CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Gaine, Deirdre Sarah |
|---|---|
| Title | Performing Fashion Outside of the Binary: The Process of Becoming with the Clothing We Wear |
| Summary | Clothing comprises a significant aspect of the intelligibility of all gendered behavior, acts, citations; as Butler understands gender to be a “surface signification,” (1990) I argue that clothing cannot be considered separate from gender itself. Together with clothing, a person becomes intelligible/unintelligible and their clothing conveys or conceals aspects of their gender identity and embodiment. Therefore, I consider clothing to play an important role in negotiating one’s intelligibility as nonbinary. In this thesis, I build on Butler’s theory of performativity (1990) by demonstrating how gender is an effect of the process of becoming with the clothing we wear and consider the citation of gender norms to be an “intra-active” practice (Barad 1999). Through the process of conducting in-depth interviews with self-identified trans* and gender non-conforming people, I analyze how my interviewees “intra-act” with their clothing negotiating its citationality and embedded meanings in relation to their gender identities in an effort to establish intelligibility and authenticity. I use the term “intra-act” because I want to contest the idea of distinguishable boundaries between the physical body and clothing. The idea of considering the enactment of gender as an intra-active practice is necessary to establish my further discussion of visibility and/or intelligibility of one’s gender identity in clothing. Ultimately, I critique the notion of visibility as it is embedded in regimes of surveillance (Magnet and Mason 2014, Sullivan 2009). Although a few of my interviewees begin to trouble the notion of clothing as expressive as such, overall they seem to understand their potential for intelligibility to be associated with visibility, which is embedded in surveillance. |
| Supervisor | Renkin, Hadley Zaun; Yoon Hyaesin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/gaine_deirdre.pdf |
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