Non-Binary Performativity: A Trans-Positive Account of Judith Butler’s Queer Theory
Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts
Non-Binar y Performativity: A Trans-Positive Account of Judith Butler's Queer Theory
Toby Finlay
Wilfrid Laurier University
Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation
Article 8
Follow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/luja Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation
Non-Binary Performativity: A Trans-Positive Account of Judith
Butler’s Queer Theory
I. Introduction
The work of queer and feminist scholar Judith Butler has revolutionized our
understanding of gender within contemporary social theory. In Gender Trouble (1999),
Butler develops the theory of gender performativity that challenges the conception
of gender as a natural, pre-discursive characteristic of human beings, allowing for
an interrogation of the systems of power-knowledge that constitute gender
arrangements. This post-structural reconceptualization of gender is particularly significant
for queer and trans communities insofar as it elucidates the symbolic violence
through which binary gender categories defined in heterosexual opposition to one
another are imposed on all individuals at birth. Despite these theoretical
implications, reframing gender in this way necessitates a deconstruction of the identity
politics that have come to characterize the gay- and trans-rights movements. To the
extent that performativity questions the possibility of stable queer or trans identities,
Butler’s theory may be perceived as invalidating the self-determination of queer
and trans people. Consequently, there is a demonstrated need for a trans-positive
reading of Judith Butler’s queer theory that unites the validity of queer and trans
experience with the performativity of gendered subjectivities.
In Undoing Gender (2004), Butler attempts to quell the perception that her
queer theory would invalidate the identities of queer and trans people. She
acknowledges queer and trans people’s nuanced relationships with identity by highlighting
the paradox within which both the presence and absence of identity categorization
constitute an unlivable constraint over human life (3–4). In many ways, being
recognized as people in liberal-humanist society is dependent on queer and trans people
claiming an intelligible sexual orientation and gender identity; however, claiming
these identities can also be understood to exercise constraint over our non-normative
ways of being. As a person who does not self-identify with either binary gender
category (i.e., neither male/masculine nor female/feminine), I regularly negotiate
this intersection of needing to assume queer and non-binary identities to render
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my unique subjectivity recognizable to others while still not feeling entirely
represented by these terms. Within the queer and trans communities more broadly,
however, there is a reluctance to acknowledge these limitations of identity-based
frameworks, likely because of the necessity of identity to our recognizability and
political movements.
Butler’s consideration of queer and trans people’s paradoxical relations
to gender identity is, thus, theoretically significant because it centres the role of
violence in producing queer and trans subjectivities. Nevertheless, Butler’s
exploration of gender constitution can be accused of exploiting non-traditional
gender arrangements in complicating the gender experiences of primarily cisgender
audiences. Accordingly, critical trans scholar and activist Viviane Namaste
critiques Butler’s queer and feminist analyses for requiring the existence of violence
against trans bodies but largely decontextualizing this violence in the pursuit of
her theoretical objectives (“Undoing Theory” 19). Butler’s inquiry therefore fails
to the extent that it does not centre the authentic experiences of queer and trans
individuals (i.e., the drag queens and kings, intersex folks, trans folks,
indigenous and racialized folks, and the many intersections of these positionalities)
who make this exploration possible. In this context, the unrepresentativeness of
Butler’s performative framework for queer and trans experiences is particularly
problematic and justifies a reclamation of her queer theory by and for queer and
trans scholars and our communities. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to
provide a critical reading of Butler that identifies and creates space for subversive
and non-conforming gender performativities within contemporary social theory.
II. The Heterosexual Matrix
An exploration of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity necessarily begins
with an evaluation of the power relations that constitute people’s experiences of
gender and desire. According to Butler, there is no gendered self that exists prior to
language, but rather, people are established as gendered subjects “through
becoming intelligible in accordance with recognizable standards of gender intelligibility”
(Gender Trouble 22). This mea (...truncated)