Abstract
This article engages with Judith Butler’s concepts of gender performativity and materiality as they develop from Bodies That Matter (1993) to The Force of Nonviolence (2020). The article shows how Butler has moved toward a materialism that is less dependent on language and thus open for animals and other nonhuman creatures to become intelligible as liveable lives. At the same time, however, Butler has not expanded the concept of gender performativity into a correspondingly more-than-human direction, which raises the issue of how to understand gender performativity when nonhumans act as living matters alongside humans. To develop such a full-fledged concept of gender performativity, the article turns to new materialism, in particular the work of Jane Bennett. Combining Butler’s concept of gender performativity with Bennett’s work on vibrant matter, the article proposes a new concept of ‘more-than-human gender performativity,’ defined as an assembled enactment of multiple forces that in the very entanglement of human and nonhuman modes of life articulates a multiplicity of gender identities. The article concludes by illustrating the relevance of such a concept by using the recent work of the Danish artist Rasmus Myrup as its point of reference.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Distinktion |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 71-87 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISSN | 1600-910X |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Judith Butler
- gender performativity
- materiality
- Jane Bennett
- new materialism
- entanglements
- nonhumans