Word - I

The "I," Butler explains,  is constructed through social discourse involving being called such a name. Once identified as the self, such as through Lacan's mirror concept, the I becomes part of an interconnected chain of compliance and opposition. The "I" may choose to comply with the names given to him or her, or the "I" may chose to reject how s/he has been "hailed". This discourse on the "I" leads into the discussion of Paris is Burning, and how a transsexual's very nature is to oppose the "I" that has been given them by the rest of society as either male or female. The given "I"s have chosen to obscure their label, to create another "I" for themselves in direct opposition to what was expected.

Butler goes on to say that "Paris is Burning documents neither an efficacious insurrection nor a painful resubordination, but an unstable coexistance of both," meaning that the "I" is both performed and achieved on levels of "symbolic" and "imaginary" fictiveness. The "I" is essentially just a label, that can be broken like any other label.