Congress Paper Abstract

Beyond the binary: fuzzy gender and the radical centre

Dr. Ashley Tauchert 

Email: a.tauchert@exeter.ac.uk

Within the disciplines of the Humanities and Cultural Studies, gender is often discussed in the context of ’binary oppositions’. There has been a shift in the last ten years or so to deny the category of gender as anything other than a mystification of the illusory ’Real’. In the work of Judith Butler, this shift has generated an argument that corporeal ’sex’ as we experience it (male and female) might be itself the symptom of the discourse of ’gender’. This paper will position itself in the ’radical centre’ between the reification of ’gender’ as an immanent condition, and the ’deconstruction’ of ’gender’ and ’sex’ as yet another binary opposition, which tends towards the postmodern de-centred subject. I will demonstrate that there is a middle way between oppressive gender reification, and the free-play of the subjective signifier; that this ’radical centre’ offers feminist agency that can answer the accusations of biological essentialism or naive universalism, and offers an account of ’gender’ that is neither ’binary’ nor chaotic.

Previous abstract

Next abstract