CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Budek, Agnieszka Izabela |
|---|---|
| Title | Queer-forming Trans or Trans-forming Queer? - on Judith Butler's account of sex and gender and transgender subjectivity |
| Summary | In my thesis I focus on the relation between queer theory and transgender subjectivity. Since the figure of transgender infrequently serves to support the queer point concerning sex/gender incongruity or gender performativity I am trying to examine this relation in detail looking closer at the queer representations of transgender subjects. The main argument of my thesis is that queer theory, as it is developed by Judith Butler, fails to account for the specificity of the social situatedness of trans subjects and to see it as located in the bigger picture of limited social intelligibility. I develop this argument in three chapters each of which engages with a different aspect of Butler’s theoretical account. In the first chapter I talk about Butler’s approach towards identity categories, in the second I describe her account of gender and sex, and in the last third chapter, I focus on the concept of gender performativity. From these chapters I conclude that transgender individuals are infrequently assumed to be challenging the gender binary which they often are not yet recognized as part of. At the same time, their explicit desire to be recognized as “real” women or men is identified as the perpetuation of the normative social framework. I believe that using trans people as an example of gender destabilization in fact perpetuates the very image of them that some of them may be trying to escape – the image that depicts them as those who are always in-between. In my thesis I tried to question the usefulness of certain account of queer theory, with an example being Judith Butler, for the social location of trans subjectivities. My point was to indicate that, although queer theory talks about transgender subjects, it fails to account for their particular social situatedness. While using them to support its own claims and to challenge the gender binary, what is overlooked is not only the fact that trans people are often not recognized as its legitimate part yet, but also that they might desire, instead of subverting the gender binary, to actually become a part of it. |
| Supervisor | Timar Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/budek_agnieszka.pdf |
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