We are All Nonbinary A Brief History of Accidents

• Published in: Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) Vol. 158; no. 1; pp. 106 - 119
• Main Author: Amin, Kadji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press Books Division 01.05.2022
• Subjects: Butler, Judith; Gender roles; Intellectuals; LGBTQ people; Non-binary gender
• ISSN: 0734-6018; 1533-855X
• DOI: 10.1525/rep.2022.158.11.106

What might Judith Butler's early work on gender offer efforts to think through the contemporary proliferation of queer and trans identities-many of which gather under the new umbrella category of non-binary- in the Anglophone Global North? Despite Butler's own recent nonbinary identification, the answer to this question is by no means straightforward. After all, whereas Butler's early work is animated by the desire to empty out the fictive core of gender, revealing it to be a mere effect of the compulsory repetition of gender norms, contemporary queer and trans culture invests strongly in the notion of gender identity, seeking to solidify new genders far outside of the confines of any "heterosexual matrix." The field of Trans Studies, moreover, has been durably oriented by Jay Prosser's foundational assertion that Butler's early work metaphorizes sex and is therefore unable to account for the transsexual desire to be differently embodied. While such dissonances are significant and important, they do not necessarily mean that Butler's early work has nothing to say to gender today.