Gender Performativity

Gender performativity is Judith Butler's thesis that gender is constituted through the repeated performance of acts, gestures, and norms rather than expressing a pre-existing inner identity.

Definition

The theory that gender identity is not the cause but the effect of a regulated and repeated set of acts, such that there is no gendered self prior to its expression through these acts.

Scope

This topic examines Butler's account of performativity, its debt to speech-act theory and to Foucault, the distinction between performance and performativity, and the political implications of the claim that gender is produced rather than expressed. It treats the major clarifications and criticisms, presenting them descriptively.

Core questions

• If gender is performatively produced, in what sense is there a 'doer' behind the deed?
• How does performativity differ from a theatrical performance one chooses?
• What possibilities for subversion follow from the repetition that produces gender?

Key theories

Acts that produce the subject

Butler's argument, adapting Austin's notion of performative utterances, that gender is brought into being through reiterated acts, so that the gendered subject is an effect of these performances rather than their origin.

Performativity versus performance

Butler's clarification that performativity is not a voluntary theatrical performance one puts on and takes off but a compelled, citational practice constrained by norms, addressing misreadings of Gender Trouble.

History

Butler introduced gender performativity in Gender Trouble (1990), drawing on Austin's speech-act theory, Derrida's notion of citationality, and Foucault's account of power. Widespread misreadings of the concept as voluntarist performance prompted the clarifications of Bodies That Matter (1993), and the idea became foundational to queer theory.

Debates

Agency and subversion

Whether a theory in which the subject is an effect of norms can still account for agency and resistance, and how Butler's notion of subversive repetition answers this worry.

Key figures

• Judith Butler
• J. L. Austin
• Michel Foucault

Seminal works

• butler1990
• butler1993

Frequently asked questions

Does gender performativity mean gender is fake or chosen freely?

No. Butler stresses that performativity is a compelled, repeated practice shaped by social norms, not a freely chosen disguise; the appearance of a stable inner gender is its product.