherwise (i.e.,
not replicating normatively defined queerness) is outside the "liberating"
world of Berlin in an undefined space elsewhere. After leaving Berlin, Knight
sends a letter to Kate from New York in which he states his intention to
return to Europe, but to Paris not Berlin, and signs the letter "Charlie
Knight." His use of his real name?something he never does in Berlin?sug
gests that he no longer performs his queerness as Miss Knight. Knight's letter
is void of any sort of queer speech acts. Apparently sober and even returning
money that he had borrowed from Kate, he is undoubtedly still queer; yet at
the time of writing the letter he is performing another type of queerness.
The text offers no evidence however that this alternative queerness is any less
abjected or constrained by regulatory norms.
Butler's theories have recently been applied in exploring queer perfor
mativity in AIDS literature. Joanne Rendell notes that in his poem, "Fog,"
Alexander Doty "unveils the performativity of the biom?dical classifications,
'HIV negative' and 'HIV positive'." She points out that "[s]uch classifications
have typically carried with them the stigmatisation of HIV positive as 'other,'
and all too often this 'other' has been collapsed into the sign 'gay'" (2002,93).
The stigmatizing label, "positive," can be viewed as another constraint

imposed by normative institutions to construct a denigrated, queer identity.
The speaker in Doty s poem resists this classification of his lover, who is being
tested for AIDS, by refusing to say the word "positive":
Planchette,
peony, I would think of anything
not to say the word . ..
Every new bloom is falling apart.

I would say anything else
in the world, any other word. (qtd. in Landau 1996, 209)
Deborah Landau observes that "Doty can be said to resist oppressive cultur
al responses in 'Fog' by forging alternative narratives to those of public health
discourse" (1996,210). Drawing on Butler, Rendell remarks that "[l]ike gen
der . .. this discursively produced label only achieves its power and 'natural
ization' through continual iteration and resignification" (2002, 94). The
speaker thus attempts to disturb the reiterative performative, HIV
positive/abject Other. Rendell neatly articulates the conflicting message in
Butler's theory: namely, a subject's will to perform transgressive?or, queer?
acts of his/her choosing and the social constraints which determine the
meaning of those acts:
in repeatedly refusing to use "the word / that begins with P" [Doty's poem]
exposes and troubles the articulation and reiteration needed to constitute
the "fact" of HIV-positivity. The speaker's repetition of the avowal "not to
say the word" (it is stated three times in the poem), imitates and debunks
the production of the "positive" category through such articulation and
repetition. (Rendell 2002, 94-95)
Does Rendell's analysis demonstrate that Butler is right in claiming that gen
der parody, or discontinuous reiterations, can actually subvert regulatory
norms? Are the constraints imposed on the queer subject any looser? The
power of "p" remains undisturbed because we know what it is he refuses to say;
"p" is in effect repeated?and reinforced?each time he avows not to say it.
Although Butler does not clearly articulate her ideas on abjection,
according to Brett Levinson, she is suggesting that "the gay/lesbian is abject
ed not because his/her sexual desires are different form the 'norm,' but pre
cisely because they are somehow alike. The dissimilar sexual practices indeed
share a communal space: the border that divides them" (1999, 84). Following
this logic, in order to be absolutely heterosexual, the heteronormative sub
ject "must . . . abject his junction or relation to these homosexual prac
tices/desires" (85). The norm must attempt to destroy the shared border.
Only then is the heteronormative subject one "without frontiers . . . threat
ened by nothing," uncontaminated by the queer (85). McAlmon's stories

illustrate a failed attempt to accomplish this. On the one hand, Foster, Miss
Knight, and Steve Uve in a queer void; they are untouchables with whom the
observing narrator (and, implicitly, other nightlife observers) finds no point
of contact. On the other hand, these characters unsettle the narrator; and his
discomfort is his tacit acknowledgment that he shares a border with them.
Levinson explains that the process of objectification can never be complete:
"Acts of objectification?the nullification of the other?only open the door
for more others, who will all need to be objectified. This is because objecti
fication does not erase the condition of possibility of the bothersome alteri
ty/relationality" (85). But can the queer effectively disrupt the norm?
Levinson takes issue with a key component of Butler's theory, namely,
that "queer performances cannot not show that 'straight' ideologies and prac
tices are also performative, not natural or essential" (1999, 85). He rightly
asks, "how can we tell one recitation from the other: the parodie (queer)
deviance/repetitions, which a priori displace norms and the law, from the
straight mimesis/repetitions which a priori reproduce norms?" (85). In other
words, how can we be sure queer repetitions are not in fact reproducing
norms? McAlmon's stories suggest that that is precisely what the queer per
formatives of the three characters are doing. But what neither Levinson nor
Butler address is the possibility that these norms are queer ones. Miss Knight
and Steve are not disrupting the dominant norm, exposing how normative
genders are artificial constructions; rather they are replicating queer versions
of "woman" and "man" that have been normativized in their society. They
are both recognizable queer "types" because they are reiterating preexisting
codes which mark them as abject Other. In the sociocultural world of the
Berlin stories Levinson s question (and Butler's failure to address it) is moot
because there are no replications that do not reinforce regulatory norms.
McAlmon's stories ask us to consider whether queer performatives cannot
not be restricted and defined by normative ideologies.
The oppressive dynamics of performing queer identity I have articulat
ed are not only found in McAlmon's Berlin. The "leather queen" is an exam
ple of a contemporary queer performative that is delimited by the dominant
culture it attempts to subvert. Elaborating on Leo Bersani's claim that the gay
macho is not subverting heteronormativity, Levinson explains that "[w]hen
. . . the straight macho views his odd mirror image, the gay macho, he does
not necessarily perceive the performativity or artificiality of his own sexual
identity;" rather, he might assume that "they [i.e., gay machos] are merely
inferior, forced imitators: straight 'wannabes'" (1999, 86). Leo Bersani offers
a key observation: "As long as the cues for subversion are provided by the
objects to be subverted, reappropriation may be delayed but is inevitable:
reappropriation, and reidealization" (1995, 51). What Bersani does not

acknowledge is that some of those cues are provided by normative gay cul
ture. David Halperin notes that "gay Ufe has generated its own disciplinary
regimes, its own techniques of normalization, in the form of obligatory hair
cuts, T-shirts, dietary practices, body piercing, leather accoutrements, and
physical exercise" (1995, 32). Similarly, in McAlmon's stories, Foster's camp
ing, Knight's semi-drag speech acts, Steve's butch persona?as well as each
character's excessive consumption of alcohol and drugs?are normatively
queer. And the characters seem unwilling or unable to invent a non-norma
tive queer identity.
McAlmon's three queer characters do not choose a degenerate lifestyle;
but to be queer in the Berlin of the text means fiving in this world of excess.
It is ironic that performative queerness?constructing a queer identity
through a reiteration of acts?may ultimately destroy the performer. The nar
rator implicitly disapproves of these characters not on account of their homo
sexuality primarily but rather because of their entire lifestyle; none of the
characters successfully performs queerness in the respectable, productive day
time world. The queer dives or seedy haunts where alcohol and cocaine are
recklessly consumed become a prison for these characters because their desire
to be free from heteronormativity, to be queer, can only be realized here and
in this manner. They are, as Butler puts it, "implicated in that which one
opposes" in that they seemingly embrace the denigrated characteristics of
queerness which are imposed on them by heteronormative society?casual
sex (as opposed to being monogamous); gender abnormality; excessive alco
hol and drug usage; unproductive lifestyle?all negative, subordinate terms on
the normative/queer binary. In turning their backs on Berlin, the narrators are
actually rejecting queer Berlin because that is all they show. And by implicitly
rejecting the queerness of their characters, all three narrators reaffirm norma
tive society's definition of queers as the abject Other. These rediscovered sto
ries have much to offer today's readers. Unwittingly or not, McAlmon alerts
us to the subtle, insidious workings of regulatory norms, whereby queer lib
eration re-enforces heteronormativity. Rather than opening a disruptive space
in the chain of performative acts that, according to Butler, all subjects are con
strained to engage in, the queer subjects scripted reiterations tighten the
chain. The dynamics of performative queerness illustrated in McAlmon's text
may point queer studies in a provocative new direction.
Notes
I wish to thank the College Literature readers for their helpful suggestions and
insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay.
1 Butler is drawing on speech act theory that views performatives as "utterances
which perform their own meaning?promises, threats, confessions, apologies" (Slinn
1999, 61). On performative speech acts, see Austin.
2 McAlmon spent time in Berlin between 1921 and 1923. The three stories he
wrote during his stay were collected in Distinguished Air (Grim Fairy Tales) and pub
lished in a limited edition in Paris. For McAlmon's impressions of Berlin, see Being
Geniuses Together.
Works Cited
Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis?.
2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
-.1979. Philosophical Papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warwick. 3rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bersani, Leo. 1995. Homos. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Buder, Judith. 1990a. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
-. 1990b. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." In Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical
Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
-. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York:
Routledge.
-. 1995. "Burning Acts?Injurious Speech." In Performativity and Performance,
ed. Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. New York: Routledge.
-. 1999. "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions." In Feminist Theory and
the Body: A Reader, ed. Janet Price and Margaret Shildrick. New York:
Routledge.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. "Experimental Desire: Rethinking Queer Subjectivity." In
Supposing the Subject, ed. Joan Copjec. London: Verso.
Halperin, David M. 1995. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Landau, Deborah. 1996. "How to Live, What to Do: The Poetics and Politics of
AIDS." American Literature 68.1: 193-225.
Levinson, Brett. 1999. "Sex Without Sex, Queering the Market, The Collapse of the
Political, The Death of Difference, and AIDS: Hailing Judith Butler." Diacritics
29.3:81-101.
Lloyd, Moya. 1999. "Performativity, Parody, Politics." Theory, Culture & Society 16.2:
195-213.
McAlmon, Robert. 1984. Being Geniuses Together 1920-1930, Revised, with
Supplementary Chapters and New Afterword by Kay Boyle. London: Hogarth Press.
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University of New Mexico Press.
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Literary History 30.1: 57-74.

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Constrained in Liberation: Performative Queerness in Robert McAlmon's Berlin Stories

Author(s): Richard E. Zeikowitz

One of the most influential developments Richard E. Zeikowitz is

in gender theory during the 1990s was assistant professor of English at

The main character in "Miss Knight" constructs a queer identity perfor

Knight's performative queerness is maintained through reiteration. He

His name itself is a performative. Unlike "Miss Collins" or "Miss Jenkins,"

and sellers are an integral part of the Berlin nightlife. Later on at a

up men in the street, at "pissoirs," or in bars. His attachment to Ruth sug

potatoes, ornamentally placed upon a borrowed giltedged platter" (11).

according to Butler, "[g]ender performativity may be inevitable but gender

The stigmatizing label, "positive," can be viewed as another constraint

Every new bloom is falling apart.

ened by nothing," uncontaminated by the queer (85). McAlmon's stories

reappropriation, and reidealization" (1995, 51). What Bersani does not

-. 1992. Miss Knight and Others. Ed. Edward N. S. Lorusso. Albuquerque:

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